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look like
you know what you’re doing?”
    This started to sound even better.
    “Sure. I played on a high-school team.”
    Again Mark nodded, as if his question were a
formality and he had known its answer in advance.
    Jesse grinned. His eyes grew feverish. Across his
brow, perspiration beaded, not in anxiety but in raw relief: a
golden triumph after years of defeat.
    Could he have a lock on this role?
    “Good deal,” Mark said. “We have a couple more
prospects to see, but we’ll notify your agent of our decision by
the end of the week.”
     
     
    CHAPTER 7

     
    Mark Shea’s decision arrived sooner. It came by five
forty-five that afternoon.
    And it wasn’t good.
    On his way home, Jesse’s car idled with its
stop-and-go companions, all engulfed in a soup of rush-hour traffic
on Interstate 405. How he cherished the carpool lane when he could
utilize it!
    With the window rolled down, exhaust fumes funneled
into his vehicle, accompanied by their heavy odor. Jesse leaned
back in his seat and rubbed his eyes with one hand on the wheel. An
old Toad the Wet Sprocket CD played on the stereo. When he felt the
buzz of his cell phone in his pocket, he turned the music off and
answered.
    “I heard back from Shea’s people.”
    The connection was shoddy, which muted Maddy’s voice
on the other end. Nervous, Jesse tapped his left foot on the floor
with eager anticipation. He struggled to increase the phone’s
volume without missing a beat. He didn’t want to be presumptuous,
but if Maddy had received word so soon, he figured it must be a
solid sign.
    “Mark promised a decision before the weekend,” Jesse
replied. “Was it good news?”
    Maddy’s pause told Jesse all he needed to know.
Sometimes, in an instant, your gut plunges into your belly and, try
as you may to think your instinct faulty, you just can’t convince
yourself.
    At this moment, Jesse wished his instinct
worthless.
    If only.
    “It’s a no-go,” Maddy said.
    He shook himself from a trance and realized the car
in front of him had advanced. To catch up with the car was simple;
to search for a response to Maddy wasn’t. He moved his lips but
couldn’t locate his voice.
    Jesse rested his head against his fingertips and
asked, “Did Mark say anything? Did I do something wrong? From the
way he talked, it sounded like I’d nailed the part.”
“Absolutely. Mark was impressed.”
    “Then what happened?”
    “He said your eyes are too wide.”
    Jesse grunted, his forehead a crinkle of confusion.
“What does that mean?”
    “Well, not owlish huge, just … wide.”
    “Was it an aesthetic thing? Like that adage, ‘The
eyes are the window of the soul’?”
    “No,” Maddy replied. “It was pure preference. They
didn’t feel you looked the part; there’s nothing more to read into
it.”
    At least they were courteous about it, Jesse
thought. He’d heard stories of industry people who made cutting
comments about an actor’s physical attributes. Now that he’d
received such a remark firsthand, it sounded too ridiculous to be
credible, yet it was true.
    Jesse sighed. “So they found someone with better … eyes. ”
    “It’s a subjective business; you’ve learned that.
Don’t get discouraged over this. We’ll keep plugging away, and I’ll
let you know when another project pops up. In the meantime, you’re
still networking as well?”
    “Of course.”
“Then we’ll continue to move forward together. Lots of
opportunities out there.”
    And with that, their conversation ended. The traffic
accelerated from a sporadic crawl to perpetual motion as Jesse
stared ahead in his own oblivion. His heart sank. His stomach grew
acidic with nausea. That weighty sense of darkness, which had
lurked for months in the background of his mind, crept closer to
the forefront.
    Stricken, Jesse felt reality finger its way into his
fibers. After eleven years, today he wondered if he had lost this
battle, and depression began to emerge as a formidable