Lu listened to the tune the girl on the stage was singing. In other circumstances she would have said the music was silly; it was a soprano aria written in a rumba rhythm. And at the end of the piece, the girl launched into a coloratura cadenza that ended in a trill—and shouted “Olé!” Maestro DiTullio would never have allowed Lu to work on such garbage.

She was to hear the song three more times before she was called on the stage to sing herself. By that point she wasn't nervous anymore, but a feeling of doom had come over her. Her clothes were wrong, her hair was wrong, and her material was wrong. Her big chance was going to be a big flop. She'd gotten herself slapped in the face for nothing.

Still, she strode out onto the stage the way she'd seen all the other girls do, and, as she placed her book on the rack of the upright piano, she said to the semi-comatose accompanist, “The song is on page sixty-three. You'll find all my key changes are noted.” Then she walked as far away from the piano as she could and turned to the house. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said to the men, who had finished their lunch and were now engrossed in a conversation about the check. She knew better than to wait for them to look up. “I am going to sing…” she began, but a snicker from the piano stopped her. “I am going to sing…” she began again, but the accompanist stepped in.

“Honey, could you come over here for a sec?” he called out.

Lu's brain threatened to freeze again. She sidled over to the piano.

The accompanist was actually showing signs of life. “I'm good,” he said with a chuckle, “but even I can't play McCall's magazine.” He held out the booklet she had placed on the rack of the piano with such authority and bravado. Horrified, Lu read the title on the cover.

“You got your music?” the accompanist asked.

She didn't. When she'd walked out of Grand Central Terminal, she'd carried only one item in her sweaty, cold hands. She'd thought it was her sheet music, but in those last panicky moments on the train she must have picked up the magazine instead. And during the cab ride to the theater she hadn't bothered to check because she was too busy trying not to be sick.

“Your music, honey?” the accompanist prodded.

She shook her head.

“Too bad,” he said, and started to signal the stage manager to send out the next girl. Something inside Lu snapped. She hadn't endured two hours of terror and nausea on a train and in a cab—plus a slap in the face—to go back home without auditioning.

“Wait,” she heard herself say to the accompanist. She grabbed the magazine he was still holding out to her. “Play that song everyone's been singing,” she told him.