'Well, for Christ's sake, I didn't mean it literally.'
No matter how innocuously we begin, every discussion these days circles round to some question of our future, just as it did eleven years ago when we were still trying to determine whether this unlikely pairing was actually going to work. Now, it would seem, everything we agreed on is up for review again.
Maybe this upcoming trip will help. Wednesday morning, we're flying up to Maine to visit my father-in-law, who has a summer home on Penobscot Bay. Six days cooped up with Jack Casterline and his loony tunes wife is not my idea of a vacation, but I can't really kick since Jack is footing the bill.
The window shades are fading to gray with the first light. It occurs to me that I haven't actually witnessed the sun rise or set since I can't remember when, this despite the fact that I'm awake during most of them these days. There is no horizon in New York, no line dividing sky and earth. Even during the day, the sun is felt more than seen, the heat of it seeping down between the long shadows in midtown and wavering back up from the concrete. Shards of sunlight refract off glass buildings, but the sun itself, the sky…
I wish I could follow Robin into her dreams. I wish I could turn my back on my life and pull up the covers and be in a snowy arroyo somewhere.
But I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep. And yada yada yada.
I'm on the lookout for signs and portents these days, and what I'm discovering is that if one is looking, they appear in multitudes. Even the most daily event sprouts wings, becomes vastly significant. I'm on my way to this audition, and halfway between my building and the subway, the summer sky suddenly darkens to a septic green and splits open. The water is starting to drip off my chin, and just as I'm warming into a long string of curses, an empty cab materializes out of the rain like a messenger from heaven. I hail the cab over to the curb, slide into the backseat, give the turbaned driver the address, then settle back and close my eyes for a few minutes. When I open them, we are inexplicably heading up Sixth Avenue and a good thirty blocks north of my destination. It turns out the cabbie doesn't speak English; he responds to each of my frenzied corrections with an uncomprehending nod. The winds shift again, we turn south, the meter ticks over into four digits, and it occurs to me that this is the difficulty with trying to read your own life: from the center, each sign seems to radiate out in a different direction.
We have just crossed Canal again, and he is heading doggedly back uptown. I check my watch: it is 9:20. If I cut my losses and get out here, I could still make it on foot. I rap on the Plexiglas and signal the cabbie to pull over.
When he flips up the meter and his eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror, he smiles cautiously, expectant. Against all odds, he seems to believe that a miracle has deposited us at the mysterious address I've been yammering from the backseat. A few minutes ago, I might have argued the fare with the guy. Now I see my own bewildered self reflected in his smooth face. I stuff fourteen dollars into the slot and climb out into the downpour.
I am losing my grip.
The audition is for a new play by Arthur Haines at Tribeca Rep. I'm reading for Hal, this right-wing preacher who's running for a Senate seat somewhere out of the Midwest. It's not the lead, the play's actually about the gay speechwriter who's working on his campaign, but Hal is an interesting character with some good scenes. And it's eight, ten weeks of work, a good play, guaranteed press. Not that I'm in a position to be choosy.
Three blocks from the theater I slow to a fast walk and start running lines in my head.
'What are they saying about us in the
'Well, Paul tells us we'll be persecuted for our faith.'
I duck and weave through a phalanx of umbrellas at the corner, check for traffic, dive across the intersection.
'I'm not asking you to agree with me privately, Terry.'
'Don't take advantage of my good manners.'
My guess is that a lot of actors are going in there and reading Hal as a cardboard villain or a buffoon, which is a mistake. This guy's likable and sincere and convincing. That's what gives the play its tension.
In the elevator, I peel away my suit jacket and shake water off myself like a spaniel. I get up to the offices, sign in: name, agency, union membership. I'm on time, which turns out to be irrelevant. They're running behind – the small reception area is clogged with nervous Hals and Terrys. A half-dozen actors are bent intently over copies of the script or staring into some private distance. Two guys in the far corner are shooting the breeze, ostentatiously at ease. One of them is Brad Whalen, who works here all the time. He's not right for Hal, but then again, you never know. I'm hoping he just dropped by.
The other guy is Kyle McCann. We have the same agent. It's not just jealousy when I say the guy is a bimbo, completely without talent and maddeningly successful. At the moment, he is lounging against the wall in the studied pose of a jeans ad and casually tapping a rolled-up script against the brick.
'When'd you get back, man?' Although the question is addressed to Brad, Kyle pitches his volume just enough so all of us can listen in.
'Last week. I took a couple extra days after we were done shooting and went on down to the Keys. You ever been there?'
'No. I did a show at the Burt Reynolds with Nate Bellogi. We kept talking about going down there, fishing some marlin. But you know how it is with Nate.' You listening up, fans? He's pals with Nate Bellogi. Nate, not Nathan as he's known to the great unwashed. 'Monday would roll around and I'd just drag myself out to the nearest beach and sleep it off.'
'I'm telling you, Kyle, you gotta go.'
I borrow the men's room key and head back out the door. In the bathroom, I check the mirror: under the fluorescent light, I look dull-eyed and pasty, like something washed up on Kyle's beach. My hair is slicked to my scalp from the rain; below the line of my jacket, my pants are water-stained and sticky with the damp heat. I spindle a couple feet of paper towel off the roll and mop water out of my hair, off my face. Then I run a comb through my hair, take a leak, wash my hands, and glance over the sides again. I say a few lines into the mirror, trying to recall what I did last night when I ran the lines with Robin. My voice sounds as phony in my ears as the jackass back in the waiting room. Whatever confidence I had about this audition, I must have left behind in the cab.
This is the first legit job I've gone out for since March. It's summer and things are dead all over town. Still, last month I dropped by my agent's office with some flimsy excuse (in the neighborhood, heard they're casting such and such, went to school with the director) just to remind him I was still alive. For better or worse, Zak is probably too nice for this business: he didn't tell his receptionist to get rid of me. Instead, he sat me down and lectured me about taking a vacation, for God's sake, giving him a break and going somewhere nice. He recommended Block Island, 'but don't eat before you get on the ferry.'
I'd be better off with one of those anorexic killers who live on coffee and hardball contract negotiations and bitter gossip, but I've stuck with Zak because, frankly, I get enough rejection in this business without taking it from my agent. I wouldn't go so far as to describe us as close, but we get a kick out of each other, and we've continued to stick it out when there were smarter options on both sides. There are marriages based on less. It'd be a good thing to get this job, if for no other reason than to justify his faith.
I run the lines until they stop echoing back in my ears, then head back into the office and return the key. Brad Whalen and Kyle are gone. I scout a chair next to a husky blond fellow who's carrying on an animated but soundless conversation with himself. His eyebrows raise then furrow, his lips move, then his features twist into an exaggerated expression of disdain. It's like watching a silent movie.
My name is called and I startle. I pull myself to my feet, take a deep breath, begin smiling inside my head. I don the persona of Hal: confident, earnest. I get ready to do my stuff.
Bippety bip bippety bop, I'm in the door, all smiles and bonhomie. The wax museum is lined up behind a long table: the director, the playwright, the casting director, the assistant to the director, each one sporting the glazed facsimile of a smile. I do the lightning round of introductions, shake hands up and down the table like a seasoned politician, go to the empty stool in front of the table, and ask the reader her name, which I promptly forget. Then
