I see him glance around, checking for other eyes that might be watching us. My limbs fill with helium. I tighten my grip on Puck's leash and try to redirect us slowly toward the curb, toward the light, casual, as though I'm not avoiding him, oh no, I just happen to live on the other side of the street. I'm not going to make it, not without running. I stiffen my spine as we prepare to pass one another, and my eyes move to his.
It's him. The guy in my apartment. A small flinch betrays that he recognizes me, too. You fuck. You fucking son of a bitch. Hold a knife on me in my own fucking kitchen. Not again, you shithead. No way, you fucking piece of shit. The words are coming out of my mouth. His cocky swagger wilts, and he edges around me, mumbling something. Once past, he breaks into a light trot.
I drop Puck's leash and yell at him to sit and stay and, I don't know, maybe I'm yelling at the guy to stay, I'm so crazy with rage, I don't know. I follow him. I break into a run and charge after him down the block. I don't know what I'm thinking, my heart is thundering and pumping gallons of blood into my head so I can't think. I just run.
He sprints across Eighth Avenue and I follow, checking for cars, but there is only one and it is too far down the avenue to help or hurt. He cuts left, and we are pounding along Eighth. We cross Fifth Street, then Sixth, then Seventh, and I figure he must be heading for the subway station two blocks ahead. I don't think I'm going to make it that far. There is a painful stitch gathering in my side, and my breath is coming in searing gasps. I have my eyes trained on his back and I can hear him panting, too, but he is also starting to put distance between us. And then he stumbles. His gawky limbs buckle and he flies sprawling onto the pavement. I am on top of him before he has a chance to get up. He flails, and one elbow connects, hard, with my cheekbone. I scrabble back onto my feet and kick him once, feebly, but then when he starts to rise, I kick him again, harder, and again, I don't know how often, until he crumples, shielding his face. I find my breath enough to croak a few more obscenities at him.
'I wasn't doing nothing,' he whimpers. 'I didn't do nothing to you.'
Something is wrong. Something is drastically wrong here. The voice. I have been hearing a voice in my head for the past month – 'I got a gun' – the timbre of that voice, every inflection, the curl of each vowel and the thud of every consonant is burnished into my nightmares. This is not the same voice.
I look down at this guy I've been chasing. He is rising slowly, warily, to his knees, one hand cradling his jaw, and though he is the same race and has the same lanky build as my burglar, he is not the same man. For starters, this is a kid, fifteen, sixteen at most. And he's trying not to cry. His mouth is smeared with blood.
He senses the moment has shifted and suddenly springs up and back, turns heel and takes off again, a jagged painful lope punctuated every few feet by a glance backward to see if I am in pursuit.
I feel sick in my gut. I've attacked someone with no provocation, no excuse in the world, and beat him on the street. I am deeply ashamed. I am dust. There are no words for this.
I am squatted on the steps of a brownstone, hunched over and waiting for the earth to swallow me up when a voice hails me from above.
'Are you okay?' An old man, clad in bathrobe and slippers, is standing on the stoop of the brownstone, just inside his doorway. He is framed in the yellow light of the vestibule.
I nod mutely. My throat is closed.
'Do you want me to call the police?' He moves down a few steps, letting the door shut behind him. 'I saw him take off. He can't be too far. I can call the police for you. No trouble.'
It takes me a second before I understand. He believes he has witnessed a mugging. That I am the victim.
'No. No police.'
He shrugs, puzzled, and takes another look at me. 'You live around here?'
'Third and the Park.'
'Ah, that's nice, those buildings up there.'
'Yeah.' Into my aching head swims a picture of my block and the recollection that I've left Puck sitting on the sidewalk there. Who knows how long he will stay before he tires of it and realizes he can just walk away. We've never tested his obedience this far.
'You're going to have some shiner to show for your troubles tomorrow.'
My fingers find the tender swelling along my cheekbone where I caught the kid's elbow. 'I'm fine.'
'Well, if you're sure you're gonna be okay.'
I pull myself to my feet. 'Thanks.'
It is a long walk home. A breeze has come up and is sending bits of trash and newspaper skirting up the street. I move blindly, passing in and out of shadow. I know that people have done worse. In the scheme of things, this is minor league barbarity. But I know what it feels like now. I've tasted what I'm capable of. Somewhere past Fifth Street, a plastic grocery bag is rattling in the branches of a tree. I keep walking until I turn up my familiar street and spy Puck in the distance, still sitting, waiting for me to come back. He wags his tail in welcome, and my grief bursts open like a melon.
It is luck I don't deserve that I'm wearing a mask for this commercial. By dawn, my right eye has swollen to a slit. Through my good eye – good being a relative term here to describe an eye that is red and rheumy with sleeplessness but otherwise normal – I survey the damage in the bathroom mirror. There isn't much to be done about the swelling, but I reason that a little makeup might at least tone down some of the more garish shades of purple blooming on the right side of my face. I'm operating on maybe two hours' sleep and so buzzy that my hand shakes when I dab pancake under the eye.
Among my repertoire of nontransferable job skills, I know how to create a completely convincing bruise with makeup. All kinds of disfigurations, in fact, along with the standard old-age lines and pouches. Covering up a bruise is much harder, though, and I make a mess of it. In addition to the swelling, I now appear to have some rare skin disease, perhaps the early stages of leprosy. On the train out to Queens, I think I catch people eyeing me circumspectly, giving me a wide berth.
Within five minutes of my showing up for my call at Astoria Studios, the production assistant has come striding down the hall, a stiffly perky blonde who sizes me up in a glance. One look confirms everything she already knows about actors, that we're unreliable children who have to be coddled because of union rules.
'You must be Dan.' She scribbles something on a clipboard and then presents me with a Junior League smile and her name, which sounds like Teacup but is more likely Teeka or Teega. 'That looks nasty. Does it hurt?'
'I'm fine,' I tell her. 'A little run-in with a mugger last night.'
'How awful. Are you okay to work?' The question might seem casual, but her bullshit antennae are up and waving.
'Absolutely.' I resist the impulse to elaborate, to weave some long and babbling defense of my competence. But this is all she wanted to know, that I'm not going to flake out and make her morning a living hell. Now that we've cleared that up, her features relax into a semblance of sympathy.
'You poor thing. Where did this happen?'
'Outside my home. Park Slope.'
She shakes her head and confides, 'My friend got mugged on Madison and Eighty-first last year in broad daylight. It just goes to show.' What it might go to show, she leaves for me to figure out. 'Well, all I can say is thank goodness you're wearing that costume, right? So, okay.' She consults her clipboard. 'I left the contracts in your dressing room. Jodi – ' She waves over a waifish girl in skintight pants and an abbreviated T-shirt that look as though they were purchased for someone even smaller and thinner. When she lisps hello, she ducks her head and peers up at me with raccoon-lined eyes. 'Jodi can show you where your dressing room is. They won't need you on the set for an hour or so. There're breakfast goodies on the catering table. Are you hungry? Excuse me.' The two-way radio on her hip is bleating, and after a brief exchange that includes a reference to the talent – that would be me – she glances surreptitiously at me and then steps out of earshot before continuing the conversation.
My stomach rumbles at the mere mention of food and reminds me that I haven't eaten since… when? Yesterday, sometime yesterday. I'm buzzing with exhaustion and hunger and nerves. That's what this is, the jitters. After all these years, the preface to performance is still a heightened anxiety, like a motor running too fast. It doesn't matter what the role is, whether it's Broadway or, in this case, a no-liner rodent on a commercial. You'd think I could learn to relax. Then again, I did a show once with an actress whose name you would recognize, who'd been in the business at least thirty years and still, every night at five minutes to curtain, would disappear into the bathroom and empty the contents of her stomach.
