Thom looked at his watch and calculated again.
Yes, it was fourteen hours since the audition. Somehow it already felt like fourteen days – fourteen years.
He wanted this job. He needed this job.
It had been two years since his last show. Two long years of waiting tables and taking classes and doing everything he could to survive.
He wondered if it was all worth it. Was he just pretending? Pretending to be an actor?
An actor acts and he hadn’t acted in two years.
When customers at the restaurant asked what he really did for a living… Was he that bad a waiter? He’d answer that he was an actor. They’d smile, benevolently and nod, then give him their order without any further comment.
He always guessed that they’d seen through his façade. But which one? The waiter or the actor? He always wondered.
He looked in the mirror as he got ready to go to the restaurant. Maybe it was time to shift gears and do something else, he wondered.
But what?
Maybe he should go back to law school – lawyers were acting most of the time anyway so he could combine his acting skills with his legal prowess and make a fortune. He certainly wasn’t doing that now either as an actor or a waiter.
It’s an idea, he thought.
He began to leave just as the phone rang.
At first he was going to let his answering machine take the call as he usually did because of all the annoying robo-calls and scams.
But something made him pick it up.
It was his agent calling to tell him that he’d gotten the job – he was to play a waiter on a soap opera.
“Well, at least I’m combining a couple of my skills,” he said aloud after he thanked his agent and hung up the phone.
Right now he decided that he’d better hone his waiter skills at the restaurant, at least for one more day – just in case…