It started out like any other Tuesday, except that it was a fine, beautiful day. Tuesdays were when I went downtown to work for my Chinese client in her office, as opposed to staying home and teleworking. I charge slightly more to go to her place of business, partially to defray the time and expense it takes me to get there and back via public transportation. The trip involves one long bus ride and two different Metro lines. Depending on how bad the connections go, among other things, it can take over two hours.

This particular day, I started out with, as I mentioned, a pleasant walk to the bus stop in balmy weather, totally unlike the previous Sunday, when I had driven into Washington, DC to audition for a part in the Washington Savoyards upcoming production of Kiss Me Kate. I had just finished doing a (paid) show for that group, in which, I believe, I did quite well. The part I wanted in Kate was the same one I had done for free, fifteen years ago—one of the gangsters, who, after their loansharking  business is done, get to sing that wonderful duet, Brush up Your Shakespeare. As I implied, the day was wet, cold and miserable, but, once inside, the audition seemed to go pretty well. As with the non-paying companies, the drill was you sang 16 bars of a song of your choice, then you learned a dance routine of their choice. If they wanted to take a further look at you, they would call you back at a later date to read lines for your character.

When I first stood before the directors, the stage director told me, right off the bat, how much he had enjoyed my performance in the previous show. This, I reasoned, can only be a good sign. Unlike most auditions, which do not allow you to sing a song from the show you are trying out for in the initial go-around, these people seemed to encourage it, so I sang a verse from Brush up Your Shakespeare, and I completely hit it out of the park. As for the dance routine, yes, I inadvertently left a few steps out, but who cares? The part I was going for was more about talking and singing than it was about dancing. Despite a warning from the director of the show I had just done with this group (Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience) that her successor wanted to stage a “very dancey show,” I reasoned that I had done so well with the song, they would dumb down what little dancing my character might do, if they had to, just to get me in the show. It is not an uncommon thing or an unrealistic expectation.

But then, I was speaking about Tuesday, before I was so rudely interrupted. I got to the bus stop and prepared myself for the usual fifteen to twenty minute wait, which turned out to be all of three minutes. Another unusual thing about this leg of the trip was that there were only four of us getting on the bus, instead of a dozen or more. As the bus made its roundabout trip to the Shady Grove Metro stop, I noted two more unusual things. First, there were very few passenger exchanges: almost no one waiting to be picked up or wanting to get off, so the trip was hardly delayed at all by stops, where the same trip usually involves exchanges at about two thirds of the stops on the route. The other thing I noticed was that, while it seemed to be the fundamental tenant of all the drivers that the ride had to be as herky-jerky as possible, this particular lady saw fit to omit all of the herk and a great deal of the jerk. I may as well have been taken to the Metro in a chauffer-driven limousine, albeit by a driver who did not know the most direct way to get there. Once I got to the Metro station, every transfer thereafter, coming and going, was so quick I could have held my breath between the time of getting to the boarding site and actually boarding each vehicle.

When I got to the job, the staff was having lunch, which is when my days there typically begin. The company, a very small accounting firm, cannot afford medical coverage or other such goodies for their staff so, in lieu of all that, we get lunch. This being a group of Chinese-Americans working, largely for Chinese-American clients, the lunch is usually Chinese food—not bad, but not the pricy part of the menu either. Except, today, we had duck. It was not Beijing Duck, to be sure, but it was delicious nonetheless. 

My work that day went unusually smoothly. The managing partner I work for is the wife in the husband-and-wife team than founded the company. He is in charge of counting the actual beans, while she takes on the special projects, for which I write the letters. I don’t always get as complete a briefing as I need the first time out for a given assignment. Today, though, everything was right on the money, the very first draft, and we got a lot of work done.

When the Metro pulled into my station , I saw the posted time was only one minute from the scheduled departure of the express bus I took to get home. Usually that bus would come three or four minutes early, by Metro’s own clock, and be gone by the time it was supposed to be arriving, so I figured, this is the end of my lucky streak. I will either have to take the slow, roundabout local or wait 25 minutes for the next express, but, for the first and only time within my memory, the express bus was late—just late enough so that I was able to walk up and step right on. And again, the trip was exceptionally smooth.

As the bus approached my neighborhood, my thoughts went to my favorite episode of the show, You’ll Never Get Rich, which most people seem to remember as “Sergeant Bilko.”  Bilko, played by Phil Silvers, was the leading actor, of course, in an exceptionally well-written situation comedy, for its time or any other. The fact that Neil Simon was one of the writers couldn’t have hurt.

In this particular episode, the gods of fortune, who grant the fulfillment of all wishes to one individual for a day, had selected Sgt. Ernest G. Bilko to be the lucky individual on the day of the episode. The person who is given that gift is not told what has just happened. He has to find a way to figure it out. The day starts off with the hot water on the fritz in the barracks shower, to the shock and discomfort of the first GI’s to try it. A minute later, in comes Bilko, wrapped in a towel, holding a brush and a bar of soap. He asks the troops how the water is and, of course, they tell him it’s just fine. As they stand around sniggering, Bilko goes behind the partition and takes a nice, hot shower, as we can tell from the voluminous steam. After he finishes scrubbing, singing and toweling off, he leaves, whereupon the rest of the platoon, overjoyed that the hot water is now working, charge into the shower and get another blast of ice-cold water.

Other things happen throughout the day that do nothing but benefit Bilko. For example, a bit of shenanigans he had tried to pull is discovered by his commanding officer, Colonel Hall (played brilliantly by Paul Ford), and one of the other sergeants gets the blame. It is only at three minutes to midnight that Bilko realizes: this is his day! He desperately searches for something he can bet on before time runs out and finds a horse race in Australia, several time zones away, that they can pick up on the short wave. He frantically places a huge bet on the longest shot in the race. At the start of the race, his horse jumps off to a commanding lead. He holds the lead but, as the horses head down the home stretch, the clock strikes twelve, and Bilko’s horse, naturally, falls down.  I wondered, is today my Ernie Bilko day?

I told myself, such a thing does not exist in real life, but, is today my Ernie Bilko day? As I came though the door, I was actually thinking of how I might go about finding a Las Vegas Sports Book to place a bet on a real longshot. Then I noticed the message light was blinking on my telephone. “I’ll bet this is the Savoyards,” I thought, “inviting me to a callback audition or flat-out giving me the part. I hit the message button and waited to find out which one it was.

“Hello, Tom,” began the voice of a British lady who was part of the production team., “I just wanted to thank you for coming out and auditioning for us on that miserable day.”

Uh-oh. I have been in theater long enough to know they do not thank you until the show is over. If I am being thanked now, that must mean, for me, the show is over.

“I’m afraid we will not be able to use you in this show, but we do appreciate.....”

Cancel that call to Las Vegas.