Page 21 of The Newcomer
“The doorman keeps giving me these weird looks,” she reported to her boss. “Do you think he thinks I’m a hooker or something?”
“Sidney gets paid very well not to ask questions or give you weird looks,” Evan said, sounding annoyed. “I’ll speak to him.”
Every guest who checked into one of Evan’s Tribeca units—which were located within a six-block radius—was given Letty’s cell phone number. They called or texted at all hours, day and night, to complain about the air-conditioning or the furnace. Or the Wi-Fi speed. Or the lack of a corkscrew, toilet plunger, or ice cream scoop.
Guests lost their keys. They wanted early check-ins and late checkouts. And, as Evan had warned, none of them could figure out how to work the television remotes.
Her new responsibilities quickly escalated. She gave notice at the diner. Working alone from the apartment, she was surprised how much she missed the camaraderie and friendship of the Lazy Daizy crew.
“You need a better agent,” Evan told her bluntly one evening, when they met at a nearby bistro to discuss the upcoming week’s bookings.
“No.” She shook her head. “Leslie’s been great to me.”
“How long since she got you an actual job?”
“I got two callbacks for that paper-towel commercial.”
“I’m not talking about callbacks. I’m talking about paid gigs.”
Letty shrugged.
“Dammit, Letty, if you want to be an actress, you need to be acting. I’ve seen what you’ve done, you’re terrific. You really stood out as the juror in that Denzel Washington flick, and I realize you only had a couple lines, but theLaw & Orderepisode you did was great.”
“You’ve seen my work? How?”
He smiled. “IMDb.” He slid a card across the table to her. “Give this guy a call. Ronnie’s the best. Knows everybody, reps all the up-and-coming actresses. More importantly, he owes me a favor.”
In retrospect, it was shocking how easily she agreed to do whatever Evan suggested. She cried the morning she let Leslie know she was seeking new representation, but within a week, Ronnie Silver managed to get her a walk-on in a CBS pilot and an actual speaking part in a low-budget indie horror flick. She got cast as the jealous ex-girlfriend in a Hallmark Christmas movie. The pay was crap, but she got to spend a week in Canada, in August.
The boost in her income allowed her to sign up for classes with a prestigious acting coach.
When Evan tactfully mentioned that her slight underbite could be keeping her from getting bigger roles—and when he referred her to an orthodontist he knew—she dutifully got invisible braces, which cut her lower lip and made her jaws ache. And when he pointed out that she might get bigger roles if she let her hair grow longer and went lighter, that’s exactly what she did.
Evan Wingfield was a patient man. He waited a month before he casually asked Letty to dinner. She was frankly shocked when he didn’t make any overt moves, just giving her a chaste kiss on the cheek when he dropped her back at the apartment.
There were more dates: to a charity fundraiser, the soft opening of a new French restaurant owned by one of Evan’s friends. The kisses became less chaste and more urgent. She enjoyed the attention and began to have second thoughts about her pledge that she would not sleep with him.
Letty hadn’t heard from Tanya in a while. The last she’d heard, her little sister was living down south somewhere, doing some modeling and living with an on-again, off-again boyfriend. Tanya was not big on phone calls or emails, so Letty was shocked to get a call from Tanya early one Saturday morning.
“Lettttttyyyy,” Tanya sobbed.
“What is it?”
“Rooney’s gone.”
Letty wasn’t sure whether Rooney was Tanya’s boyfriend or her cat.
“Gone? Oh my God, is he dead?”
“I wish. No, the fucker moved out. I came home last night and there was a for-sale sign in the window of the condo. There’s a multi-lock on the door, so I can’t get in, but I looked inside and it’s completely empty. All my stuff is gone. My clothes, my shoes, everything. Thank God I was carrying my Louis Vuitton, or it would be gone too.”
“Did you try calling him?”
“Only like a gabillion times. Nothing. He’s gone and my shit’s gone. And P.S. He owes me like a couple thousand dollars. I’m officially broke.”
“This happened last night? Where are you staying?”
“I slept in my car last night, because it was too late to do anything else.”
