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Imagine you and Sloane each getting married, each having babies, and imagine someday having to explain this surreal kind of bigamy that you’re living in. Where you have these other children who are imaginary—”
    “Stop!”
    It takes a second for me to realize that I’m crying. Emma stands and comes to me and puts her arm around my shoulders and actually dries my face with her fingertips. And I actually let her.
    Great, now I’m crying right before a big audition. When our session is over, I lock myself in Emma’s bathroom for a good ten minutes. I smooth my hair and fix my makeup. Ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.
    My callback is in the office of June Weitzmann, a really wonderful casting director. Making a good impression on her is actually far more important than landing this role. I always tell myself this kind of stuff when I’m playing the lower-your-expectations game. As soon as I walk in the office, I’m being judged. Even the receptionist sizes me up and can’t resist a critical comment.
    “Hi, I’m Maggie Jameson. I’m a little early.”
    “Excuse me?” she says, her brows furrowing together.
    “I’m a little early. I’m not scheduled until three. I can just wait here, or…”
    “Oh!” She forces a laugh. “I thought you said you were a little surly. Make sure you enunciate for Tucker.”
    Great. Thanks for the tip.
    She eventually escorts me into a large loft space, empty but for two chairs, a long table strewn with script pages, and a bunch of storyboards leaning against the wall. Astonishingly, the directorhimself is there. Tucker Martin’s last film took first at the Tribeca Festival. He is the real deal. As I stand before them, my heart is in my throat. And the more kindly June and Tucker speak to me, the more I realize that my panic is showing and the more frightened I become. I mean, seriously, I want to run.
    Tucker chooses a different scene than the one I’d rehearsed and allows me to read from the sides (which is what they call printed pages of a scene). To my credit, I’ve already memorized all of Jolene’s lines, so I’m able to keep eye contact pretty consistently. I rise above my fear and manage to be actually pretty terrific. I guess because I want it so bad. Last night, I told myself it was no big deal. But staring into Tucker Martin’s eyes, things feel different. Maybe I am just as competitive as every other actor.
    When I finish, there is a beat. June glances over to read Tucker. He is still staring at me, his face indecipherable. June tells me it was lovely and thanks me for coming down and says she’ll call. My heart sinks.
    Tucker turns to her and asks if he can speak to me alone. I’ve been on hundreds of auditions, callbacks, readings. This has never happened before. June squeezes my shoulder warmly as she leaves the room.
    “I’m not going to cast you,” he says in the kindest way he can by choosing a matter-of-fact voice to treat me as a professional rather than a brokenhearted girl, which is what I am. “How old are you?”
    I lie by ten days.
    “If you want a career in this profession, and if you’ll work hard enough, you’re going to make it. I’m not saying you have a chance; I’m saying you will make it. And my guess is sooner rather than later.There’s an elegance and a refinement to you that is at odds with the core of this character. The day will come when you have the technique to overcome something like that.”
    I want to jump up and down and squeal, in an elegant and refined way, of course.
    “We’ll work together someday, Maggie. And it will be my pleasure.”
    I walk around town in the rain for about two hours imagining the, oh, thirty or forty films that Tucker and I will make together during our mentor-protégé collaboration. My favorites are a startlingly reimagined version of
Lear
, with me as Cordelia (somehow I envisioned Tucker actually playing Lear and carrying me out of frame in the finale), and an original conception of my