by Nick Cole
Nothing.
“Great. I think it’s going to be a really great picture. We’re really having a lot of fun out here.” Langley was sure this response sounded as lame to his agent as it did to himself. The ensuing silence seemed to confirm this.
“Hello?” he tried.
The agent gathered his wits. Then he launched into a lecture worthy of any college-level course in business and the making of film. He used words like “helmer” and “maven” and indicated these were people who were watching how this unfolded not for the sake of art, but for the sake of money. He indicated that specific deals—deals already on the table with some group called “The Mouse House” and “The Frog”—could be directly affected if his, Langley’s, performance was overshadowed by Kurt’s.
Langley listened. He nodded. He threw in the occasional “Uh-huh.”
Agent-speak devolved into acronym-salted sentences.
“We know this picture’s going to have big BO.”
Langley wondered if that meant it was going to stink.
“The studio vets and marketeers are watching the REVs and wondering who to tap!”
Langley wondered whether “tapping” was good or bad.
Eventually, the agent used the word “skein.”
Langley broke in, completely bewildered, and interjected, “Listen, what do you guys want me to do?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” queried Langley.
“Nothing. Just keep in mind, and I don’t want this to stress you out or inhibit your performance in any way, but if you’re going to do this picture, then you really need to turn in a great performance. That’s all I’m saying.”
Silence. Then…
“Kurt’s burying your name. Okay?”
“But…”
“No, listen, man.” The agent was through with AgentSpeak. “At the end of the day, this is about your career. You can’t look bad. People will start to talk, and it’s hard to stop talk like that once it starts. Comprende, mi amigo?”
Silence.
The agent laughed, as though their talk had merely been one between two friends, buddies even.
The agent said goodbye and hung up.
Langley pocketed his phone, confused.
He continued on into the gravel parking lot that had become the film set’s base camp. Cast and crew walked by, nodding a familiar greeting, sometimes soliciting an opinion about the cold. Langley was again one of them. By the time he reached the bus he almost felt that everything would be all right. He tried to forget this was a business with a lot of money, reputation, and livelihood riding on the line. This was just his job. He was no different than a guy working in a factory on the morning shift. Donuts and paper-cup coffee in the break room and then back to the drill press until lunch. He wondered, feeling the tension between his shoulders, if the Screen Actors Guild would get a masseuse out to the set as provided for in his contract.
His lines were memorized.
He knew his blocking.
He was ready.
Was he?
The wardrobe girl came out from behind the truck holding a bear claw and smoking a cigarette. “I’ve got your costume all pressed. Come by and we’ll get ya ready.”
“Okay.”
“Bet you’re ready to start working today, huh? Show Kurt what ya got.”
“Yeah,” he said softly.
“Well, today’s the day.” She walked away, chewing and smoking.
The “buzz” was right. Kurt was giving a once-in-a-lifetime performance. If Langley didn’t measure up in his first dramatic role, he probably wouldn’t be noticed and there wouldn’t be a lot of call to get him a second chance. It would be back to doing lame freshman movies for the few years that remained of his youthful looks. After that, what? Character work. Maybe.
He didn’t feel like he had it all together.
For days now he had been trailing the film crew. Joking. Goofing off. Signing the occasional autograph.
But he hadn’t been working the part.
He’d memorized the lines. But did he have the depth to stretch? To show arc? To be his character?
Not Langley Banks, teen idol.
He wandered back toward the road. What did he know? He knew his lines. He tried one out. It felt flat, rehearsed. Jokey. A mockery of his character. Was he a real small town kid, working as a bar-back in a roadside honky-tonk, looking to get out of nowhere and hightail it to somewhere better?
He tried another one.
What did it matter?
He was afraid. If there was fear, the great lie detector they called the camera would find it. He tried to pace back and forth and walk off the panic.
He stopped to turn. And in that turn he felt sick and angry at himself.
He needed help.
He was a long way away from home.
***
Bill Hurt—not the actor, to whom he bore a slight resemblance in both manner and speech, but the high school teacher—parked his car in front of the school. He turned off the engine, letting the car shudder to the final clunk that indicated the engine was off. He looked at his watch. He was early.
Why?
He’d been doing this job, teaching high school gym, Anatomy, English, and Theatre, for fifteen years. And yet he was early. What did it matter in the long run if he was early? Or late? He wondered if he still liked teaching. He wondered if he still loved his wife. He wondered what it would be like to be young again.
He sat looking at the gray central Texas sky. It was wide and seemed to stretch off into forever. High cumulus drifted in sheets toward the west.
He wondered where forever was.
The prairie grass bent and rose in waves like the surface of an immense green ocean, breaking around the new beige edifice of higher learning that was his school. It was a good school. The best academically in the state. That was something he’d helped accomplish.
He wondered how he felt about that.
He didn’t know anymore.
He just didn’t know anymore.
This was a line of thought he had been plagued by for six months now. Ever since his friend, the physics teacher Bill Wheatley, asked him one morning as they both arrived for work, “What’s it all about?” The question was a private joke between them. A joke in reference to a scathing letter, written by a parent, a notorious advocate of Central Texas Football and a sharp critic of the school’s focus on academics over athletics. The parent published the letter in the local newspaper under the heading, “What’s it all about?” It was a derisive review of the school’s production of Our Town. The letter argued that the school had the worst football record in the state, having lost every game the previous season. In the end, the parent refused to see the deeper meaning and implications of the play, and chose instead to bend all his criticisms into long circular arguments, implicating the play and philosophy behind it as being bad for the community. And the remedy for these ills was—what else?—football. The lessons of the gridiron would solve all their problems and protect the children from the pied piper of high school theatre.
Now every time he and Bill Wheatley greeted one another, they opened with the title of the letter and then a reply.
“What’s it all about?”
“You tell me.”
“Halftime.”
“Bigger cars.”
“More explosions.”
“Physics.”
“Money.”
“Women.”
“Drugs.”
“Rock and roll.”
“Are you talkin’ to me?”
“I don’t speak English.”
“I’m not supposed to tell you. We had a meeting.”
“How the hell should I know, I just work here.”
“Ball bearings. It’s all about
ball bearings.”
And finally the abyss into which Bill Hurt had fallen as of late.
“I don’t know anymore.”
At nine thirty, knee-deep in the wonders of human anatomy with freshmen, he had forgotten his dark gloom, or at least put it on hold until after the basketball game he would coach that evening and before he arrived home to his wife Sharon. He had effectively penciled it in for the dark roads that led home. Tonight’s impending loss at boys’ basketball would be more than sufficient to reignite his ennui.
A young girl, one he recognized as having tried out for Our Town but having not shown up for the first rehearsal, appeared in the doorway to his classroom. She handed him a slip of paper, folded in half. It was a message from the office. As her hand reached forward, extending the pink note, she looked up at him in a way that no young girl had ever looked at him. Or at least, it had been a long time since such a thing had happened. Her face was filled with awe. As if he, Mr. Hurt, was something more than just a high school teacher. As if he was… a rock star. Her lips parted and she tried to say something in a low and hushed tone. Nothing came out. She blushed suddenly and fled, awkwardly banging into the side of the doorframe as she practically ran from the classroom.
The young freshmen, serious, bored, earnest, somewhere else, sat silently as he read the note.
Please call Langley Banks during your lunch. A California number was written beneath.
He folded the note and immediately understood the messenger girl’s reaction. Langley Banks was the most famous student this school had produced. The young girl had obviously read the note and now she was star-struck. The mere thought that an ordinary man such as Bill Hurt would know a mega-star like Langley Banks, and that she would be entrusted with a communiqué between the two of them, was too much for her to bear. An hour later would find her breathing into a paper sack at the nurse’s office.
Bill Hurt shoved the note down into his double knit slacks and resumed teaching.
He slogged his way through the next two periods, ending with gym, a class in which he was reminded anew that his boys would take a savage beating that night. He didn’t care if they lost. He didn’t care if they lost almost every game. But just once, he thought, just once he wanted them to win. Just once he wanted them to know what it felt like to win. Just one win. Then he could let the season go. Maybe, he reasoned, heading for the teachers’ lounge, lunch sack in hand, maybe that was what was really getting him down lately. Maybe they just needed a win.
We all do.
A few greetings in the lounge. Most of its occupants were reading, listening to soft music, slowly eating their lunches. Bill crunched into his turkey-light and lettuce-heavy sandwich on wheat bread as he popped a diet soda.
He still had to call Langley. He didn’t want to disturb the solitude, and he thought about leaving. But he couldn’t go out there. There was always someone needing something.
“Langley Banks called me,” he announced. Most had taught at the school long enough to remember the skinny, awkward boy who made everyone laugh. No one said anything. But they were interested.
“Seemed urgent.”
No one moved, but they watched, fearing the worst, as he now did. Hollywood. Drugs.
“Is it okay if I call and find out what he wants?”
A few nodded.
Bill stood and went to the wall phone. He went back and got his apple out of his lunch, taking a bite as he returned to the phone. He cradled the phone with his shoulder and retrieved the number from his pocket, pushing his wire-rimmed glasses farther up his nose and reading the number, lips moving. He took another bite of his apple while he waited to connect.
“Mr. Hurt?” It was Langley.
“Langley. Yes. It’s me. I got your message. Is everything okay?”
There was a pause.
“No. I mean it’s nothing bad, I just…”
There was a deep sigh across two thousand miles.
“Are you all right, son? Is it serious? It’s okay, you can tell me.” He said it too loudly, and immediately everyone in the lounge was watching him. Langley had been their student too. Bill turned away from them. It was serious.
“No, nothing like that. Really.”
“All right then. Good.” Bill took a deep breath, massaging his left arm. It wasn’t the worst.
“I just… um… I just…” And then Langley was sobbing. Sobbing in the way that boys who are becoming men do when they feel overwhelmed and can’t hold it back anymore.
Silently almost.
You can barely tell.
Unless you really care.
Everything had been under control until this very moment. Then Langley had reached out. Reached back for just a little encouragement. And the voice on the other end of the line, the other end of Langley’s life, had knocked down all the barriers. Its warmth, its familiarity, its love, reminded Langley how far away, lost, alone, and over his head he really was.
Bill said nothing for a moment. Then he spoke. “It’s okay. Everything will be okay. All right?” He let Langley compose himself, then, “How can I help?”
“Sorry, Mr. Hurt.”
“Don’t be. It’s okay. We all get there.” He paused. “Now tell me what’s going on.”
Langley sniffled heavily and then took a deep breath. “I’m doing a movie. A serious one. And I’m worried.”
“About what?”
“I’m not right for it. I can’t do it. Maybe… maybe I’ve bitten off more than I can chew this time. I just don’t want to mess it up.”
Pause.
“I guess I’m not following you. You’re a fine actor. You’ve done serious stuff before. Remember our production of The Seagull? What’s the problem?”
Silence.
“It’s not like back home. Everything means something out here. If you fail, that’s it, you’re out. I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
“Listen, son, it’ll be okay. You’re working as an actor. You got there by being talented. That’s what you’re doing there. Okay?”
“I guess.”
“No. No ‘I guess.’ You got there because you’re good—better than a lot of others. Now listen. You know how to act, and we don’t have time to coach you. I’ve got to go teach English. But remember the basics and you’ll be fine.”
A truck passed on the highway where Langley was.
“I can’t remember anything but my lines,” he gasped.
“That’s good. That’s a lot better than some actors.”
“I don’t know what to do, how to behave, how to emote, how to be in this scene. I’m gonna bomb, Mr. Hurt.”
“No. No, you’re not.” Bill took a deep breath. “Listen. This is how you’re going to do the scene. Okay?”
Silence.
“Someone’s going to say something. Right?” asked Bill Hurt.
“Right,” mumbled Langley.
“Then you’re going to hear it. Right?”
“Yeah,” mumbled Langley.
“You’re gonna really listen to it. You’re gonna really hear the information the other person is giving you in the scene.”
“I’m gonna hear it,” said Langley.
“Then you’re gonna think about it. Process it. Right?”
“Right.”
“Then you’re going to give them some information back, your line, taking into account what they’ve just spoken to you. Got it?”
The phone was silent.
The lounge was silent.
Everyone in Texas held their breath.
“Yeah, I think I do.”
“Good. That’s all. That’s acting. You know how to do that.”
“I do know how to do that.” Langley took a huge breath.
Silence.
“Thanks, Mr. Hurt. I just needed… I just got a litt
le scared, I’m okay now. I’m good.”
“Good.” He paused. “Langley?”
“Yes, Mr. Hurt?”
“We’re all so very proud of you here.” For a moment Bill Hurt’s voice caught in his throat. Then, “We believe in you.”
“Thanks, Mr. Hurt. I really need that right now.”
“I know. Now I’ve got to finish lunch.”
“Okay. I’ve got to get to wardrobe. Thanks, Mr. Hurt, I really mean it.”
“I know you do. Now do good work.”
They hung up. Bill Hurt stared at the cradled lime green phone and all the miles between it and Langley. Then the clapping from the other teachers started. He waved them off, and within moments after sitting down the bell rang. Lunch was over.
The other teachers left. Someone squeezed his shoulder.
He thought about finishing his lunch and being late to class.
He thought about the boys’ basketball team. Maybe tonight was their night. Maybe they could win just one. But he wouldn’t be late for class.
Thank God for good teachers.
***
Langley finished wardrobe, throwing himself into putting on the clothes of his character. He saved the shoes for last. He stood before the mirror fully dressed. He was the character. He thought about the young kids from the diner. Hard lives lived on love alone. There was something in their lives. Something simple, earnest, and hard. Something he could use.
He went to make-up, and while he was being finished Scott the AD came in.
“They’re ready for you on set.”
“Good. I’m ready too.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
The Space Motel
The Great Director propped himself up against the front desk of the Valley Oasis Motel. He could not remember a shooting day harder than the one the production had just wrapped. In truth it had been three days, but the studio would be billed for one long day. One fifty-three-hour workday in which Golden Time had started at the sixteen-hour mark. Every hour since that sixteenth had caused every member of the crew to be paid his or her daily rate, every hour. The Great Director was sure this day would go down as the most expensive payroll day ever in the history of cinema.
Now, at eleven thirty at night, standing in the small office of the Valley Oasis Motel, located just off the interstate and built sometime in the late nineteen sixties, the Great Director was too tired to relish the triumph and joy of delivering yet one more arrow into the heart of his career. All he wanted was a bed and sleep. Sweet, long-denied, unbroken sleep.