Samara laughed and said, “Okay. Well, can you picture someone else’s face, then? Maybe a girlfriend or a boyfriend.”
“I don’t have a girlfriendora boyfriend.”
“An ex you don’t hate?”
“Not really,” she said. “I hold grudges, in case you can’t tell.”
Samara laughed again and suggested, “Celebrity crush, maybe?”
Dana cleared her throat. She wasn’t about to reveal that before she met Samara, she’d had the tiniest of crushes onher.
“It’s fine. You really don’t have to help me. It’s not like I’m going to get the part, anyway. They’ve got three others they’re looking at still.”
“I watched those videos. Dana, I watched you read for five minutes this morning, and I liked what you did more than what I saw from the two I read with yesterday or any in the videos.”
“You did?”
“You might still be mad at my face, but I meant what I said before: Idowant what’s best for this movie.”
“Because you want the awards.”
“Not just that. Will you just give me this?” Samara took Dana’s script from her hands and wrapped it up with the one she was still holding. “You didn’t need it this morning, and I’m off-book, too, so I’ll put mine down in there, and we’ll really try this time. Act like you aren’t mad at me. Make it part of the performance, if you have to, but let’s get this right.”
“I might not be able to,” Dana told her.
“You got into Carnegie, NYU,andJuilliard. You’ll be fine.” Then, Samara bit her lower lip and added, “Just trust me, okay? I won’t do anything to mess this up for you. BeBray. Stella is the shy one. Bray takes charge. I’ll follow your lead, okay? I promise, I’ll be your scene partner in there. You can trust me on that.”
Dana swallowed because Samara was being nice to her, and her eyes were kind of dancing a little, which was distracting, but Dana decided she’d use that, and she’d refocus and get this right.
“Yeah, okay.”
Samara left the room first, with Dana following close behind, and they reentered the audition room.
“Okay. We’re ready,” Samara said and moved back to her spot, dropping the pages to the floor. “Dana?”
“Yeah,” she replied with a nod.
Samara then found two folding chairs and pulled them over. She sat down in one and motioned for Dana to sit in the other. Dana did and decided that Bray would probably have her arm draped over Stella’s chair, so she put her arm there, and Samara smiled at her.
“You don’t think you’d watch meattemptto move hips that don’t like to move and see another woman on the dance floor and at leastthinkabout dancing with her instead?” Samara said.
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, you’re right: we could do that. But we’d be giving up this amazing sofa seat I found for us.”
“Could you part with it if we could find another seat?” Dana said her line, leaning in a little. “Or, we could just dance in front of it, blocking it so others don’t take it from us.”
“The song’s almost over, Bray. I–”
“Take a chance,” Dana said, staring into Samara’s eyes now, trying to make it look like she genuinely wanted to dance with this woman.
Then, Dana stood and held out her hand. Samara hesitated and looked around, just as the script called for, before she took Dana’s outstretched hand and stood up.
“This okay?” Dana asked as she pulled Samara into her by the hips. “You can put your arms around my neck.”
Samara did, and even though the script called for Bray to leave her hands on Stella’s hips, Dana moved her own to Samara’s lower back to pull her in a little closer. They swayed there, in the middle of the room, with three sets of eyes on them, but Dana didn’t look away from Samara, who was a couple of inches shorter than her.
“I’m going to turn you around,” she said her line and, following the script, turned Samara in her arms, pressing her front to Samara’s back.
