A Bright Ray of Darkness

by Ethan Hawke

  A slumbering primordial anger in my guts rose like a lizard, stretching and kicking and gnawing and fucking. And this lizard didn’t give a shit who he hurt. And this woman was growing too, becoming more and more wicked and treacherous. We brawled all night. Once I thought I’d gone too far and hurt her. But she smacked me in the face and asked me to do it again. “You see, you see, you see…I’m not fragile.”

  I imagined her keening could be heard through the halls of the Mercury.

  When I woke, my mouth was swollen and my hair was caked with my own blood. Blood from Prince Hal’s opening night smack to the face. Half my rib cage was raw with scratches; that was from the girl in the blue jumpsuit. It was also the first time I’d noticed a small but deep cut in my lower abdomen that must have occurred during the haywire opening night fight with Prince Hal. I looked at the clock and it was four in the afternoon. I’d slept longer than I had at any time since I returned from Cape Town. The girl was naked, cuddled in the fetal position next to me. Her long snake tattoo had lost its menace in the daylight. She looked young and hurt.

  On the ceiling of my hotel room was a mural, and I’m not making this up, of Jesus seated next to his scolding disapproving Father surrounded by angels and clouds. It wasn’t a great painting; some drug-addled artist had probably done it on a whim twenty or thirty years earlier. I stared at Jesus’ face above me.

  What are you looking at? I laughed to myself. Somehow, I felt great. I kissed my lover and woke her up. She instantly enveloped me in her sleepy, heavy arms and cried again. I could feel her eyelashes sopping wet on the skin of my neck and felt that somehow everything, absolutely everything—my play, my kids, the scalded earth, the oceans with their disappearing dead plant life, the ozone layer—everything was going to be OK.

  The light in the room was green. It was always green in the afternoon. There was so much ivy growing over my bedroom window it washed the whole room in a shivering forest light that shook with the wind outside. Soon, it would be time to go to the theater again.

  Now, I realize that I didn’t have much to feel good about, but believe it or not, I didn’t just feel good; I felt tremendous. I was going to make it. I couldn’t believe it. I was going to arrive back to the stage alive, rested, and with my mind clean, without having read any goddamn reviews. Not one. I’d made it. Opening night had passed. I’d lived, and even successfully had sexual congress with a woman. Yeah, I’d probably got her pregnant or caught some bizarre STD, but for now, I didn’t have one single care about my long-term future. I was so happy to have a rock-hard prick and a strong voice, and not be dead. My body swam in gratitude for the simple things.

  * * *

  —

  “Well, I did it, boys,” I said, arriving back at the theater to find big Samuel and the guys sitting on the curb immersed in some desultory conversation and sharing a smoke. I sat down next to Samuel and put a cigarette in my lips. “I haven’t read any of the stinky reviews and I feel like a million bucks. Like I passed some test. So, don’t anybody tell me nothing. I want to keep my mind clean.”

  “They were better than you could possibly imagine,” Samuel said, winking. “I thought secretly you’d want to know,” he added after seeing my expression. “I know you’re only not reading them ’cause you’re worried they will be bad or that they will affect your performance or something, but they are fucking stupendous and you should know.”

  I paused and considered how I felt. I was ecstatic.

  I knew they’d be great, I thought, but carried on the cavalier charade.

  “Well, I don’t need some two-bit theater student to tell me how I feel about our fucking show,” I boasted.

  The guys clapped and lit my cigarette, like I was Steve “Hotspur” McQueen.

  “You think my wife will read the review and remember what a stud I am and finally come to the show and beg for me to come home?” I joked, but apparently it didn’t come off like a joke ’cause the guys just sat there, blank faced. I guess I came off as edgy and angry.

  My understudy, Scotty, looked over at me. “Your wife was making out with that fashion designer dude on the cover of the Post yesterday. Did you see that?” He took a deep inhale on his smoke and continued, “She and that creepy rich guy were all over the CNN scrawl. None of us were sure if you knew—and were scared to bring it up.”

  Big Sam gave him a scolding stare.

  I sat there for a long while. The conversation stopped.

  “Damn,” I said out loud. Somehow it felt humiliating that she was fucking somebody else and that everybody knew it. And I knew I couldn’t be justifiably angry with any of it, because this was the same as what I had done to her back when we had the same address.

  “Let me ask you guys something,” I said. “When I was talking to her the other day, she said I was making a weird noise with my throat and that I did it all the time. Did you guys ever notice that?”

  They all burst out laughing.

  “What? What? What’s so funny?” I asked.

  “Dude,” Samuel started through his laughter, “you do that constantly and it’s frickin’ spooky and weird!”

  “Really?” I asked. I knew I had been doing it, but I didn’t know it was obvious to other people.

  My eyes stung like I was being made fun of in the schoolyard. “Come on, man,” Samuel said. “It’s no big deal.”

  I flicked my cigarette, stood up, and walked into the theater. I couldn’t talk to those clowns anymore.

  When I got to my dressing room, there was another mysterious note left on the door, again without a name. It was a Henry Miller quote that ended with meeting God, and spitting in His face.

  “Got another one,” I announced.

  Ezekiel was already seated in front of the mirror, on his side of our dressing room. I threw my bag down and tried to casually take off my jacket—all the while holding my breath, so that I didn’t make that weird humming noise with my throat.

  “Do I make a weird noise with my throat, like all the time?” I asked.

  “Does the wild bear shit in the woods?” he asked.

  I tried to smile. I was going to cry again.

  “To hell with them,” Ezekiel began. “They always pick on the movie star.”

  “Who does?” I asked, sitting down.

  “The fucking critics. I hope you’re not upset about all that crap they wrote in the papers and can see it for the jealousy that it is.”

  I stared at him blankly.

  “You’re brilliant in this show,” he continued, “and the whole ensemble knows you carry the first two hours. Those critics just feel like it’s too easy to say some good-looking guy like you is also a great actor. Don’t take them seriously at all. They’re just green-eyed pencil pushers.”

  I still simply stared at him.

  After a long time, I said slowly, “Zeke, I told you I wasn’t going to read the reviews. I told you that yesterday. I told you I couldn’t bear failing in this play and that to protect myself, I would just make up my own mind and keep marching on. I told you I wasn’t going to look at one stupid paper. And you promised me that we wouldn’t talk about them in here.”

  We stared at each other, neither of us moving.

  “I know,” Ezekiel said with his eyes welling up. “I know, I promised.” He took a deep breath, and after a long pause went on. “I told you anyway because I wanted to hurt your feelings.”

  I looked at him.

  “Everybody is so fucking nice to you,” he began, taking a deep breath. “You get those fan letters you don’t even open—and you’re bangin’ all this beautiful tail—and the only reason these chicks like you at all is ’cause you’re famous, and you want everybody to feel sorry for you because your sick-hot rock star wife doesn’t love you anymore. And I just don’t feel sorry for you. You’re ri
ch and you get great roles. You don’t even read half the scripts that come in here and it kills me. It literally drives a nail into my heart. So, I told you that you got bad reviews because I wanted you to know that you didn’t get good notices and that I did. I was worried you weren’t going to read them and you’d never know that I am a fucking world-class actor and you don’t have to keep patronizing me.”

  I stared at him.

  “Which I realize you probably don’t even do,” he continued, sniffling and wiping his eyes. “It’s just that it really gives me a tremendous amount of pain, you know…” Tears were now flowing down his face in steady streams like rain on a windshield. His voice was raw. “I’m so sorry—” He put his head in his hands. “I have so much work to do on myself. I’m really not a very good person.” He looked up. “Please forgive me. Please.”

  There was a long still silence in the room.

  “What the fuck?” I asked. “They were all bad?”

  “I don’t know, man, I only read a few…For the show, they were all great…”

  “So, it’s just me…”

  I turned and looked for something to do with my hands. I was worried I was going to put my fist through the mirror.

  “BEFORE HALF-HOUR, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,” the stage manager announced over the loudspeaker. “IF YOU COULD ALL MEET IN THE GREENROOM, THE PRODUCERS WOULD LIKE A BRIEF COMPANY MEETING.”

  “They said ‘company meeting,’ Virgil, what are you doing here?” someone shouted from the back of our congregation, and the whole cast exploded in laughter. We were stuffed in the small room where all the coffee, tea, bagels, and throat lozenges are laid out. It’s not even a room, more like an alcove in a long hallway. There are couches along the wall for people to nap during the two-show days.

  “Ha, ha, ha,” Virgil said, as he poured himself a tea.

  We were all listening to the head producer speak. Most of us didn’t know his name—I didn’t anyway. It was disconcerting to be addressed by someone other than J.C., but we all knew J.C. was gone. He was already on a flight to direct an opera in Paris.

  “I just want your attention for a second, gang,” the nerdy guy began apprehensively, “to say thank you. We had a great night last night and I know we all are supposed to not care about the reviews, but I’m a businessman and I care.”

  Everyone laughed, but none of us were sure what this little powwow was all about.

  “We took a great risk on this show. I’ve never produced Shakespeare, and you should know that, as great a playwright as he was, his plays have a checkered commercial past on Broadway. Good for the not-for-profit world…less so for the capitalist.”

  None of us knew where this was headed.

  “When I asked J.C. why we should invest all this equity into a four-hour Shakespeare play, he said, ‘Because I guarantee you the greatest American Shakespeare ever performed’…So, when I opened up the Times this morning, or I guess I should admit, last night…”

  Everyone laughed again. I gathered that all my cast mates were weak-minded morons who spent the night online reading about our show. They were not the blue-jumpsuit-fucking Zen monk that I was.

  “And when I saw that beautiful photo of you, Virgil”—he gestured to our Falstaff, who falsely blushed—“and read the lede—the greatest american shakespeare ever—I just had to pinch myself!” He held up the cover of the Arts section.

  The whole basement of the theater exploded in applause.

  “It really said that?” Virgil said. “Really? Let me see.”

  The producer and the folks around him nodded and confirmed the news, handing the newspaper around.

  “What about my Hamlet?” he asked, and the room roared in more laughter.

  “We have had the greatest day of sales in the history of Broadway,” the producer shouted, “and I want you all to know that as of 3:56 this afternoon, the entire run is SOLD OUT!”

  The basement of the Lyceum Theatre shook with cheers and applause. I looked over at Ezekiel. He stared with wide, apologetic eyes back at me. I looked over at our King Edward. He was already quietly and humbly making his way back to his dressing room, as if he’d been called for a false alarm. He wanted no part of all this gloating.

  “So this is a long-winded way of saying…” The producer paused, wrapping up. “Book your house seats now. ’Cause they are the only seats left!”

  Everybody cheered again.

  “Thank you,” the producer guy closed. “Now, have a great show!”

  We all walked back to our rooms to get ready for the show.

  Ezekiel pulled me over in the hallway, letting everyone else pass us by. “Listen, man, I first learned about acting in prison. OK? J.C. came to teach a class at the Illinois State penitentiary—nobody knows that, OK? That’s how we met, and sometimes I think that just ’cause I kicked drugs and pulled myself outta the shithole I grew up in, that I have an excuse to be an asshole. But if you’ll forgive me and give me one more shot to be your friend, I’ll never let you down.”

  I wasn’t mad at him. He was a strange guy, I knew that already. I was disappointed that I had personally gotten bad reviews, but that feeling was confused and lost in the excitement that the show had been received so well.

  “Done,” I said, meekly.

  “Thank you,” he said, and with that, shook my hand and walked away. We had a long run ahead of us and we were roommates.

  I went outside to smoke a cigarette. Big Sam was there. We both should have been at fight call.

  “Don’t worry about your stupid throat thing,” Samuel said. “None of us care.”

  “It’s OK, Sam,” I said. “I just don’t know how to stop doing it.”

  “If you ask me,” he said quietly, “it’s a small price to pay for getting to give such a great performance.”

  “Thanks, pal,” I said.

  “Self-pity doesn’t play, right?” he said, trying to smile.

  I looked over at him. He was down, too. One thing worse than a bad review is not being mentioned.

  “Samuel…” I didn’t want to but I did it. “Do you have the paper?” I asked. I could see it sticking out of his bag.

  “Sure, man,” he said and gave it to me.

  There it was: cover of the Friday Arts page, a full-page color photo of Virgil with the title the greatest american shakespeare ever.

  I walked away from Samuel and sat on the curb of Forty-sixth Street, just off Broadway, and read the review by myself. I heard Samuel walk inside and head to fight call. It was indeed a glowing review. No wonder everyone was happy. They wrote that Ezekiel was a “phenomenal talent who appears to actually breathe fire.” There were passages about Virgil’s towering achievement; Edward was hailed a “national treasure.”

  Finally, I came to the passage about myself: “Unfortunately, like a great Persian rug that must have one deliberate mistake, J. C. Callahan, the best director working today in the American theater, felt the need to cast a film star, William Harding, as the warrior Hotspur. He is hopelessly outclassed.” I imagined Mary reading this with her new lover. Both feeling sorry for me. “Hotspur is a challenging role and the film actor seems incapable of achieving what W. H. Auden called ‘the living embodiment of the lost chivalry of the older generation.’ ”

  I stopped there. The black cloud that had been gathering in my chest suddenly receded and rays of the sun broke through. This critic was quoting from that same W. H. Auden essay that J.C. and I had discussed at length and had decided was so obviously, clearly, and hopelessly misguided.

  This lily-livered loon from The New York Times didn’t know what he was talking about. Joy erupted from my heart. I knew more about Hotspur than that cream-faced punk. I looked up and let the pages of the paper scatter as a bus drove by. I didn’t care. I go to war for art. The world can t
hink what it wants. They can pronounce you a failure. They can sew a scarlet letter on your chest and call you a cad and a charlatan. Meek voices may murmur derisive whispers behind your back at every turn. They can hate you and blab about it on talk radio with the entire nation listening. And yet, they can all be dead fucking wrong.

  ACT IV

  A Hell Broth Boil

  We were deep in the run now. It was the first Tuesday of the New Year and the kids were headed back to school after winter break. My soon-to-be-ex-wife had just spent the holidays with our children at her new billionaire-boyfriend’s palace on the Black Sea. There were pictures of them all over the Internet. Pictures of Valentino teaching my daughter to surf, a lovely shot of the mother of my children frolicking topless on the beach. Extreme macro close-ups of a new diamond ring on her finger. One photo was of the new lovers passionately kissing with my son building a sandcastle in the background. Something from a science fiction film was happening inside my intestines. I was gonzo depressed and had somehow developed an extremely painful boil.

  I’m not sure how it all began. I believe the cut came on opening night. Maybe it was from the battle. Maybe it was from the girl in the blue jumpsuit. It was a small slice right below my belly button. After I’d been ignoring it for weeks it became infected from the sweat of my leather costume. Then I started obsessively picking at the infection, until it began to fester. By the time my kids returned from Christmas break, I had a boil protruding from my belly about the size of a shooter marble. With near zero percent body fat (normally fit and trim at 180 pounds, I was now down to 148), this festering ball of pus looked like a small creature trying to climb out of my body. It also hurt.