March
Lucy's Age: 18
Calum turned out to be funny and carefree. Gray's Papaya wasn't the kind of place that Venice would ever approve of, but the hotdogs were tasty and it was amazing fun to watch the cooks as they fried up dozens of hotdogs all at once.
Calum seemed to know one of the employees because the guy took our orders and then handed us our food without any money changing hands. We ate our food while leaning against a long, narrow counter as people hurried past the window in front of us.
"So, Lucy, what exactly brings you to New York?"
I finished chewing and then shrugged. "Nothing actually brought me here, I was born here. We lived up in Yonkers for a few years, but the city is where most of my memories are. What about you?"
"I'm taking acting classes."
"I thought that Hollywood was the place to be for that kind of stuff."
"It definitely is if you want to do movies, but a lot of the television stuff gets filmed out here and television is a pretty good way to go because the stories tend to focus on more than just one or two characters. It's pretty hard to get noticed in a movie because you're either the star or you only get a couple of lines. Plenty of people start out in television though and build a fan base before jumping over to Hollywood."
It actually made a lot of sense, and I found myself wondering why I'd never made that connection before. It was amazing how the world was made up of a ton of small things that all came together to create order out of what looked like chaos, or sheer dumb luck, when you were looking at it from the outside. I'd just spent weeks learning about power generation, but there was a whole new world of rules when it came to acting that I didn't know anything at all about.
Calum interrupted my train of thought by waving a hand in front of my face. "Earth to Lucy. What do you do?"
"I'm a…student right now."
"What are you studying?"
I'd said that I was a student mostly because it was a safe thing to say, but I suddenly realized that it had been the truth.
"Kind of everything at some point or another, but currently I'm taking classes in business."
"Oh, no, a rabid capitalist!"
His tone sounded so serious that I looked over to check his expression. His face was so deadpan for a second that I wasn't sure how to respond, but he grinned a moment later and I felt my stomach unknot.
"Better a rabid capitalist than a layabout actor."
"Touché."
From there our conversation progressed through a relaxed, but fun, range of topics. I told Calum a little bit about how utilities worked and he talked about the different ways that posture or expression helped to sell a role.
Once we finished our hot dogs we walked over to the film museum that was a few blocks from Gray's Papaya. Calum was in heaven, but I'd seen so few of the movies that I didn't have much of a frame of reference for most of what he was talking about. The museum was nothing but a huge series of televisions each of which had a small plaque next to it explaining what was playing and why it was included in the collection.
Excerpts ranging from Citizen Kane to Life is Beautiful made up the displays and Calum seemed completely in his element. He claimed never to have been to this particular museum before, but he had something to say about each of the exhibits. His comments had a smattering of the discussion I'd expected about the craft displayed by the actors, but he spent even more time talking about camera angles, plot and lighting.
I was surprised by just how much he knew about so many of the different aspects of filmmaking, but when I expressed my admiration he just shrugged it aside.
"It's just part of landing a role. Craft is important, but knowing what's going on around you is one of the ways to help make sure you can deliver a good performance."
"Still, I'm impressed. I bet that there are a lot of aspiring actors in New York who don't know all of that."
"Yeah, you're probably right. Acting is one of those lucky break kind of professions. You do everything you can to be ready when your break comes along, but it can be hard to keep at it month after month when nothing happens for you. I guess I just figure that the more work I do now the better chance I'll have that I'll be able to recognize my break when it rolls around."
"You're pretty driven, aren't you?"
Calum looked down at his clothes with mock shock. "What gave me away? Was it the shoes?"
"No, silly. It was the fact that it sounds like you're working forty hours at the restaurant, another fifteen hours a week doing other odd jobs and you're still managing to take acting classes and study up on all of this director-type stuff."
"I would have said no, but it sounds like you've pretty much got me dead to rights after that. Yeah, I guess I'm pretty focused."
"So why hide it?"
Calum watched one of the monitors for a few moments before sighing. "I try to keep it on the down low because most people don't like driven individuals. Nerds get made fun of not just because they lack social skills, it's also because the other kids resent the fact that the nerds are working towards something more than just getting drunk or lucky, and their time horizon extends out to more than just what happens at the cool party this weekend. Nobody likes having it pointed out to them, however indirectly, that their priorities might be out of whack."
He'd provided a much more revealing answer than I'd expected to receive. I let it process for a couple of beats and then shrugged. "So you were a pretty big geek in high school then, I take it?"
"The biggest. Complete with double-bridged glasses and a year-round membership to the debate team."
"So why did you choose to pursue acting then?"
"The really good debaters have more than just facts to back up their arguments, they develop a kind of stage presence. I wanted to be a good debater, so I started studying anything and everything I could find that might help me get better onstage. I got contacts, changed my hairstyle, the whole nine yards. I was still planning on going to college until all of a sudden girls started hitting on me instead of the other way around."
"So you abandoned your college goals and decided to pursue acting full-time so you could get girls?"
"No, I realized pretty quickly that the girls who were hitting on me now were just interested in my looks. As soon as I started trying to talk to them about the kinds of stuff that I was really interested in, their eyes would glaze over. Once I was more attractive it became a lot harder to tell what girls were interested in me for who I was instead of just for what I looked like."
I was tempted to make a wisecrack about him having a big head or something like that, but it wasn't the right time for that. Besides, he really was extraordinarily hot.
"For a couple of days I was tempted just to go back to how I was before, but then I realized that that would just be putting the problem off. If I went to college and worked as hard as I could then eventually I'd have money and I'd just be looking at the same old problem. So I decided to just go off and do what made me the happiest."
Calum looked back over at me and gave me a wry smile. "So now I guess you know everything there is to know about me. Sorry, I don't usually info dump on people like that."
I put my arm through his and grinned at him. "I suspect that there is a lot more there underneath the surface than you've even hinted at yet. You're in luck though, I like driven people. By the way, when you agreed to have lunch with me I didn't realize just how precious your free time is. Thanks for this."
I actually managed to get a slight blush out of him. "So what about you, Lucy? What were you like in high school?"
His question was so unexpected that for a second I couldn't get a response out. "I…ah, I've never been to high school. I've just had private tutors ever since I was little. You're worried about people finding out how driven you are, well, I'm worried about people realizing that I have no social skills whatsoever."
Calum slipped my hand off of his arm and down into his hand, giving it a squeeze as he looked over at me again. "I think your social skills are just fine, Lucy. I hope that we can do this again sometime."