Sue pulled the old version out of her purse as Bob grabbed a pencil. After a quick once-over, he drew a big X on the paper with a sigh. “Standard. So standard.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Sue was hurt. She had worked hard on the thing. Her stage career was on that piece of paper. All the plays she had done in high school, including the one-acts, asterisked with *Thespian Society Award*. Every performance she had ever given at the ACLO, from member of the chorus right up to last year’s turn as Nellie Forbush in South Pacific. Five seasons and eighteen musicals! The productions at the Gaslamp Playhouse Dinner Theater—Emily in Our Town and the Ensemble in Zoo Story. The Narration she did for the Diabetes Walk-a-thon public service message. Every performance Sue Gliebe had ever given was listed on that résumé.
“As we jaded queens say, ‘Nobody gives a shit, honey.’” Bob stood up and went into his bedroom. From under his bed he pulled out an old typewriter protected by a clear plastic dustcover. “This beast is so heavy. I really should keep it out. Make space on the table, would you?” Sue moved away the deli leftovers and a stack of books.
Bob’s typewriter was nearly as big as his grandmother’s radio, a black metal antique, fitting for an apartment crammed with old, peculiar things. The typewriter was a Royal, with glass sections on the sides, like opera windows for any titmouse that might take up residence among the keys.
“Does that still work?” Sue asked.
“It’s a typewriter, child. Ribbon. Oil. Paper. Happy fingers. That’s all it needs. This, however…” He disdainfully picked up the record of Sue’s life’s work, holding it with two fingers like it was rancid melon rind. Then he grabbed a pencil and used it as a pointer. “You list only the roles you’ve played, not the high school you went to or the Gasbag Amateur Play School Diner. The only pro credit you have is the Arizona CLO, so you can’t lie about those credits. You put it at the top in big capital letters, then list the best plays and the best roles first, not in the order you performed them. If you were in the chorus, name your part like ‘Ellen Craymore’ or ‘Candy Beaver’ toward the bottom. If anyone questions you, then say you were in the chorus. These other roles? In high school and all that?”
“Yes?”
“They go under the heading ‘Regional Theater.’ Embellish. Don’t tell them the plays were one-acts. Don’t tell them you won any trophies. Don’t tell them they only ran two weekends. The play. The role. You were a working actress in the Region of Pile-of-Rocks, Arizona, and you have the credits to prove it.”
“Isn’t that lying?”
“They don’t care.” Bob took his pencil to the résumé again. “Oh, look! You’ve done commercials! Valley Furniture! The disease of the month! No, no, no. You put right here, ‘Commercials on Request.’ They will see that you have done commercials but will request not a single one.”
“Really?”
“Trust Bobby Roy, Sue. The great ones all do. Now, this last bit, this sad paragraph listing your Special Skills. This is bullshit to anyone on the other side of the casting desk. Notice I did not say ‘couch.’”
“What if they’re looking for special skills?”
“They ask you. But this list? Guitar. You know three chords, right? You can juggle. Three oranges for a few seconds, right? You roller-skate. What kid doesn’t? You can ski and ride a bike and skateboard. BFD! Did you actually put Sign Language here?”
“I learned some for Tribal Heritage Day. This means ‘awkward.’”
Bob gave the one bit of sign language he knew. “This means ‘bullshit.’ Understand that your résumé will receive all of five nanoseconds of attention. Casting people look at your picture, then at you to see if it matches. Are you actually a girl? Do you have blond hair? You sporting a rack of any significance? If you’re what they are looking for, they turn over to your résumé, scan your credits and your lies, then scribble down this magic word: callback.”
Bob rolled paper into the old Royal, adjusted the margins and tabs, and within minutes had typed out a crisp, clear, and clean résumé that made Sue look like she was as experienced a dreamer as ever hopped a bus to the big city. She could boast of thirty roles. The one thing missing from the paper was her name at the top.
“Let’s think about this for a moment,” Bob said. “Over more tea.” He removed the deli tray to the kitchen and lit another big match for the burner. “I’d get out more Oreos but then we’d just eat them.”
“Think about what?” Sue studied her new professional call sheet. She liked herself more because of what Bobby had typed.
“Have you ever thought of changing your name?”
“My real name is Susan Noreen Gliebe. I’ve always been just Sue.”
“Joan Crawford had always been Lucy LeSueur. Leroy Scherer was called Junior till he became Rock Hudson. You ever hear of Frannie Gumm?”
“Who?”
Bob sang the opening lines of “Over the Rainbow.”
“Judy Garland?”
“Pal of Frances lacks the panache of friend of Dorothy, doesn’t it?”
“My parents will be disappointed if I don’t use my real name.”
“Disappointing your parents is the first thing to do when you come to New York.” When the kettle sounded off, Bob refilled the teapot sitting beside the Royal. “And say you make it big on the Great White Way—which you will. Do you really want to see that name in lights: Sue Gliebe?”
Sue blushed, not out of embarrassment at such praise, but because, deep inside her, she knew she had a future as an actress. She wanted to be big. Yes, as big as Frances Gumm.
Bobby poured more tea in both cups. “And how do you pronounce that? ‘Gleeb’? ‘Glee-bee’? ‘Glibe’?” He pantomimed a big, fake yawn. You know what Tammy Grimes’s stage name was? Tammy Grimes.” He fake-yawned even wider.
“How about…Susan Noreen?” Sue could imagine that name up in lights, no problem.
Bob flicked the paper in the Royal typewriter, snapping the new résumé with his finger. “This is a birth certificate for the new Sue. If you could go back in time and pick a brand-new name for yourself and your ma and pa, what would that name be? Elizabeth St. John? Marilyn Conner-Bradley? Holly Woodandvine?”
“I can call myself something like that?”
“We’ll check with the union, but yes. Who do you want to be, titmouse?”
Sue held her tea. There was a name she’d once dreamed of having, in junior high school, when she sang in a folk group for her chapter of Young Life. Everyone was making up groovy names like Rainbow Spiritchaser. She came up with hers, imagining the name on the cover of her first LP.
“Joy Makepeace.” She said it out loud. Bobby’s face showed no reaction.
“Heap big trouble with that’um smoke signal,” he said, “unless you have some Native American DNA in the Gliebe bloodline.”
So it went as the afternoon wore on. Bobby came up with a constant stream of stage names, the best of which was Suzannah Woods, the worst being Cassandra O’Day. The Oreos had come back out and were now all eaten. Sue kept working the Joy angle. Joy Friendly. Joy Roarke. Joy Lovecraft.
“Joy Spilledmilk,” Bobby said.
Sue used the bathroom. Even Bob’s water closet was replete with estate-sale booty. She could not imagine why anyone would want a toy bowling set with Fred Flintstone tenpins, yet there they were.