Alice in La La Land by Sophie Lee Page B

running late, she had driven slowly down Laurel Canyon on her way to the audition, afraid that the previous night's allergic reaction would cause her to tumble into the ravine below. The motorists behind her honked in frustration. She was now fifteen minutes behind schedule, pale-faced and very under-rehearsed.
    Alice had called Rebekah at 9 am to ask if she could
re-schedule, but it was the last day Hallmark was testing for the role.
    'Well, hon, you could cancel, that's up to you. But they made this time for you even though they were real busy. But, hey, if you can't make it, you can't make it.'
    Alice knew that if she were a Name this would not be the case, but she wasn't one so she had no choice. 'Fine, I'll be there,' she said.
    The waiting room was situated at the top of a set of stairs, in what appeared to be transient office space on a suburban street. There was no receptionist or sign that indicated a casting session was taking place, and Alice briefly wondered whether she had come to the right address. It was as though Hallmark had rented it yesterday on a short lease. Alice imagined it was the sort of office a down-at-heel private detective might use.
    The carpet, once beige, was now decidedly grey and splattered with a number of coffee stains – as though one of the waiting actors had rehearsed a monologue with a Starbucks cup in hand. The faded venetian blinds on the window facing the street were askew and three were broken. Alice had traced a finger along the table at the centre of the room and it came away covered in dust. She'd picked up a fact sheet from a pile in the middle and now began to fill it in, wincing as she wrote her age in the space provided.
    The sunlight coming through the window was painfully bright and her eyeballs ached. Alice craved toast and Vegemite, the delicious black salty spread that had been a part of her daily diet since she was an infant.
    Hallmark's fact sheet was more detailed than most and included a list of additional questions at the bottom. These
pertained to the job applicant's skills and listed a range of activities. Levels of accomplishment ranged from poor to excellent, and the actor was asked to indicate their skill level.
    Alice surveyed the list. She vaguely remembered something about horse-riding in the Goodbye Poinsettia Lane screenplay but thought of it mainly as a story about a sick mother and a doomed romance. The fact that she'd got out of bed at 6.15 am to perfect her lines suddenly felt like an exercise in counter-productivity. Alice pulled her compact out of her makeup purse and checked herself in the mirror. She certainly wasn't sporting the rosy hue of a girl from the midwest fresh out of her teens. She hurriedly applied more makeup.
    Horse-riding was the first skill listed. Alice tilted back her head in contemplation. It would have to be said that her skills were minimal. Six years ago, she had an ongoing role in an Australian outback hospital series. For one of the second series' episodes, the script writers had suddenly decided that her character, who'd had the good fortune to be appointed hospital administrator at the age of twenty-one, was also a champion horse woman. After multiple lessons, the producer visited the stables to assess Alice's riding skills whereupon it was quickly decided it would be best for all to put Alice on top of an upturned milk crate instead of a horse. They were forced to rely on a stuntwoman by the name of Bucky for the other footage. Alice sighed and wrote 'excellent' in the space provided.
    Next on the list was parachuting. Obviously, large parts of the script were missing from her memory. Well, how hard could it be to parachute? They'd have to give people refresher courses for insurance purposes. She had
bungy-jumped once. She was the only person, they'd remarked, to have been whacked in the face by the cord on the bounce back up. Alice scribbled 'good'. Surely, a 'poor' parachutist was a dead one?
    Alice noticed an actress