The song began with the familiar words I’d first heard from the ghost guard on Christmas and each time I visited the phone booth since then—“No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused”—and just then a large piece of the puzzle finally snapped into place.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Almost exploding with too many thoughts bombarding me at once, I took a moment to catch my breath on the bench in front of the Greenwich House Theater. I put my head between my knees and sucked in some much-needed air. Between securing a final audition on-site, a feat that on its own would have been enough to knock me on my ass, and then discovering the origin of the phrase “No Space of Regret,” I was practically incapacitated with confusion—and, even more so, curiosity. None of this could be a coincidence. Not anymore. There were too many serendipitous occurrences that proved to me this wild ride was all meant to show me something, or maybe teach me something, but hell if I knew exactly what that was yet.
I checked my watch. I would never have enough time to make it back to Bushwick before I was supposed to meet up with Gabe for a date he’d planned for us at our favorite French bistro, the one we’d opted to skip in favor of DiscOasis. Though I couldn’t wait to tell him about the audition, I hadn’t told him about my second encounter with the phone booth and was hoping to let the conversation flow and see if the subject could arise organically. （Not super sure how a discussion involving a magical phone booth could come up organically, but at this point, I was grasping at straws.）
With some time to kill before meeting Gabe, I walked to Mimi’s, about two miles uptown from the theater, hoping the fresh air and activity would help to clear my head and burn off some of the adrenaline still racing through my body. I figured I could freshen up in the restaurant’s dressing room before heading off to my date, which thankfully was just around the corner from the diner.
I strolled up Seventh Avenue toward Times Square and couldn’t help but imagine my name in big letters on the Marley Is Dead marquee that would one day （soon） adorn some theater’s front entrance and could envision my face on the staged show images that usually decorated the theater’s outside facade.
I swung open the door to Mimi’s to hear a handful of servers finishing up their rendition of “You Can’t Stop the Beat” from Hairspray. I clapped along with the raucous applause from the diner’s patrons as I made my way to the back to search for Charlie, unable to keep the news of the callback to myself for even one moment longer.
Seeing me, Charlie did a double take. “What are you doing here? Didn’t you have your callback today?”
“I did,” I answered, desperately trying to keep my face even so as to not give away my big news.
He literally dropped what he was doing, tossing a handful of the menus he’d been holding off to the side to gesture for me to continue. “And?! How did it go?!”
My face split into a wide grin, hardly able to keep myself from shouting it to everyone in the restaurant. “They asked me to audition at the final callback in front of the investors and full production team. I did it, Charlie. I’m so damn close I can taste it.”
“Oh my God, Avery! This is incredible and calls for a celebration! I’m going to get us a slice of The Wizard and Pie, the bright-green key lime one you like, and you can tell me all about it.” He ushered me into a booth close to the kitchen door and rushed away to grab us the dessert.
When he returned a minute later, he carried two big slices piled high with whipped cream, which he set on the table before sliding onto the bench across from me. “Thank you for this,” I said. “I can only have a few bites, though. I’m supposed to be meeting Gabe for dinner around the corner in a little while.” I took a bite of the pie and moaned inwardly. “Hmm . . . but it really is my favorite.”
“I know it is.” He smiled and leaned into the table. “Okay, so tell me everything, start to finish,” he said before he scooped a bite of the creamy dessert into his mouth.
I told Charlie about the first number, how well it went, and how positively the team had responded to me. Then, I told him about the ballad, how it was a little shakier but not a total disaster. “Then, they handed me a totally new scene from the show,” I continued, “and gave me fifteen minutes to work on it.”
“Sounds like you must’ve killed it if they offered you the final callback on the spot.”
“I was really feeling the material. I’ve never felt so connected to a character before. Like very connected.”
“What do you mean?”
I leaned in a bit closer and lowered my voice. “Do you remember the crazy story I told you about how I reunited with Gabe on Christmas Day, and the mysterious phone booth that gave me his address and all that?”
The shift in conversation seemed to jar him but he answered, “Yeaaah, of course, who could ever forget a story that included a ghost guard?”
“Exactly. Well, I don’t really know how to say this, but Gabe and the phone booth and this audition and this character, it’s somehow all connected.”
“Wait a minute. Maybe just start from the beginning, what’s connected?” he asked.
“Where do I even begin?” I said, replaying the long series of strange events that had led to this moment before answering. “I was with Lyla and we stopped for a hot dog at this cart downtown. I’m handing over some cash for two sodas and look up and the guy, the hot dog vendor, has a silver-bell pin on his jacket, the same exact pin the ghost guard was wearing. And before he gets shooed away by a policewoman for not having a permit, he says to me the same thing the guard said on Christmas Day: ‘No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused.’”
Charlie’s eyes grew wide at the recognition. “That’s from Marley Is Dead, the song ‘No Space of Regret.’”
“I know! How strange is that? And I looked it up, and the line is actually taken from Dickens’s original Christmas Carol story. The guard said that to me months before I ever even knew about the audition.”
Charlie scrubbed his hand over his face and shook his head in disbelief. He opened up his mouth to speak, but closed it, seemingly not knowing what to say.
“There’s more. So after the hot dog vendor was chased away, I took off after him in search of some answers, but I lost sight of him in the crowd, and you’ll never believe where I ended up . . . at the phone booth. The very same phone booth from Christmas. The last phone booth in Manhattan. Only this time it gave the address of the Greenwich House Theater—”
“Where the Marley Is Dead open call was being held,” he said, finishing my sentence.
“Yes! Don’t you see? The phone booth, it’s guiding me to the past and present and—”
“Future? I don’t know. That sounds a bit far-fetched. Maybe you’re searching for more meaning in all of this than there actually is.”
“No, I don’t think that’s it. There are too many parallels.”
“It’s a beautiful thought, Avery, but fate is choice, not chance. It was your choice to give Gabe a second chance, to stay for the audition, to prepare as hard as you did for the callback. To put it all on the phone booth almost cheapens your accomplishment.” He stood up from his seat. “And it’ll be you who earns the role once you work your butt off these next couple of weeks.”