The Exit Coach

by Megan Staffel

  “Yeah, the dips are good, but don’t you think…” He looked at her in a surprised way, then leaned in again. “Can I be honest with you?”

  “Sure,” she said simply.

  “What we did was much better and his thing sucks.” Then he leaned back in his chair, looking at her, waiting.

  She knew what he wanted. And for a moment she was unsure. Ruben was her friend, but Ruben was a faggot. She could not love him all the way. And this man wanted an accomplice. He wanted sex. He was asking right then and there. And he was strong. He dipped her down, brought her back up with the smoothest, most effortless grace. “Oh yes,” she cried. “We were so much better. Ruben’s thing sucks!”

  Her happiness grew. Because now, to her list of accomplishments, she could identify the feeling that had been growing inside her despite the slap, despite the shame. Sex. All she had to do was shift it from Ruben to Ernie. How he looked at her, what he was willing to say to get her on his side. She’ d never guessed she had such power.

  “Ava, use your tail. You’re not using your tail. God gave us the behind to attract a mate. Use it.”

  Now they were not only in costume but in makeup, too. The transformation was violent. Angry red lips, bruised eyes, scarlet cheeks. Any place her eyes rested got singed. Her face made her so powerful, she had forgotten the switching, impatient backside, the take-me signal, the undulating muscles that called to any hungry man lounging on the street. And when she got it going, and then worked in the face too, the tits, the shoulders, her pimp couldn’t contain himself and the music barely held their mad, evil energy.

  The runaway with the beautiful fans at the bottom of her pants (she learned to ripple them out with a fast leg toss) was pure respite. Her careless, sweet, goofy moves were a contrast to the robotic secretaries. But the runaway was careless only for a short while. The banker kept walking past her, back and forth, back and forth, trying to restrain the goose step that was irrupting out of his casual moves, until finally it took over and the hippies on the drums beat out a march as he grabbed her arms and threw her in the back of his car.

  “That’s it!” Ruben cried, waving his hands to stop all action. “It doesn’t matter that we don’t know what actually happens to her. What we’ll see is the birth of anger.” But then he corrected himself because he got the message on her face. “You’re right Ava, not the birth, the explosion of it because the anger was already there. You’ve told us that in the ridiculous goofiness of her moves, her total imperviousness and lack of defenses. The anger explodes into a burn and that’s when the hooker is born. So let’s see it. Now, get yourself out of his car and show us.”

  She didn’t know how. She was a virgin. How could she even imagine? Cocksucker. With a strange man, for money. Cocksucker, cocksucker. She hardened her body, flung it into that deep and relentless hunger: give it to me. Not love, not sex, money. She became that word.

  The first run-through on stage, with the whole company, should have been frightening. But Ava had blinders on. Nothing touched her. The lights, the sets, the numbers of people, the flurry of activity in the wings. There was so much happening at once she had to stay focused. So when Justin Beckwith, as Sammo, sang his crazy hippie song and the street people swung and twirled, playing their buckets and car parts, creating their rush-hour cacophony as the executives passed back and forth and the pimp waited in the alley, she couldn’t listen. She couldn’t be the audience; she had to stay separate and unaware. She had to be in her two different roles and the simultaneous levels of the production were irrelevant. The sounds that she made with her feet, her voice, sometimes backed by their rag-tag orchestra, sometimes alone, owned her.

  And because they owned her, they didn’t awe her. That is, she was simply the runaway, simply the hooker. And because she couldn’t be nameless to herself, she invented Dawn for the runaway and Dawna when she started walking the streets.

  Cleopatra offered to come to the opening night, but Ava lied and told her everything was sold out. In truth they had offered her three free tickets. But Cleo didn’t protest, as Ava knew she wouldn’t. She was a creature of habit. Once she got home from her job she never went out.

  The first preview was the monster before her. She got through it by pretending it was only another rehearsal. At the end of the show the audience went crazy and when Ava came forward, the applause turned thunderous. Or maybe it was her imagination. She was still Dawn and Dawna and she didn’t become Ava until she was sitting in a bar next to Ruben sipping a glass of rosé.

  “What’s your pleasure?” he had asked, and she had named the only alcoholic beverage she knew of. “As the lady wishes,” he murmured, and ordered the most expensive rosé on the menu.

  They hashed out the problems. There had been mistakes in timing, missteps in group numbers. She didn’t have anything to contribute because as a dancer, she hadn’t been there. A friend of Ruben’s, another choreographer, suggested that while the secretaries did their staccato march on the stairways Ava should be even more loopy and fanciful below them and there should be no indication of any sexual power. “Let her moves be more girlish, more innocent. That way, when he throws her into the car we will truly be heartsick.”

  “That’s good, Mike. I like that. She’s so young and trippy, yeah, that would work well. Make sense Ava?” Ruben squeezed her shoulder.

  “Yes,” she answered. And it did make sense. She could feel already how she might swoop and soften, how she might be more exuberant.

  The reviews hit the papers soon after opening night. One critic gave the dance numbers equal space with the acting. He called it “a revelation.” Another claimed never to have seen words, song, and dance so seamlessly blended. It was “haunting, raw, erotic.” The remaining performances were sold out and Ruben said he was in negotiations to move the show to a larger theatre for an extended run.

  The dressing room was electric with nerves. Brekka was checking the women’s makeup and when she came to Ava’s place at the table in front of the lighted mirror, she put on the finishing touches and said, “So you and Ernie, friends, right?” She rubbed her finger in grey eye shadow and held it over Ava’s face and gently, tilting her chin into the light, smeared it onto her lid, a feather motion that made Ava hold her breath. “You want some advice or no?”

  Ava could feel Evelyn listening. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Should Brekka shut up?”

  “I don’t know,” she said again. And then, gathering breath she said, “I think I’ll follow my own instincts. But thank you.”

  “Yes sweetheart, that is exactly what you should do.” Brekka planted a kiss on her cheek and murmured, “You look so vile it gives me the fright.”

  Ernie had already told her Brekka was a lesbian and she should watch out.

  Ruben was an idiot, Brekka was lonely, Evelyn was incompetent. They gloated over these judgments, even as the show gained more and more notoriety. One night, when she was leaving the theatre, Ernie caught up to her and said, “I’m staying over at my friend’s tonight, and he’s out of town, and maybe you’d like to come over for a glass of wine?”

  She knew what he was asking and although what she really wanted was to get on the subway and be in her own bed forty five minutes later, she said, “Where does he live?” And it was not far and it was too hard to resist the imploring face or her own sense of momentum. At last she would know.

  “Do you have condoms?”

  “Oh what a girl, what a question!”

  “Well, if we’re going to have sex, I want to be smart about it.”

  The friend’s apartment was a single room crammed with possessions. The bed was raised above a desk with a ladder going up the side. He offered wine. But she was too tired. “If you really want to know, what I really want is a huge piece of really fine chocolate cake. With homemade buttercream frosting. From an Italian bakery. Can you find such a thing? If I wait for you here?” It was her right, as the virgin, to make such demands. And though he shot her h
is surprised look, he was already reaching for his jacket and checking his pockets for bills. Once he had left, she was alone with her feelings: her excitement, her fear.

  She rummaged in the closet till she found clean sheets for the bed. Curiously, there were candles on every surface, stuck on plates and tin can lids, all in various stages of slump. She arranged them about the room, wondering why one person would want so many going at once. But when she lit them and turned off the lights, the wavering points of yellow were magical. She found cleanser and scrubbed the filth from the bathtub and ran a high bath of very hot water. She set candles around the tub. Then she took off her clothes, sat down in the water, and promptly fell asleep and everything that happened afterwards felt like it was part of a long, watery dream.

  The kisses. What she learned was that when a person decided they were going all the way, the kisses deepened. Mouths turned searching, insistent. The tongue, the hands, the stiff, blind horn on the man, eager to butt past all impediments. She had never imagined how artful it was, how slippery. Nor would she have guessed at the way she knew what she didn’t know at all. They ate the cake afterwards. It was laced with a liquor that left a dark, bitter taste in her mouth. He put on music from the performance and as Ava, not Dawn, not Dawna, she did her own moves to it, naked.

  12.

  Now Ava came in later, left earlier. But at least she still came, still cooked, still graced his lonely rooms with the same energy the reviewer had fallen in love with. Only Harvey knew it had nothing to do with the role she played and everything to do with her person.

  He wheeled himself to the kitchen door and using the handles Ruben had installed, he hoisted himself to standing and made the tea and the toast, leaving them on the counter for her to bring to the table. He wheeled into the living room and up to his end of the table where there was a pile of that week’s magazines and that morning’s Sunday Times. The review Ruben had read over the phone to him last night was in Arts and Leisure. He saw the photo, it was Ava of course, and read it himself.

  Finally, the door opened. She popped her head into the living room, just long enough to say good morning, aim her happy look in his direction.

  “I have something to read to you, so hurry up.”

  “Be patient, old man. I’m getting there.”

  Since her, well, what would he call it, her discovery, the two separate personalities of the regular Ava and the Thursday Ava were more melded and the new arrogance made him feel more comfortable. Not so fucking unreachable. And old man, he loved it. Soon, he would know what derogatory to fashion for her.

  She set it all out, sat down. He took a sip of tea, cleared his throat, and said, “There’s something that might interest you in the Arts section: “The Charmer Who Dances Her Way Into Our Hearts.” He read everything up to the part about her and that he read slowly and in a soft voice: “`Ava Prett, the dancer who plays the California runaway who turns into a Times Square prostitute brings a wild and zany energy to the dance sequences as she loops from sweet-tempered badness to pure malevolence with an originality and focus that is thrilling to watch play out. Her spectacular moments make up for the less than inspired moves of the pimp and financier, danced by Edward Abbott, a performer we have seen before in Ruben Escorella’s work.’”

  “That’s so awful. How could they say that?”

  “Awful? Did you hear it?”

  “But Ernie! How could they say that? He’s the one who makes me look good. I feel so terrible. I mean, what do I know, he’s so much more experienced.”

  “Listen, listen you!” he was shaking like a palsied old man. “Now listen here!” He slapped the table to get her to stop. “Don’t denigrate yourself!” Pointing a finger, shouting. “Don’t diminish what you do in order to prop him up. Why do women always do that? It’s not fair to yourself. Miss Nobody. That’s who you are. Nobody! But you’re not nobody. You breathe, you eat, you shit, you sit at my table and take up room in my apartment. And not only that, you’re a surprisingly talented young woman. You take over the stage. And let me tell you, I know what I’m talking about. When you’re on the stage, no one in the audience can bear to look anywhere but at you. You’ve got it! You’ve got that elusive, mysterious, compelling quality that moves people. So step up to the plate and forget Eddie.”

  “Ernie,” she said. She stood up to carry their dishes into the kitchen. “What do you want for dinner?”

  Another typical female move. So he said very plainly, enunciating, “We are having a conversation here and you are not simply going to leave it.”

  She came back and said, “But we do have to think about dinner,” sounding as peremptory as she could, but she was no match for him.

  “We do not. We are having a conversation and we are going to finish it. Sit down, Nobody. Tell the old man. Why are you angry?”

  “I feel bad for Ernie. And you can’t just tell me to forget him.”

  “Why not? You have something that he doesn’t.”

  “He’ s my boyfriend.”

  This he wasn’t expecting. “Do you love him?”

  “Of course I do, I mean, yes.”

  “And he’ s your first?”

  She nodded an affirmative.

  “And have you talked to him since the review?”

  “No, but maybe he hasn’t seen it.”

  “He’ s seen it.”

  “He’ s going to hate me.”

  “If he hates you, drop him. He’s no good for you if one little review makes him jealous. Let me tell you something.” And without waiting for her to give him the go ahead, he told her about Alice. “I knew the first time I saw her on stage that she had that rare thing. It’s what you have. An awareness of the audience. But not only that. It’s a desire to do anything for them. Anything. You want them to have a true experience, to carry away something really big and you’ll turn yourself inside out to give it to them. Let me tell you, Alice came from the hinterlands. No sophistication. Nothing in her life that I could see gave her this thing she had. She’ d learned to sing in her church. Her church! Not Negro gospel, which might explain it, Presbyterian! Milk toast! She was going on nothing! Nothing but feeling and intuition.”

  As he spoke, he saw her exactly as she had been. Those tanned arms, the long neck, the wrist circled by a silver band. This beautiful creature standing before him. He remembered the time at the Greek restaurant. Summer. A sleeveless dress. In His great wisdom, when God had made the sleeveless dress, yes indeedy, that was the way to ensure that the species would reproduce. His eyes began to tear, the memory was so exquisite. “I had to get out of the way when she became famous. I had to let her surge forward and become who she was meant to be.”

  “I’ve never heard her sing,” Ava said simply.

  “Then let’s do it. Let’s do it this moment.”

  He wheeled to the music room. He knew what he wanted to play her. Evenin’, it was the opening song on her last album. He shook the record out of the sleeve and gently placed it on the turntable. He didn’t play records much anymore, because he wanted to save them, but the sound quality was better on the record than the cassette. He waited, letting the silence crystallize, and then he set the needle in the groove and her voice came into the room. Alice! In all her simplicity and surprise. He looked at Ava and he could see that she felt it too.

  The lyrics, they were so plain, but the rhythm was tricky and what the voice did was make it all smooth, all okay. The pain was okay.

  Evenin’, every night you come and you find me

  And you always remind me that my baby’s gone.

  When it was over, he stopped the record, wiped it off, put it back in the sleeve. Then he wheeled around and saw that she had changed.

  Her eyes were glassy too. Her face was loose, softened. “I had no idea. I mean, it’s sad, but it’s beautiful. It’s so beautiful it makes you feel good. It’s amazing that she could make me feel that way. I mean, it’s like I’m there. In it with her.”

  “That’s w
hat an artist does. They take the horrible things life gives us and they make them bearable by finding the beauty. That’s what she gave her audience. That’s what they took away.”

  “I never knew. I never really got it.”

  She seemed to be in a state. He realized very quickly that he should do nothing but listen. She was struggling to say something and he had to be absolutely focused on her words to help her get them out.

  “That I was separate, that I could dance. But it was only because of my mother. We had it. And it made us separate and apart. Or I was separate and apart because her dancing was for sex. I think she was a prostitute. I’m not sure. But I think she was. And that made me separate too. But this dancing is completely different. It’s not for something, it’s with something. You can’t be competitive or on your own.”

  “Well, that’s what music does, it creates a community of people all feeling the same thing. It puts everybody on the same beat.”

  She placed her hands on her thighs, getting ready to stand up. “Thank you. So. Since you’re paying me and everything, shouldn’t I make some dinner?”

  “No. Just sit. Let’s not break the moment.”

  “Okay.” She took her hands off her thighs and looked at him expectantly.

  “You can cook something terrific for me tomorrow. Okay? I just feel more like talking today. Is that all right with you?”

  “What would you like to talk about?”

  She seemed so normal, so forthcoming he had to remember it was Ava. “This theater work is good for you. Gets you out of your shell.”

  “I sort of feel like I’m on my way. I don’t know; I’ve never felt that before. On my way.”

  “Towards what?”

  She shrugged, hands splayed on her thighs again. “I don’t know. Towards whatever will happen. Towards the next thing.”

  “Well, what do you see out there? What do you picture for yourself in ten years?”

  “Me and Ernie’ll have our own apartment and we’ll both be dancers. Maybe by then we’ll be on Broadway.”