But I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to type someone out of an actual job interview.
I sit down in the chair in front of her desk. “No,” I repeat, forcing her to elaborate.
Georgie gets up as if I haven’t spoken, attending to the coffee that is steaming out of the bottom of a sleek single-serve Keurig on her desk: a splash of half-and-half, exactly one sugar packet. She takes her sweet time. I can hear the fancy white marble clock on her desk ticking, the sounds of cars honking and braking below, the entirety of New York swelling up beneath us. When she does sit down with it she glances over at the chair where I’m sitting with some mix of ambivalence and mild surprise that I’m still there.
“You want to intern for me.”
Insofar as it will grant me automatic proximity to a woman who may or may not have given birth to me.
“Yes,” I answer, a defensive edge in my voice.
She doesn’t miss it, her eyes raking me with new intention.
“I don’t hire actor types.” She gestures at me, and before I can protest, she says, “Look at you. Your eyes are basically screaming ‘squeeze me in between the Equity auditions.’”
It’s not my fault getting a union card is so impossible that newbies have to scramble to get seen. I shift my butt in my seat, trying to sit up straighter and seem less like a teenage girl who had a month-long pie-baking phase after seeing Waitress and more like a force to be reckoned with.
“Yeah, well. You hired Steph, and she’s an actor type,” I blurt.
She raises one perfectly groomed eyebrow, and something surges in me—like I’m not just defending myself, but Steph, too.
“So you did some research.”
“That I did.” Kind of.
“That still doesn’t mean you’ll be of any use to me,” says Georgie with a dismissive wave of her hand.
“How do you—”
“You show up without a résumé, without any kind of elevator pitch, without seemingly any experience in this field—”
“I’ve got an elevator pitch,” I tell her, which is a total lie until, miraculously, one starts falling out of my mouth. “You want an intern to help you with your clients. With your prone-to-melodrama, unpredictable, needy actor clients. Who better to help you anticipate their ridiculous needs than one of their own?”
She sets down her coffee cup. Her expression doesn’t change, but just enough of her posture does that I know I’ve got an in.
“You have thirty more seconds to make your case.”
I lean in to her desk, propping my elbows on it, fixing my eyes on her as unflinchingly as hers are on me. “I never do anything halfway. I am an actor type, and I’m a great actor type. Not because I was born talented. But because I fought for it. Because I fought tooth and nail for it, and practiced harder than everybody else, until I was the best. I throw myself into everything I do with a vengeance, and this would be no exception.” I can feel it then—the fire that’s always been in me. The one that has chased me into every audition room, soaked up the light on every stage, quivered in my bones. “You hire me, and you’ll get my best. My absolute best. And my best is something to be reckoned with.”
Georgie’s eyes narrow just enough that I can tell I’ve gotten through to her. “Why do you want this?”
She means for the question to be damning, but I’m ready for it. “The same reason you do,” I tell her. And in that moment, it doesn’t matter that I have no idea who she is, or what this internship actually entails, or what the hell I’m even doing here. What matters is the truth—and that, at least, is so solid in me that it feels like I’ve been waiting my whole life to speak it. “I want to be the one in control. The one calling the shots. And the only way for me to do that is to learn every angle of this business inside and out.”
Georgie doesn’t say a word. She juts her chin out and stares at me. I stare back. Enough seconds pass that I’m certain anyone else in their right mind would have looked away, but it feels like a challenge—and I have no intention of losing.
“All right,” she finally says. “You’re dismissed.”
I stand up sharply, without saying a word. Some gut instinct tells me not to protest, to go quietly and powerfully, leaving everything that poured out of me in my wake.
Oliver is still talking to Steph when I walk out, my face flushed, my body electric. He glances over at me and I can feel his smugness—his interview was short, but mine was shorter. He must think he’s won it.
But then Georgie follows me out, and the blood just about drains from his face.
“Here’s what I’ve decided. You’ll both intern for me for two weeks. Then whichever one of you earns it will get to stay for the rest of the summer.”
Oliver’s jaw drops, and it’s more satisfying than the time Mrs. Cooke told him that he would be in charge of the quick-changes for the kids double-cast as Bird Girls and members of Whoville in Seussical. He was pulling glitter out of his crevices for months.
“Do you agree to these terms?”
I answer first. “Of course.”
It takes Oliver a moment to recover. “Um—yeah. Okay.”
“Good. I’ll see you both at nine A.M. tomorrow.”
We both stand there, mouths ajar. The door to Georgie’s office closes behind her. There are a few beats of silence, and then Steph says, “Do either of you need a drink of water?”
“No,” says Oliver faintly, “but thanks.”
She hands us some paperwork to fill out then, with pre- addressed envelopes to send to their outsourced HR. Oliver turns to leave. I hesitate, lingering by Steph’s desk. There’s still so much I want to ask her. But at least now I’ve got time.
“See you tomorrow,” I tell her.
She smiles at me widely, shooting me another wink. Like she’s proud of me for pulling this off. My chest feels warm in this way that it probably shouldn’t, because even if she is my mom it’s not like she stuck around long enough that any of her feelings about me should count.
Then I hear the ping of the elevator arriving and wrestle myself out of that particular tailspin and back into the hall.
Oliver does a very poor job of suppressing his shudder when I pop up next to him just before the doors close. We sail back down to the lobby in total silence, his entire body so tense that I’m half expecting him to burst into flames. He walks out of the lobby and into the street fast enough that it’s clear he’s trying to shake me off, so for once, I let him—except then we hit the sidewalk and he changes his mind, whirling around to face me.
“What do you want?” he asks, gesturing up to the tenth floor. “Why are you doing this?”
I keep walking, so this time he’s the one who has to keep up. “I could ask you the same thing.”
“Seriously. This is too much. I get enough of you during the school year, and now I’m getting handcuffed to you for half the summer?”
“Why do you hate me so much?”
“I don’t hate you, Millie,” Oliver exclaims, throwing his hands up in a very un-Oliver-like gesture. It appears that after all these years, I’ve finally found his last nerve. If it weren’t so insulting, it’d be kind of fun to watch. “I’m just exhausted by you.”