High Society: Melody Chapter 3

“How did I get here?” wondered Melody to herself. One minute I was starry-eyed and starting my first acting class, and now I’m here: inside a narrow wooden box, being sawed in half by a monkey.

Clearly, the week hadn’t been a good one. On Tuesday (Melody’s least favorite day of the week) Nigel Betters, her manager of eighteen years, decided that Melody wasn’t manageable anymore. Sporting a starry eyed smile, Nigel told Melody that from now on he was going to focus on “the millennial market”. The term confused her, which wasn’t itself a confusing thing since very little about the world made sense anymore. So Melody simply conjured up a convincing smile, uttered a convincing “thank you for everything” and left the office of Nigel Betters for the very last time, wishing him luck with his “Millennial Market” and thinking it was something like a Tesco, but for astronauts.

The week Melody began her quest for a new manager was also the week London suffered its most horrific smog since the Big Smoke of ’52. The air was barely breathable, but Melody nevertheless began her search on foot. When that became exhausting to both her feet and her lungs, she continued her quest in the back pages of The Stage, which also became exhausting since no one in London ever seemed to return the calls of anyone else in London. Which explained a lot about London.

So Melody put on a pot of tea, opened up a box of McVities Penguin biscuits and picked up the phone. By way of a friend of a friend of an acquaintance of a friend, she finally managed to get an introduction to a manager in Tooting: Margarine (pronounced “Marjoreen”). Margarine had no surname, having jettisoned it into oblivion after a historically nasty and fruitless divorce. “Simplification” she called it. So now she was simply “Margarine” — sort of like Cher or Beyonce. Or Pocahontas. “I’ll call her Sergeant Pepper if she can get me an audition”, thought Melody. And Margarine did.

The job would pay 300 quid, which was just enough to cover the shortfall in this month’s rent, plus the extra 50 she owed her landlord from the month before. Breathless, Melody arrived at the Magic & Mayhem audition earlier than she needed to, but not early enough to beat “The Lovely Amanda” (seriously, that was her name – you can’t make this stuff up), who not only got there even earlier than Melody but also got the part that Melody wanted. This was the second time in a single week that The Lovely Amanda had beaten Melody to the punch, and Melody now found herself in the midst of an embarrassing hatred of a woman she’d never even met.

“Look, I’m sorry to sulk right in front of you like this, but I was hoping for a little Magic to go with my Mayhem” said Melody to the Magician, who also doubled as casting director. “Is there another part I could audition for? I can juggle. Or spin plates, if needed. I also play the kazoo.” The Magician touched his chin, just like detectives do in the movies right before they discover who the murderer is. “How tall are you?” he asked, looking her up and down and up again. Melody told him. “Can you fold yourself in half?” he added. “I do Pilates” Melody said. “Then I have only two words for you: You’re hired!” said the Magician, smiling. And Melody smiled back, starry-eyed and staring at the huge stage, the neon “Magic and Mayhem” sign and the 200 empty theater seats waiting to be filled. “Thank you!” she said to the Magician. “Thank you so much”.

And that was how Melody wound up in a box asking how she wound up in a box. It’s how she wound up only making 50 quid, which turned out to be the going rate for a woman who contorts herself inside a box for ten unending minutes with her knees pressed up-and-into her chest whilst she’s sawed in half by a monkey named Amanda. (Who, by the way, was quite lovely, even for a monkey).

Just as these injustices became unbearable and the stale air inside the box became un-breathable, the box itself opened up and Melody emerged – like a sweaty, mascara-drenched Venus. The audience applauded and Melody felt the usual desire to take a bow. She wanted to take a bow. But she refrained. She simply didn’t feel like she’d done anything worth bowing for. So she smiled instead. And although the smile was sweet and convincing to the strangers in the crowd, it didn’t convince everyone.

“That smile you smiled at the end there…I didn’t quite believe it my dear. But that monkey didn’t even smile at all.” said Albert, who had been in the audience. Melody laughed. “That monkey should have been smiling. She made six times my wage. And she was wearing a Mappin and Webb tennis bracelet,” said Melody, kicking a soda bottle against a curb. “One day it’ll all be worth a chuckle or two,” said Albert. “Yes. In retrospect, tragedies become comedies,” agreed Melody, who promised herself that one day – even if the rent was late and she found herself in a box where she couldn’t breathe – she would look back on Nigel Betters and The Lovely Amanda and Margarine and The Magician – and she would laugh and be starry-eyed at the recollection. But in the meantime, she and Albert continued their journey home, arm-in-arm and cloaked in smog, which Melody found herself surprisingly grateful to be breathing in.

Written by Tinsel Townsend | @TinselsTown

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Next Wednesday: Dalton

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Chapter One

Part 1: Charlie Malbery

Part 2: Albert

Part 3: Ernest Malbery

Part 4: Ingrid

Part 5: Dalton

Part 6: Melody

Part 7: Marion