Priscilla Monroe's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Priscilla Monroe stood at the pay phone outside the Ivywood radio station with a shivering chihuahua in her coat and no tape in her hand. The dog wore a purple robe stitched with little stars, a gift from her sister that Priscilla had never bothered to take off. The receptionist had already said no twice this week. Priscilla wanted one thing: to sing a duet with Elvis Presley and hear it on every radio in Ivywood. But no one would forward a girl with no demo to a man with a full calendar. She hung up and counted the coins in her pocket. Six dollars and change. The proper studios in Ivywood charged forty an hour, and they wanted the money before you sang a note. She had knocked on three doors that morning. Each man asked the same question. Where is your tape? Each time she opened her mouth to explain, and each time the door closed before she finished. She walked to the park because the park had the little painted gazebo with pine benches, and the gazebo had power outlets the groundskeeper forgot to lock. Behind the hedges sat a battered coin-operated recording booth with a red curtain, the kind carnivals used to sell for a quarter a song. Priscilla had watched a repairman haul it there last spring and never haul it back. She fed it two dollars. The needle twitched. The reel began to turn. She set the chihuahua on the bench, pressed her mouth to the microphone, and sang both parts of a duet she had written for Elvis and a girl who sounded like her. She sang the man's line low. She sang her own line clean. The booth spat out a small acetate disc, still warm. She walked the disc back to the station and put it on the receptionist's desk without a word. The receptionist called a producer down from the second floor. He listened to thirty seconds, lifted the needle, and told her he could not send this to Elvis, but he could send it to someone bigger tonight, if she signed a release before she left the building. He slid the paper across the desk. The release named a manager Priscilla had never heard of and gave him half of anything she ever recorded. The chihuahua whined inside her coat. Priscilla picked up the pen.