Description: Despairing over her blunder playing the part of Shakespeare's Juliet, Eve listens to the advice of the one and only Glenn Sabine, who encourages her to rise to the challenge. Will his words be enough to help her overcome her mistake and still hold onto her dream?
The Miss Teenager Pageant. PART 19.
Eve collapsed into the plush hotel chair a complete and utter failure. Clutching Romeo and Juliet to her lap, she reflected on how awry things had gone once she had begun reading the part of Juliet. “Ay me!” was Juliet’s fitting sigh to open the scene. Ay me, Eve thought! How had her reading so easily begun with “Wherefore art thou, Romeo?” and then somehow spiraled out of control like a bus without brakes until it plunged off a cliff and landed in a massive pile of “art thou that thus bescreened”?
Who was she kidding, anyway? She was no actress. If she couldn’t do Shakespeare, she couldn’t do anything, she thought. The question arose in her despairing mind, how do you overcome such a mistake and still hold onto your dream? Was her dream finished? Was she?
It was the dashing Glenn Sabine who swooped in to her rescue, sitting on the edge of the chair, his warmth leaning into her side. He was her knight in shining armor, or at least, her knight in a perfectly pressed suit-and-tie combo.
“We don’t expect our ‘Miss Teenager’ to be a finished actress, Miss Jones,” Glenn spoke comfortingly. “After all, Larry, Kit… Marlon…”
Eve gasped as he sprang to his feet and gestured again like a Broadway superstar, one hand on his chest and the other pointing in the air. In one unbelievably insane moment in time, Mr. Sabine displayed his awe-inspiring acting ability. If there were an audience, they would have been struck dumb in the presence of such grandeur.
“We all started as frightened little walk-ons,” he explained. “Until the challenge produced our greatness.”
Suddenly, as if dark clouds on a stormy day yielded to a gorgeous blue sky that had been there all along, Eve had an epiphany. The challenge produced their greatness! That was it! The missing piece of the inspiration that she had failed to grasp! That was how she overcame her mistake and still held onto her dream! She was falling short of taking the bull by the horns and wrangling it into submission. If only she…
“What are you doing, Pike?” Glenn inquired as his assistant picked up the phone.
“Ordering something to drink,” Pike murmured, his cigarette lazily hanging from his lip. “I need it. Milk for you, Miss Jones?”
Milk, Eve thought? Who did he think she was? A baby who needed suckling? Well, maybe she was in that moment, but now she knew that all she really needed was another chance. And then another, and another, and maybe another. Then, and only then, would this babe find favor in the eyes of the host of the Miss Teenager pageant. The question was, would he find it in his heart to give it to her?
