“You did?” Casey, said, impressed. “Wow. All I had last week was a go-see for Ebony Breeze perfume.”
“I almost went in on that, too.” I said, and Casey gave me a funny look as Stavros dimmed the house lights. “I’ll explain later,” I whispered into the darkness.
Penelope Schlotzsky, I thought. Of course. I would have given it to her over me, too. But it still stings. How can a part I had no chance of ever getting still feel like it belonged to me, even a little?
So when Stavros assigned James Franklin and me to do a scene together, I was less excited than I might normally have been. I need a job like his girlfriend has, not a headache like him.
Still, a few days later, when I hear his voice, or what I think is his voice, talking into the answering machine upstairs, I run so fast that I bang my knee on the circular staircase while lunging for the phone.
“Ow, I mean, hello?” I say, a little short of breath.
“Franny?”
“Yes?”
“It’s James. Franklin.”
“Oh, hi.” I actually have to cover the receiver while I try to catch my breath. I’m audibly gasping for air.
“You okay?”
“Yes. Are you okay?” I shoot back, boldly.
“Am I … okay?” he says, sounding confused.
I try to adjust my tone and sound more breezy. “I mean, how are you? Okay?”
“Yeah, uh, I am. I’m actually in the neighborhood. Want to take a walk? I thought we could work on our scene, if you’re free.”
Am I free? I’m not sure. It would definitely be cooler of me not to be free, but I’d like something to do, since I do happen to be free. And anyway, he isn’t asking me out, therefore the never-say-yes-to-being-asked-out-on-the-same-day rule doesn’t apply here. It definitely doesn’t apply to scene partners from class who are just getting together to work.
But I hesitate. Who’s actually ever just in the neighborhood? Brooklyn is huge. I’ve never even told him my address. He could be in Coney Island inviting me to take a walk on the boardwalk for all I know.
“How can you be sure?” My question sounds mysterious and confident, I think, as if I’m a detective in a British mystery. I’m combing the misty London streets at night with my magnifying glass, finding clues no one else can see.
“How can I be … what?” he says, after a moment.
“How would you know where I live?” He must have not only kept my number, but researched me, too. Maybe he looked me up in the phone book, although I think we’re only listed under Jane’s name. That means he must have really had to work hard to find me. Then it hits me—James is also a client at Absolute. Maybe he called Richard at the agency and told him he needed to reach me, and maybe now there’s a rumor going around the office that we’re dating. I wonder whether the agency thinking that I’m dating an actor who actually gets auditions and books jobs will make them think more highly of me.
At any rate, he found me, I think to myself proudly. He somehow found me, so it must mean he’s at least a little interested.
“We’re all in the, uh, on the class contact sheet? I live sort of close by.”
Oh. Right. Stavros’s class contact sheet. I forgot about that. We all have each other’s addresses and phone numbers so we can rehearse together. So I guess he didn’t really have to work that hard to find me. But that day on the street he asked for my number. Why would he ask for it if he had it already?
“So then, what was the point of asking for my number that day?”
I close my eyes and cringe. Shut up, I tell myself. You’ll be working together for the next three or four weeks. Be cool.
“I guess, because I wanted to call you?”
“Why not just use the contact sheet, then?”
For some reason I’m trying to ruin everything, even before there’s anything to ruin.
He clears his throat. “Because I guess I wanted to call you in the personal way, not the class-contact-sheet way.”
I’ve gone from bumbling idiot to positive genius, even if only in my own estimation. I have been forthright and bold, like a woman with actual confidence would be, and in return for my bravery I have received a direct and pleasing answer. I must always be this daring and spirited. I’m like a woman in a perfume ad. I’m carrying a briefcase, skipping through Manhattan in a flowing yellow pantsuit and impossibly high heels, so you know I’m not only hugely successful and independent, but irresistible, too. I picture James and me strolling hand in hand through the neighborhood in Brooklyn, a place where I’ve never strolled hand in hand with anyone.
I shake my head in an attempt to clear it. It’s ridiculous to be thinking of James as a potential boyfriend. He’s just my scene partner. We’re in class together. We’re working together, that’s all. His saying he wanted to call me in the personal way is cute, but he didn’t actually call me until today, so it doesn’t mean anything. Plus, as far as I know he’s still with Penelope, which means he likes someone whose signature contains a smiley face in the “o” of her name. If he likes her, I’m definitely not his type. I have to act more professional around James. He’s a real working actor in a world I’ve only imagined, and I want to be composed enough to potentially learn something from him.
“We’re both wearing Doc Martens!” I squeal, as I come down my front stoop. So much for cool professionalism.
But he doesn’t seem put off at all. He breaks into an easy grin, as if I’ve just said the most delightful thing. “Want to get a coffee first?” he asks.
He says his apartment isn’t far, but as we walk down toward Fifth Avenue, I realize I’ve never been this far south in my own neighborhood. Brooklyn as I know it quickly falls away, giant trees replaced by overflowing garbage cans, elegant brownstones giving way to more plain, tightly packed row houses. We stop for coffee at a place I’ve never been, where the coffee is made behind a protective metal grille and handed to us through a small opening that’s locked after we pay. The man behind the grille eyes me in a way that makes me feel as if I’m trespassing.
“I love this place,” James says, blowing on his coffee to cool it. “Authentic Cuban coffee. Reminds me of a place near where I grew up in Hoboken.”
I take a sip of my coffee and practically gag from how hot and strong and almost gritty it is. “Yum, delicious,” I say, managing a smile. “Wait, you’re from New Jersey? That’s so funny. I thought you were from the South for some reason. My roommate and I imagined you were some sort of cowboy.”
I shouldn’t have told him I’ve discussed him. I’m revealing too much too soon. I seem to have momentarily lost the attributes of perfume-ad lady. But this time it’s his face that flushes.
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry about that. I was …”
He trails off, looking up at the sky. He’s got one of those ruddy complexions that reddens easily, I’ve noticed. I imagine him herding sheep on the moors of Scotland or Ireland, somewhere misty and rugged, wearing a cream-colored wool cable-knit sweater and green Wellies, maybe smoking a pipe.
I wonder what it is about James Franklin that makes me constantly imagine him as someone else, somewhere else, especially when he’s right here in front of me. Shouldn’t that be enough of a fantasy? Not that this is a fantasy exactly. I’ve wondered about him, it’s true, but it’s just a work session with a classmate I happen to find attractive, which is less of a fantasy and more of a really good day.
“I was probably just working on something, something for work I mean, and I guess it, uh, crept into my real life without my noticing it.”
I’m impressed. James was working on a character, probably for his Arturo DeNucci film, and he’s so dedicated that he unconsciously kept doing the character’s dialect even away from the set. I want to ask him more about it, but I think I’ve done enough fawning already. I’ve regained perfume-ad-lady composure for the moment, and I don’t want her to slip away again.
The scene we’ve been assigned is from a two-character play that was recently done O
ff Broadway called The Blue Cabin, about a woman who flees her wedding ceremony right before she’s supposed to say “I do.” She runs, still in her wedding dress, as far as she can, until she finds herself in the middle of nowhere, and knocks on the door of the only shelter she can find, a remote cabin in the woods. She just needs a place to sleep—she wants nothing to do with the gruff loner she finds inside at first, and he doesn’t want his privacy invaded either, but eventually they open up to each other and begin to fall in love.
James’s apartment is on the ground floor of a tan brick row house. It’s dark when we enter, and I can’t quite make out the room at first, but I can see through to the garden out back. He says he shares it with the upstairs neighbor, but there’s a part that’s partitioned off just for him. “The outdoor smoking lounge,” he calls it.
He doesn’t turn on any lights, but he starts to light a few candles, which I would normally think of as a romantic gesture, except I’m refusing to let any thoughts like that in. Perfume-ad ladies in yellow pantsuits don’t allow themselves to be torn away from the work at hand by a few candles that may or may not be intended to woo them.
Once my eyes adjust, I can see that, while it’s small, the room is clean and well organized, and even sort of formal. I don’t know why that’s surprising exactly; I guess most of the guys I know aren’t that into their surroundings.
James doesn’t have much furniture, but what he does have is the exact right size for its role in the room, and the more I take it all in, the more I can see how old and expensive it is. Everything looks so grand that the room, which is perfectly fine, seems apologetically shabby in contrast. It’s as if he’s royalty of some kind, who had to hurriedly move from a large mansion to far less desirable accommodations and could take only his favorite pieces.
There’s even proper art on the walls: a few oil paintings, one of a man in uniform, one of a bowl of fruit, and a few charcoal drawings that look like they could be hung in a museum. His bed is neatly made and dressed with pillows, and the two small windows that face the garden are hung with dark red velvet curtains.
“Wow.”
“Thanks.” He pauses for a moment. “I think living in a beautiful space is important, since actors are artists after all, and we’re therefore more acutely affected by everything around us. Poorly chosen objects are distractions, obstacles we put in the way when we’re afraid of telling the truth.” Then he stops and his face flushes. “Sorry. I think I just sounded really pretentious.”
I picture my bedroom on Eighth Avenue: unframed posters on the wall, twisted pajamas on the bed, towels draped over the desk chair, and shoes all over the floor. Am I messy because I’m avoiding some “truth”? I always thought I was just plain old messy. But maybe my lack of neatness is trying to tell me something. What would it feel like if I took myself more seriously and referred to myself as an “artist,” the way James did? When he said it, it did sound a little self-important. But maybe it sounds that way only to someone who doesn’t make her bed.
“It doesn’t sound pretentious at all. It’s an inspiring concept, actually. It never occurred to me to think of my room as an extension of the, uh, craft, or whatever. I’m always more like, who has time for this, you know?” I laugh, but my laugh sounds wrong to me now; it’s too loud and uncontrolled in this beautiful space. It feels as messy as my room.
As if he’s reading my mind, James says, “It’s interesting, isn’t it? That you can find yourself feeling so awkward in unfamiliar surroundings that you become more self-aware and more self-conscious? Maybe that lack of connection to an unfamiliar place can actually give you freedom to open up and see yourself. I thought coming here might help you with Kate. She was stifled before, but because she’s with a stranger in a strange place, she’s finally free to open up. She can finally breathe.”
All of that is interesting, except who the hell is Kate?
James is looking at me expectantly.
“Kate?”
“Your character. From the play?”
Oh, right. Kate. I’d almost forgotten that we’re here to work on the play whose characters are named Kate and Jeffrey, but in fact it seems we’re working already, since everything James has been talking about relates to the play and the work we’re supposed to be doing.
In the play, Jeffrey decided to escape from the world after his wife died and create an isolated haven for himself in a cabin in the woods. Kate has lived a sheltered life, never straying far from her familiar surroundings, until the moment she flees the altar. The cabin is completely foreign to her, just like James’s apartment is to me.
Coming here was a genius idea of his. I’m already learning so much from him. He’s so smart.
“You’re so smart,” I say.
“You’re so pretty,” he says.
It hangs there.
I can almost see the letters that formed the words suspended in the air between us. Part of me wants to bat them away and watch them fall to the ground by making a joke, or saying something deflective, but I also want to leave them floating there, to savor the compliment for just a second more.
He said it so quickly and easily—was he serious? Was the compliment even coming from him, or is this part of our scene study? Maybe he’s in character already.
Either way, I don’t want to ask.
17
It’s turned dark and pleasantly hazy in James Franklin’s apartment. He’s lit some more candles and dimmed the lights further. We’ve done our scene over and over until it’s lost all meaning to me. He wanted to keep going even longer, but I finally convinced him to stop and take a break. We step out to his tiny garden to share a cigarette, the only one left, which we pass back and forth as if it’s something we’re used to doing together.
“Why are you still in class?” I ask him, then immediately wish I could take it back. My face reddens, but he doesn’t seem put off at all. He smiles, looking thoughtful.
“What do you mean?” he says, taking a deep drag off the cigarette, then passing it to me, filter end out, like he’s handing me a pair of scissors and doesn’t want me to cut myself.
“I mean, you’re working. Everyone’s in class so they can get better, so they can get a job and not have to be in class anymore. So, why are you still in class?”
“I don’t want to stop learning. I’m afraid if I stop taking class I’ll get, like, complacent or something. Even Arturo still studies.”
“He does?”
“Yeah. He studies privately, but he still drops into Ivanka’s class.” Ivanka Pavlova is the other big teacher in town, although the mention of her name makes Stavros roll his eyes sometimes. “Try that in Ivanka’s class,” he’ll say, when someone does something he deems unnecessarily showy.
“What’s he like?”
“Arturo?”
“Yeah. What’s he—is he—to work with I mean. You don’t have to tell me anything personal about him. I’m only interested as an actor, you know? Like, how does he … what do you think makes him so great?”
“I guess it’s that he’s so authentic.”
“Authentic?”
“Yeah. Like, he doesn’t fake anything, you know?”
I nod, as if I know.
“He’s always real.” James pauses, as though he’s not sure if he should say more. “Like, the other day, we had a scene, or, we were supposed to have this scene where—we’re cops, right?—he’s my dad, and they’ve assigned us to be partners, but he doesn’t want to be partners, because he’s worried about me, like I’m this hothead from Georgia, you know? And he’s supposed to blow up at me in the car, and his line’s supposed to be ‘Get out of here! Just get out!’ or something like that, and he just—he decided the line wasn’t real for him, in the moment, so he just—he decided not to say it.”
“Wow,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says.
“But—wait. I’m confused. So—if he didn’t say anything, then—how does it end?”
“Who knows? Maybe th
ey’ll rewrite it. Or reshoot it. Or maybe it’ll be perfect the way it is. Arturo has wonderful instincts.”
“But why didn’t he just finish the scene?”
“It wasn’t authentic for him in the moment.”
“But, they pay him all that money.”
“Well, he makes all that money because he’s so authentic.”
“But then, isn’t it sort of his job to be authentic whenever they need him to be?”
“He’s an artist.”
“Yes. But it’s all pretend. I mean, I agree he’s very authentic, like you said, an artist, but also, none of what we do is actually authentic.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you guys aren’t actually cops.”
“Uh-huh …”
“It’s all made up. Right? That’s the job of being an actor. To make something made up seem real.”
“It’s not just a job—it’s an art.”
“Right,” I say. “I see.”
But I don’t really understand. I feel guilty if I take too long in the shower and use all the hot water. I can’t imagine telling a group of people waiting for me to finish a scene that I couldn’t complete it because I didn’t feel I could make it authentic enough. But Arturo DeNucci is an inarguably great actor. Maybe that’s what it takes. Maybe I’d be a better actor, too, if I weren’t so worried about being polite.
“I mean, I agree there’s a range of acceptable behavior,” James says. “But Arturo’s work merits the process. It’s like I said to Penny, back when we were together—I said, that soap, don’t do it. It will deaden you, because that process, there’s no freedom there. There’s just tons of pages of bullshit that have to be shot no matter what, and story exposition to wade through, and there’s no choice but to get through it. There’s no fucking beauty in that.”
I’m pretty sure he just told me he’s not with Penelope anymore, which would normally be exciting information, but my brain hurts, I’m hungry, and my eyes are dry and itchy. I’m done for the night.
“It’s past ten,” I say, stretching. “I’m exhausted. I need to eat something.”
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