by Blake Crouch
“Another, sir?” the bartender asks, before my empty even hits the bar.
“No, I’m good.”
Wittig orders another wine.
“So tell me about this play, Paul.”
“I think you’ll be intrigued. It’s Mamet meets Simon meets Pinter meets Beckett. I’m tempted to say more, but I’m afraid it would spoil your experience.”
“So am I going to see this kid’s stuff on Broadway in the near future?”
“The question, Jim,” he points at me, and I hope he isn’t getting drunk, “is are you going to see Broadway on Matthew? If he stays true to himself, Broadway will have to come to him. ’Cause I don’t see him selling out. This kid is fucking special, Jim.”
Everywhere I look, eyes are on me. Male and female. I look at Wittig, his cheeks fire engine red as he knocks back a substantial sip of wine.
“Ready to walk over?” I ask.
I’m ready to get the hell out of O. Wilde’s.
I shouldn’t be swimming in the deep end my first time in the pool.
Chapter 4
in Hamilton Studio ~ a real piece of shit ~ beholds the city at night ~ offers criticism ~ attends a party ~ strange music ~ meets the director ~ an offer ~ another offer
Lights down. Lights up.
Onstage, a park bench. An overtly fake tree. Cardboard clouds hanging from visible cables.
A man enters stage left, dragging a fake dog by a leash. A woman enters stage right. They stroll starry-eyed toward center stage and bump into each other in front of the bench.
The woman says, “Oh, excuse me. I didn’t see you.”
“No, no, it’s my fault,” the man responds. “This damn dog won’t heel.”
He tugs on the leash, and the stuffed poodle slides across the stage.
“Is your dog stuffed?” she asks.
“Why yes, of course.”
“You’re walking a fake dog?”
“No, she’s real.”
The man pulls the dog up into his arms and smothers it with kisses.
“This is Poopsie, yes it is.”
Wow.
Thank fucking God it’s only one act.
Wittig whispers: “Brilliant opening. You’re about to see an entire relationship condensed to thirty minutes. You like it?”
“It’s first-rate, Paul.”
I have a hard time concentrating on shit, so for the next five minutes I sort of zone out and glance around the theatre. Even though Hamilton Studio is quite small, with only a hundred seats, there’s no full house tonight. Maybe thirty playgoers. Vivid lighting makes the stage look as sharp as an autumn afternoon.
This woman behind us has a big, sloppy grin across her face, and I wonder if it’s because she’s enamored with the play, or if she thinks it’s comical what gets produced these days.
Now, the man and woman onstage are sitting up in bed.
The man puts a cigarette in his mouth, and the woman removes it.
“Honey, that’s so cliché,” she says. Then, “You were wonderful.”
“I know.”
The audience laughs. Not a big laugh. I’d say about a 4 on a scale of 1 to 10.
“How do you know?”
“Because you just told me.”
“I mean it,” the woman insists. “You really were good.”
“I mean it. I know.”
More laughter. I gauge it at 8. I even laugh this time, because it is pretty funny. But it doesn’t stay funny for long. It gets weird again, and I zone right the hell back out and watch the faces in the audience instead. They’re like children, most of them—curious, happy children, trying to see their lives onstage.
Don’t ever ask me what Love in the 0’s was about. Wittig tries explaining it to me in the cab on the way to the director’s apartment, says it has to do with the way people like hurting each other. A reaction to the absurd. I don’t know. Only reason I care even a little bit is in case I talk to Matthew the director. I mean, I’m not going to tell the guy I didn’t know what the hell his play was about.
So I’m sitting in the back, trying to think of something I can say I liked about the thing as the lights of the Village blur by, sidewalks loaded with keen dressers. The city’s gorgeous at night. Vital. I roll down my window and the night air rushes hot into my face, perfumed with the smell of garlic and women and spicy meat and coffee beans and storm gutters. For a moment, everything kind of stops, and I’m overwhelmed with this city and this man, Wittig, who I’ve only known for nine hours, and the fact that I woke up this morning in the room above my parents’ garage, and that only yesterday I was fired and had the wherewithal to put this beautiful idea I’ve been planning for ages into motion. Funny how life goes. The same thing every week, year after year, and then one night you’re in a cab in New York City on the way to a party at the apartment of a director whose play you’ve just seen, and everyone thinks you’re a movie Star, and they might just be right.
Wittig pats me on the knee. He’s always patting me on the knee.
“You must tell me, Jim. The play—what’d you think?”
“I think your boy Matthew’s got a lot on his mind.”
“Do tell.”
I severely wish he’d just leave it at that, but I can tell he won’t.
“I could rave all night,” I say. “Let me make one criticism.”
“It’s our critics who teach us,” he says.
I guess you have to say that sort of thing when you’re a professor.
“I think Matthew—what’s his last name?”
“Gardiner.”
“I think Mr. Gardiner is too eager to lecture his audience. There’s a certain anxiousness and immaturity there. I knew what he wanted me to see in the first five minutes. He spent the next twenty-five beating me over the head with it.”
“Fascinating.”
I’m not making this up. Jansen starred in a movie ten years ago that was savaged because it felt more like a lecture than a story. It was called Room 116, about a guy who’s lying in a hospital bed (in Room 116) dying slowly and in immense pain. And the doctors can’t kill him ’cause it’s against their creed or whatever. Jansen played his part well, but it’s just scene after scene of this guy moaning in bed, and by the end of the movie it’s like, okay, we get it, fucking kill him already. Anyway, that little spiel I just delivered was adapted from Ebert’s review of that movie.
“But Matthew’s a talented director,” I add, because I don’t want Wittig to think I’m one of those people who hate everything. And I’m not. I like most things.
Strange music leeches through the door of Matthew the director’s apartment. It’s this highly danceable music with this guy speaking monotonously over a drumbeat and synthesizers. I can’t tell what he’s saying yet.
There’s a note on the door: “Just come right in.”
So we go right in, me following Wittig and feeling a little nervous but not quite as bad as you might think. The first and only time I went to the Lewis Barker Thompson Hardy Christmas party, I threw up in the bathroom as soon as I got to the restaurant. I hate stuff like that. Social engagements. Mingling. Finding that stride of charming superficiality. I just don’t know what to say to people. I’m good for about a minute, but after that I’m unbearable. I’m just not that interesting. I mean, I wouldn’t want to talk to me at a party.
But tonight is different.
Tonight, I am not me, and that is the greatest comfort in the world.
Find a place. In the park. Sit and watch the ducks. Watch the sky and turn around. I’ll be there in your dream. Find a place. In the park. Sit and watch the ducks. Watch the sky and turn around. I’ll be there in your dream.
That’s what the monotone voice is saying. Over and over.
I like it. I don’t know why.
It’s a studio apartment, and people have crammed themselves between the walls like you wouldn’t believe. There’s way more people here than were at the play. I follow Wittig through the crowd, sinc
e he seems to know where he’s going. The floor is hardwood, the ceiling high. Paintings, sculptures abound. If I were the kind of person who used words like chic, I’d say this is a very chic apartment.
The back wall consists of windows, and they look out high above the city. People are standing outside on the balcony as well, leaning against the railing, smoking cigarettes.
Wittig turns and says something to me, but I can’t understand him. There must be a hundred people here. Like ants, most have assembled in the middle of the room. Bouncing. Gyrating. A colony of dancing. Others stand in the kitchen around the stove island. Or sit on counters, or along the walls. Certainly this guy can’t know everyone here. If I invited everyone I knew to a party, there’d be about eight people in the room, including my parents. All you can hear is a jumble of voices and above them—find a place. In the park. Sit and watch the ducks…
Next thing I know, we’re standing in front of this guy garbed in black, with moussed black hair, black-framed glasses, who isn’t even thirty, and Wittig’s got his arm around my shoulder and he’s saying, “Matt, I want you to meet a dear, dear friend of mine. I brought him to the show tonight. This is James Jansen. I think you’ve probably seen his work.”
Right off, I don’t like this kid. He’s impressed to meet me, it’s obvious, because for three seconds his mouth hangs open and he doesn’t, or can’t, speak. I mean, James Jansen is standing in his house, you know? But then he catches himself and gets this cool, smug look on his face that I’d like to peel right off. He’s not honest, and I don’t respect that. It’s okay to be blown away that I’m standing here. That I took time out of my important, maniacally busy life to come to your weird fucking play.
I thrust my hand forward. “Jim,” I say, real understated-like.
“Matt.” He shakes my hand, then looks at Wittig and breaks. “You brought James fucking Jansen to my show?” He releases my hand and hugs Wittig. Okay, now he’s coming around. Kid might be all right. But if I were a lesser Star, you can tell he’d try to come off like it was no big deal.
“Guys want a drink?” Matt offers.
“I’d like one of those with Tanqueray.” Wittig points to the martini in Matthew’s hand, “and Jim would like, I know this, hold on…a double Absolut with one cube of ice, no lime.”
Matthew threads his way to the open bar. A spinning disco ball dangles from the ceiling, its radials of light causing the liquor bottles to flicker intermittently.
He returns with our drinks, and I really wish Jansen liked cranberry juice or something, because I can’t stomach downing another glass of vodka.
“It’s too fucking loud in here!” Matthew shouts over the music, like he’s annoyed he has enough friends to fill an apartment. “Let’s step outside!”
I barely sip the vodka, but by the time we push through the horde of dancers and reach the glass doors, I can feel the alcohol behind my eyes.
When we step outside, I try not to act too enthralled, but man the city is stunning tonight. We’re thirty-nine floors up and the breeze is gentle and mild. The three of us find a place on the railing, and we stand there just gazing out over the sweep of light and motion and sound far below. I’m damn near in tears, but like I said, I don’t show it. You’ve got to figure Jansen’s experienced far more beauty than some off-off Broadway director’s balcony.
Wittig’s standing between us and he puts his arms around the both of us.
“Gentlemen,” he says, “what a night, huh?”
Matt and I don’t say anything, because what are you going to say? I think he’s being rhetorical.
“Matt, it came off even better than I thought it would,” Wittig continues.
“Even the scenes with the therapist? You know, I’ve had concerns they’re too chauvinistic.”
“Especially those. They’re the make-or-break scenes of your play, and they make it. You really pulled it off.” Wittig takes a big sip of his martini, really pounding down the gin.
“I appreciate you saying that, Paul.”
“I mean you really, really pulled it off. Really.”
Wittig’s sloshed. He’s getting ready to say something else, but then notices his martini glass is empty.
“Gentlemen, I’m going for a refill. I shall return.”
Wittig walks back into the party and Matt watches him go, shaking his head.
“He was my advisor at Columbia.”
“He was bragging on you tonight before the show.”
“Was he now.”
“He a playwright, too?”
“He wrote a masterpiece when he was twenty-four called In the Can. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. He doesn’t write much now. But he’s brilliant. Look, I really appreciate you coming. It’s not typical theatre.”
“You made me think, and not much does these days.”
God, I hope he doesn’t ask me anything else about the play. I really feel bad for hating it.
Matt leans over the railing and spits. On the other end of the balcony, I notice these two women stealing glances at me. They’re both wearing highly glittery dresses, and on closer inspection, I see that they’re twins: beautiful, brunette twins. I flash my best Jansen smile and turn back to Matt.
“Say, Matt?”
“Yeah?”
“Reason I’m in New York is I’m doing research for an upcoming part. I’m going to play an actor in the off-Broadway scene. And I’ve never worked here. Always done film. So there’s a lot I don’t know. And of course to do a character right, I’ve got to really understand where they’re coming from.”
“Sure.”
I sip my vodka. It’s growing on me.
“So I was wondering if I could talk to you about your experience. Not tonight of course, since you’ve got your party here, but maybe this week. And I’d love to meet the actors from Love in the 0’s, get a window into their lives.”
“Hell, Jim, I’ll put you in my play if you want.”
“Really?”
“Look, while Love in the 0’s runs in Hamilton, it’s a work in progress. I’ve written a few dozen scenes that could potentially work. The story’ll stay the same. It’ll stay a half-hour long, but I’m experimenting with what best depicts the course of this relationship. In fact, I can think of a scene right now that would be perfect for you. And I’d love to see how it plays in front of a crowd.”
“What’s the part?”
Matt polishes off the rest of his martini.
“You’d play the shrink. I wrote two parts. One for a man, one for a woman, which you saw tonight. Despite what Paul says, I’m not sure a woman shrink is the best thing for the play. You be interested?”
“Absolutely.”
That puts a hell of a smile across his face.
I take the last sip of vodka. I could breathe fire.
“If I give you a script before you leave tonight, could you come read tomorrow?”
Of course I can, but I grimace because Stars never have time to do anything.
“What time?”
“Two? I’d do it earlier, but I’m going to feel pretty shitty tomorrow morning.”
I pause for no real reason.
“All right.”
“Since it’s a short scene, what I’m thinking is, if we nail it fast, which I’m sure we will, we could be ready to show it by next performance, which is Thursday. That’s perfect, don’t you think? You get firsthand experience doing theatre in New York. I get to work with one of the greatest actors of the last twenty years. It’s a fucking dream, Jim.”
He’s pretty happy now. I think it’s starting to hit him that he’s recruiting James Jansen for his shitty play.
“You need another drink, Jim.” He takes my glass before I can argue and walks back inside.
Now only the twins and I share the balcony.
I look over at them and smile again.
“Evening, ladies.”
They smile back, far younger than I first thought. Hardly twenty.
O
ne of them says, “Could you help us settle a bet?”
Everything is buzzing. This may be the best I’ve felt my whole life. I step toward them. Champagne and strawberries on their breaths.
“My sister, Dawn, says you’re that movie star, James Jansen. But I don’t think you are. I think you just look like him. Who’s right? I got twenty bucks riding on this.”
“You’re right,” I say, giving her this soul-penetrating stare.
“So you aren’t him?”
“Nope.” But I say it like I don’t mean it. Real flirtatious-like. She laughs and sips her champagne. “You’re pretty cute in person.”
“What? You don’t believe me?”
She steps closer and her sister comes around the other side so they’ve got me backed up against the railing.
“We had another bet,” Dawn says.
“What’s that?”
“I bet Heather a hundred dollars you’d come home with us. You wouldn’t let me lose that money, would you?”
“I’d hate to cost you money,” I say. And I would. Man, these women smell good.
“All right, stand aside.” Matt reaches a hand between the twins and I take my glass of vodka.
“Do we know each other?” he asks, looking at Heather and then Dawn. He doesn’t say it meanly, and I guess it’s a reasonable question. Heather and Dawn glance at each other, and I wonder if they’re communicating in some special twin way. Matt looks at me.
“Everything cool, Jim?”
“Aces.”
He smiles that oh-I-know-what-you’re-up-to smile. And he’s right. I am up to it.
“Oh to be you. Well, then. I’ll leave you three. Jim, come find me before you leave, and I’ll give you that script.” He winks at me and walks inside, and before my attention turns back to the women, I get to wondering whatever happened to Wittig. Scanning the dim, flashy living room, music pumping through the glass, I finally see him: a short, tweed-suit sporting, gray-bearded man, martini glass raised, in the thick of that dancing colony, sandwiched between two tall, slim men.
Chapter 5
his caterpillar ~ why they can’t stay at the Waldorf ~ the triangle of goodness ~ the joy of twins ~ the contents of their refrigerator ~ doesn’t even say goodbye ~ the diner called DINER ~ it’s all chemicals ~ studies his lines ~ Dr. Lovejoy