When David Benton was five years old, he had it in his mind that he was going to be a rock star, something between Freddy Mercury and Billy Joel. He spent all his spare time on music, practicing his singing and songwriting. When he was in kindergarten, David received an award for his original song “Attacus Atlas.” His parents had been so proud that they’d hung it up on the fridge for a month before David decided to put it to better use.
At the time, the series Starfly, loosely based off of the cult classic, Shadows of Earth, had been airing worldwide. David had been completely enamored with the youngest member of the cast, Louis Greene, controversially portraying Jason Oliver.
Deciding that he could woo his potential friend with his award-winning lyrics, David had sent him a letter containing the poem about a kingfisher catching an atlas moth and devouring it.
David’s parents had warned him not to expect a response, so it has been a shock when Louis Greene decided to write back. In hindsight, the letter was completely understandable, but it had been devastating at the time. Louis had told him what he now knew very well: That his writing sucked.
Though his response had gone something like this, “Your effort in writing me is appreciated, but your lyrics need work. Perhaps you should choose an alternative profession,” the letter had been signed cordially—not that David had known what that meant—but in that single instant, it was as if David’s dreams had all fallen through.
And now it was happening again.
At the time David thought the song was an explanation of the southeastern Asian ecosystem.
Now, he thought it more a metaphor for life. No matter how big you were, there’s always something bigger out there to eat you.
Apparently, David would forever be a moth. No matter how big and impressive, a moth was still a moth.
David had been called back for auditions to Rift Valley but now he was sitting in the lobby with a handful of other actors around his age, around his build, and with much stronger credentials, and he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to get the job. He always got the same feeling of foreboding sitting among them, like a ball of mud amidst a selection of truffles. Even if he nailed the audition, he knew his chances were slim.
When he first auditioned for this role, he’d been filled with confidence. But now that he was here, he saw the looks he was getting and he was pretty sure he knew why.No one had watched it. It was infamously bad even before it had been released and there were screencaps making fun of it from day one. But everyone had heard of Lust Story, and, now, David couldn’t seem to escape it.
No one had watched it, but everyone had heard of Lust Story, and now David couldn’t seem to escape it.
Glancing around, David caught sight of the casting director exiting the audition room. All eyes turned expectantly toward the man as he held up a list.
“Thank you all for coming, we will be reviewing our notes and will call your agents within a week.”
David let out a long breath, he thought the audition had gone fairly well, but his nerves were getting the better of him now and waiting never helped with that.
*****
It was beginning to smell like rain as David exited the building and he was glad he’d thought to bring an umbrella. He didn’t have any other plans for the rest of the day so he decided to make a stop at the Wisteria Cafe before heading back to his apartment.
The Wisteria Cafe was one of the best joints in Weldstone Harbor. David had been living here for nearly three years, but he had yet to find a coffee shop quite as good as this one. The usual barista knew all of his customers by name and made the best mocha on the West Coast. David only came here once every couple weeks—he had to watch his figure, unfortunately—but it was well worth it every time he did.
There were the regular faces and a couple new patrons, just like every other time he visited, and David walked right up to the counter. He ordered his drink and it came back to him in record time—including a little caricature of him in place of his name on the cup. David chuckled at the exaggeratedly large eyes and pouting lips.
He slid into his favorite booth, a tiny one tucked well out of the way but with a pretty good view of everyone else. He originally liked to sit closer to the window and door so he could see outside, but ever since the absolute failure of Lust Story, David had been more careful about being seen in public. He just hoped that he’d get the part on Rift Valley so that he could get over his association with Lust Story as quickly as possible.
It was humiliating enough being on a terrible paranormal romance, but to be on a terrible paranormal romance that even the people who enjoy terrible paranormal romance hated, well, that was just a whole new level of failure.
Which was, actually, pretty on par with David’s career in general.
At this point, he was pretty sure that his dreams were all doomed to fail. Not even Jennifer, his best and most supportive friend, was particularly optimistic about David’s ambitions. He just needed to catch one more break and he could turn this all around.
What started out as a light drizzle outside was quickly becoming a downpour and two figures ducked into the café to escape the cold. David nearly choked on his mocha when he recognized the man as the casting director he’d just met. David didn’t’ know the woman with him, but they appeared to be discussing the auditions, and none too quietly, at that.
If David took note of their words, well, he wasn’t really eavesdropping as much as overhearing them. Their fault for speaking in such a public place.
“And then there was that kid,” the director said, “the one from Lust Story.”
“Oh, no, you’re kidding me,” the woman said, smothering her laughter with a hand.
“No, I’m not. His audition was all right, but dear god, can you imagine if we hired him?” the director said. "What a PR nightmare."
David’s throat went dry.
“Then again,” the man continued, “there’s a chance the infamy could bump up viewership to Rift Valley.”
“Your ratings would drop by pure association,” the woman scoffed. “I’m not even sure how they made it past the pilot episode. How would you pitch it to the producers? You know Mrs. Steward is. She’d never go for it.”
“You’re right, of course,” the director said. “It was just an idle thought.”
David cringed, sinking down into his seat and praying to any deity that would listen that they didn’t notice him sitting there. There was a fern in front of his booth, but it certainly didn’t block him from view.
Trying to give himself an out, David fumbled for his ear buds and phone. As he tugged the cord, trying to untangle it, his phone, still plugged into the other end, escaped from his pocket and clattered across the floor. Several people, including the casting director and the woman he was with, turned to stare at the commotion.
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David bent over to retrieve the escaped phone, trying to tamp down on the flush of humiliation creeping up his neck. He straightened up with as much dignity as he could muster then caught the director’s eyes. He gave the man a smile, doing his best impression of, ‘oh, you’re here, too.’ The director smiled a little awkwardly at him but shook his hand as David made his way to the door.
He was already half way down the block by the time he realized he left his umbrella sitting at the booth in the cafe. The rain had turned into a full blown storm by this point and David was soaked within seconds. That was probably the worst thing about living in Weldstone Harbor. There was just so much rain all the damn time. Not that David minded it on most days, he usually had an umbrella and wasn’t in the midst of an inappropriately timed identity crisis.
But he supposed that was that.
Once again, he had been forced to the realization that this was not the job for him. He took some small comfort in the fact that they had said his acting hadn’t been ‘bad’. . . But of course, if not bad, it was clearly not good enough to warrant giving him a chance.
His apartment wasn’t far from here, only four blocks down from Main Street, but the rain was strong and David wasn’t dressed particularly warmly. Returning to the coffee shop to retrieve his umbrella wasn’t an option, either, though. He wasn’t sure his person, let alone his career, could handle any more humiliation.
“Why me?” David whined, tilting his head up to the down-pouring sky.
David trudged back to his apartment, stopping at the door to take off his shoes so that he didn’t track mud in. The apartment wasn’t nice, exactly, he had never made enough for that, but it was, at the very least, clean. Jennifer liked to say he had a knack for minimalism, but David knew it was just that he couldn’t afford more than the one piece of furniture.
He took the term starving artist very seriously.
If things didn’t turn around quickly, though, he was going to just be starving and not an artist at all.
Suddenly needing some sort of external source of perspective, David pulled his phone out of his pocket. The screen was damp from the rain and David wiped it on his shirt only to realize that his shirt was even soggier than his phone. Still dripping, David made his way to the bathroom to grab a towel and run a bath, hot as the ancient water heater could muster.
Once he had stripped down and dried his phone on the hand towel, he slipped beneath the water. The burn was almost painful, but soothing at the same time against his chilled skin.
David put the phone to his ear. “Call Jennifer Yang,” he commanded the device. The phone asked which number he wanted and David just guessed. He could never remember which was her office phone and which was her cell and then there was one that she hadn’t had since high school but was still in his phone. He’d put all of them in as “other,” and still hadn’t fixed it.
Whichever number he had dialed, Jennifer picked up. She didn’t sound irritated, either, so it was probably the right one.
“David,” she said evenly. “It’s three in the afternoon. You realize I’m at work, right?”
Correction, she didn’t sound too irritated.
“I know, but I needed to talk to you and if you were very busy, you wouldn’t have answered,” he said. There was a pause.
“Are you talking a bath?” Jennifer asked. “David, if you are really serious about acting, you should probably put more effort into actually finding work.”
“Shut up,” David said. “It’s been a bad day.”
Jennifer made a humming noise that David interpreted as some sort of inquiry, or at least permission to continue.
“I went to callbacks,” he said. “And they went great!”
“But you didn’t get the job? Weren’t callbacks just today? How do you already know?”
“I may have overheard something I wasn’t supposed to.”
“Oh, so you overheard the director talking about how he murdered his father-in-law and now you can’t take the job for fear of him coming after you next?”
“No, nothing’s been murdered except my career,” David moaned, sinking as far into the water as he dared with his phone pressed against his ear.
“I thought you said it went well,” she said, starting to sound frustrated with him. Close as they had been for going on fifteen years, Jennifer was never very fond of emotional support.
“I did, but I’ve already ruined my chances by acting in Lust Story! I overheard the casting director saying he didn’t want to hire me because ratings would drop by association!”
Jennifer made a choking noise, “Well, I did warn you it was a shitty story. The novel was crap.”
“Yeah, but I thought that it might at least be somewhere to start making a name for myself!”
“And look at that, you’ve made a name for yourself,” Jennifer said dryly. David glowered at the dripping faucet.
“I need your honest opinion,” David said more seriously.
Jennifer let out a sigh. “I never give you anything but my honest opinion,” she said. “What do you want to know?”
“Am I a terrible actor? Do you think that it’s silly for me to pursue this? Should I become a construction worker instead?”
There was a moment of silence before Jennifer started snickering on the other end. “You know, I think I’ve told you before that your acting is good. But more to the point, there’s no reason for you not to continue acting, David. Your parents are filthy rich and they do like you for some reason, so you don’t actually have to make money to continue surviving. Take advantage of that privilege and call me back when you’ve either succeeded or stopped being a trust fund baby.”
“Jennifer,” David said, “that doesn’t help.”
“Besides,” she said, “You aren’t qualified to be a construction worker. Their liability insurance isn’t good enough to deal with your shit.”
“Thanks,” David said, half sarcastically, but half sincerely, too. Sometimes it was good to have an unbiased—if tactless—opinion to fall back on. “But that still doesn’t help me repair my ruined reputation.”
“Then I guess you’ll have to find a rich nobleman that’s willing to marry you despite the scandal,” she deadpanned.
“I need help,” David whined. There was a click, as though Jennifer was putting something down on her desk. David replayed the sound, trying to figure out if it was whatever she was working on or the phone. Because she’d done both before.
“Then come visit me,” Jennifer said. David scrunched his nose. Jennifer was currently working on some top secret project—though how a visual effects company could have top secret projects, David did not know—in the middle of nowhere. Some little place literally called Midtown, as though the thing itself was so small it didn’t warrant its own name.
“I’m not going to fly into the middle of nowhere just to come see you,” he said.
“You are, because I’m a lot cheaper than therapy,” Jennifer said in a sing-song voice. David snorted.
“Sure, because the thing to do when I am so dirt poor that I can’t even afford a couch is to buy a plane ticket to come visit you.”
“I’ll lend you the money and you can pay me back with interest, or, better yet, you can go talk to your mom and she’ll write you a check for free,” Jennifer said.
“I’m not doing it. The whole point of moving here was to live independently,” David said.
“And you’re terrible at it,” Jennifer reminded him, “so either go visit your mom, or come visit me, but either way, you clearly need someone to smack some sense into you so you can get back to your life.”
“Why do you want me to visit anyway? You don’t even like me,” he grumbled.
“Of course I like you,” Jennifer said, “I’ve put up with you since we were three.”
“Yeah, so you’re really more like a sister. You can’t get rid of me at this point.”
“David, stop fishing for compliments. Come visit because . . .” Jennifer paused.
“Your top secret project?” David sat up straighter. Jennifer was tight-lipped about her secrets, but on rare occasions, she’d let David in on something juicy.
“You are sworn to absolute secrecy and if you say anything to anybody, I will castrate you, do you understand?” she said. David nodded vigorously before realizing she couldn’t see him.
“Yes, sir,” he said, giving a salute that he hoped she could imagine over the phone.
“Well, without going into detail, there’s a series running for Cybervid. And there are some pretty big names working here right now. It would be a good opportunity for you to at least do some networking.”
“Who’s working on it?” he asked.
“None of your damn business,” she snapped. “But you should show up. I’ll even give you a job as a runner until you find something better if you deign to visit me on set.”
“Really?” David asked. Jennifer had refused him a job every time he had asked since she started Fire Lily Effects at seventeen. Apparently, he didn’t live up to her work ethic. Not that David disagreed with that assessment.
“Yes, really, though you will actually have to work, you understand,” she warned. David grinned.
“All right, I’ll show up,” he said. “But it’s only to sell paparazzi photos of the cast.”
“I know you’re joking,” Jennifer acknowledged, “but if you do, I will end you.”
“And I know you’re not joking, so I’ll take that under advisement.”
“So pack your bags, I’ve got you a ticket that leaves tomorrow noon. The confirmation is being sent to your work email.”
“Thanks Jennifer,” he said, wondering what he did to deserve such an amazing friend.
“You are a lazy ass, and I didn’t know what I signed up for when we became friends in preschool,” Jennifer said before hanging up. David smiled and turned the water back on to warm his bath again.