Three Balconies

by Bruce Jay Friedman

  His first scene seemed to come out of nowhere. (Did they still call that a smash cut?) The action had been in a Brussels train station. Suddenly, there was Harry in a New England book store, greeting the leading lady. Much as he suspected, if not feared, there was very little of him to be seen, although he recognized his voice, which he’d been told, on occasion, was distinctive. Harry might have been disturbed by his fleeting appearance on the screen if he hadn’t been so fascinated by the angle at which the camera had caught him. Harry was not shy about mirrors. Julie teased him about this – saying he was unable to pass one without a quick look – but this was an ambushing and extra-dimensional look at himself that he had never seen before – and that he imagined most people never get to see of themselves. The camera, predictably, was focused on the leading lady who was far more stunning than she had seemed to be in person; obviously the camera not only favored the actress, but was also head over heels in love with her. Harry – his character, that is – said “Hi” and asked if she needed any help and she said “Not just now.” Then she strolled over to the Poetry Section, the camera lovingly following her while Harry disappeared from the frame.

  “Did you see me?” Harry asked his daughter, lowering his voice this time.

  “Sort of,” said Megan. “But can I please watch the movie?”

  With his Pushkin scene coming up shortly, Harry was able to damp down any general annoyance he felt and to settle back and enjoy whatever turned up on the screen. However, no sooner had the leading lady reached the Poetry Section than the action switched once again, this time to a furtive drug transfer on a dock in Cap Ferrat. And there was no Pushkin scene. Harry felt that a pail of ice water had been dumped on his neck, and at the same time – the contradiction notwithstanding – he would have sworn that smoke was coming out of his ears. To steady himself, he gripped both armrests, which resulted in an impatient look from Megan. Fainting was a possibility, canceled out only by Harry’s fear of causing further embarrassment to his daughter. This is all ego, he told himself, stating the obvious. And what does it really mean in terms of a lifetime? In terms of the cosmos, for that matter? He had close friends who were writers, and had major credits on movies, much more important than Harry’s. They had died recently and already been forgotten. Did anyone care if one of them had a role in a movie (which none of them had ever gotten, incidentally) – and a scene of theirs had been eliminated?

  Gathering some stability, if not confidence, Harry reminded himself that the style of the film was to jump around in time. Maybe his Pushkin monologue had been folded into the climax where it might make some kind of ironic statement and have more impact. But when the picture ended with a series of brilliantly photographed explosions, Harry had to face the fact that his Pushkin scene had been eliminated. As he and Megan left their seats and crossed the lobby in silence, he felt that every eye was on him. His arthritic leg, which he’d always looked upon as an amusing inconvenience, ached so profoundly that he had to stop and sit for a minute opposite the refreshment stand.

  For his ego, Harry passed up the subway and hailed a cab to take them home; and for Megan’s sake, he kept what could only be called his humiliation in check. But as they approached the West Village, he could contain himself no longer.

  “So what did you think?” he asked, bracing himself for her response.

  “I thought you were great,” she said. “And can we go to more screenings? I really enjoyed sitting with the grips.”

  Harry had been concerned about sending his daughter to school with all the spoiled and wealthy Connecticut Muffys and Buffys. Now he saw that in the crunch she was going to be all right. And that these were different times – and that maybe he had underestimated the Muffys and Buffys as well.

  In the days that followed, Harry wondered if Vera had deliberately set out to punish him for the humiliation she’d felt when he had met and fallen in love with Julie – and begun to withdraw from Vera. (He hadn’t done it suddenly – he had graciously taken both women to a New Year’s Eve party.) But it was Julie who was surprisingly generous when Harry raised that possibility.

  “Give her a break, Harry,” she said. “She’s got a lot more on her mind than embarrassing you. I’m sure you were good, but maybe the scene just didn’t work in the movie.”

  And Harry realized that this was probably the case. The Pushkin scene, when he thought about it, was totally irrelevant. At one time, there had been a code named “Pushkin” but that had been dropped from the plot. So to let Harry do at least a ten-minute monologue on Pushkin – and to include it in the movie – just because he was good – would have been ridiculous. He even thought of calling Vera and telling her he understood why she had to make what was no doubt a painful decision – in case she thought he harbored some ill feeling. But whenever he tried to reach someone he knew in Hollywood, they were always in post-production (“So and So is in ‘post’”) and could not come to the phone, which made him feel even more sharply that he was left out of the party. So he did not make the call.

  Harry’s hurt feelings, like an old tennis injury, slowly began to disappear. The picture went into general release and Harry received a cassette from Vera’s office. He’d been so upset at the screening that he had not even stayed for the credits. But he saw now that even though his part had been cut to a line – a line and a half to be generous – he was listed as “Daniel” when the credits rolled. Soon afterward, a golf bag arrived by Fed Ex, with the title of the film embroidered on the cloth. Even though Harry hated golf, he appreciated the touch. And he was delighted when a check for $500 came along in the mail with a note from the studio accountant saying he could keep it all – since the law permitted an individual to make one picture without joining and paying dues to the Screen Actor’s Guild. And though the check did not quite cover Harry’s airline tickets and traveling expenses, he appreciated the courtesy. And didn’t actors get residuals? Once the movie turned up on television, other five hundreds might be coming along as well.

  And then Harry started to get the calls. The first came from Julie’s sister, Patsy, who had seen the film in a little theatre, just down the road from her Rape Crisis Intervention Center in the deep South. She thought Harry was excellent. And then Lenny, his old college roommate, called from Nebraska. A sports announcer now in Omaha, Lenny’s great disappointment in life was that he had never cracked the networks.

  “At first I heard the voice,” he said, in the dramatic announcing style that had failed to impress CBS, “and then, to my great surprise, there was my old buddy on the big screen. I’ve been telling everybody for years that you were going to make it, and I was right. I’m proud of you, Harry, and I’m sure that all of Omaha feels the same way I do.”

  Half a dozen more calls followed, including one from Megan who said she had taken a group of girls from her dorm to see the movie. Not only had they enjoyed it, but they loved Harry’s acting as well. And then Harry received what he considered the ultimate compliment. He was eating alone one night in an Italian restaurant on Thompson street – which was not unusual. Julie was so wasted during the week from her counseling that she pretty much collapsed when she got home on weekdays. It was all she could do to watch an episode of Will And Grace. Harry was about to dig into his main course when an attractive man he recognized as having appeared in several episodes of the The Sopranos approached his table and said he’d seen Harry in the movie.

  “I thought you did an excellent job.”

  “But I went by in a flash,” said Harry.

  “Never mind,” said the fellow, his voice taking on an ominous tone that Harry recognized from the hit series. “What I liked is that you didn’t try to do too much. You kept it neat. You were very professional.”

  Harry could not have been more pleased. Along with so many Americans, Harry had been captivated by the television phenomenon. Julie had even worked the advisory “Don’t call during the Sopranos” into her answering machine message which delighted many of their frie
nds. The actor who stopped at Harry’s table was not a regular – he’d had bit parts in two or three episodes – but to receive a compliment from anyone who had anything to do with the series was high praise indeed. It occurred to Harry that maybe he had been on screen a little longer than he realized – and that more of his face was recognizable than he had previously thought. He’d been so upset that he had probably never sat back and taken in the full impact of what he now thought of as his performance.

  And so what began as a disaster for Harry turned out to have a surprisingly bright side. This was not an unusual development in his life. One of Harry’s casual interests was military history. A favorite episode came about in the Franco-Prussian War, when all seemed lost for the Gallic nation; and then, all of a sudden, and out of nowhere, Ricciotti Garibaldi, the foreign recruit, rose up in the Cote D’Or; with his ragtag army of francs-tireurs, he began to cut through the German lines and to show that France still had teeth. France lost the war, and for that matter, Harry might lose his war as well. But that was beside the point. Whenever Harry was down on his luck there always seemed to be a Garibaldi in his life. Acting was his new Garibaldi.

  Not that he took it seriously. He had never even taken screenwriting seriously and he had done it most of his life. But just for fun, Harry began to calculate the kinds of roles he could play. Not the kind where he’d actually have to act. He wasn’t about to sign up for lessons at The Actors’ Studio. But the kind where he could just more or less show up and be himself. He could do writers, of course, and people in related professions, such as William Morris agents. He couldn’t do Mexican bandits, but he could certainly do judges. He felt confident – with his hair – that he could play the hell out of judges. So if he could get a judge part here and there and maybe a role as a teacher – he had actually taught screenwriting at a community college for a couple of weeks up in Vancouver – if he could land a few judge and teacher parts here and there and pick up some more of those five hundreds and string it all together he’d have a nice little income to go with his pension. Throw in Julie’s counseling money and maybe they could stick it out after all in financially strangulating Manhattan and not have to move to Flushing.

  One thing he would not do, however, is audition. He’d move to Flushing – and the hell with what everybody thought – before he’d do that. That’s all he would need is to be standing around with a bunch of old guys, skilled old guys with real acting track records, guys who did Falstaff with the Lunts for Christ’s sakes, waiting around to try out for a judge part or a doorman. And that’s probably what they’d want him to audition for, too, a doorman role, one who was about to retire with a heart condition and all the tenants come by to tell him how much they’re going to miss him.

  Let’s say a Judge part did come up – or the hell with it, let’s say it was a doorman role after all, just for argument’s sake.... He might read – just go down there and read a few lines – so that they could get a feel for his capabilities and what he would be like in the role – but only – and he was firm about this – only if he knew the director – or at least someone in the production. It wasn’t that he needed the fix to be put in. It wasn’t that at all. He just wanted to know that he wasn’t wasting his time, that he didn’t go all the way down there for nothing . . . that he had a pretty damned good shot at getting the part. Otherwise, if it couldn’t be set up that way, if they wouldn’t allow him to just read informally, with no commitment on anyone’s part, theirs, or Harry’s for that matter, if they couldn’t do that much for him, then forget it.... They could keep the fucking part and get somebody else to do it.

  Some poor bastard who really needed the work.

  Protect Yourself At All Times

  THERE WAS NO EVIDENCE that it was a grudge match. To the contrary, the fighters touched gloves respectfully at the end of each brutal round. Yet few in the arena could recall seeing two men in a boxing ring attack each other with such savagery. One was a pale square-shouldered Irish middleweight with a conventional straight-ahead style, the other a Jamaican who was listed at the same weight but was much scrawnier than his opponent. He had, nonetheless, what the boxing analysts call a “wide repertoire” of skills. Both men had decent but not especially distinguished records in the ring. There was nothing in their previous matches to indicate they were capable of fighting at such a high level and with such unrelieved intensity. Yet something in each man seemed to tap into a well of fury in the other. They did not bother to feel each other out. At the opening bell, they flew at one another and began to trade punches to the head and body – a furious exchange that had the crowd in a state of frenzy. Before the third round had ended, the excited television announcers were already calling it The Fight of the Year.

  Philip Collins, a retired high school teacher, watched the action on a television set in a small apartment above a Greek restaurant in the Chelsea district of Manhattan. He was a tall, slender man who was, at 73, a bit stooped over. Though his hair had turned white, he had lost little of it. And he still had the strong profile that had led more than one person to ask if he was a film actor.

  Collins had intended to thaw out his frozen dinner in the microwave, but the televised fight was so riveting that he did not want to get up from his recliner and miss a moment of it. He had followed the sport for many decades. When he was a boy of five, Collins’ father, who had a milk delivery route in the East Bronx, had taken him to see his first fight – one that was held in an outdoor arena. Collins became a fan of a local heavyweight named Tami Mauriello who fought in the main event that night. Later in his career, he gained recognition with a knockdown of the great Joe Louis in the first round of their championship fight. The astonished Louis had recovered and finished off Mauriello before the round ended. Whenever Collins discussed the fight, he was quick to point out that one of Mauriello’s legs was shorter than the other, so that he could only move in a forward direction. The predictable style unfortunately made him easy prey for a skilled opponent.

  Collins himself had never done any boxing and only once had he been tempted to enter the ring. He had signed up to participate in an amateur fight sponsored by The Police Athletic League. But the night before the fight, he was so sick with worry about what might happen to him that he was unable to sleep. In the morning he threw up and his mother had to call ahead on his behalf and cancel.

  The memory of what he thought of as an act of cowardice stayed with him for years. Nonetheless, he continued to follow the major fights on the radio. So vivid was the announcing style of Don Dunphy that Collins felt he was actually in the arena for the event being broadcast. He was able to visualize every punch thrown, each knockdown. He learned the meaning of certain code words. For example, when a fighter was described as being “game,” Collins knew that he was on his way to defeat.

  As a GI, during the Korean War, Collins became ill one day and ran a fever of one hundred and four. Yet he managed virtually to crawl out of a hospital bed in San Diego and make it to an enlisted men’s club in time to watch Rocky Marciano knock out “Jersey Joe” Walcott in the first round of their televised championship rematch. He had his favorites, Ali, of course, and Henry Armstrong, and a middleweight few remembered named Johnny Bratton. The Chicago fighter had seal black shoulder-length hair that bounced each time he hit or got hit. He was not much of a puncher, but he had a style that was clean and pure, more so than any boxer Collins had ever seen. Collins loved to talk fights, at saloons, or on social occasions when he ran into another enthusiast. He would always steer the conversation around to the “phantom punch” Ali used to defeat Sonny Liston in their Lewiston, Maine rematch. (“I’ve watched that tape a dozen times and I still haven’t seen the punch.”) He made sure to mention that he was actually there at the Garden for the first Ali-Frazier fight. In the same arena, he had seen Roberto Duran, an unknown teenager from the back streets of Panama, literally spit at the then champion Ken Buchanan of Scotland before knocking him out in the thirteenth round. To Collins,
the very names of past fighters were like poetry . . . Charles “Bobo” Olson, Kid Gavilan, Harry Greb, Benny Leonard and the southpaw Lou Tendler. Al “Bummy” Davis, Tony Canzoneri and Arturo Godoy. Kid Chocolate, Pipino Cuevas and Willie Pastrano. Though he admired Evander Holyfield, he winced each time the heavyweight was introduced as Evander “The Real Deal” Holyfield. Was this a plea for his authenticity? Collins had always felt the nickname struck a wrong note.

  Collins had lost his wife in a car accident. In the years following her death, he had met and enjoyed the company of several women. But such was the depth of his love for his wife that he had never once thought of remarrying. He raised their one child alone. They lived in a small house on Long Island; from time to time, Colleen would join her father in the den and watch the fights with him. Now and then he made stray comments about the sport. “When you have a guy hurt, step back and let him fall. Keep punching and you’re liable to revive him.”

  In fighting a south paw, he instructed his daughter, the trick was to circle to the left of his front foot.

  “That takes away his left hook.... And always throw punches in combinations. You don’t throw one and then step back to admire your handiwork. That leaves you vulnerable to a counterpunch.”

  On occasion, as Collins watched a fight, he would unconsciously duck punches, cover up his ribs and throw a punch when he saw an opening.

  “Dad, you’re not in the ring,” she would remind him.

  When a fight turned vicious – or more than most – he would say to her “Maybe you shouldn’t watch this.”

  “It’s all right,” she would assure him. “I enjoy it.”

  He did not try too hard to dissuade her. It was comforting for Collins to have her beside him in what he had come to think of – since his wife’s death – as an empty house.