Almost Royalty: A Romantic Comedy...of Sorts by Courtney Hamilton Page B

entertainment industry well enough that he had finally found a literary property concerning a historical tragedy that had taken place so long ago that it wasn’t going to ruffle anyone’s feathers and yet, the industry would congratulate itself for making it. Then he attached himself to it as a “producer.” And somehow, despite all of the managers, agents, studios and other forces that had become involved in the project, he managed to stay involved enough in the project that he was the person who walked across the stage to pick up the award with the major star who also had produced it.
    The world was not meant for people with excellent long-term memories. For those of us cursed with this particular genetic mutation, you can never see a person in the present moment without remembering your feelings about that person when you last saw them, as if it were yesterday, and not ten years ago, that you wanted to tell them that you would rather jump into a bucket of your own bile than speak to them again.
    Even as I moved through my mid to late teens at a school which I knew would be the last outpost of my childhood, I somehow knew that Genie was squandering the precious years of his students’ educations with his endless exercises and humiliations. Under the guise of “the training in theater,” his program was nothing more than a sandbox for him to work out his inner demons in a human lab of 18–22-year-olds. In exchange, those students who had blindly followed him were guaranteed to graduate with no skills, some misguided theories, and debt that was so enormous that they would be servicing it well into middle age.
    As I stood with my client at the reception after the awards ceremony and tried to avoid Genie, I didn’t know how to react when I saw him striding toward me, a bantam rooster in an Armani Tux. But that didn’t stop him.
    I felt like throwing up.
    “Well, if it isn’t little Miss Fake. All grown-up and wearing black. Aren’t we a little professional robot now,” said Genie.
    “I’m gonna go get a drink,” said my client, who was beginning to have a relationship with alcohol that was more than social.
    Just then, a waiter came by with a tray of hors d’oeuvre.
    “Oh look,” I said to Genie while gesturing to the waiter, “another successful graduate from your program.”
    “Well, well,” he said, “tell me again what mindless occupation you’ve put yourself in? Oh, that’s right—you’ve sold out and became an attorney. Such an appropriate profession for you.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “My ambitions ran deeper than becoming an assistant with an MFA from your world-renowned theater arts program.”
    “Don’t go away. I’m not done with you,” he growled as he walked over to hug the female lead in his production.
    As I watched him work the room, I looked for my escape. The bathroom looked likely. My client, who had discovered that he didn’t have to pay for the drinks, was endlessly exploring the possibilities of an open bar.
    I glanced back at Genie and saw that he was pressing the flesh with a group of baby-agents who had just made their highly publicized exit from their monolith parent agency and started their own boutique agency. Then I made a run for it.
    “You can go to the bathroom later—now we’re going to talk,” Genie said as he pushed me into a corner. Funny how fast that little guy could move.
    “Genie,” I said, “what do we have to say to each other?”
    “Well F… I mean Courtney… it is Courtney, isn’t it?” he said as he smiled and revealed a set of choppers that had been permanently stained by over 40 years of daily hits on a bong. “I want to show you what it is to be alive.”
    Oh no. His lines hadn’t even changed. And it still had the same result. I was suddenly seized with the knowledge that I had to go do my laundry.
    “Genie,” I said, “enough. You used that line on me over ten years ago. Did that ever work on anybody?”
    “You bet,” he