Actor

by Parnell Hall

  The sulky Rita, as I dubbed the box-office apprentice, was back in the ticket window with her head in a book. She didn’t look up, but as he was ushering us out the front door, Herbie called to her, “You reach Ridley?”

  She jerked her thumb. “Just came in. He’s in there now. Oh, and you got a call.”

  “Oh? Who?”

  “I don’t know. Said it was important, though. I got it here.”

  Herbie frowned. “If it was important, why didn’t you tell me?”

  She looked at him as if he were a moron. “You weren’t here.”

  He rolled his eyes. I knew just what he was thinking—apprentices—you don’t pay ’em anything, so you can’t fire ’em.

  “Who was it?” he said in exasperation.

  “I don’t know. A Mr. Calendar or Colander or something.”

  “Cadwallender!” Amanda said. “You’d better call.”

  “Shit, I’d better,” Herbie said and headed for the box office.

  “What’s the problem?” I said.

  “This is a major fund raiser.” Amanda said. “The major fund raiser. Personally contributes and brings in all his friends. You wanna run a theater, you return the man’s phone calls.”

  “I see.”

  She lowered her voice again. “In fact, I’m not sure I should let Herbie handle it. Excuse me, I’m going to get on the extension.”

  And she turned and hurried to the box office.

  Left alone, I stood there looking around the lobby. It looked pretty much as it had the last time.

  The doors to the auditorium were shut. I walked over, pulled one open, stepped inside.

  The house lights were still off and the work lights were still on. I let the door close behind me, stood in the darkness of the auditorium under the shadow of the balcony and looked at the stage.

  Sitting in the middle of it was a young boy, presumably Ridley. He had two lights in front of him, two Lekos. The remains of the one that had smashed on the floor and another one, quite old, but in slightly better repair. Ridley had apparently cleaned up the debris and was now in the process of working on the two lights. As I watched, he removed the plug from the cord of the smashed light and began screwing it onto the cord of the other one. He obviously had no working Leko to use as a replacement and was attempting to repair an old one by using the smashed one for parts.

  He had not looked up when I came in and seemed totally unaware of my presence, so I stood there in the dark and watched.

  It was the first time I had really had a moment to reflect since the whole thing happened. Not the light falling, I mean being given the part. On the bus ride up I’d been too concerned with my lines. But now, in the darkened theater with the respite of the phone call, I had a chance to sort things out and put them in perspective.

  Like what I was doing here. It was not, I realized, just that I had gotten The Call. Basically, I needed a vacation. Alice had even said that much when I’d come home and told her. She hadn’t been angry that I’d said yes without asking her; she knew it was the right thing to do.

  You see, it wasn’t that long ago that I was shot by a drug dealer. It wasn’t serious and I’m fully recovered now, but still. A thing like that does things to your head. It makes you reevaluate a lot of things. Like your entire life.

  I’m saying this badly It’s not like it changed me or anything. It did, but nothing dramatic, you know what I mean? It’s not like, hey, I’m going to leave my wife and kid and go out and live life to the fullest because tomorrow I die, or anything like that. But still, I kind of needed a vacation.

  A vacation I never got. Because after I got shot, things got complicated, and straightening them out was no picnic, believe me. And by the time I did, I’d lost some work and was behind on the rent, and the whole vicious cycle. And of course I’d been busting my ass for months trying to catch up. Without making appreciable progress.

  So this acting thing was like a godsend. Kind of like a paid vacation from my detective job.

  I thought all that as I watched Ridley working on the stage. He had finished the plug, and now he was working on the lenses. Apparently the ones from the light that fell weren’t cracked too badly, because he had popped the lenses out of both lights and was now holding them up, comparing them.

  Which gave me a good look at his face. It was round, almost moon shaped, with a fringe of short, sandy hair.

  But what got me was the expression.

  Granted, I was way in the back of the theater and seeing him in poor light from a long distance away, hut I swear the kid looked like he should have been playing “Dueling Banjo in Deliverance. It flashed on me that his skill in electronics had to be the same sort of moronic genius. Dueling Lekos.

  I shook my head. It’s hard to feel anything about a kid like that, particularly a kid you never met.

  But, as I said, I’d been shot. Shot in the chest by a dope dealer. Whose every intention was to kill me, to exterminate me, to wipe me off the face of the earth.

  It was a sobering thought that young Ridley up there onstage had come a lot closer than him.

  4.

  SHE WAS GORGEOUS.

  Margie Miller came bounding out of the restaurant, hopped in the back seat of the car, leaned forward, tapped me on the shoulder flashed me a dazzling smile and said, “Captain Bluntschli, I presume?”

  I wanted to reply in kind, but attractive women fluster me, and for a moment I blanked out and couldn’t recall the name of her character. To cover I said, “At your service, ma’am. And who might you be?”

  Her eyebrows went up in mock surprise. “My dear sir, you mean you never heard of me? I am a Petkoff.”

  “A pet what?” I said.

  Those two lines, straight out of Act One, broke the ice. We both laughed and Herbie said, “See, Margie, I told you, it’s going to work out.”

  “Of course it is,” she said. “Herbie tells me you’ve done the role before.”

  “That was a while back, but yes I have.”

  “Well, don’t worry about it, What you don’t remember, I do. I know Bluntschli’s blocking, and if there’s a problem I can help you out.”

  “Thanks.”

  She shrugged. “Hey, I’m not in the one-acts, so we got time. We’ll just work until we get it. Where we workin’, Herbie?”

  “My house.”

  Margie made a face. “Couldn’t we use the rehearsal hall?”

  “It’s strike night. They’re working tech in there.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “We’ll have to approximate the set.”

  “Your living room’s not that big.”

  “The lines are more important anyway,” Herbie said. “We can firm up the blocking in the tech.”

  “Yeah, I suppose,” Margie said. But she didn’t seem happy.

  “These are difficult times,” Amanda said. “We’re doing the best we can.”

  “Of course,” Margie said.

  I gathered there was no love lost between the two women. Amanda’s remark had been tinged in acid, and Margie had replied without looking at her. But before I had time to speculate on that, we arrived at Herbie’s house.

  It was your basic split-level suburban home, with garage, yard, fence and the whole bit. Herbie stopped in the driveway and we got out.

  Margie and I found ourselves standing side by side and I noticed what I hadn’t before. She was short, not much over five feet. I’m five-eleven, which made for a considerable difference.

  I smiled down at her. “Well, Miss Petkoff. Is the height difference going to be a bar to our relationship?”

  She waved it away “No, don’t worry about it. Walter was six-two.”

  “Oh, really?”

  She put her hand on my arm and smiled. “Trust me. Everything will be fine.”

  Herbie unlocked the front door, called, “Honey, we’re here.”

  Herbie had told me he had a wife and kids. I believe two kids, and I think a boy and a girl. If he’d mentione
d their names, I couldn’t remember them, and I couldn’t even be sure if he had. I’m poor at such things anyway, and finding out I’d just gotten a part blew whatever chance of retaining the information I ever had.

  At any rate, as we entered the house, a plump woman emerged from what was apparently the kitchen and was introduced to me as “my wife Martha.” Martha, though quite large, appeared determined to emulate the movements of a hummingbird. She flitted from place to place emitting tidbits of information, such as, she’d gotten the living room ready, she’d try to keep the kids out of our hair, and she’d have sandwiches ready when we wanted them. Finally she fluttered back into the kitchen and we went in the living room and got to work.

  As we did, all kidding was momentarily put aside as the enormity of the task engulfed us. Dress rehearsal was twenty-four hours away. We opened the show in forty-eight.

  Holy shit.

  At first it went slow. Real slow. There was all the blocking to be learned. Or relearned. Or, in some cases, unlearned. Because, of course, the new blocking wasn’t the same as in the old production. I’m sure I wouldn’t even have remembered after all these years, except for the fact I’d found my old script, and in studying my lines on the bus ride up, I’d subconsciously relearned all those old stage directions I’d penciled in. Which wasn’t all that helpful, since the set was somewhat different, rendering most of the directions moot. Fortunately, Margie had a near-photographic memory and was quick to point out things, such as, “No, on that line, Walter crossed down left,” or, “Walter sat first, then said the line.” This was good, because Herbie seemed somewhat distracted and didn’t always catch these points.

  I’d never worked with Herbie as a director before. He hadn’t been a director way back when, just an actor, so I had no basis with which to compare. Plus the circumstances of the situation were far from the best. Still, if I had to evaluate Herbie’s directorial talents based on this evening’s rehearsal, I would be hard pressed to label them anything but meager.

  Not that I was in great shape to observe. I had my hands full with my part and was somewhat preoccupied by the task. Still, even an unobservant person such as I couldn’t help noticing that Herbie seemed exhausted, drained, overwhelmed, yet at the same time distracted and on edge.

  Funny what thoughts flit through your mind. But I am not particularly proud of my ten-bucks-an-hour and thirty-cents-a-mile ambulance-chasing detective work, and on the bus ride up I had entertained a pang of envy for producer/director Herbert Drake, still working happily within the system.

  Amazing how quickly that disappeared.

  Anyway, as far as blocking Act One went, Herbie proved a real washout, but with Margie’s help I got through it.

  If you’re not familiar with Arms and the Man, Act One takes place at night in the bedchamber of Raina Petkoff, a young Bulgarian woman. In the first scene, as Raina is preparing for bed, her mother Catherine comes in to relate that she has just received news that Raina’s fiancée, Major Sergius Saranoff has led a cavalry charge, routing the Serbian army, and that she should lock her window, as the retreating Serbs may be fleeing through the town. This paves the way for the entrance of yours truly, who during the retreat climbs through Raina’s window in an effort to escape. Raina takes pity on him and hides him while the soldiers search the house. The rest of the act is just the two of them, until close to the end when Raina goes to inform her mother that he is here, and Bluntschli, overcome with exhaustion from two days of battle, falls asleep in her bed.

  It’s a hell of a long act. Well, not really, but it sure seemed so. From climbing in the window until climbing into bed, there seemed like a million other things that had to get done. And it was up to me to remember them all. As well as remember my lines. Which, as you’ll recall, weren’t coming as quickly as planned.

  I’d forgotten another thing about theater—funny how quickly you forget—but you learn the lines much easier with the blocking than off the printed page. Because you associate the line with the movement. The one complements the other, it goes together and bingo, you’re there.

  So the lines came. Slowly at first, then better and better. Until I was able to put the script away and try it off the book. An added burden for Herbie, who had to prompt, Amanda having left long ago, after the first read-through. But as I say he wasn’t really into it, and it was often Margie who was giving me the prompt. Which I was needing less and less. And as that happened, the scene began to flow.

  More than flow. It began to move. There began to be some real chemistry onstage. The two characters were really playing off each other.

  And Margie wasn’t bad. My first impression of her had been that she was too young for the part. I guess that was partly being so small and partly having short brown hair and a turned-up nose, which gave her a schoolgirl look. But as the evening progressed, and as I saw her perform, it occurred to me she was just right. In the play, Raina is twenty-three, but Bluntschli mistakes her for seventeen. Which he could easily do. At the end of the play, when he finds out she’s twenty-three, he’s astounded, and realizes this is a possible match. In the play, he’s thirty-four, which is somewhat younger than me but certainly in my acting range. So there was no reason theatrically this shouldn’t work. The chemistry was right.

  Realizing this gave me an added lift, made me throw myself into the part. Margie responded in kind, the last run-through was pretty darn good and I finished it on quite a high.

  Rude awakening.

  It was now twelve-thirty in the morning, and we had only completed Act One.

  That brought me back to earth and reminded me in short order how little time was left, how much we had to do and how long it had been since I’d visited a bathroom.

  I asked directions from Herbie and excused myself to find it, which I’m sure would have been easy if Herbie’s wife hadn’t already gone to bed after carefully turning out all the lights. Anyway, I maneuvered down the hall, took the short stairs a half level and found myself in another hall where an open door did indeed prove to be the bathroom. I was sure glad it was, ’cause I couldn’t see a thing till I flicked on the light, and I had a paranoid flash as I did, that I had stumbled into the wrong room by mistake and the light would illuminate a mountain of Martha coiled up on the bed. But it was the bathroom as promised, with every accoutrement I could have wished. I availed myself of it, switched off the light and headed back.

  You know how it’s hard to see in the dark when you’ve just turned off a light? Well trust me on it, now I couldn’t focus at all.

  Which is my only excuse for what happened next.

  Because I didn’t find the short stairs. At least, not the ones I’d come down. I went through a door and found myself groping through another room, and when I did find the stairs they weren’t the ones I thought they were. Of course, I didn’t know that. I went up them like a fool and wondered why I couldn’t see the light from the living room at the end of the long hall.

  But I couldn’t see anything. It was pitch black, and I hadn’t any idea where I was. I groped my way slowly and gingerly along, and my hand encountered something which proved to be the spout of a sink, and I realized I was in the kitchen. That was good—Martha had emerged from the kitchen, so I knew it was right by the living room. I groped my way a little farther and out the kitchen door.

  They were standing not ten feet from me.

  Oh boy.

  There are some things you wish you never saw. This was one of them.

  Herbie was holding Margie in his arms. They made quite a picture—her so small and him so fat. Her head was on his chest and he was stroking her hair.

  A million thoughts flashed through my mind. First was denial, inventing reasons why it couldn’t be so—it’s a long rehearsal, she’s exhausted, he’s the producer; she’s losing heart and he’s trying to encourage her, keep her from giving up. But explanations of that kind just weren’t going to fly. There’s encouragement and encouragement. This was something else.

&
nbsp; My second thought was, sure it all fits, what she said in the car, not wanting to rehearse here. It wasn’t a lack of space. She didn’t want to see his wife.

  My third thought was show biz—my god, did she sleep with him to get the part?

  But all those thoughts were secondary to the big overriding thought, which wasn’t so much a thought as an act of instinct, which was to shrink back into the shadows so I wouldn’t be seen.

  Which I sure as hell did. Boy, oh boy, I wanted none of this.

  It occurred to me that this was the absolute worst thing I could have found out by taking a wrong turn in the dark.

  Wrong again.

  At that moment Margie raised her head from Herbie’s chest, fixed him with her eyes and said with quiet intensity, “Herbie, I can’t work with that old fart!”

  5.

  AMAZING HOW ONE’S PERCEPTIONS change.

  I have to tell you, I sure had a different impression of Margie during the rehearsal of Acts Two and Three than I had during the rehearsal of Act One. Her every action seemed to grate. She only had to open her mouth and say, “Walter used to do it this way,” to get my back up. I had to stifle a strong impulse to say, “Oh yeah? Well, he happens to be dead.”

  I realized something else too. One of the reasons Act One took so long to block was her insistence that I do everything exactly the way Walter did. When, in point of fact, there was no reason why I should. In fact, I realized, attempting to mimic the actions of another actor could only result in a stiff, stilted, wooden, mechanical performance. Large, general blocking, yes. But the nuances of every line? Fuck you, bitch, I’ll do it my own way.

  That was not, of course, how I phrased it. I was actually perfectly polite. I merely pointed out that, due to the time constraints, we had better concentrate on the broad brush strokes and leave any subtleties alone. Margie wasn’t happy with that, but she eventually went along, largely due to the lateness of the hour.