Ok, so I would really appreciate ideas on what to cut out of this essay to make it the right length for the NYU Tisch Film and Television dramatic story. It needs to be four pages double-spaced, so roughly half what is is. Thanks!
The prompt:
Part 3. Dramatic Story - Introduce yourself.
Here's mine:
I was never the same again after Beth - she became a marker of a Jesus Christ- type significance, defining life into two distinct periods. When I close my eyes, I can see still Beth's pudgy olive cheeks and deep charcoal irises, surrounded by a wild tangle of inky curls; I cannot forget the small tattoo on her left forearm, the word "breathe" written in her own, jilting writing. As I stand in the cold cellar where that first memory took place, I remember the whole affair in painfully vivid detail - from the crisp autumn frost of the first days of November to the heat radiating from Beth's shaking frame as she shrieked in rage, shattering wine glasses and trembling as the sickly odor of vodka wafted off her in waves.
Three years ago, my father opened the Old 5 Mile House - the restaurant in whose cellar I now stoically stood, as the events of those beginning days swirled around me in a tornado of memories. Three years ago, I was a fifteen-year-old high school sophomore, grey-blue eyes wide with optimism and hands not yet calloused and burned from work. Three years ago, I was still young and innocent when I was abruptly submerged into the harsh behind-the-scenes of the restaurant business. In the front of the house, the calm dining room is worlds away from the smoky reality of the shady slight-of-hand of adrenaline-addicted line cooks and street-savvy wait staff. Even the rose-colored glasses of a bright-minded fifteen-year-old could not block out all of the unsavory backhand dealings; but I was soon to discover that the final shattering of those childhood lenses was yet to come, that the last remnants of youthful naivety were about to be broken by the precariously two-faced Beth.
Three Novembers ago, I knew Beth as the kind-hearted bar manager. Her cheery smile easily greeted me, crafted her homey hot chocolate, and told corny stories of Christmastime in her native Maryland. I knew Beth as a sort of adult best friend, someone to go to, as my parents had become so consumed with work they had seemingly fallen off the face of the earth. Hours before my first official clock-in on the job, it was Beth who drank a tall glass of water and helped me fill out my W-4. That Thanksgiving, it was Beth who took for me a scenic holiday hike in Tahoe National Forest just across the highway. Whenever I had a question about work, or school, or life in general, it was Beth who flashed her toothy grin and leapt to answer it.
It was one of those cold but deceptively bright days in early November the first time I watched Beth heave open the ancient cellar door. She hooked the metal ring onto the wall with a sigh and motioned me to come down with her.
"Come down here, I want to show you something," she said, in that sing-song voice of hers.
I slowly descended the cinder-block steps into the small chamber, which in those days was mostly empty, besides two or three bottles of Chateau de Pez - the most expensive wine we carried - sitting alone on a high, dusty shelf. I was admiring the aging yellow labels when my father called down, asking Beth if she had done the liquor inventory yet. He needed to get the order ready for the distributors.
"I'm working on it right now!" Beth called up.
"Are you?" I asked, glancing around for the yellow legal pad I'd seen lying on the shipment cases.
"Shhh," Beth whispered, "I have a secret for you."
She pulled a pen out of her messy curls, then fished around in her pocket for a second before handing me a small scrap of receipt-paper.
"Write down a secret," she said, placing a small roll of paper behind the last bottle of Chateau de Pez, in a tiny alcove barely noticeable to those not looking for it, "We'll hide them down here. No one will know. It will be the chamber of secrets." Beth said, starting back up the stairs, "I have to work on that inventory."
I waited for a moment after she left, then scribbled my secret and rolled it up, stuffing it behind the deep burgundy bottles. I started up the stairs, but stopped short. I could hear Beth and my father talking, having an almost heated argument. I had heard the way my father's voice hovered on the edge of losing control enough times that I knew it was serious. I had never heard Beth angry before, but the way her voice was so flatly unemotional worried me.
"I need you to do that inventory," my father was saying. "I need to get that order into Saccani today, or we're not going to have stock for next weekend."
"I'm working on it!"
"I don't see you working on it, that's why I'm here again, reminding you," my father snapped harshly, and I could hear him set his clipboard down on the bar. "I need you to do this, Beth. You're not the boss around here - I am."
There was silence for a moment. And with that, my father walked away, leaving me clear to ascend the stairs out of the cellar.
"What were you talking about?" I asked.
"Oh, what we should get you for your birthday," Beth smiled, "you're almost sixteen, you know. That a big one!"
It was a little white lie, but it got me thinking. I wondered why she would lie to me about something like that - I wondered if she had something to hide. That white lie got me thinking, but nothing compared to the shock that was still to come when Beth proved her true self a few weeks later.
It was Thanksgiving night, and the restaurant had closed early after a long day. Beth stood behind the bar with rosy cheeks as she poured drinks for the cooks who had gathered for a toast. She laughed as I watched the way she poured the rum with one hand out of its silver metal nozzle and coca-cola with the other. I had noticed the other bartender, Nick, counting under his breath as he made mixed drinks - making sure he had the right proportions - but as I watched Beth she didn't seem to be doing that, talking distractedly as she tipped the bottle of Bacardi with a flick of her wrist. I watched her for a while longer, until I'd had enough of the drunken banter of line cooks and went upstairs, exhausted, to the apartment above the bar and fell fast asleep.
Within an hour, however, I was abruptly awoken up by the sound of shouts and shattering glass. I jumped out of bed and ran down the stairs, but as I heard the noise was coming from the very next room, I eavesdropped on another argument between Beth and my father. This time, his voice didn't even sound angry, it just sounded tired and broken. Beth, however, was screaming at the top of her lungs, anger and malice dripping from her every word.
"Three strikes and you're out," my father said. "You're at two. I'll give you one last chance but -"
Beth cut him off. "I don't need any more chances from you! I quit!" And with that she threw down what sounded like an entire tray of glassware that shattered on the stone floor.
"Good," my father said, "I'm actually relieved." He paused a moment, and I could hear her sharp intakes of air. "For one, you're drunk. And you've been drunk since you got here. You think I can't tell that the 'water' you're drinking is actually vodka? My vodka? What are you drinking? Skyy? Absolut? That is expensive stuff. I can't afford to have you drinking that, let alone the moral implications of an alcoholic like yourself." Another pause. "And I know you're over pouring."
Beth said nothing.
"You think I can't tell my liquor bottles are emptying twice as fast as the product mix report says they should be? And that the other half are diluted with water?" my father continued. "That is not the kind of bar I run. I don't need your sneaky maneuvering behind my back. I need a bar manager who respects me."
"I was over pouring! Not stealing."
And then my father's voice shifted. In an instant his exasperated tone was replaced by thinly-veiled rage.
"Over pouring is stealing. When you pour someone twice as much as they ordered, you're stealing. And besides, you were literally stealing. I know that cash drawer hasn't been in line for over a month now! You go around telling my daughter how much you care about her and then you go and steal her future. You are two-faced liar and a thief! You have stolen from me on three accounts. I'm glad you quit so you can't weasel your lying nose into our unemployment fund - and I have no problem going to court to see that you don't."
I opened the door a crack just in time to see Beth's face turn beet red before she launched into a stream of furious obscenities. She paced and wrung her hands in rage as she recounted, in blood-spattered expletives, how she got on my good side in order to use my friendship as leverage against my father, how she never cared about me, how she used me as collateral for her alcoholic habits, her rampant kleptomania. She screamed curses about her sociopathic self-entitlement, how she deserved to take those things, how I was necessary damage essential to her greater good.
And then, with another uncontrollable burst of drunken anger, I watched her to try to physically attack my father, loose locks of hair flying in all directions as she hurtled across the room, teeth bared and face flushed with rage. My father just stood there and outstretched his arms, putting his hands on her shoulders and stopping her from coming any closer.
"Get out of here," he said quietly. "Get out of here before I call the cops. I'll have you busted for good." She stopped suddenly, and with a withering look, sidled quickly toward the back door. "Oh, and one last thing," my father stopped her. "That phony payroll check that bounced last week in Maryland? I know that was you. That's two thousand dollars you'll never see."
She didn't see anything, but a guilty smile lit up her smug face. She let out one last cackle as she kicked the door open and jaunted out, letting in a small gust of frigid November air.
I'm reminded of that burst of cold of her departure as I stand in the cellar again. I think about all the things she took with her that she had no right to and didn't deserve - not the least of which being the last of my trust. Everything she had done for me was insincere - every smile faked, every laugh counterfeit, every secret forged. She had utterly betrayed my trust in not only her, but in my perceptions of people. I was young and naïve, and she took advantage of that - she took advantage of my youthful optimism and turned it into distrust. She devastated my perception of myself as someone worth caring about, and my trust in the goodness of people. Over time I have built that trust back, and only now, as I stand in that cellar three years later, have I finally gathered the courage to peek into that tiny alcove read what she wrote on that rolled-up piece of receipt-paper. Nervously, I pull it out from behind the burgundy bottles of Chateau de Pez, and with the flickering orange light of that one dusty bulb, I unroll it, wondering what candid declaration of hate or greed might be written there - or more likely, what cleverly manipulated deception, what false 'secret' of a caring she never once felt.
But what I found was worse than all of that. What I found was a piece of receipt-paper, rolled and placed carefully in the alcove with my secret - and completely blank. Empty. She had no secrets. She had no regrets.
