appear desperate when someone did. This time, I told myself, I’ll be far more discerning. I’ll ask more questions, and I’ll do just what Leo Abbot told me to do, demand half of the deposit. I might suddenly have become a beggar, but I would not give up being a chooser.
Before the end of the week, I gave Mr. Abbot the full rent. The extra hours and some good tables that I suspected Marge had sent my way resulted in a little more money than I had anticipated. It wasn’t enough to carry me through another month, but I assured him I had enough funds to provide for my utilities and immediate needs. However, he had learned how to read my face too well. There was no way to hide the concern that if I didn’t get a new roommate soon, I’d be faced with the same crisis when the next month’s rent came due.
In the meantime, the following week, there were three new auditions for smaller productions off-Broadway. When I went to them, I saw that the size of the production didn’t seem to matter, however. There were just as many girls trying out for the same roles as there were for larger, far more expensive musicals. And the pay for these smaller productions made it almost financially dumb for me to take a role if offered one. I’d have to give up too much time at the restaurant and essentially lose that job, earning less money. I was at the point where I was trying out just to see if I could get a role that I would then turn down. If it happened, it would be enough to restore my confidence, however.
None came my way.
The second day into the start of the following week, I was finally lucky, however. Another young woman contacted me about sharing the apartment, and she was far more mature than Piper, not only because she was four years older at twenty-six, but she had a stable position at an insurance firm. Her name was Clara Denning, and she was surprisingly forthcoming.
“I’m looking for a new apartment because I’ve just broken up with my boyfriend, Curtis,” she said. “We broke up just before he left for a sales conference in Houston, Texas. Being that sharing your apartment can be immediate, I’d like to come over to see it. You’re two stops away from my company. I was ready to just take a hotel room for a while.”
I invited her over whenever she wanted to come, and she replied, “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
You can never tell what people look like from the sound of their voices on a telephone. On the other hand, my father used to swear that he could tell if a prospective borrower was someone substantial or not from the way he or she phrased sentences or from the vocabulary he or she employed. He claimed “first impressions are rarely mistaken.” But I thought you had to have a certain amount of arrogance to believe that, something that was beyond self-confidence. I never doubted that was what my father had.
Maybe more of him than I wanted was emerging in me, but to me Clara even sounded like someone substantial. She spoke in clear, sharp, authoritative tones and did not giggle or laugh nervously after something she had said. Later, when I got to know her, I had no doubt she would realize her ambition to become the private secretary of the company’s president. My fear was she wouldn’t think the apartment was good enough and after a while would decide she had to look for something more fitting for a top executive secretary. After all, it still needed quite a bit of touching up and renovation. Piper hadn’t been interested, and I didn’t have the money to do anything, anyway.
The woman at my door twenty minutes later was shorter and thinner than I had envisioned. She wasn’t pretty, yet she wasn’t unattractive by any means. Her dark-brown hair was done in a neat pageboy style, but nothing about her hazel eyes and diminutive features particularly stood out. Her smile was friendly although firm. She wore a little lipstick. The shade was conservative, simply correct for her hair and complexion. I guess the best way to describe her was she was someone completely under control. I imagined there were times when her eyes looked a great deal brighter with excitement, but it wasn’t going to be now. She was too