I Don’t Own My Likeness 6

Read from the beginning at I Don’t Own My Likeness 1.

Too Vesta

The casting office didn’t even have a logo on the door, just a taped-up sign in black marker: AUDIOCRIME CALLBACKS 9 AM – 2 PM. Below it was a polite request not to knock unless you were on the call sheet. 

Vince signed in just below someone named Derek, which felt like a cosmic joke, and took a seat in one of the tan plastic chairs that lined the beige hallway. The walls were peeling, the carpet was low pile, and a little ring light glowed behind a half-open doorway. 

He adjusted the collar of his wrinkled Henley and tried not to overthink everything. The look was intentional: beat-up jeans, work boots, and a couple days’ worth of stubble, just unkempt enough to say “haunted homicide detective,” but not” downward midlife spiral.” He’d even smudged a bit of shadow under his eyes with concealer to give the impression of sleepless nights. 

It had been years since he’d pounded the pavement looking for work. He could feel the gentle flutter of nerves in the pit of his stomach, not from fear, but anticipation. This role felt different. Grounded. Human. A leading role, yes, but not glamorous in any way. The character was divorced, estranged from his kids, and consumed by his work. Broken. Messy. There was no way anyone could confuse him with Vesta, no matter how much he growled into the scene. There would be no lengthy monologues about peaceful coexistence, no space operatics. Just grief, bourbon, and an unresolved triple homicide. 

Across the row of chairs, a kid in his twenties bounced his leg so fast it made the whole row tremble. Next to him sat a barrel-chested man in flannel who looked like he’d just walked in from a lumberyard. Vince caught his own reflection in the black glass of a turned-off flatscreen mounted above the water cooler. No one looked up. No one whispered. No one recognized him. 

He found it oddly comforting. 

He pulled the sides from his back pocket and flipped through the first scene again, a straightforward late-night interrogation, followed by a monologue about digging through trash bins for evidence the killer didn’t even know he left behind. It was refreshing to read a script that didn’t start with a pronunciation guide for the half-dozen alien words peppered throughout the dialogue. No gadgets, no technobabble—just rot, asphalt, and bad lighting. 

A young man in joggers and a lanyard leaned out from the open door. 

“Vince Karros?” 

Vince stood, smoothed the front of his shirt, and adjusted his shoulders just slightly. He gave a half nod and stepped forward. 

He was ready. 

The room was barely furnished, consisting of a table with a couple of water bottles, a few ring lights mounted around a tripod camera, and a folding chair positioned in front of a black backdrop. A man in black jeans and a slate-colored T-shirt stood behind the table, clipboard in hand. 

“Vance, thanks for coming in.” 

Vince smiled, half a breath away from correcting him, then let it go. “Glad to be here.” 

The man—Terry, the casting director, presumably—stepped around the table and motioned to the guy already standing beside the reader’s mark. “This is Cade. He’ll be reading with you today.” 

Cade was maybe 22. Fresh faced and alert, Cade probably used hydration as a verb. He smiled widely and extended his hand. “Big fan,” he said. 

Vince shook it. Cade’s grip was firm and enthusiastic. It felt like shaking hands with a younger version of himself, minus the years of media training, PR polish, and Hollywood soul erosion. 

“You’ve got the sides?” Terry asked. 

“Yeah,” Vince said, pulling the folded pages from his pocket. “But I’m okay to go off book, if that’s all right with you.” 

Terry looked impressed. “By all means.” 

It was a shameless flex, sure, but auditions were competitions, and Vince needed to play every card he had. Every wasted minute costs the studio thousands of dollars, and no one wants to deal with an actor who can’t get his lines down. 

Vince walked to his mark. The ring lights buzzed faintly, casting soft shadows on the blank backdrop. Terry took his seat behind the camera. 

“Scene 27, late night, interrogation room. We’re rolling.” 

A red light blinked on. Vince nodded once, centered himself, and slated: “Vince Karros. Los Angeles, California. Six foot two. Auditioning for the role of Detective Max Mathias. Represented by Randy McSweeney of Atlas West Talent.” 

He paused, smirked, then finished with his trademark screen test closer: “I’m able to shave or grow facial hair with little lead time, no problem.” 

The performance came easily. Vince’s voice dropped into a register just above a whisper, tense and clipped. His eyes stayed fixed on Cade’s. He paced the scene slowly, like walking across broken glass. His delivery was measured and grounded, nothing close to the hammy theatricality of Spacedock Omega. When Cade stumbled on a line halfway through, misreading “I was his alibi” as “I was with him,” Vince didn’t flinch. He improvised a retort, pulled the tension tighter, and looped them back on track without breaking the rhythm. 

By the time he finished, the silence was thick. The camera’s red light blinked off. 

Terry exhaled like he’d forgotten to breathe. He leaned back, nodding slowly. “That was… great.” A small pause. “Really… strong read.” 

Vince’s shoulders relaxed by a degree. He smiled, not smug, just satisfied. “Thanks. It’s a great part. I appreciate the opportunity to read for it.” 

Terry glanced down at his clipboard. “Yeah.” 

The casting director’s silence was accompanied by a shift in tone and posture. Vince felt it before Terry even continued. This wasn’t going to end well. 

“I have to be honest with you, bud,” Terry said. “You’re a terrific actor, and I know you’d nail the role. But…” 

He scratched behind his ear. 

“It’s just that you’re so identified with Vesta in the public consciousness. I don’t think people would believe you in this role.” 

Vince laughed too loudly, too fast. 

“But this guy’s a detective,” he said, shaking his head. “Grounded. He drinks bourbon and hates everybody. Everybody hates him. There’s not a lick of science fiction in this script.” 

Terry offered a small, rueful smile. “Exactly.” 

Vince blinked. Terry spread his hands a little, searching for a diplomatic phrasing that wouldn’t sting, and failing. “When people look at you, they see the suit. They see Vesta. Audiences aren’t smart enough to see anything else.” 

The words landed with a soft thud. They didn’t sound cruel. They sounded rehearsed. 

Terry hesitated before adding, “It’s not your fault. You’re iconic. But that’s a risk. Too Vesta. It threatens to overshadow the production.” 

Vince held his expression steady. His hands didn’t move. Only his jaw tightened, just a little. He nodded once and asked, “Then can I ask why you had me read for you?” 

The question hung in the air for a second too long. Terry looked genuinely sheepish. “To be honest?” He glanced down, then back at Vince. “My son’s a massive Spacedock Omega fan. He grew up on it. Had the bedsheets. Still sleeps in an old Omega Corps sweatshirt, I swear.” 

Vince didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. Terry cleared his throat and reached beneath the table, lifting a small cardboard box onto the surface. Inside, perfectly centered in its plastic sarcophagus, was a mint-condition Derek Vesta action figure. 

The uniform was tight in a way the real one had never been. The pecs were impossibly square. The jaw was cut like glass. The boots gleamed with molded, gunmetal perfection. The bulge in the trousers suggested masculinity devoid of sexuality. Vince stared at the figure’s dead eyes behind a helmet visor that never lifted. He could almost hear it speaking catchphrases in his voice. 

The doll doesn’t know how good he has it, Vince thought. 

Then, as his eyes drifted to Cade, still standing by the tripod, smiling politely and thinking about his future, another thought crept in. 

Neither does he. 

Terry handed Vince a Sharpie. Vince uncapped it with his teeth, like he’d done a thousand times, and signed across the clear acetate window with the same practiced scrawl he always used. 

Ad Astra! —Vince Karros, accompanied by a rough little sketch of the Omega Corps emblem. 

Terry beamed. “Thanks, man. My kid’s gonna flip when he finds out I met Derek Vesta.” 

Vince nodded, the corners of his mouth straining into something that looked close enough to a smile. 

“Thanks for the audition,” he said. 

He shook Terry’s hand, then Cade’s. Cade said something polite, something vaguely encouraging, but Vince didn’t catch it. 

He walked out without looking back. The sunlight streaming through the lobby windows hit him like a slap. Another dozen new hopefuls had filled the hallway while he’d been auditioning. On the lone empty chair, someone had left a stack of headshots, half curling at the edges. Vince kept his gaze down, letting the door close softly behind him. He didn’t want to see anyone looking at him, not with recognition, and especially not with pity. Not even with indifference. 

A man passed him on the way in—early thirties, clean shaven, sculpted jaw, and a lived-in leather jacket slung over his shoulder. Confident. Relaxed. Like he belonged here. 

Vince didn’t need to watch the man’s audition to know he’d book the part. With him at the helm, Audiocrime would probably get picked up for a full season, become a critical darling, a ratings success, and break every awards record before being preserved forever in the Library of Congress for its cultural, historical, and aesthetic significance. 

The lobby’s fluorescent lights hummed overhead. Vince walked straight through it, out the front door, and into the too-sharp sunlight. His car was parked at the far end of the lot, in front of a crumbling curb that was decades overdue for repainting. He got in and left the door open, one foot still resting on the asphalt. The keys dangled in the ignition, but he didn’t turn them. 

He sat back in the driver’s seat and looked into the visor mirror. For a second, the reflection startled him. The way the daylight hit the bags under his eyes. The slight sheen of sweat on his forehead. The way the stubble made him look almost like someone else. Someone rougher. Older. Hungrier. 

He raised a hand to his jaw and touched it, like he was checking for cracks. Then he whispered the words, as if testing how they sounded out loud. 

“Too Vesta.” 

There was no sarcasm in it. No real bitterness. But there was no pride, either. Just hollowness and soreness, like pressing an old, yellowish bruise to see if it still hurts. 

He let the words sit there for a moment, then he slapped the visor closed hard enough that the mirror popped slightly out of frame. He turned the key in the ignition. The car started on the second try. 

He didn’t check his messages. He didn’t check the time. He just pulled out into traffic and kept going.