'i'd really rather hang out in your lobby'

Something I am coming to understand more and more during the course of directing this one-night-only extravaganza is working with your friends and ex-friends is a bad idea. My previous shows have been populated by people I am friendly with, but not necessarily "Friends With."

Of course, certain collaborations have already proved fruitful and excellent, and the world will see these marvelous results in neigh less than a fortnight. Other combos have been altogether strange.

There was the knock down drag out fight over a script change. Then there was this.

This girl, let's call her Karen. She's had some trouble in the past. Some drug trouble. Some train-hopping and squatting around the U.S. trouble. I was pretty sure in a few years I'd get a phone call something along the lines of: 'We found Karen's body in a ditch this morning.' So needless to say, I am VERY relieved that she is okay. She's moved to Queens, lives with her boyfriend in a warehouse - slightly legally, I think. And she wants to act. So she calls me, and I say hey, as a sign of my good faith in you, please be in my play.

She has been on the flakey side. She has no phone. She rarely can check her email. She calls me from pay phones, and since I screen my calls, I rarely pick these up, and she doesn't often leave a call back number. There is a major...how shall I say...body odor issue with this girl as well. Not one that she can't control, I don't think, but how do you tell someone to shower more often without coming off like...well, an asshole?

So why is she still in the play? Because I love her, and I believe very much in her. So today, I had planned to muster my strength of being, and tell her (lovingly) that she needs to bathe, for the sake of the production and the other actors' poor olfactoral senses. And then I pick up a sketchola number I see on my phone, because I'm pretty sure it's her.

Karen: Um, I've stayed at work as long as I can. Can I go to your place for rehearsal now?
Me: Karen, no one's there yet, I'm sorry.
Karen: Oh. Well can I go wait in your lobby?
Me: You can't kill an hour? Someone will be there at six.
Karen: No, I have no money.
Me: Well, you know, there's parks and stuff.
Karen: I'd really rather hang out in your lobby.
Me: I don't know Karen, someone will be there at six.
Karen: Fine, I'll figure something out.

End transmission.

Is that not a bit odd?
This is New York. I know there are places to go, even if you don't have money. Given it is 10 million degrees out (which I'm sure will not assist her in the scent-improvement department), but...huh?