Fifteen minutes and six blocks later, we pull up to a tan brick building on Forty-Fourth Street. It would have been faster to walk.
“Follow me,” Theo urges as he heads for an unmarked metal door. I trail him through a maze of cinder-block-lined hallways until we reach another metal door, this one decorated with a homemade gold star caked in glitter with my name written in the center in Hannah’s wonky cursive.
“Ta-da!” Theo announces with a flourish as he opens the door and reveals Hannah and Priya sitting in folding canvas director chairs in front of mirrored vanities. A woman with coarse gray hair held back with a pair of chopsticks stands in front of Hannah with a palette of rhinestones she’s applying to Hannah’s already intense eye makeup look.
“Is that Finn?” Hannah asks with her eyes closed, reaching one hand out to grasp at the air beside her.
“Don’t even think about opening your eyes,” the makeup artist warns as she aims a pair of tweezers holding a rhinestone at Hannah’s face.
“Well, merry Christmas, whoever you are!” Hannah says, earning herself a glare from the makeup woman.
“Finn, this is Paula,” Theo says. “If there was a Tony for theater makeup, she would have won it for Hello, Dolly last year.” I stick out my hand, in shock I’m about to touch someone who’s touched Bette Midler. Paula looks down at my hand with distaste and waves her tweezers at me instead. Guess not.
“And this is Anton,” Theo points to a petite man in a leopard-print kimono squatting in the corner to steam the hemline of a red silk gown. “He was the assistant costume designer for Hamilton.”
Anton looks up from his steaming and says, “Charmed,” in a gruff Eastern European accent.
“And what are we doing here?” I ask, trying to catch up to what the hell is going on, and how and why Theo roped these talented people into spending their Christmas morning with us.
“We’re re-creating our first Christmas!” Hannah says. She flings an arm out to the side, almost knocking away Paula’s palette.
“But better, obviously!” Theo adds. “We couldn’t figure out what we should do this year until we realized, what better way to spend your last Christmas than paying homage to your first?”
“This has very Make-A-Wish fund vibes. You know I’m not dying, right?” The assumption that this is my last Christmas with them stings, even though the same thought crossed my mind this morning. I prefer the vision of future me as a guest star, returning each Christmas much to the studio audience’s delight, or like a college student taking a time out from their full and exciting social calendar to head home for the holidays.
Paula uses a tissue to blot the bright red lipstick she applied to Hannah’s lips and stands back to consider her work. “You’re a masterpiece,” she declares. “Don’t eat anything. Don’t even think about crying. It would be best if you don’t talk either.” Paula counts off rules on her fingers.
Hannah flashes her a thumbs up and leans closer to the mirror to inspect herself. I’ve never seen her wear this much makeup.
“Who’s next?” Paula asks.
“Finn, you go!” Priya urges from the director’s chair at the station beside Hannah’s. She’s lounging in a pink velour tracksuit with her legs draped over the chair’s arm.
* * *
? ? ?
?It’s been years since I’ve worn stage makeup, and I forgot how uncomfortable it is. I feel like someone accosted my face with an entire can of Aqua Net. My skin feels simultaneously tight and sticky, and the experience gives me a whole new respect for Trixie Mattel.
“Stop it. Don’t ruin my masterpiece,” Paula scolds as I open and close my mouth, trying to crack through the stiff feeling while she attacks my eyes with even more makeup. Paula has been at it for forty-five minutes. The only hint at what she’s doing came in the form of a curious “Oooh!” from Priya fifteen minutes ago.
When she finishes, half an eternity later, I open my eyes to survey what she’s done. She’s given me a rainbow ombre smokey eye, just one. It fans out onto my forehead and cheek, like a colorful wink to the Phantom’s half mask. It’s the most beautiful and intricate thing I’ve ever seen.
“Do you like it?” she asks shyly, a 180 from her militant orders of earlier. “They told me you were the guest of honor, so I wanted to give you something special.”
“I love it,” I tell her and then startle at the sight of the false eyelashes fluttering like bats in my peripheral vision.
After makeup, Anton puts me in a pair of slim tailored pants and a crisp white dress shirt. The cape he adds is more Joseph’s technicolor dream coat than the Phantom’s staid black number, and it’s heavier than the cheap drama department one I wore our first Christmas.
While Priya and Theo take their turns in the makeup chair, I wander to the stage. I assume a generous donation from Theo bought us the run of the place for the day.
When I walk out from the wings, I’m surprised to find Hannah already sitting there with her legs dangling over the edge of the stage, eating a bagel with cream cheese. My pulse skyrockets thinking about how not allowed this is, even though there’s no one here to yell at us.
“Paula’s going to kill you,” I tell her.
She startles and looks up at me. “I’ll give you a bite if you don’t tell on me.” She holds out half of her bagel sandwich. “I ran to the deli on Seventh while you were getting your makeup done. I got some real weird looks on the street. Who am I supposed to be anyway?”
She’s in a floor-length red gown, the one Anton was so carefully steaming, with a red feathered headpiece. “You’re Dolly Levi from Hello, Dolly,” I tell her.
“Never seen it.” She shrugs. “For red dresses it was either this or orphan Annie, and that felt a little too on the nose.”
“Would that make David Daddy Warbucks?” I ask, taking a seat next to her.
“I’m not the expert here, but I’m pretty sure there was no sexual relationship between Annie and Daddy Warbucks.”
“Oh, so you didn’t see Annie Two. It was dark.”
She looks at me with narrowed eyes, trying to tell if I’m kidding.
“I probably would have auditioned for it if it existed,” I tell her. “Not that I would have gotten the part.” Like always, I add in my head. Back in my auditioning days I had a pocket-sized Moleskine notebook I brought with me everywhere. In it, I tracked the auditions I went to, the directors I auditioned for, and the results—a few callbacks, but mostly radio silence. I told myself when I hit a hundred auditions, if I hadn’t landed a role, I’d find a different job. A real job, I could hear my father’s disapproving voice say in my head.
On my ninety-ninth audition, I got a callback. This was it! In bed the night before the callback, I rehearsed how I’d tell my story of perseverance when I accepted the Tony award I’d undoubtedly earn even though the role was for an unnamed ensemble member.
I didn’t get the ninety-ninth role, and on my hundredth audition my voice cracked during my audition song, and I knew as soon as it happened I wasn’t getting the part. I threw the notebook in a trash bin outside the theater and haven’t been on a stage since. I’ve barely even been in a theater. When Theo brought me to see Hamilton for my birthday last year, I was queasy from the very first song. I feigned a migraine at intermission so we could leave.