Lives of the Circus Animals

by Christopher Bram

  A smart version of a tired question, thought Jessie, with a setup for a good answer. Prager might not be a total hack after all.

  “Oh I want to try everything,” said Henry. “High, low, middle. I’m a promiscuous slut. A happy hooker of the theater arts.”

  Prager looked uneasy. It wasn’t quite a Times quote.

  Henry sounded awfully giddy tonight, goofy. Jessie wondered if he’d snatched a few tokes in his dressing room.

  “You don’t see yourself primarily as a man of the theater?”

  “Oh no. I see myself as—Excuse me. Jessie?” He turned to her. “You’ve seen this play? Does Toby speak or is it more a walk-on?”

  “Oh no,” Jessie assured him. “He has a sizable part.”

  “Good.” He turned back to Prager. “Sorry. You were saying?”

  Of course, thought Jessie. Henry was goofy over Toby. After a day of fame, Rosie O’Donnell, and big bucks, he was gaga over a large blond bunny. Which was sweet. Kind of.

  The car hurtled up Broadway. Prager tried more questions. “Many of your peers from the Royal Shakespeare have gone on to careers that take them far from serious theater.”

  “Oh. Like dear old Alan Rickman?” Henry said indifferently. “But he did better work in Die Hard than anything else he’s done.”

  “Do you see any common ground between playing a suave lover of little girls in Greville, and anyone you’ve played in Shakespeare?”

  “Hmmm. Hamlet.”

  “Interesting. How is he like Hamlet?”

  “Damned if I know. Except they’re all like Hamlet, aren’t they?”

  The car turned a corner into a narrow side street. They came to a stop by an old building with a canvas awning.

  “This is it?” said Henry. “Where’s the theater?”

  “There is no theater,” said Jessie. “It’s in an apartment.”

  “How creative. Let me out, please.”

  Jessie opened her door and got out.

  “But we’re not finished yet!” cried Prager.

  “After the show,” said Henry. “Come up and watch it with us. We’ll finish afterward. I promise.” He raced across the sidewalk to the front door without waiting to see if Prager followed.

  Jessie bent down to speak to Prager through the door. “Hey. He’s an artist. They’re not like normal people.”

  Prager turned off his tape recorder and shoved it in an inside coat pocket. The Times was not like normal people either.

  “I apologize. Really.” And she was sorry. Not that she felt great sympathy for the Buzzard. She just didn’t want to turn the Times against Henry. “He needed to see this play,” she explained. “Well, not the play, but someone in it. If you know what I mean.”

  “I wish I’d known sooner,” he grumbled. “Before I went out tonight on this wild-goose chase.”

  “Sorry,” said Jessie. “You sure you don’t want to come up and see the play? It’s short. Only a half hour.” Or something like that. She couldn’t remember how long it was.

  Prager remained in his corner of the backseat, stewing and thinking. “A half hour?”

  “Or thereabouts.” What would Frank think if she showed up with the Times? Would he forgive her or hate her more?

  Prager shook his head. “I’ll wait out here.”

  “You won’t come up?”

  “No. I’ll wait in the car. I’m sorely tempted to catch a cab downtown and go straight home. But I won’t, only because I don’t have anything I can use yet.”

  “Oh good. Oh thanks. I really appreciate it,” said Jessie. “Downtown? We’re going downtown after this. We can drop you off.”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  “Just so you know. But see you in a few minutes? Sasha will take good care of you.” She closed the door and tapped on Sasha’s window. It whirred down. “Don’t let him get away,” she whispered.

  60

  A posterboard sign was taped to the plate glass of the door:

  2B. Or whatever.

  A New Play about Learning to Live with Your Craziness by Boaz Grossman and the West End Players.

  Suggested contribution: ten dollars.

  Henry read the sign again, trying to figure out how to get in. Jessie arrived behind him and pushed the door open.

  “Oh? It was unlocked?”

  He followed her up the stairs. He was very excited, very anxious, which was silly. This was only a play, an amateur production featuring an attractive boy whom he hadn’t seen in two days. But it was fun to be silly again.

  They came to the second floor and an apartment with an open door. A very pretty Spanish-looking girl glanced up. Her eyes nearly popped out of her face.

  “Henry Lewse! Oh my God. Good, good, good. You came. We have a special seat for you. Hey, Jess.”

  “Hey, Allegra.”

  Jessie sounded mildly annoyed about something. Was it him? Which of the many things that Henry had done wrong tonight irritated her?

  Allegra led him to a big wooden chair with a calico cushion. None of the other chairs had cushions.

  “Oh, you’ll want your ten dollars,” said Henry. “All I have is a twenty. Oh, but I’ll get Jessie too. Yes. Here. Please. Take it. I insist.”

  Henry gave the pretty girl the money and sat down, fearing he’d have to chat with her. She was so overwhelmed, however, that she said only “Hope you like it” and fled.

  He looked at the room: high ceiling, cracked plaster, old theater posters; it looked like an old drama student squat, very convincing. He read over his program. “Now I get it,” he told Jessie. “To be or whatever. The apartment number is 2B? Very Tom Stoppard.” But where was To Be Toby or Not to Be Toby? That was the question.

  More people arrived, more seats were taken. There were two dozen chairs in three rows, like at an old-fashioned wake. There was no coffin, although Henry sensed people looking his way, as if he were the corpse.

  “That’s Frank,” muttered Jessie, nodding at a slightly dumpy fellow fiddling with a stereo in back. “If he seems standoffish later, it’s not about you, it’s about me. We had a big fight.”

  “Oh? Oh. Of course.” The fellow was not bad-looking, Henry decided, merely heterosexual with a receding hairline.

  A song came on: “Love Thy Neighbor” sung by Bing Crosby. Lights were clicked off all over the apartment. The play was starting.

  Henry folded his arms together. “What fun,” he said.

  A floor lamp came on directly in front of them. A large, stately black woman sat watching a silent television. There was the sound of keys in the front door—the apartment’s real front door. The door opened. And there was Toby.

  “Hey. Hi. What’re you watching? Good show? I hope your day went better than mine. You wouldn’t believe what I saw on the subway coming home.”

  He wore a loose necktie and carried a sports coat. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He did all the talking. This was one of those peculiar American acting exercises where an actor performs a dialogue with silence.

  Henry had not seen Toby since Wednesday morning. He had hoped, or feared, his mind would say: Him? You’ve been pining away for Him? He’s nobody special. But here he was again, and he was beautiful. He was sexy; he was warm, far warmer dressed than naked. He seemed doubly dressed playing a fictional role, so his warmth and sweetness were magnified.

  Henry felt he could look at Toby for hours. He had forgotten about the privilege of just looking, the joy of voyeurism. Like most actors, he preferred exhibitionism, but looking was nice too.

  The black woman turned off the floor lamp and the scene ended. Kitchen lights fluttered on—the kitchen was to the right—and here was the black woman again, chatting with a dinky white girl. Was that all this would be? A string of acting exercises? Henry didn’t mind too much, so long as Toby returned.

  The kitchen lights went off. Over to the left, a blue paper lantern came on. The curly-haired Spanish beauty, Allegra, sat on the sofa and talked with a larg
e, androgynous teddy bear of a man.

  There was a knock at the door.

  The teddy bear looked nicely startled. Henry was impressed until Allegra said, “Now who could that be?” with a quoting inflection that suggested this was not in the script.

  She got up and went to the door. She opened it.

  Out in the hallway stood a tall, gaunt, male silhouette.

  “Is that Boaz?” said a voice behind Henry.

  It was light in the hall but dark in the living room. The figure could see Allegra but not the audience. The audience held its breath.

  “Excuse me,” he said. “Has the play started yet?”

  “Oh yes,” Allegra told him. “It started five minutes ago.”

  The man was Prager, the Times man. He looked in, squinting, still not seeing anything. “Where is the play?”

  A few people began to titter.

  “Here,” said Allegra. “You’re in it.”

  And the audience burst out laughing, Henry laughing as loud as the others. It must be the oldest theater joke in the world, the metaphysical joke of artifice tripping over reality, or however one described it. Henry never tired of it.

  “Terribly sorry,” said Prager, jumping back. “I’ll go.”

  “No, no, no,” said Allegra. “Just get in here.” She waved him inside and he automatically obeyed. She closed the door.

  He wildly looked around, needing a seat. Then he saw the sofa under the lantern. He raced over and sat beside the teddy bear actor.

  The audience roared all over again.

  “Pssst, pssst,” went Jessie, standing up and patting her chair.

  The teddy bear pointed her out to Prager. Prager jumped up, scuttled over, and seized her chair. Jessie sat on the floor.

  “You were complaining about money,” said Allegra, instantly picking up what they’d set down. “Better money worries than love worries. Love worries suck.” They had put aside their make-believe for a minute, but it wasn’t broken, it was intact, like an old hat.

  Prager sat petrified beside Henry, audibly embarrassed, loudly catching his breath.

  “I’m so glad you decided to join us,” Henry whispered.

  “I thought there was a theater up here,” Prager hissed back. “I thought I could just come in and use the phone. I am so humiliated.”

  “All in good fun,” Henry assured him. “We’re all good friends.”

  “Sssssh,” went someone behind them.

  Henry made his voice lower. “And nobody knows who you are.”

  Allegra and the teddy bear continued to commiserate. They stood up. And she pounced. She jumped up on him, wrapped her legs around his waist, and buried her mouth in his. They bounced against the wall. They lurched across the floor and hit another wall. They bounced again and disappeared around the corner into a hallway.

  The music came back on—“Love Thy Neighbor” again.

  Jessie’s friend, the director, Frank, came out and stood in front of everyone. Was the show already over? No, he held a finger to his lips and signaled the audience to follow him. People got up, one by one, and started down the hall.

  “Very cool,” Jessie told Henry. “Come on,” she told Prager. “Don’t you want to see what’s back there?”

  The audience trooped through, pausing to peek into a bathroom on the way, which made them chuckle. They crowded into a bedroom at the end. Henry hung back, not wanting to get caught in the crush, wondering what happened to Toby. He passed the bathroom.

  A large, cream-colored figure stood at the sink: Toby, wearing nothing but red plaid boxer shorts. He looked at himself in the mirror with the saddest eyes imaginable.

  Henry was the tail of the line. The people ahead were fixated on the bedroom, even Prager, who was craning his head over the pack. Henry slipped into the bathroom. “Hello,” he said.

  Toby did not look at him. “Please,” he muttered behind his teeth. “Don’t break my fourth wall.”

  This was even better than the Gaiety. Henry could just stand here, two feet away, and look and love without fear. Here were the nipples like plump freckles, the bare shoulders pebbled with goose bumps, the chewy upturned nose.

  “You’re very good,” he said. “Quite good.”

  Two sets of thick blond eyelashes swept the air when Toby blinked. “You’re enjoying the show then?”

  “Oh yes. It’s nice to watch you and your friends be yourselves.”

  There was laughter from the bedroom.

  “You better go,” Toby pleaded. “I got to get dressed so I can do my next scene.”

  “Of course. See you later. We’ll see each other after, won’t we?”

  “Of course. We’re going to that party.”

  “Oh good.” Henry leaned over and lightly kissed his shoulder.

  The boy didn’t even flinch.

  61

  It’s working, thought Frank. It’s finally working. Or more accurately, it’s not fucking up.

  He stood in the back corner of the bedroom and watched as Allegra and Dwight picked up pieces of underwear, tried them on, exchanged them, and tried again. This time it hit. It was like porno Carol Burnett. The audience roared.

  They finished the scene and Frank turned off the light. He squeezed through the crowd, signaling everyone to follow him again. The bathroom door was closed, but he could hear Toby in there pulling his clothes back on. Allegra had been right: a little more skin didn’t hurt, especially Toby’s skin. It hadn’t spoiled the surprise of the postcoital bodies. Frank returned to his post at the stereo and changed the song. The music worked so much better when limited to three songs: Bing Crosby, R.E.M., and Mozart.

  K-I-S-S, he told himself. Keep it simple, stupid. He tried not to think about Jessie out there; he refused to notice Henry Lewse. While the audience stumbled back to their seats, he turned up the volume of R.E.M. singing about being in the spotlight. He cut them off. The actors resumed. And things still did not fuck up.

  There was a Zen of failure. So much had gone wrong tonight until everyone surrendered, let go, relaxed. They were so relaxed that the latecomer, whoever he was, turned out to be a gift, a new joke that Allegra could play like a pro. And Henry Lewse actually perked things up, his presence tweaking the actors to sharper life. Frank had been afraid they would overdo it, that Toby in particular would be thrown by the presence of his boyfriend/one-night stand/star-fuckee, whatever the Brit biggy was to him. But Toby was stronger than ever.

  His final monologue began. It built naturally, then started to fly carefully out of control, like a runaway wagon rolling downhill toward the cliff.

  “I am so on top of things. You wouldn’t believe how much they want me for the new Sondheim. And Salomon Brothers too. I’m too multitalented for my own good. What would you do in my shoes? Business or theater? It’s a hard choice. I walk into a room and people know. I’m not nothing. I’m someone important. Someone of value. And you know why they know that? Because I’m a positive person.”

  The audience laughed, but the laughter stuck in some throats. You could hear cringing little groans around the room as people recognized their own lies. Then when Chris stood up and Toby threw his arms around her in a panic, there were actual gasps.

  This wasn’t the last scene, but the audience now trusted the play enough to give it the benefit of the doubt. They entered the home stretch. Melissa and Chris threw dishes on the floor. People could see only a three-foot-wide slice of chaos through the kitchen door, but it was enough. Then the women broke up laughing over the idiocy of their fight. They began to clean up and Frank put on the Mozart, the slow movement of Piano Concerto no. 21, the Elvira Madigan theme. Dwight, Allegra, and Toby reappeared with mop, broom, and dustpan, and all pitched in. While the lyrical sunlit music softly puttered along, the friends cheerfully worked together to tidy up the mess of their lives. Or however people wanted to read it.

  Even before the audience responded, Frank knew: it landed, it clicked. The applause was not much louder than the applau
se of the first show, yet it sounded different, more solid. The cast already knew. They grinned at the audience but smiled knowingly at one another, treating the applause as mere reinforcement for what they already understood.

  They pointed at Frank and began to applaud him. He stood up, smiled, and bowed, accepting their praise as his due. Then he turned around, turned off Mozart, and it was over.

  Allegra was instantly at his side. “We did it, Frank! We beat that sucker!”

  “It didn’t go too badly, did it?”

  “Asshole,” she said with a laugh. “We were fabulous. Wasn’t I great with the jerk who came late? I thought I would choke, but I didn’t. What did you think, Jessie?”

  She stood behind Frank. She was smiling, blinking, thinking—he could almost hear her mind ticking—waiting for him to see her.

  “It was good, Frank. Really. I don’t know how you guys did it. But you made a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Well, not a sow’s ear exactly, but you made something out of nothing.”

  “Exactly!” said Allegra. “Can you imagine what we could do with a good script?”

  Frank looked at Jessie looking at him: wary, guilty, uncertain, amused. It was like looking into a mirror, and he wasn’t absolutely sure which feelings were his and which were hers.

  “Wait,” said Allegra. “There’s Henry Lewse talking to Toby. I got to ask him if he can give us a quote. Later.” She raced off.

  “So,” Frank told Jessie. “So,” he repeated. “I’m glad you liked it.”

  “I didn’t just like it. I loved it. It’s what I’ve always said, Frank. You got a gift for working up a big picture. You’re great with actors.”

  “I don’t do too bad for a loser, do I?”

  She looked away, drawing a quick hit of air through her nose.

  He regretted bringing up the other night, but she seemed so blithe, so bent on forgetting their ugly words. He was already feeling totally visceral standing next to her, as if they were still naked on the loft bed. The smell of her hair went straight to his stomach.

  “We need to talk about those things we said,” she admitted. “But later. Not tonight.”