"Kat, I love you, but you look like Hell," said Photochic, pulling me aside at an EPA for White Christmas.
"It's the cockroaches," I said. "Every time I come home, there's a new one."
We walked to the ladies' dressing room to reapply makeup.
"Did you know that one cockroach can live for nine months off the glue on the back of ONE postage stamp? They're never leaving, so my auditioning slump is never going to end."
"Not with that attitude," Photochic said. "You need to watch The Secret and remember the law of attraction."
"Oh puh-lease," I retorted. "They play that hippie music and talk in first-grade teacher voices and say: 'Stop picturing bills in the mail and start picturing checks, and if you believe enough, it will happen.' That's such bullshit." My rant received a number of nods of agreement from fellow auditioners in the process of beautifying.
"Think about it, if you get cable, you're gonna get a cable bill. You know? If your diet consists of Pop Tarts and Burger King and you've never seen a treadmill, guess what? You're not losing those last five pounds. There's just no amount of believing that changes reality without a little luck and a nutritionist."
"I've tried The Secret," said a girl next to me while mascara-ing. "I have the nighttime meditation tape, the DVD — I even have the little stickers on my bathroom mirror that say 'Assume an attitude of gratitude.' I gave The Secret the college try and then some. It's all crap."
"I agree," I said. "Let's be honest, I have a cockroach problem. No amount of belief alone is going to get rid of them. I need more Raid."
"Kat Voboril," the monitor called my name. Into the audition room I went.
Given the roach trauma of the past week, I'd been using my old standby, "Someone to Watch Over Me," for every audition. I'd been singing the song since before I could string sentences together. I had paid good money to have it transposed to a key that fit perfectly into my voice, sick or healthy.
It was, in a word, foolproof.
Except that, this time, a tremor in the piano tickled the mid-blade region of my spine that I'd been using as a roach indicator since the first sighting. All of a sudden, I was messing up the bridge — half notes became whole notes, I forgot the melody, let alone any attempts at acting.
"THAT! IS! IT!" I proclaimed to my friends upon exiting perhaps the worst audition of my life. "I give up."
Kat: 0; Roaches: 28, I thought to myself as I stomped home in the rain.
The thing about slumps — whether they're auditioning slumps, dating slumps, or gambling slumps, is that it only takes one magic bullet to get out of them. All you need is one audition where you nail it, one Mr.-Seems-Right to sweep you off your feet, one blackjack, and you're back in business.
But the other thing about slumps is that magic bullets aren't exactly gunning down the pipeline at Smith & Wesson. My worry was that the cockroaches signified this was no ordinary slump. I'd been in a slump before the roaches appeared and it had only gotten worse. Maybe I needed as many magic bullets as there were dead roaches in my vacuum cleaner?
Crossing the street to my apartment, I saw her sign again: "Clairvoyant." The psychic studio had opened the day I saw my first roach, which seemed no small coincidence. I had two choices: go back to my apartment to cower on my bed while the roaches had their run of the place; or, go in and ask the psychic whether I should kill myself, move, or see the roaches as a sign that a career in pesticides was my destiny.
The psychic studio smelled like black licorice and it was cold. I didn't hear her footsteps behind me but suddenly felt a light tap on my shoulder. I screamed my signature "Oh no, another cockroach" scream and burst into tears.
"That's okay, it's okay," she said, and her voice was brittle and raspy, the voice of tough love. "I am Ermina. Sit at the table and take a deep breath. Would you like some tea?" I nodded.
She poured an over-steeped Earl Grey into a Styrofoam cup. "What is it you want to know about future?"
My tears began anew as I tried to answer. "Well, I... I want to know if the cockroaches in my apartment are a sign that I'm not meant to be an actress and that I'm going to fail to find happiness in my life... because I can't get rid of them by thinking positively and maybe that means I have no faith in anything, you know?"
Ermina was silent for a long time. Finally, she said: "I can't answer such a messy question. Makes no sense." She pulled some stones out of her pocket and began moving them around on the table.
"Actors. Superstitious bunch," she said. "So much time playing at dramas you think life is drama and you always the star. Did you ever think that maybe there is no drama?"
"What do you mean?"
"You not always the center of what happens. Sometimes, what's happening to you not so important. Sometimes, just go along, see what happens, don't worry what meaning is. You see? Maybe next week, you the star? Maybe you fall in love, you get the part, you the center of the drama. But who wants a drama about cockroach?"
"Okay, but then why is everything falling apart?"
"Because you drama queen! You keep turning something unlucky into life tragedy. They're just bugs. Whole building has them. They open up wall last week and roaches come in off street. Not about YOU! Sometimes a roach is just a roach. You be fine."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. You'll be star, you'll meet wonderful man, have smart babies, live in pretty house, die in your sleep. I tell you all the things you want to hear."
"But is it true?"
"Who knows?"
"What kind of psychic are you?"
Ermina collected all the stones and put them into her other pocket. Then she lit the votive candles on the table, and I knew where the licorice smell came from.
"Future is complicated. Messy, like now. I can tell you you will be success, and you will, but it won't look like you think. I can tell you you fall in love, but it won't always feel good, and it might not last. I can tell you you will give into your fears too much, and it won't get better with age, and I can tell you you will learn to laugh at life when it is bad, instead of letting the bugs make a mess in your head."
"Well that doesn't sound so bad."
"Good," said Ermina. "That will be $120."
"But you didn't even read my palm!"
"Fine." She took my left hand and turned it over, tracing the lines. After a time, she looked up at me and smiled. "I see no more cockroaches in your apartment. They are gone."
When I got back to my apartment, $120 poorer and feeling like the queen-iest drama queen alive, I opened the door to a clean, roach-free space. I haven't seen another cockroach since.
But I hope when I do, I'll be able to laugh at the harmless little bug, fend off superstition and say to myself:
Maybe next week, you be the star. But this week, a roach is just a roach.
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Be sure to read the chilling opening episode in "Very Superstitious (Part I): Roaches in the Wall"