The Night Archer

by Michael Oren

  But she never got out of the elevator. Her boss stood there with arms akimbo, rasping, “What? What in god’s-fucking-name do you think you’re doing?” She snatched the compress from Cheryl’s hands and waited as the doors closed on her scowl.

  The choice, for Cheryl, was obvious: leave Cleveland unemployed or access Anthony’s room. The deliberation took five minutes, the execution somewhat longer, but even Mothras have to sleep. Still, she took the stairs, which exited near the presidential suite. A single knock sufficed.

  How did she feel—sluttish? Cheap? On the contrary, the maneuver flushed her with power. And something unexpected. Though scarcely pleasured, she found herself sliding into love. Not with his physique or his face, majestic even without makeup. No, what sent her slipping, clawing ineffectually to slow her descent, was his soul.

  He revealed it that night, a mere glimpse at first, but then the spectacle. It began with the story of his childhood in a tiny Bulgarian enclave in Los Angeles. The mailman father and his mother a sometimes five n’ dime store worker, the older brothers and sisters who married as soon as they could and relocated. Bogdan Antonov was a quiet kid, compulsively shy, and apparently not gifted in anything. Not until high school did he discover that girls found him attractive and that, once forced onto stage in the senior play, he could play any part. As long as it wasn’t Bogdan.

  Escaping that character proved easier than he imagined. It involved getting on a bus the day after his graduation and traveling across town to the studios. From there, the journey from extra to walk-on to star was rapid—too rapid, for he never had the chance to grow up. Though his name was now anglicized and appointed a middle initial, Robert P. Anthony remained Bogdan inside.

  The tale unwound over several nights, Scheherazade-like, during which she held him and stroked his hair. A large man, he felt babyish in her lap. He opened up to her and, letting go of herself finally, Cheryl fell.

  By the end of the week on location, Mothra was gone, and Cheryl held a new position. She also possessed a life partner, or so she believed while landing at LAX. But the limo left her off at her apartment in Westwood while Anthony rode up to the Hills. By the time she saw him again, on the set of August Autumn, he was already bedding his co-star. Cleveland was never again mentioned. Cheryl became Miss Milgram and he reverted to Mr. Anthony, except at those times when he was bespoiled and too drunk to notice the difference. Only then did she call him Bogdan.

  * * * * *

  Lillian Drop made an enormous show of meeting the “real Robert P. Anthony,” as if there were numerous fakes, and “in the flesh,” as though it were not so abundant. Cheryl looked on saccharinely. She could discern an act, even off-set, and knew that Lilly, as she insisted on being called, had no more interest in her boss than she did in his personal assistant. She could also tell that Anthony was doomed. Along with that predatory expression she remembered from years back, eyeing her from the top of the stairs, she saw a hunger and sorrowful need. Here, Cheryl feared, was a heart too papery to break.

  But busted it was, and perhaps fatally, as Lilly showed no sign of reciprocating. His gifts of Richart chocolates and Lady Slipper Orchids went unappreciated, and his dinner invitations ignored. By the second of the two-week shoot, Anthony was drinking alone in his room or sulking in his trailer. He could neither eat nor sleep, only whimper. Cheryl ceased to exist.

  And for this she hated Lilly, almost as much as she hated Anthony for loving her. Wandering the lot, Cheryl considered her options. Decades on the job had taught her much, although at an abominable price. Every mirror showed her how much she now resembled Mothra. The same short, worn out hair and indifferent pants suits, the same bitter crimp in her mouth. Her helpers lasted three weeks at most. Yet, while no longer innocent or seductive, she remained more responsible than ever, and more cunning.

  That afternoon’s break, she kept a watch on Lilly’s trailer. A few minutes passed before her hunch materialized. Roger Rimrauld, the casting confection who played the prosecutor in Sidebar, made a show of sneaking inside. Not a very convincing performance—Cheryl was in plain view—or perhaps he wanted to be seen. Personal assistants might be invisible, but not so the gossip rags. A magazine cover of Roger’s sculpted face with Lilly’s reconstructed one was worth another contract, at least, when exhibited next to the cash register.

  Cheryl had to hurry. Roger did not look like a long-laster, and Anthony could barely limp. She hustled back to his trailer, just in time to find her newest helper climbing the steps with yet another latte.

  “You’ve got to be joking, Zoe.”

  “Please, Miss Milgram. Production said Mister Anthony requested it.” The young woman visibly trembled, dribbling coffee and booze.

  “Production?” Cheryl fumed, “Production! Since when does production tell you what only a personal assistant can? Since when, you dimwit?”

  Again, Cheryl wrenched the latte away and snarled, “Bye, Zoe, you’re fired.”

  “I’m Chloe,” the ex-helper wailed, but Cheryl was already pushing through the starred door and dusting off Anthony’s blazer.

  “Quick, straighten yourself up!” she ordered him, pausing only to down the mug. “She’s asking for you.”

  “Who?” Anthony tried to look clueless.

  Cheryl angled her head in the direction she came from and jiggled her eyebrows.

  “Oh,” Anthony shouted, “Oh!” and extended a trembling hand. “Help me.”

  She helped him as fast as he could be assisted down the three steep stairs and the seemingly infinite stretch of the lot to Lilly’s trailer. There, too, Cheryl lifted him from behind by the elbows and gently prodded his butt. Anthony knocked but fortunately not loud enough. Nor did he wait but instead stumbled through the door.

  “Oh!” he exclaimed again, much as Cheryl anticipated. “I’m most terribly sorry…”

  Peering around him, she could see Lilly on her knees in front of Roger’s naked half. All of her surgery could not prevent her face from transforming into a monstrous mask. “Get the fuck out of here!” she hissed at Robert P. Anthony. “Crazy old perv.”

  * * * * *

  She held him for hours that night, lolled him while he bawled. “You’re a good woman, Milgram,” he finally sniffled. “Where did I ever find you?”

  His head rose and fell on her shoulder. “Under that rock.”

  Later, he reminisced about past performances, his two Oscar nominations, his marriages, and his many affairs. Cheryl never interrupted him, not even when she injected him and waited for the drug to kick in. It did, eventually, but not before Anthony started burbling.

  “But there was one I loved more than all the others. More than that slut Lillian, for sure. I loved her but, God help me, I lost her.”

  “There, there,” Cheryl comforted him, caressed his adored, addled head.

  “A beautiful, intelligent, young woman. A woman I could tell anything to, all of my secrets. Who could have made me happy. But I lost her, Milgram. I lost her in Cleveland.”

  Cheryl whispered, “No, Bogdan, you didn’t.” Rocking him, she sang, “Nani, nani, brate, S’nco se ti prati.” A Bulgarian lullaby he taught her once, long ago. “The cradle is swinging Kalina”—so he translated it for her. “Sleep, little brother, sleep.”

  Noah Simkin,

  Athlete, Scholar,

  Renaissance Man,

  Is Dead

  Noah H. Simkin has died, a family spokesman announced. Though well over one hundred years of age, the cause of his passing was uncertain. “He simply fulfilled all of his dreams,” said his eldest son, Adam, adding that, “even in death, he was bigger than life.”

  Such sentiments were widespread among those privileged to know Mr. Simkin. His remarkable rise from challenging, if not humble, origins, his meteoric career, and his renowned compassion for family and friends alike, became legendary. Indeed, a summary of his accomplishments reads like an adventure novel—that, or a guide to impassioned living.

  Born to m
iddle-class parents—his father was a podiatrist, his mother, a realtor—and raised in a Long Island suburb, the young Simkin showed little of his later pre-eminence. His grades at the Davison Regional High School were mediocre, at best, and difficulties with concentration severely constricted his horizons. Looking back from his extraordinary adulthood, Mr. Simkin often lamented his early lack of popularity, most painfully with female classmates, and his inability to excel at sports. His sole athletic achievement was serving as manager for the Davison tennis team.

  Like a carriage wheel that seems to spin backward or the rowboat oars that merely dip, Noah Simkin appeared to regress or, at best, stay in place. But in fact, he raced into life.

  A crafty and original writer, he secured admission to several Ivy League universities, obtaining degrees in anthropology, psychology, and hermeneutics. He applied these disciplines to a ground-breaking study of love. From the sophomore crush to the oceanic ardor for humanity, Mr. Simkin revealed, love is the irreducible emotion, as uniquely human as the smile, potentially more devastating than nature. His volumes on the subject earned him numerous prizes, among them a National Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer, along with some twenty honorary doctorates.

  While attaining literary prominence, Mr. Simkin similarly overcame his physical limitations. From the last-listed player on the junior varsity football squad, he rose to become an all-star running back, setting several collegiate records that stand to this day. After graduation and well into his last decade, Mr. Simkin remained an avid athlete, a scratch golfer and competitive skier. Asked how he managed to outshine so many of his peers, the Professor—so he was genially known—pointed once again to love. “Just tap into it,” he remarked, “and you’ll always come out a champ.”

  And at love, too, Mr. Simkin eventually triumphed. Blossoming to over six feet, investing in his musculature, he found himself the object of desires once directed at others. Olivia Fanning who, as captain of the Davison cheerleaders, never once glanced in Mr. Simkin’s direction, married him when she was still a community college undergraduate. Together they had four sons and a daughter, all of whom achieved distinction in law and medicine.

  Before that, though, Olivia Fanning Simkin died from cancer, leaving her husband bereft. Two years passed before he met Valeri Bartucci, the former Bond girl and advocate for African orphans. Their marriage made the front cover of numerous celebrity magazines, which continued to headline their philanthropic missions as well as their gala appearances until Ms. Bartucci, too, passed away from a rare strain of Zambian malaria.

  Still, Mr. Simkin retained his fervor for life. Whether on the links or down the slopes, in classrooms or galas, he remained engaged and thoroughly engaging. His disquisitions on love, and especially his advice to lovers, made him a standard guest on daytime talk shows and a much-sought-after inspirational speaker. Long after his centennial birthday, Noah Haskell Simkin was overwhelmingly deemed a success.

  Approached by a reporter several weeks before his death and queried about his favorite reading material, Mr. Simkin recommended obituaries. “I’ve been reading them since high school,” he responded. “Every young person should. Obits are the blueprints for life.” Those last six words are now inscribed on the walls of this department, whose writers are woefully underappreciated in journalism.

  In addition to his children, Mr. Simkin is survived by thirteen grandchildren and twenty-four great-grandchildren. The family asks that donations be made to the Davison Regional High School which has established a scholarship in his memory and placed a plaque on his locker. Several production companies have expressed an interest in making a film based on Mr. Simkin’s story—this according to Adam, the eldest son—though some thought it might prove too implausible.

  Noah Simkin pushed back from his desk. He looked wistfully at his bulletin board, at the D letter emblazoned with a tennis racket and the smaller m for manager, and at the photograph of a young woman pumping poms-poms. He sighed at his computer screen with its reflection of a short, plump, rather pimply teenager with eyes that were nevertheless irrepressible. He moved the cursor across the site of his college application and centered it on the Personal Essay box. Then, with a grunt if not a flourish, he clicked on the word, “submit.”

  Jorge

  What could be lonelier, and scarier, than the subway at 6:00 a.m.? Lonely because, apart from some slumbering drunks, George was the only passenger. He was traveling back to the Bronx from the midtown rink where his intermural hockey team practiced pre-dawn. The uptown express raced past local stops of sooty light and plunged into tunnels that seemed to suck the train’s power. And scary because he could never forget how, as a child, his father took him to see a horror film in which a monster plucked precisely such a subway off an elevated track and hurled it, riders screaming, onto the street. At nineteen, that memory mixed with the clang and screech into images of giant claws crushing the car like a soda can. The solitude, the fear, made him clutch the hockey stick weapon-like between his knees.

  He was clutching still when, short of the Harlem River crossing, the doors opened for two women. Actually, one was a woman and the other a girl, seventeen at most, holding her by the elbow. Hispanic—Guatemalan, Honduran?—with the off-shoulder blouses and red plastic jewelry favored by Latinas of the time. Mother and daughter, George guessed, though they look nothing alike—the first overweight and fat-featured, and the second slim, almost feathery. They sat on the bench opposite his and watched the windows flickering behind him.

  So they rumbled for another stop or two, swaying, before George’s eyes caught the girl’s. They were the shape and color of footballs, black-lashed and mascaraed. Her jet black hair, pulled back and tied—too rigorously for a teenager, he thought—revealed bite-sized ears and fruity lips and a nose tilted upward without exposing a nostril. But it was her skin that most transfixed him. Burnished, coppery, it radiated in the train’s chiaroscuro.

  George tried not to stare. He focused, instead, on the advertisements for driving lessons and personal injury lawyers. The hockey stick twirled in his hands. Still, his eyes wandered back to her. Her eyes also kept drifting. Given the time and the limited vision field, their glances would inevitably meet. And when they did, it was George who blushed, seeing himself as she must—a gangling, pale, freckled undergrad, in torn Manhattan College sweatgear, a ski cap slapped over his head.

  The girl didn’t blush, though, or divert her gaze. Instead, she held his, cupped it, he felt, and appraised it. Then, baring a row of tiny white teeth, she smiled. George smiled back, his head hot with embarrassment. He wished he could hide behind his stick.

  How long did that smile endure—a second or two probably, though he later measured it in minutes—before the mother intervened? The same elbow that her daughter had cradled now jabbed her side. George also received a threatening look that stung like a slap on his cheek.

  They looked away from each other, the two young people, though both sensed the pull. Both knew that their eyes would gravitate and link again, and they did but only fleetingly before the train shrieked to a halt. The doors drummed open, and this time the mother took her daughter’s arm and lifted her from the bench. They began to exit, the wide woman and the girl who pranced limberly on platform shoes, her body in tight jeans looking cookie-cut. She stepped out of the train but not before twisting her chin over one bare shoulder and casting a final, rueful, smile.

  George sat there stunned, aware that something immense hung in the balance, but unsure exactly what. A few stops remained before his, the Grand Concourse, and getting off now meant missing his first class. Not that it mattered. He was scarcely the studious type, pleased to squeak by with Cs. Nor was he aggressive, not on the ice, not in life, the trajectory of which was set. Marriage to some local Irish girl, work in his father’s roofing business, a house with a one-car driveway and a small backyard in Queens. Mets games on the radio, a beer at the end of each day, a son if he were lucky.

  The car shivered, me
anwhile, the engine revved. Hissing, the doors began to close. In that instant, he thought: I’ll never see her again, never learn her name. The mother and daughter were no longer in view, only a barren platform, but that very emptiness filled him. Inflated him, almost against his will, and lifted him off the bench. His hockey stick clattered as it vaulted him toward the doors that he clutched and pried open, just wide enough to squeeze through. To the curses of some unseen conductor, George stumbled out of the train.

  Bent over, a muscle snapped in his back, he groaned and managed to straighten himself only to find the two women gaping at him. “I’m sorry, Ma’am,” he gasped, limping toward them as the mother pulled her daughter away. “No, please, let me explain. My name is George McDonough. I’m a student. Just a guy. I didn’t mea,n to scare you. I just…just…”

  The younger one cut in, “Speak slowly. Her English is not that good.”

  George gulped and nodded. “If it’s okay with you, Ma’am,” he began again, very slowly indeed.

  “She’s not deaf. You don’t have to shout.”

  He stopped and swept the cap from his head, exposing an orangey mop. Slowly, softly he said, “I really want to meet your daughter.”

  The daughter held up a hand to him and turned to her mother, translating. He cursed himself for dropping out of Spanish 101. The only word he caught was “Jorge.”

  The mother leered at him. “Jorge,” she repeated dryly, and George, wringing his cap, echoed her, “Jorge.”

  “Hola, Jorge!” the girl laughed out loud, and her laughter chimed around the station.

  He laughed as well, nervously under the mother’s glower, as the girl scribbled on the inside of a wrapper. That was how he gained her number and how he learned her name, Carmen.