Confessions of a Falling Woman

by Debra Dean

  The window shades are fading to gray with the first light. It occurs to me that I haven’t actually witnessed the sun rise or set since I can’t remember when, this despite the fact that I’m awake during most of them these days. There is no horizon in New York, no line dividing sky and earth. Even during the day, the sun is felt more than seen, the heat of it seeping down between the long shadows in midtown and wavering back up from the concrete. Shards of sunlight refract off glass buildings, but the sun itself, the sky…

  I wish I could follow Robin into her dreams. I wish I could turn my back on my life and pull up the covers and be in a snowy arroyo somewhere.

  But I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep. And yada yada yada.

  I’m on the lookout for signs and portents these days, and what I’m discovering is that if one is looking, they appear in multitudes. Even the most daily event sprouts wings, becomes vastly significant. I’m on my way to this audition, and halfway between my building and the subway, the summer sky suddenly darkens to a septic green and splits open. The water is starting to drip off my chin, and just as I’m warming into a long string of curses, an empty cab materializes out of the rain like a messenger from heaven. I hail the cab over to the curb, slide into the backseat, give the turbaned driver the address, then settle back and close my eyes for a few minutes. When I open them, we are inexplicably heading up Sixth Avenue and a good thirty blocks north of my destination. It turns out the cabbie doesn’t speak English; he responds to each of my frenzied corrections with an uncomprehending nod. The winds shift again, we turn south, the meter ticks over into four digits, and it occurs to me that this is the difficulty with trying to read your own life: from the center, each sign seems to radiate out in a different direction.

  We have just crossed Canal again, and he is heading doggedly back uptown. I check my watch: it is 9:20. If I cut my losses and get out here, I could still make it on foot. I rap on the Plexiglas and signal the cabbie to pull over.

  When he flips up the meter and his eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror, he smiles cautiously, expectant. Against all odds, he seems to believe that a miracle has deposited us at the mysterious address I’ve been yammering from the backseat. A few minutes ago, I might have argued the fare with the guy. Now I see my own bewildered self reflected in his smooth face. I stuff fourteen dollars into the slot and climb out into the downpour.

  I am losing my grip.

  The audition is for a new play by Arthur Haines at Tribeca Rep. I’m reading for Hal, this right-wing preacher who’s running for a Senate seat somewhere out of the Midwest. It’s not the lead, the play’s actually about the gay speechwriter who’s working on his campaign, but Hal is an interesting character with some good scenes. And it’s eight, ten weeks of work, a good play, guaranteed press. Not that I’m in a position to be choosy.

  Three blocks from the theater I slow to a fast walk and start running lines in my head.

  “What are they saying about us in the Herald, Terry?”

  (Blah, blah, blah, blah)

  “Well, Paul tells us we’ll be persecuted for our faith.”

  (Blah, blah, blah)

  I duck and weave through a phalanx of umbrellas at the corner, check for traffic, dive across the intersection.

  “I’m not asking you to agree with me privately, Terry.”

  (Blah, blah)

  “Don’t take advantage of my good manners.”

  My guess is that a lot of actors are going in there and reading Hal as a cardboard villain or a buffoon, which is a mistake. This guy’s likable and sincere and convincing. That’s what gives the play its tension.

  In the elevator, I peel away my suit jacket and shake water off myself like a spaniel. I get up to the offices, sign in: name, agency, union membership. I’m on time, which turns out to be irrelevant. They’re running behind—the small reception area is clogged with nervous Hals and Terrys. A half-dozen actors are bent intently over copies of the script or staring into some private distance. Two guys in the far corner are shooting the breeze, ostentatiously at ease. One of them is Brad Whalen, who works here all the time. He’s not right for Hal, but then again, you never know. I’m hoping he just dropped by.

  The other guy is Kyle McCann. We have the same agent. It’s not just jealousy when I say the guy is a bimbo, completely without talent and maddeningly successful. At the moment, he is lounging against the wall in the studied pose of a jeans ad and casually tapping a rolled-up script against the brick.

  “When’d you get back, man?” Although the question is addressed to Brad, Kyle pitches his volume just enough so all of us can listen in.

  “Last week. I took a couple extra days after we were done shooting and went on down to the Keys. You ever been there?”

  “No. I did a show at the Burt Reynolds with Nate Bellogi. We kept talking about going down there, fishing some marlin. But you know how it is with Nate.” You listening up, fans? He’s pals with Nate Bellogi. Nate, not Nathan as he’s known to the great unwashed. “Monday would roll around and I’d just drag myself out to the nearest beach and sleep it off.”

  “I’m telling you, Kyle, you gotta go.”

  I borrow the men’s room key and head back out the door. In the bathroom, I check the mirror: under the fluorescent light, I look dull-eyed and pasty, like something washed up on Kyle’s beach. My hair is slicked to my scalp from the rain; below the line of my jacket, my pants are water-stained and sticky with the damp heat. I spindle a couple feet of paper towel off the roll and mop water out of my hair, off my face. Then I run a comb through my hair, take a leak, wash my hands, and glance over the sides again. I say a few lines into the mirror, trying to recall what I did last night when I ran the lines with Robin. My voice sounds as phony in my ears as the jackass back in the waiting room. Whatever confidence I had about this audition, I must have left behind in the cab.

  This is the first legit job I’ve gone out for since March. It’s summer and things are dead all over town. Still, last month I dropped by my agent’s office with some flimsy excuse (in the neighborhood, heard they’re casting such and such, went to school with the director) just to remind him I was still alive. For better or worse, Zak is probably too nice for this business: he didn’t tell his receptionist to get rid of me. Instead, he sat me down and lectured me about taking a vacation, for God’s sake, giving him a break and going somewhere nice. He recommended Block Island, “but don’t eat before you get on the ferry.”

  I’d be better off with one of those anorexic killers who live on coffee and hardball contract negotiations and bitter gossip, but I’ve stuck with Zak because, frankly, I get enough rejection in this business without taking it from my agent. I wouldn’t go so far as to describe us as close, but we get a kick out of each other, and we’ve continued to stick it out when there were smarter options on both sides. There are marriages based on less. It’d be a good thing to get this job, if for no other reason than to justify his faith.

  I run the lines until they stop echoing back in my ears, then head back into the office and return the key. Brad Whalen and Kyle are gone. I scout a chair next to a husky blond fellow who’s carrying on an animated but soundless conversation with himself. His eyebrows raise then furrow, his lips move, then his features twist into an exaggerated expression of disdain. It’s like watching a silent movie.

  My name is called and I startle. I pull myself to my feet, take a deep breath, begin smiling inside my head. I don the persona of Hal: confident, earnest. I get ready to do my stuff.

  Bippety bip bippety bop, I’m in the door, all smiles and bonhomie. The wax museum is lined up behind a long table: the director, the playwright, the casting director, the assistant to the director, each one sporting the glazed facsimile of a smile. I do the lightning round of introductions, shake hands up and down the table like a seasoned politician, go to the empty stool in front of the table, and ask the reader her name, which I promptly forget. Then the scene. It flies, they’re awake, and they�
��re asking to see something else, the scene with the reporter. I slide into gear again, and then it happens: I step through the looking glass. On the other side, there is a reporter asking me questions about a young woman Hal knew in Grand Rapids. Katherine Sellers. Kathy. She was wearing a white nightgown that held the shadows of her thighs, and her shoulders were like small birds. Just that once, late at night, while Janice and the children slept upstairs. When she moved underneath me, I heard wings rustling. It might have been a dream. A brilliant light shines directly in my eyes and faces swim feverishly at the edges of my vision. I smile into the light, willing myself to speak slowly into the proffered microphone. “Miss Sellers lived with our family briefly while she was attending college. She helped my wife, Janice, with the boys after Kirk was born. Miss Sellers attended our church and was a fine young Christian woman. I don’t know why she would fabricate this kind of…” I feel like I’m going to puke. Some cold and predatory corner of my brain, though, is measuring the auditioners, gauging the heat of their attention. They have stepped across with me.

  When the scene is over, there is a fraction of a minute before the tension snaps and we’re back in the room. The playwright, Arthur Haines, grins confidentially to me. “That was great, Dan,” as though we’ve known each other for years. The director nods his agreement and seems to be looking me over again, envisioning me in the role. There’s a brief whispered exchange, then the casting director says, “Good reading, Dan. Thanks.” I’m out the door. Ten minutes, tops. That’s all it takes to change the direction your life is heading in.

  It has stopped raining, but the air is still steamy and tropical with the smells of overripe garbage and fruit. Sun glints off water coursing down the flooded street. Like Gene Kelly, I want to stamp through the gutters, dance into those puddles, to hell with my already soggy loafers. Instead, I wait expectantly at the curb, careful not to get splashed, bouncing on my twinkle toes and waiting for the sea of traffic to part just long enough for me to dart across. I’m giddy, ready for my luck to change.

  As it turns out, I didn’t have to wait long. Good news was already blinking on my answering machine by the time I walked in the door this afternoon. Beep: Tribeca Rep wants to see me again in the morning. And in a when-it-rains-it-pours mode, another beep: I’ve been put on first refusal for the Dobbins Copier commercial. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

  It’s premature to start counting my chickens. I know that from experience. A callback is a long way from an offer. And even a first refusal doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll use you. They’re covering their asses. These days, there may be two or three other actors on the back burner with you.

  Still, I can’t stop my brain from racing on ahead without me, whizzing down the arterials, turning out at every promising side street. Part of me may be standing here at my post behind the bar, but the rest is far away, lofted into a future from which I can see this restaurant—the speckled pink walls, the framed and autographed photo of Sinatra over the cash register, the same tapes looping over and over, and even myself, the bartender zesting lemons like a zombie—all of it tinted with nostalgia.

  At nine o’clock, there are three customers on the other side of the bar, a pair of nurses and, of course, Marv. Marv is the professional hazard of this job, the regular who monopolizes the TV and takes all his phone calls at the bar, dispenses unwanted advice, and generally makes himself at home. I’m his “old buddy,” a dubious status accorded to anyone pouring out the CC and soda, and carrying with it the burden of hearing whatever thoughts are currently circulating through his sodden brain. Right now, he’s holding forth on some theory he’s heard concerning bats, the depletion of the bat population. It seems to have something to do with architecture and Vatican II; I’ve been tuning in only just often enough to nod in the right places, so I may have lost a critical thread. On the floor, it is similarly quiet, only a few couples becalmed on a sea of white tables. The ceiling fans tick lethargically, pushing dust motes through the warm air. The waiters shift from one foot to the other, scoping out their tables on the sly and then slipping out to the kitchen for a smoke. A typical Monday night, the dead shift in the week. I’m only half here, but that’s more than enough.

  “They slept under the eaves and in the bell tower. All those doodads served a purpose, is what he’s saying, you know?” Yes, we must still be on bats.

  “If you want to have bats, you gotta have belfries,” I joke.

  “Well, that’s not exactly the point.” Marv waves it away impatiently. “You don’t want to get hung up on the bats per se. It’s what’s behind the thing.”

  “I see.” I have no idea what the point is, but I pretend to give it my fullest consideration.

  “It’s a whatchamacallit. You know,” he accuses, “when you say one thing but you really mean something else?”

  “I don’t know—a lie?”

  Marv appraises me slowly, working his chin from side to side.

  “You being a smart-ass or just stupid?”

  His mood can flip on a dime, even in mid-sentence, and you never know what will trip the switch. Most nights, I refill his drink on the fly, making sure not to pause too long near his stool, in a pinch escaping my cage with some feigned need to restock something or other. But tonight my expansiveness extends even to Marv. So what if he insists, ridiculously, on acting the part of the neighborhood don? I feel something akin to the affection one has for the recently dead—that old dog Marvin with his scuffed white loafers and his half-baked stories about what a truly decent fellow Rocky Graziano was or the time he and Dean Martin and a bunch of the guys drove up from Atlantic City at four in the morning for corned beef sandwiches. What a character. I pour him a healthy shot on the house, and we’re buddies again.

  I might actually get out of here for good. Why not? The way I’ve got it figured, the folks at Tribeca must have put the call in to Zak before I was even out of the building. I’m perfect for the part and they knew it, didn’t even wait until the end of the day to weigh their options. And they’re hot. They’ve moved something uptown every year for the past three seasons. So, let’s say the play does well, pulls in some good reviews; there’s no reason it couldn’t be a contender. It could move to Broadway, and I could be looking at a long-term gig.

  Then there’s the commercial. It’s not art, it’s not even acting, but it’s money. Maybe even serious money. The session fee for an on-camera principal is about five hundred, but the real money is in the residuals. Depending on how long it runs and in what markets, a national commercial can snag you ten grand before it plays out. One I did five years ago still brings in a nice little chunk of change every thirteen weeks; in fact, a large percentage of the money I’ve made in my career can be traced directly to one day spent reaching over and over again into an ice chest and pulling out a couple of beers.

  The two waiters are huddled at the service end of the bar, engaged in their own forecasting. Beneath Marv’s raspy drone, I hear Yusef grimly predict that they’ll be lucky to go home with forty dollars apiece tonight.

  Carrie takes the pluckier view, that we still might get a late-night rush after the concert. The Philharmonic is playing up in the park, and she’s pinning her hopes on a mob of hungry Schubert lovers storming Picardi’s.

  “Maybe people would come in to drink but not for dinner,” Yusef pronounces, shaking his head stubbornly. “This is it.”

  “I’m just saying a couple of tables.” Carrie turns to me for confirmation, bright and flirty. “What do you think?”

  “One way or the other, makes no difference to me.”

  She smirks. “Well, what’s gotten into you?”

  “Oh, nothing much. I had a good day is all.”

  Under this Gary Cooperish reticence, I’m actually itching to tell someone. I haven’t even filled in Robin yet, though this is simply a matter of our paths not having crossed since this morning. Only a habitual superstition against jinxing my good fortune keeps me quiet now. I don’t want to end up l
ike one of those sad cases who’s always blathering about some deal in the pipeline. Better to take everyone by surprise, walk in here one night and spring it on them. Sorry, my friends, it’s been nice knowing you. Hasta la vista. Farewell.

  Just as Yusef predicted, we wind down the evening nearly as poor as we started it. Before he leaves, Marv makes a point of discreetly palming a five-dollar bill to me, as though I might be embarrassed to publicly accept a tip. I lock up and am home just after eleven, eager to share my news. I come through the door calling out to Robin, who emerges from the study, her arms heaped with folded clothes. She swipes a distracted kiss past my cheek as she passes into the bedroom, her voice trailing behind.

  “How was work?”

  “It sucked. Now ask me if I care.”

  I wait, the proverbial cat that ate the canary. But she doesn’t pick up her cue, so I blunder through a garbled replay of my day. I’m on first refusal for the rodent thing. It’s shooting Friday. And, ta-dah, I’ve got a callback with Tribeca Rep. Arthur Haines was impressed—you should’ve seen. I’m not saying I’ve got it (knock on wood), but I gave the best audition of my life. It just sang, the whole damn thing. And if I get the commercial, we could be talking some serious money in the bank.

  There is a long pause after I wind down. When she speaks, her voice is precise and even, as though she were balancing something on its edge.

  “So you haven’t actually booked the commercial, right?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You’ve just agreed to be on call this Friday.”

  “Right.”

  Her blue eyes ice over with disdain. “Congratulations.”

  It occurs to me that I’m missing something here. For some inexplicable reason, she is intentionally trying to puncture my good mood. It’s not like I have that many great days to string together. Today was one. Then it hits me. I’m supposed to be in Maine on Friday.