America for Beginners. Leah Franqui

job, and filled with the purpose that had been so lacking in his life up until now, but it also felt empty. He showered every evening, washing the city off his skin, still feeling dirty. Nothing would erase the sense of continued shame.

      He distracted himself, studying maps and guidebooks every day, and after two months he got a call from his boss, Mr. Munshi, on the brand-new pre-owned phone Mr. Munshi had given him. There was a job for him. He would be leaving New York soon and traveling across the country with a Bengali widow and a female American companion, one Mr. Munshi was looking for even now. Ravi would have laughed to hear it, but he wasn’t there, and when Satya pretended to tell him one night in the bathroom, he still couldn’t look at himself in the mirror. He wondered if he ever would again.

       8

      Rebecca Elliot woke up to the sound of snoring. This wasn’t the first time Max’s nasal trumpeting had disturbed her but it would be the last, she told herself as she stared up at the ceiling. A headache from last night’s whiskey pounded at her temples. She had met this one, like many before him, at a bar, after another failed audition a few weeks ago where the casting director had eyed her breasts but not her performance and sent her on her way with a limp “Great work.”

      Rebecca habitually used her combined salary from part-time jobs in a coffee shop and a small map store to buy cheap drinks at the place around the corner from her apartment, a Chinese restaurant that became a dive bar after five. It attracted odd people, which is why Rebecca liked it. This boy, Max, had joined her that night, and together they’d washed away her desperation with alcohol, only here it was again, as always, waiting for her as the man beside her slept.

      Yesterday’s audition, the third she had drunk her way toward forgetting since she met Max, had been particularly painful. It was for the role of Anya in The Cherry Orchard. Rebecca loved that role; she had wanted to play it since college. It was a prestigious director and it was a huge production and it was Anya. But when she had entered the room, the casting director had looked her up and down and frowned, explaining that they would be doing the readings for Varya, Anya’s older sister by seven years, the following day. Rebecca had blinked back her tears and explained that she was there for Anya and everyone had laughed and joked and pretended it was fine. Rebecca had auditioned and tried to “use it” but the damage was done. She left shaking, wishing she could throw up, wishing she had the kind of mom she could call for sympathy.

      Rebecca had grown up in Washington, DC, the only daughter of well-educated, well-bred American Jews. Her father, Morris Elliot, ran a small law firm specializing in divorce, which was a prosperous business given his discretion and the instability of many political marriages. Rebecca’s mother, Cynthia Greenbaum, taught economics at Georgetown University, where she delighted in sparring with her Catholic coworkers. They had raised Rebecca with strong assurances that she could be anything she wanted to be, and then, like so many American parents, were surprised and dismayed when she believed them.

      She had attended Columbia University because her parents, alumni of the school, approved, and since they were the people footing the bill, that was important. To her, it didn’t matter where she went, just as long as it was in New York. She had dreamed of the city since she had been a child. She’d done well, but she hadn’t made friends, holding herself apart from everyone but the theater crowd and acting in every role for which someone cast her. It seemed for a time that it would even be easy. She couldn’t imagine failure. Who can, before it’s actually happening?

      Rebecca graduated with a flurry of acting accolades and enough flashbulb photos snapped by her proud parents to cause a seizure in a susceptible person. But once the world of acting was no longer confined to her pool of fellow students, Rebecca realized for the first time that acting was a form of begging, and all you could have was what people decided to give you.

      She had gotten a few roles, a few commercials, a lot of promises of things that were going to be “the thing that launched her,” and nothing had. So, after the early difficult years following college, Rebecca found herself performing in her own life. When she met someone new they would transform in her mind to an audience, and Rebecca would go to work. Her body would grow languid and pliable, her breath lifting her chest in trembling motions that held men, and sometimes women, captive. She was sick of this performance, but it kept attracting audiences, and given that almost a year had passed since her last real acting job, she wasn’t sure if she could actually play another role anymore.

      Next to her, Max shifted again, throwing his hand over her breast. It was clammy with sweat. Glancing at her buzzing phone, Rebecca realized that she was late for work at the coffee shop, again, which meant she would be fired, again. She supposed she should be unhappy, but she only felt annoyed. Every job but the map store was disposable and yet she was always surprised when she discovered her employers felt the same way about her.

      “Turn that off, would you?” the guy, Max, asked groggily. It was one in the afternoon. Rebecca’s phone buzzed again, a voice mail this time. She deleted it, already knowing what it said.

      “Thanks.” Max coughed, and reached down to his pants, which were lying in a heap on the floor of Rebecca’s otherwise neat apartment. He took out a pack of cigarettes and fumbled around his pocket for a lighter.

      “What are you doing?” Rebecca didn’t mind smokers. She even had the occasional cigarette herself, when drunk or stressed or devastated or all three at once, which happened more and more these days. But no one smoked in her apartment. Not that he was asking, this near stranger, this idiot poser who claimed to want to make music but really just spent his time getting high in the Williamsburg apartment his parents had purchased for him after he graduated from the Berklee College of Music without a record deal or a clue.

      The strength of Rebecca’s sudden hatred surprised her. She had enjoyed Max, his banter, his faux self-deprecation and real self-satisfaction. She even liked him in bed, finding his confidence and his rich vocabulary welcome. Now, sitting naked, blowing smoke in her face, with last evening’s drinks seeping out of his pores and sweating onto her sheets, he disgusted her.

      “I have to go. I have work.” Rebecca stood and walked into the bathroom. In her studio apartment, the walk wasn’t long. Avoiding her own gaze in the mirror, she ran the shower, soaping up briskly, tempted to linger in the hopes that Max would leave and never return and that would be the end of it.

      “I’m making us breakfast!” His cheerful call echoed through the apartment. Damn it, Rebecca thought. He was trying to be nice. He was trying to be the “good guy.” There had been ones like him in the past, ones who had thought they liked her for her no-strings declarations, somehow thinking they were a lure and a challenge, not statements of fact. They rushed in to claim her in some way, but this quickly moved from amusing to disturbing. They took such pride in being good, these men, in being what they assumed she must want based solely on her insistence that she didn’t.

      Rebecca rushed out of the bathroom in a manufactured hurry.

      “I’m late! Sorry, sorry, so sweet of you, sorry, but I have to run. Sorry!”

      She pulled on clothing quickly, tying up her wet hair and hopping into jeans as Max, standing with a bowl of half-beaten eggs in his hands, looked on, concerned.

      “You should eat something, Beck. It’s important.”

      He had a nickname for her? Rebecca’s mouth twisted with disgust.

      “No time! Sorry! Had such a good time I didn’t even remember my stupid job. Really gotta go! That smells great. Please, eat it, obviously, and let yourself out when you go. The door locks behind you, okay?”

      And she was gone, closing the door on his protest. Her phone beeped.

       Last night was great. Miss you already, sexy. Get some breakfast on your way.

      It was perfectly constructed, a neatly packaged mix of flirt and feeling. Rebecca closed her eyes, her head pounding even harder.

      Thanks,