Rupert was less-than-fondly referred to by his critics as Red-Nosed Rupert, a stab at his alcoholic past. Actors who spent forty or more years auditioning in hopes of getting a meaningful part, tended to eat away at themselves something awful. Rake just hoped he wasn’t staring into his future as he padded the sponge around the old man’s eyes.
Rupert grabbed Rake’s hand and held it away from his face when he was happy with the result. Maybe he didn’t want the horror of having to hold on to forty at eighty entirely erased from his façade. Maybe he wanted them to feel his pain, or wanted them to know he felt theirs.
Ready to step on stage at last, Rupert relaxed himself by idly shuffling a deck of cards in one hand, turning up the ace of spades on command, no matter how many times he buried it in the deck. He had learned a few tricks from his father, a vaudeville magician. He used the gags mostly to relax his mind or play a prank on someone, lighten the air with some laughter.
Daisy brought him his meal. She pulled up the lid on the silver serving tray and screamed at the sight of the bunny rabbit flicking its ears at her. Rupert chuckled devilishly at her. “How did you do that?” she exclaimed. “I just this second put the lid down. I haven’t taken my eye off this dinner service since, not once.”
“The best things in life, Daisy,” Rupert said, “can’t be explained.”
Rake returned to his floor sweeping, aimed his broom in the direction of anyone rehearsing their parts, in hopes of sucking the craft out of them. He’d steal from them what they wouldn’t give freely, jealous to hold on to their waning celebrity. Anonymity was knocking at their doors, and they would soon be forever lost among the endless sea of B-list actors whose names no one remembered, and fewer still remembered ever having seen. Many made an entirely adequate living in this register, happy to ply their trade, even if, were it not for being captured on a piece of celluloid, there would be no record of them blowing over the land like wind. Many more weren’t really after the joy that came with making a living doing what they loved, however modest the living. Many needed the adoring fans. Many needed to be remembered as larger than life. That was the whole point for them.
That was the whole point for Bowing. Dreyfus Bowing, forty-six, not particularly handsome, not particularly talented, but definitely hard working and determined. Whatever part he was given, however insignificant, he played it big; he played it to the back row and the rafters. He turned the part of the hired help, to be neither seen nor heard, into Othello, until you noticed no one else in the room, and Romeo and Juliet themselves doing their balcony scene couldn’t pull focus. They tolerated him because the audience never failed to laugh at how ridiculous he was.
Rake steered the broom toward Bowing, bombast and blowhard extraordinaire, in full form, reworking the part of secretary. He was supposed to take the papers from Marnie, his boss, stick them in the typewriter, and peck away, the clacking keyboard providing wry commentary enough on Lucy and Marnie’s mindless banter. Commentary enough for anyone but Bowing.
Lucy (a bit of an airhead in and out of character): “My mother raised me to be a nurse. If she could only see me now. I count paper clips! If I do it well, as a reward, I get to collate papers. I aspire to petty. There was a time when I would have considered it beneath me. Not anymore. Now petty is the Holy Grail. It’s friggin’ summiting on K-9. It’s several rungs up from meaningless, I assure you. You can take it on faith from me, a connoisseur of meaninglessness.”
Marnie (a streetwalker who has parlayed her big boobs, ample ass, and lengthy legs into an admirable ascent of the corporate ladder): “I joined the Church of Christ. It was that or trade this body in on a real fender bender.” (She sashayed to and fro in stilettos, all the bodaciousness threatening to throw her off balance on those heels like bumping a produce aisle at Wal-Mart. She clutched the script with false-nails that extended further than tiger talons, occasionally highlighted difficult words with them. It wasn’t not fair to call this acting. It was typecasting.) “Christ has taught me to surrender earthly goals. Achieving them inflates your ego until you drift away from anything that matters.”
Lucy: “I’m a complete non-entity, a shadow of a person; and, like any shadow, I disappear each day into oblivion with the rising sun.”
Marnie: “I’d switch places with you. Beats playing the part of raw meat in a dog’s mouth.”
Lucy: “Oh, great. Make me feel better by reminding me I haven’t hit bottom yet.”
Bowing took the typewriter he was pecking away on, and flung it so hard it wedged in the wall. He had been seething beneath the surface all this time to indicate the storm brewing, so the audience would be waiting for the eruption to come at any time, and watching him more than Lucy and Marnie. The way he repeatedly slammed the arm on the typewriter. The way he pounded the ream of paper against the desktop. The way he hammered at the stapler. Rake was impressed by how deftly he had reduced Lucy and Marnie to background noise even while they were standing under the spotlight center stage.
Bowing (thundering): “I’m sorry you could do no more with your mediocrity than wear it like a crown of thorns. Yet it is I who has truly suffered!” (Finger pointing to ceiling). “For I am a Titan, forced to interact with you commoners until everything that is great about me is thoroughly erased.” He did this eraser-over-the-blackboard gesture with his hands. “I assure you the climb down the mountain is infinitely more painful than the climb up.” (Another big finger pointed to the ceiling, or perhaps to God.)
Lucy: “Is he seriously trying to squeeze Hamlet’s ‘To be or not to be?’ out of typing the friggin’ correspondence?”
Marnie: “No, he’s improving on Hamlet, at least in his own mind.”
Rake was beginning to wonder if anyone in this company could actually act. It seemed the actors could only play themselves. Even more disturbingly, the audience kept screaming for more. Couldn’t the would-be thespians see they had become characters no writer could top for sheer incorrigibility? And the audience kept coming to reassure themselves that no matter what hell their own lives, at least they hadn’t sunk to this.
The repertory performances had become like Catholic Mass; theater had succumbed to mindless ritual. But no Catholic altar show could boast what their performance could; genuine redemption and a fast track to the Promised Land by so clearly elucidating the one barrier to it: Being so utterly and entirely full of yourself.
***
Armageddon strolled the London sidewalks, spying the human garbage strewn across the streets, pushed up against the steep walls of the skyscrapers by the strong winds. London pavement boasted one big, borderless rummage sale of broken souls. Amidst the lot were the finds for which he was looking.
He watched the pickpockets ply their trade, ask for the handout first, with a palm thrust in front of a wary walker, only to get it callously knocked out of the way, spinning the hustler around, and so positioning the mark just perfectly for the rear pocket lift. An old standby. Good to see the classics hadn’t gone out of fashion.
Pickpockets he didn’t need; he was shopping for a whole different kind of hustler, one whose acumen was less sleight-of-hand and safe-cracker and more mind-picker, someone who could quickly get inside a mark’s head to know exactly what product or service to offer him he didn’t even know he desired. Part natural born salesman, part actor, part psychologist and therapist, weighted in favor of the acting skills in order to reach a wide variety of marks.
The legless black man pretending to be blind smiled too much when the mark plopped the quarter into the hollow of his guitar over the nickel and few pennies he had there. He shouldn’t have let on he could tell what was in the mark’s hand. Bad actors he didn’t need, either. They could fool the quick passerby whose mind was elsewhere, but not the sharp customer looking for any reason to say no.
The arthritic older man, performing a staccato jig with the aid of a cane, stopped and started so unpredictably, he was a menace to the quick moving crowd that miscalculated how best to sid
estep him. He balanced his collection hat atop the cane, his back permanently bent over thanks to a curvature of the spine. It was all theater, of course, barely passable theater at that. He was just shaking and shimmering all wrong for someone contorted in precisely that way. His gait, furthermore, was off for someone truly dependent on the cane for more than just show. He was taking too much delight in how far he could throw himself off balance and then recover, like a tightrope artist playing to a crowd, making it look more dangerous than it was. If he could stop hamming it up for a second, and think about the parts of his body that were supposed to be hurting him, his gait would adjust naturally. Armageddon passed him by. He had strict instructions: no more middle-of-the-road talents.
Where do I find someone who loves to act so much, losing themselves in their work trumps feeling sorry for themselves? Actors by choice, not by necessity. As soon as he phrased the question thusly, the answer was clear.
***
Armageddon hit up every stop in the theater district until he found what he wanted, a “closed for real, this time” sign. “Don’t come back.”
The actors in the small acting company lingered before the building in shock. They stared at the sign, caught in a psychic showdown, as if their collective neediness could overwhelm the willpower of the one who had hung the sign. Their out-of-body state was ideal for an ethereal blood bath facing off against an impersonal and callous force that really didn’t belong to anyone in particular.
“I’ll hire you,” Armageddon said. The words had come out a little too breathlessly.
Heads turned to take in the vagabond, looking more down on their luck than themselves, then returned to the sign.
Armageddon was furious. He was a displaced intellectual, specializing in the human condition. Positioned rightly, able to whisper in the ears of the rich and powerful, he could fix this broken world, make it work for everybody, not just the few. Instead, he was here, manipulating lesser people to get them to do what they should have had the sense to do on their own, bending them to his will like a jaded politician with a knack for the interpersonal realm, not really his forte. The transpersonal domain was his bread and butter. Humanity he loved; it was people he hated.
Compared to his plight, what did they have to complain about? Natural born actors could shapeshift themselves into whatever they needed to thrive, and even convince themselves they were happy to do so. Not like him, who had one destiny to fulfill in this world, one place to fulfill it, and he was about as far from home as Odysseus. Still, he had to admit he’d botched it. He wouldn’t believe him right now.
“Yo!” Armageddon shouted, holding up a fat roll of bills. A twenty on the outside, half a roll’s thickness of ones just below that, and the rest, monopoly money. The magician’s sleight of hand held their attention this time. “I work for Ermies Paragon, importer of choice goods. We need salespeople who can sell to anybody, most notably the rich and famous. You have to be able to do what the best salespeople so far have failed to do. Sell to the most jaded, jaundiced customers who’ve seen it all, every come on, every hustle, and who have it all, and need for nothing. If it’s not the performance of your lives, you won’t eat.” He paused to see if he still had their attention. They looked keener than ever to hear more. “Our first big mark is the Harding dynasty.”
“The Hardings!” several of them gasped.
“They do love their characters,” said the old man of the lot. “If we fail as salespeople, we might be able to wheedle a gig as a complete nut case, provided we can concoct some character actually more colorful than the ones on their staff. No easy challenge that. Have to be a star performance either way.”
Several of the actors nodded. The old man had pushed the most recalcitrant of the lot over the hump for Armageddon. “Okay, then,” Armageddon said. “Just follow me.”
The crew followed in his wake, looking like baby geese imprinted on their mother.
TWENTY-SIX
Ermies fashioned the blindfold to Juriel, made sure it was seated so as to preclude any cheating.
He spun the kid around and sent him in the direction of the pile of unsellable items.
Juriel laid his hands on the dress-maker’s mannequin, though he didn’t yet know this. The other boys laughed. “Good luck foisting Josie on anyone!” Ermies heard one of them shout, Josie being their name for the mannequin. Juriel sighed, his shoulders hunched, his head dropped.
Ermies would have dismissed Juriel’s display as entirely histrionic if he hadn’t himself tried to sell Josie to each of the local dressmakers in town. All refused to have anything to do with her. She was made of tin, so you really couldn’t stick pins in her, which really defeated the whole idea of pinning a dress together using her as a mold. She had a thousand and one parts so she could be molded to emulate any shape body, but by the time one got her customized, it was easier for a trained dressmaker to do some quick measurements of the person being fitted, and use her professional eye to guestimate the rest.
“All right, kid. Show us what you got,” Ermies said.
“It can’t be done!” Juriel squealed. “You couldn’t get the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz to take Josie home with him.” The other boys laughed.
“You make excuses…” Ermies said. Before he could finish, the rest of the boys chimed in, familiar with the mantra, “…Or you make sales! Middle ground is for the maudlin!”
Juriel sported a round face, like a pie fresh out of the oven. His features, including his puffy cheeks and his bulbous nose, suggested he should have been taken out of the oven a few minutes earlier. He had a voice akin to a French horn. Ermies used him in lieu of a bugler for rousting the lads in the morning. His constant whining imparted to him all the charm of a cheese grater, and left him with few friends. Ermies saw to it everyone was just too exhausted to be depleted further by his downtrodden demeanor.
“Close your eyes,” Juriel said. The boys closed their eyes.
“Open your eyes,” Juriel said. The boys hit Josie with the colors of their eyes like a field of wildflowers catching the first of the morning sun. Josie was posed like a ballerina with her right leg held straight out behind her parallel to the ground, and both arms arching gracefully above her head. The boys laughed.
“Close your eyes,” Juriel said. The boys, always eager for any source of entertainment to sneak past Ermies’ defenses in their relentless work schedule, were only too happy to comply. Ermies rolled his eyes, impatient at the commercial interruption in his training regimen. “Open your eyes,” Juriel commanded.
Josie had been transformed from lithe ballerina to fat, foppish diva, holding a cup of tea and turning her nose down at it, as if a fly floated in the hot liquid. The boys howled.
“Close your eyes,” Juriel said. The boys closed their eyes.
“Open your eyes,” Juriel said. The boys opened their eyes. Josie had been transmuted once again into an athletic version of her former self, thick-muscled, not as thin as lithe-Josie, not as fat as foppish-Josie. She held a discus in her hand, ready to cut loose on it, and send the discus flying straight over the boys’ heads. She had the Olympics inscribed in every fold of tin doubling as her human body. The boys cackled.
“Close your eyes,” Juriel said. The boys closed their eyes. Once again, Juriel worked feverishly to interchange her parts, showing a shop mechanic’s expertise for makeovers matched only on a race track. Ermies had tolerated the whimsical approach Juriel had taken as much to see how fast he could transform Josie, as to ascertain the point behind his curious sales approach.
“Open your eyes,” Juriel said. The boys opened their eyes and guffawed. Josie had been transformed yet again, this time into a haunting ghost. She caught the wind blowing through the cavernous door of the warehouse, and howled like a banshee. The breezes played hell with her metal parts. Each joint of her body, connecting the tubular sleeves comprising the sections of her arms and legs, caught the tufts of air and sounded like the holes in a flute.
Juriel ex
claimed, “I give you, Josie, the first, fully transformable, living sculpture, perfect for your estate garden. Each time guests drive up, they will do a double take, and laugh with delight.”
Ermies rubbed his chin. “This could work. This could really work. Best of all, she’s high maintenance. Someone will have to go out time and again to do her makeover, sand down her rusting parts, refinish her. During the rainy season she may be such a pain, they might have to hire extra staff. The servants will love us; great job security. Ten points to Juriel, the man to beat for the one portion of chocolate pudding to go with dinner tonight.”
Juriel triumphantly raised his fists in the air, like a track star bursting through the tape at the finish line. He shouted, “Yeah! Take that, you sand-loving Quakers!” Juriel swore in ways that made no sense to anyone but him. What Quakers had to do with sand and beaches, was beyond Ermies’ appreciation, and surely everyone else’s, too. Somehow, that just made the moment that much funnier. The boys laughed. Ermies reprised his conviction that the kids were best under pressure. Living on the edge of life and death was great for getting the creative juices flowing. He’d never have thought Juriel had it in him.
“Next at bat!” Ermies shouted.
Ermies affixed the blindfold to Suzie Six-Toes, a sixteen-year-old.
Several fumbling steps later, she had the unfortunate luck to pick the one item in the pile whose purpose no one could ever figure out. Ermies would have had to have known when he ordered the thing from the mad inventor, but, to his shame, he had forgotten. Presumably, he had seen some use for the device even if it was different from the one the inventor had in mind. That way, he was sure he could make money off it. Ever since then, he’d kept a strict ledger of what the things were and for what they could be used.
Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5) Page 143