Leading Men

by Christopher Castellani

  At the appointed time, ten minutes after eight, fashionably late, the overhead lights flash. The audience bursts into applause as they scramble to their seats. Then they go quiet. Reverential. The only sound is the squeaking of the chairs and the overhead fans. As Hovland used to do on the first day of filming, Anja goes to each of the actors, one by one, takes their hands in hers, and thanks them for their work.

  In her blonde wig and glittering sequined top, altered and expertly stuffed by Keith, Trevor is unrecognizable as himself and unmistakable as Gisele Lemonade, the bartender and proprietress of Key West’s legendary Club Gisele. His face is pale, even under the thick foundation, pink rouge, and blue eye shadow. He is still going over his lines. When he looks up at Anja, blinking, his lashes open and close like butterfly wings. With the help of the Shipwreck’s cocktails and one small hit of Angelo’s pot, they reinvented Gisele together. She went from the middle-aged woman of “understated elegance” to the brash drag queen who loves and misses her brother, who wants to give Tenn some joy, who makes her living from illusion. She went from Anja Bloom’s comeback to the debut of Trevor Halley. It is better.

  “If you forget something, just make it up,” Anja whispers to him. Her. “No one will know the difference.”

  The houselights go down, and the spotlight comes on, ready for Anja to step into it.

  “You’re about to disappoint a lot of people,” Trevor says.

  When she pushes through the curtain and steps onto the stage, dressed not as the barmaid described in the program but in a simple pink silk dress, a necklace of pewter coins, her hair arranged in a loose chignon, carrying a cordless microphone, the audience leaps to their feet. They did not expect her to greet them.

  She is there, she tries to say, to explain. “Thank you,” she mouths, and waves, and takes a humble bow. She holds out her hands before her to quiet the crowd, to get them to sit and listen to her announcement, but they do not sit, they do not stop clapping. They hold their phones over their heads. She takes another bow, though she has yet to do a thing to deserve it. The lights are bright. Her eyes dazzle. She can see mostly darkness. Then the lights flash again, on and off this time, strobelike. The crowd claps louder, in sync, whistling and stomping their feet, until the lights stay on, and suddenly she can see all their faces. There is Scott, all the way from New York, standing on his tiptoes in the back row. There is a woman, house right, who might be Ann-Margret. There is the university president, whom she met briefly at Pieter’s memorial. There, on the aisle of the third row, is Sandrino, dressed in a suit, blowing her kisses with both hands. The empty seat beside him belongs to her. She does not recognize the other faces. She has been away for so long. She has made the world a stranger. She scans each row, looking for someone, but there is no one to look for, not him, not any one of them.

  She is at the start of the next thing. She tried laziness and failed. She was no good at being alone. Can she admit now, finally, how greedily she snatched up Sandrino the day he appeared, like some starving Baba Yaga? How she courted his affection and attention, and encouraged—no, luxuriated in—his television questions? How happy she was to dab at the brown salt his boots dripped onto her rug? He is the only one in this room she trusts with her address. Even Scott sends her mail from New York to a PO Box in the town.

  What comes next after arrogance? What follows pride? She has bought a house on the edge of a cliff. Shrink-wrapped boxes of milk and fruit arrive each week on her doorstep. In the spring, there will be tulips and roses. The town is a twelve-minute drive through protective miles of dunes and woods, ten acres of which belong to her. For nearly a year she has been testing the town’s embrace, and, so far, it still looks upon her as kindly, girlishly, as it did on her first visit. The locals and tourists who recognize her in the café across from the post office, and the jewelry store next to the hair salon, and on the steps in front of Ray’s salon, leave her mostly alone. They regard her with the same bland curiosity they have for the men in boots and boas flying by on their bicycles. She is nothing special here. Just another misfit.

  Tonight’s debut of Call It Joy is the first theater performance Anja has attended in her new town. The testing of an embrace requires care, caution. She has yet to appear at a political action meeting, or one of the weekly summer parades and festivals, but the Rays keep her informed of the goings-on in case something appeals to her. There is still, to their knowledge, no opera. Once this night finally ends, she will propose to Sally that she bring in a company. A soprano, at least, to sing a few selections. Another “seed event,” if that is how she prefers to view it. If Sally does not cooperate, Anja will find another theater. One with perfect sound. Or she will build the opera house herself, and it will be grand.

  She is auditioning the next substitute for grief. Love did not prove sufficient. Neither did fame, or money, or fear. Neither did all of these at once. Eventually, something will stick. The right formula. And if it does not stick, if no such formula exists, then she will know with certainty what she has long suspected and ignored, which is that the auditions were the closest she would come. In the meantime, she has the rest of her life to contend with.

  In the lexicon of stars, Anja Bloom is a has-been. These people now at her feet are gazing up at dead light. If they recognize it as such, they are kind enough not to let on. Most do not know the difference. They want to believe in Anja Bloom’s greatness as much as Anja Bloom has wanted to believe in it. But it is possible her greatness ended with Hovland, that any talent she possessed as an actress was conditional, relational. Alchemical. It is possible she has been dead for some time.

  These possibilities do not scare her or sadden her as much as she imagined they might. In fact, she feels that relief that comes when possibilities are taken away. Perhaps the crowd senses her relief. Her lightness. They let her go on standing before them on the stage, accomplishing only the taking of her bows, the mouthing of her thank-yous. They will not let her tell them she will not be performing tonight or any other night. She never was Elizabeth Taylor. They will not let her get to the speech she has been writing in her mind since 1982, her speech about Tennessee Williams and his fifteen years of alchemy, of greatness, with Frank Merlo.

  The last time she saw Tenn, she will say to them, he was nearly the age she is now. He was as much of a has-been as she has become. Like her, he was living with the curse of having once been great, and the burden of the belief that greatness was still possible. They will not like hearing this. They will groan, for sure, thinking her haughty or falsely modest. But the difference between us, she will say, is that Tenn kept working. His light was dead, but every day he made the attempt to revive it. The stonemason, Frank used to call him. He showed up each morning, got down on his knees, and he worked. And after Frank, he wrote through twenty years of fear and grief and loneliness and failure. Plays and stories and scripts and poems. She has read them all. He was not a coward. He did not hide himself away like she did. Call It Joy is not his best play. It is not even a good play. She wanted it to be better. But Tenn wrote it for Frank, and for that reason alone, she believes it is worth putting into the world.

  She hopes they enjoy it. She is grateful for their generous donations. They will make a difference to this town she has come to love. She apologizes if she disappointed them. She has already gone on too long. The lights will go down now, and she will take her seat beside her friend. She will see them again after the show. She is sure they will have questions.

  17.

  INDIAN SUMMER

  When he came for him, his fear filled the room. Frank was on the bed gasping like a hooked fish. Something was wrong with his oxygen tank. Nurse Fig was supposed to fix it. Instead, in came Tenn. The sight of Frank flailing and wheezing stopped him dead. His shadow covered the walls and the floor from the doorway to the edge of the bed.

  “Get the damned nurse,” Frank said, each word cutting off his air. He knocked over the roses
on the nightstand. He slipped on the spilled water trying to save the vase. Tenn’s shadow disappeared. An orderly came to sweep up the glass.

  Of this scene, Frank remembered only the shadow. How it stopped just short of him, then retreated. He was too doped-up on morphine to recall anything else. But he’d known the shadow was not death. It was too afraid, too dark. When death came, it would come as a brightness, a seduction. “Ecstasy,” Father Kelly had promised him. “Look at the faces of the saints,” he’d said, pulling a set of cards from his sleeve like a magician. “See how they welcome death like a lover. Do the saints look afraid to you?” He’d given Frank the cards to keep next to the flowers. Now they were soaked.

  He woke to Tenn beside him in the chair, his fat soft fingers entwined with his. Holding his hand as he slept. He was telling Frank what happened when he’d walked into his hospital room like it was gossip from a night at the Monster.

  “I ran into the hall screeching, ‘He’s in there gasping like a hooked fish!’” said Tenn. “That’s what got them moving, baby. My tears and carrying-on. If you want a hospital to pay you any attention, you’ve got to play the hysteric. They ignore you otherwise. You have too much pride for that, but by God I will not have you die of pride.”

  Tenn thought he could just come back from—where’d he go again? Yes, Frank remembered: Abingdon, Virginia. Milk Train. Audrey. Clare Luce—and he’d just forgive him lickety-split for his vanishing act. And why should he not think that?

  Frank breathed easier from the new tank. When he tried to sit up, though, all the strength left his arms. He fell back onto the bed. A bomb exploded in his lower back, shattering his bones. He cried out. Nurse Fig appeared with another injection. He made a fist when he saw the needle. His entire fist fit in Tenn’s hand, clasped over it as he went under. Tenn continued to talk. “You’ve had a parade today, baby,” he was saying. “All the people coming in and out of here. See all these chairs? You’re the hottest ticket in town.”

  When Frank woke again, the room was filled with men. Al and Dan and his uncle and Father Kelly and Tenn. They’d even wheeled up Blind Sid from the ward. Frank knew every face. He’d been swimming. He heard their voices from the bottom of the ocean. He lifted his head above the surf to see who’d come around to see him. Ciao ciao ragazzi, what’s the program? They were talking to each other across his bed. They seemed not to know he was lying there on top of it. Al’s arms were folded across his muscled chest. Tenn leaned over and patted Sid on his shoulder. His uncle was reading the newspaper. Frank dove back in. The water was warm. Taormina. Wildwood in July. His mind got clear. When he came up again, Tenn was the only one left.

  The swimming had done him good. He felt rested, stronger. He sat up in bed without any explosions. He was sweating for the first time in the week Tenn had been gone. He threw off the covers.

  “Frankie!” Tenn said. The sudden movement startled him. He closed his book. The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh. “How are you feeling?”

  Frank looked around. It wouldn’t take much to set up a desk in here. Take out a few chairs, push the bed up against the wall. Plenty of space. “You must miss your typewriter,” he said.

  “Not in the least,” said Tenn. He leaned forward. “The color’s come back to your face.”

  “I need to walk,” Frank said. He unhooked himself from the tank. His lungs filled with the hospital air, stale but sweet. His feet found the floor. Tenn helped him stand. “Take me outside,” Frank said. His legs had enough in them to get him out of the room. He walked toward the chair by the door. He didn’t need the wall to steady him.

  “Careful, Frankie,” said Tenn, following close behind, preparing to catch him, his breath on his neck, his hand on his hip bone. The bone jutted out like a shelf.

  Slowly the room filled with water. He was nowhere near Taormina; he was in Memorial Hospital, and the water was rising, and now it was up to his elbows, and now it was up to his neck. Tenn called to him. He stretched out his arms and floated, listening to him repeat his name. He kicked and swam toward the door. Beyond the door was the beach. Somebody there had a cigarette. It felt good to kick and to stretch his arms. But it tired him out fast. He needed to rest. He tried sitting in the chair, but the water came up to his lips, and he jumped up again. He had to keep swimming or he’d drown. He swam from chair to chair. Then back to his bed. Then the chair again. Then the doorway. Each time he tested his ability to propel himself upward, he passed the test. He could make it all the way to the beach if he kicked faster, if he didn’t tire himself out.

  When Tenn wasn’t looking, he dove through the door into the hallway. But he swam straight into Nurse Fig. She dragged him back inside. She pulled him toward the bed.

  “No,” he said, fighting her off. “I’ll drown there.”

  “We won’t let that happen,” she said.

  “I’m telling you, I have to keep moving,” Frank said. His limbs buzzed. He was becoming a shark. “It’s the summer. I want to be outside.”

  “It’s September, sweetheart,” she said. “We call that the fall. There’s even a little chill in the air today.”

  “Frank is correct that it’s not yet autumn, Miss Newton,” said Tenn. “There are still three days left of summer, if I’m not mistaken.”

  To Frank, she said, “Your mother would never forgive us if we let you catch cold.”

  “Wouldn’t you agree he’s much improved from the morning?” Tenn asked her. “When you left him here alone for nearly an hour with a faulty oxygen tank? Look at those roses in his cheeks. I’d like to take him outside, if you don’t mind. And even if you do mind, it’s my understanding that this is a hospital and not a prison.”

  “Mr. Merlo is in our care and in the care of his family,” Nurse Fig said firmly, gathering the bedcovers from the floor. “I can’t authorize that.”

  “His family is not paying his bills,” said Tenn.

  “I’ll get him some fresh sheets,” she said. “If you’d like to speak to Doctor Fallon—”

  “What I’d like is for you to bring us a wheelchair,” said Tenn. “One of those electric ones, so he can drive. Driving calms him. It gives him happiness. Can we give him a little happiness?”

  She ignored him.

  “Do it, do it!” Tenn shouted, stamping his feet. He grabbed fistfuls of his hair with both hands and pulled at it as he snarled at her. “Immediately!” When she turned her back, he gave Frank a wink and snarled again. He stamped and roared: “Do you hear me, Miss Newton!?”

  Frank laughed. “They should give you a Tony,” he said, after she walked out.

  Tenn tapped his shirt pocket, where he kept his cigarettes. “Put something on, baby,” he said. “She was right about the chill.”

  * * *

  • • •

  IT WAS THE MIDDLE OF the afternoon, and Frank was riding circles around the sycamores in St. Catherine’s Park. Tenn watched him from a bench, hunched over with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, the shiny sunlit windows of Memorial behind him. He called out for Frank to slow down, to look out for the dips in the asphalt and the broken bottles and that little girl on the trike. He didn’t have to warn him. Frank saw every divot, every glint of glass, every pigtail, every falling leaf, every pigeon, every sad stare.

  At least the women met his eyes before they glanced away. A flash of sympathy, of concern, of morbid curiosity. The men just checked their watches. What did Frank care? He lapped up every breath of the delicious air, rich with earth and trash and fumes and dog shit. So what if he got a little dizzy circling the trees? It was worth the nausea, the risk of fainting, to feel that chill on the tip of his nose, that tilt of the chair on the curve. If only this claptrap could move a little faster. If only he could push the wheels with his own strong arms out of the city, take one last trip south through Jersey, waving goodbye to the shore, and roll himself all the way to the Keys.

>   Instead, ten minutes steering the electric chair nearly crippled him. He parked beside Tenn to rest for a bit. Tenn helped him onto the bench. He slung his leg over Tenn’s thigh and rested his head on his shoulder, and together they watched the men pass by, their favorite pastime, the choosing of the fish from the bed of ice, the catching the eye of the deer before it leapt into the woods. None of these men would touch them now, of course. They shunned the sickness they could sense from twenty feet off. An old man of fifty-two on the bench holding a skeleton on his lap, better not to look their way at all, better to pick up the pace. Frank nudged closer, covering his head with Tenn’s scarf. The chill had seeped into him.

  In the years they summered in Italy, they used to daydream about staying on after the season. They dreamed themselves onto a farm in Sicily, some tract of lush and fragrant land far from the constraints and temptations of a city. They’d hide their address from everyone but Anna. She could visit as long as she rode in on a donkey. (Oh, how they laughed when they pictured Anna in her black silk dress and high heels, slapping the donkey’s cheeks to get him to hurry up!) On their little farm, Frank would learn the native arts of cheese and oil and bread, and Tenn would spend his long days in the tunnel. The nights and afternoons would belong to the nightingales.