“And,” says Steph glumly, “he wanted me to read for the mom part.”
My brain latches onto the word mom like a dog with a bone. “Okay, but like … what kind of mom?”
“The mom kind,” she says, setting her coffee down.
“No, I mean, like—there’s a spectrum.” I extend my arms out to demonstrate the two ends of it. “Are we talking young, sporty mom of toddlers or mean, chain-smoking mom of adult children who fled the nest?”
Steph’s nose crinkles. “I don’t know. Honestly, I tuned out after that.” Off my look, she says, “I should have some kind of established career before the biggest part on my résumé is mom.”
The universe might as well have served me this opportunity on a silver platter. All it would take is a wheedling question: Why is the idea of playing someone’s mom so bad?
I flinch, the thought rubbing at something a little too close to my chest.
“So it could be a big show, you’re saying?” I ask instead.
“Yeah. Probably.”
“Then why don’t you—”
Let it be known that if Georgie Check weren’t managing half the Broadway talent in New York, she would have made one hell of an assassin. Steph and I don’t even notice her enter until she’s fully in front of us, peering at me suspiciously. She’s in another variation of what I’ve come to recognize as a uniform of sharp, jewel-toned fitted pieces and statement jewelry—today it’s a sleeveless, waist-hugging emerald-green dress and pear-shaped purple drop earrings, her hair tucked into a twisted low bun.
“Oh, hey, Georgie,” says Steph.
“Hey,” she says back, her eyes still trained on me.
“I asked her to come in early,” says Steph.
Georgie is still considering me. She caught me sitting casually, with my legs crossed and my coffee in hand, and I thought it was best not to snap to attention and look like a small animal that just spotted a lion at the watering hole.
Mercifully, we’re interrupted. “Uh—am I…”
Georgie’s gaze cuts away from me and over to Oliver, who must have just emerged from the other elevator. I watch his expression waffle from confused to nervous to suspicious so fast that to everyone else in the room it probably didn’t happen at all.
Then Steph’s phone rings and Georgie sweeps out of the room and into her office, presumably to get our Check Lists.
“What are you doing?” says Oliver through his teeth.
“Drinking coffee. Sitting. Staring at the bike chain oil on your khakis.”
“What?”
Oliver immediately looks down, tilting his ankles to stare down at his perfectly pressed, stain-free pant legs.
“Made you look.”
He goes very still. “Some higher power is testing me.”
“Patti LuPone?”
“Seriously,” says Oliver, sitting on the chair next to mine so fast that even I’m surprised by the sudden closeness. “Why were you here early? What are you trying to—”
Georgie emerges from her office and Oliver’s mouth snaps shut. “Your Check Lists,” she says, a select three of the handful of words she says to us every day (my particular favorites are “take your lunch break” and “go home,” because although Georgie is by all accounts terrifying, she is also very strict about adhering to child labor laws). “No need to check in with Steph at the end of each task today; send me proof over text when they’re complete.”
She hands them to us so indiscriminately that I’ve started to realize there really is no rhyme or reason to which of us gets assigned what tasks. As reluctant as she was to hire me, I’m pretty sure when she comes out here each morning she doesn’t see me or Oliver so much as two amorphous teenage blobs. This only seems to up the stakes, though. How are you supposed to prove yourself to someone who barely grants you object permanence?
And the stakes are actually high now, because with summer already in full swing there’s no way I’ll be able to get a job anywhere else. If I have a prayer of paying for Madison, I have to see these shenanigans all the way through.
I glance down at my Check List, and just like that, all my resolve goes out the window.
“My life is a joke,” Oliver says flatly.
Our Check Lists for today are the punch line. They’re fully highlighted from top to bottom, meaning that everything we’re doing today is a “shared” task.
The first is picking up two massive sheet cakes and hand-delivering them to a wrap party for an indie movie musical that one of Georgie’s clients landed a lead for. After that we have to go to the tech rehearsal for a charity gala at Carnegie Hall and be stand-ins for Saundra Donald and Phil Fenton, a Broadway power couple who are busy in rehearsals right now for an upcoming off-Broadway revival of The Last Five Years. The third is to help post on the Instagram of an older client by taking photos of her at a rally scheduled for later today, which I assume will just be the whipped cream on the “Millie and Oliver Kill Each Other” sundae.
Objectively, all these things are really, really cool. Conditionally, we’re doomed.
“Well,” I say, bouncing up to my feet, “let’s hop to it, sunshine.”
The bakery is nearby, so as we power walk over to it I amuse myself by asking him ten times what the name of his brothers’ band is and he amuses himself by pretending I don’t exist after the fifth. Collecting the sheet cakes is easy enough, at least until it comes time to leave.
“Hold on, I’m grabbing us an Uber.”
Oliver props his sheet cake on the bakery’s counter. “You’re kidding.”
“I am carrying a sheet cake as large as my actual wingspan. No, I am not kidding.”
“We’ll never make it in this traffic.” He stares out the window, his brow creasing. “What is even going on out there?”
“It’s Pride weekend,” I remind him.
“No it’s not. Pride weekend’s at the end of June.”
“It is the end of June.”
To be fair, I’d probably have lost all sense of time and space in this internship, too, if the Milkshake Club hadn’t been decked out in rainbows the whole month. This last weekend of the parade and rallies draws in enough crowds that I usually find migrated glitter in our apartment well into July.
“Well, I’m taking the train,” says Oliver stubbornly.
For all this resolve, I notice that he doesn’t actually move, waiting for my cue.
I sigh. It’s too early in the morning for us to self-destruct.
“Fine,” I say. “But only because I get carsick anyway.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” says Oliver.
I roll my eyes and say a quick prayer to Patti LuPone that we don’t end up dropping these sheet cakes into the bowels of the 1 train as a sacrifice to the rats.
“Hold on,” says Oliver once we reach the station. “I’ll ask the station guy to buzz us in through the emergency exit.”
I wait at the turnstile dutifully, then spot a group of Pride revelers in matching sparkly rainbow shoes and temporary tattoos. By the time Oliver turns back around, a group of men have eased the cake out of my hands and through the turnstile and proceeded to carry it down the stairs to the platform, making sure it’s firmly in my arms before blowing me a kiss and taking off.