‘Ha ha!’
He made a mark on the paper in front of him. ‘Now be sexy,’ he said. ‘Like you’re trying to seduce me. Come on, like I’m Farrah Fawcett. Or some chick, whoever, some girl you want to lay. Go.’ He snapped his fingers again.
I’d never had to do anything like that before. I shrugged and put my hands in my pockets, turned to the side, pursed my lips, winked at him. He made another note.
‘Come in for a close-up,’ the director said to the cameraman. ‘Stand straight, dammit,’ he told me. ‘Don’t move.’ The camera came about six inches from my face. The director stood up and came toward me, squinted. ‘You always got zits up there between your eyebrows?’
‘Only sometimes,’ I answered. I tried to look at him, but the lights were too bright. It felt like I was like staring into an eclipse.
‘Your eye’s messed up, you know that?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, it’s a lazy eye.’
‘Work on that,’ he said. ‘There’s exercises for that.’ He sat back down. ‘Now be sad,’ he said.
I thought of the time I saw a dead cat on the street in Gunnison.
‘Be angry.’
I thought of the time I slammed my thumb in the car door.
‘Be happy.’
I smiled.
‘Be brave. Be goofy. Be stuck-up.’ I tried my best. He told me to stick out my tongue. He told me to close my eyes, then open them. Then he told me to kiss the two girls. ‘Pretend they’re twins,’ he said. He clapped his hands.
The girls stood up and came toward me.
‘You. Stand on the line,’ the director said to me. ‘That line.’ He pointed to a length of black tape on the concrete floor. The girls stood on two Xs marked in red tape in front of me. They looked young, maybe sixteen, and pretty in a way girls hadn’t been back in Gunnison. The skin on their faces was orange and as smooth as plastic. Their eyes were huge, blue, with wide black pupils, white liner drawn across their lids like frost. Their heads were big and round, necks and shoulders narrow and bony. I chewed my gum and put my hands in my pockets.
‘What are you chewing?’ one of the girls asked.
‘It’s gum,’ I said.
‘Get in the shot,’ said the director. ‘On the line. Jesus.’
‘That’s rude,’ the other girl said to me.
‘Take out the gum!’ the director yelled. ‘Let’s do this. We haven’t got all day.’
I took out my gum and held it on the tip of my finger and looked around for a place to throw it out. The girls sighed and rolled their eyes. The camera came closer.
‘Action!’ the director cried.
The girls lifted their chins.
I just stood there holding my gum, looking down at the legs of the table where the director was sitting. I was paralyzed. The girls laughed. The director groaned.
‘Just kiss,’ he said.
I couldn’t do it.
‘What, you don’t like blondes? You’ve got a thing?’
I waved my finger around helplessly. I suddenly felt I couldn’t breathe.
‘I’ll count to ten,’ said the director. ‘One, two, three …’ I looked into the lens of the camera and saw my upside-down reflection. It was like I was trapped in there in the darkness, suspended from the ceiling, unable to move. I looked at the girls again. Their lips were frosted in pale pink, mealy and shimmering, nothing I’d ever want to kiss. Then one of the girls bent down to my finger and sucked my chewed-up wad of gum into her mouth. I took a step back. I was shocked. I tripped on a cord. The girls tittered. ‘Ten!’ the director shouted.
I did not get the part.
On the way home, I boarded two wrong buses, going east all the way down through Glendale and Chinatown. I walked through downtown Los Angeles, past all the bums and garbage, then finally found a bus on Beverly back to Hancock Park. At home, I walked straight into Mrs Honigbaum’s office. I could have been irate that she’d sent me there. I could have blamed her for my humiliation. But that didn’t occur to me. I just wanted to be soothed.
‘It was bogus,’ I told her. ‘The director was some hippie. There wasn’t even a trash can to throw my gum out in.’
‘You win some, you lose some,’ is all Mrs Honigbaum said.
‘I’m a good kisser too,’ I told her. ‘Do you think Bob Sears will be mad?’
‘Bob Sears doesn’t know his face from his armpit. Let me see your mouth.’ She got up from her desk and pointed to a chair. ‘Sit. I promise I just want to take a look. Now open up.’ I did as I was told. I closed my eyes as she peered inside. I could smell her breath, acrid from cigarettes and those harsh mints I’d grown fond of. She hooked a finger into my gums, pulled my bottom lip down, her long nail tapping against my two front teeth. ‘All right,’ she said finally. I opened my eyes. ‘You have nothing to worry about.’ She removed her finger, turned and went and sat back down at her desk. I took a mint. ‘I’ll tell you a secret,’ she said, sharpening her pencil. ‘Teeth are what make a star. Teeth and gums. That’s the first thing they look at. That director is a fool. Forget about him. You?’ She shook her head. ‘You’re too good for that guy. Good gums. Good mouth. The lips, everything. My teeth are fake, but I know a thing or two, and you’ve got the proportions.’ She turned back to her pad of paper, flicked a page of a magazine, lit a cigarette. I stood. It was a relief to hear I wasn’t doomed for failure, but I was still all torn up inside. If I failed to make it as an actor, where would I go? What else could I do with my life? Mrs Honigbaum looked up at me as though she’d forgotten I was still sitting there. ‘Are you going to cry, darling?’ she asked. ‘Are you still upset about the kissing?’
‘No,’ I answered. I wanted her to embrace me, hold me tight. I wanted her to rock me in her arms as I wept. ‘I’m not upset.’
‘Is that what you wore to the audition?’
I was in my usual getup: leather loafers, tight jeans, and a loose Indian shirt that I thought made me look very open-minded.
‘Stuff the crotch next time,’ she said. ‘You’ll feel silly but you won’t regret it. Half of a man’s power to seduce is in the bulge of his loins.’
‘Where’s the other half?’ I asked. I was completely sincere. By then I’d kissed half a dozen girls in closets at parties back in Gunnison but had never gone all the way. I never had enough enthusiasm to do all the coaxing and convincing it seemed necessary to do. And I was too anxious, too attached to my dreams of stardom to get tangled up in anybody’s private parts. Of course, I thought about sex often. I kept a condom in my wallet, like an ID card. My stepfather had given it to me on my last night in Gunnison. ‘Don’t go and pierce your ears or anything,’ he’d said, and punched me in the arm.
‘Power is in the mind,’ Mrs Honigbaum was saying, patting her head, jangling her bracelets. ‘Read an hour a day and you’ll be smarter than me before you turn twenty. I used to be too smart, and it made me miserable. So now I spend my time on soft stuff, like gossip.’ She held up a copy of the coupon circular. ‘It’s all fluff, but I’m good at what I do. So-and-so is retiring, this one has cancer, that one is going crazy. The Love Boat, can you believe it?’
‘Believe what?’
‘It’s nothing. Go have a cry, then come back and I’ll tell you a story.’
‘But I’m not going to cry,’ I insisted. I flashed her a big smile to prove it.
‘You go. Have a cry. If you want to talk after, come back. Have another mint.’
I retreated to my room to smoke a joint out the window and listen to the Eagles for a few hours. And I did cry, but I never told Mrs Honigbaum. In the evening, I went to work and tried to get those blond girls out of my head. Women left lipstick smears on their pizza crusts and the rims of their wine glasses, cigarette butts rattling in their cans of diet soda, phone numbers scribbled on cocktail napkins, smiley faces, Xs and Os. Their winks and tips did nothing for my low spirits, however. At home, I stared at my headshot and tried to pray for solace: ‘God, make me feel good.’ I cried so
me more.
In the morning I called Bob Sears. He mentioned nothing of my failure from the previous day. ‘I received a call from your mother earlier this morning,’ he said instead. He told me that she’d threatened to call the Los Angeles police. If I didn’t call her that day, she’d open a missing persons case. ‘She seemed very upset and inquired as to my qualifications as a talent agent. I told her, “Madam, I’ve been doing this work for forty-seven years and none of my boys has ever gone missing. Not under my watch.” I’m not going to send you out into the lion’s den now, am I? How could I profit? How?’
He gave me the addresses for two casting calls that day, neither of which I went to. I still didn’t feel good. My head hurt. My face was swollen from crying. I spent the rest of the morning in front of the Toshiba, watching Hollywood Squares, Family Feud, all the while imagining my mother’s rage. ‘It was Larry’s birthday last week. What, now you’re too good to call? You think you’re better than us, than me, your own mother?’ I knew she’d be furious. I had nothing to say for myself. I had promised to call, and I hadn’t called. Maybe I wanted to make her worry. Maybe I wanted her to suffer. ‘I’ve been scared to death,’ I imagined she’d say. ‘How dare you do this to me. What have you been doing? Ballroom dancing? Champagne and caviar? Fooling around with who – whores?’ I walked back and forth to the doughnut shop, feeling like a criminal. I didn’t go out to the beach. I just crawled back home into bed, under the covers and listened through the blanket to Days of Our Lives, Another World, Guiding Light. Again I cried. At six o’clock, Mrs Honigbaum knocked on my door.
‘I just got off the phone with Bob Sears,’ she said. ‘It’s time to call your mother. See if she still hates you. Use the phone in the bedroom. Follow me.’
Mrs Honigbaum led me down the softly carpeted hallway and ushered me into her chambers, which I’d never seen at night before. The poodle scurried under the bed. Mrs Honigbaum turned on the chandelier, and suddenly everything was cast in dappled yellow light. The perfume bottles and crystal decorations glinted and winked. She slid open the heavy glass door to the backyard to let in some air. ‘It gets stuffy,’ she said. The room was filled with a fragrant breeze. It was nice in there. She pointed to the bed. ‘Have a seat,’ she said. Just then the phone rang.
‘Who’s calling me now?’ she murmured. She plucked off one earring, handed it to me, and lifted the receiver. ‘Hello?’ I held the large golden earring in my open palm. In its center was an opalescent pearl the size of a quarter. ‘All right. Thank you,’ she said quickly, and hung up. ‘It’s my birthday,’ she explained. She took the earring and clipped it back on. ‘Now, sit here and call your mother. I’ll be your witness. It’ll be fine. Go ahead.’
She stood there watching me. I had no choice but to pick up the phone.
‘Very good,’ said Mrs Honigbaum after I’d slid the tip of my finger into the number on the rotary. ‘Go ahead,’ she said again.
I dialed.
The phone rang and rang. Nobody was answering. It was a Saturday night.
‘See, no one’s home,’ I said to Mrs Honigbaum, holding the receiver out toward her.
‘Leave a message,’ she said. She lit a cigarette. I nodded and listened to the brassy bells dinging on the line, ready to hang up if my mother answered. Mrs Honigbaum exhaled two huge plumes of smoke through her flared nostrils. ‘A good message.’
Finally the machine picked up. I heard my mother’s voice for the first time in months. I held the phone out to Mrs Honigbaum again. ‘That’s her, that’s what she sounds like,’ I said. ‘She always sounds so mad.’
‘Never mind,’ said Mrs Honigbaum.
After I heard the beep, I started my message: ‘Hi, Mom, it’s me.’ I paused. I looked up at Mrs Honigbaum.
‘I’m so sorry I haven’t called,’ she whispered. She waved her hand at me, smoke dotting the air, as though to spur me ahead.
‘I’m so sorry I haven’t called,’ I repeated into the phone.
‘My life out here is fabulous. I am making some major progress in my acting career.’ Mrs Honigbaum widened her eyes, waiting for me to proceed.
I repeated what she said.
‘And I’m meeting lots of fascinating characters.’
‘I’m meeting fascinating characters.’
‘I’m safe and eating well. There’s nothing you need to worry about.’
I delivered these lines word for word.
‘Please don’t call Bob Sears again. It’s not good for me, professionally.’
‘Please don’t call Bob Sears again. It’s not good for me, professionally.’
‘I love you, Mother,’ said Mrs Honigbaum.
‘I love you,’ I said back to her.
‘Now hang up.’
I did as I was told.
‘There, that wasn’t so hard now, was it?’ Mrs Honigbaum extinguished her cigarette and sat down beside me on the edge of the bed.
‘She’s not going to like it,’ I said.
‘You’ve done your duty. She’ll sleep better now.’ My heart was racing. I bent over and put my head in my hands. ‘Take some deep breaths,’ Mrs Honigbaum said, a hand rubbing my back. I sat and breathed with her and I felt better. ‘Now listen. I have something I’ve been meaning to show you,’ she said. ‘I don’t show this to many people. But I think you deserve it. It’s something to make you smarter.’
Then she reached across my lap and opened the drawer of her bedside table. She pulled out a sheaf of index cards. ‘It’s a special deck of cards I made myself,’ she said. She shuffled through them. They were blank on one side, and on the other side they bore strange symbols – mostly shapes, solid or outlined or striped or polka-dotted, in different colors. Mrs Honigbaum had drawn them all in Magic Marker. One card had three green diamonds. Another had two empty red circles. A black solid square, a striped purple triangle, and so on. The point of the game was to set the cards down in rows and find patterns between the shapes and colors, what have you. ‘This game is a metaphor for life,’ Mrs Honigbaum explained. ‘Most people are dumb and can’t see the pattern unless it’s obvious. But there is always a pattern, even when things don’t make sense. If you build your brains up, the people here will think you’re a genius. Nobody else is going to teach you how to do this. You’ll see what I mean.’
She laid out three rows of three cards each on the bedspread.
‘The pattern here is easy. Three of the cards have wiggly lines on them.’
I nodded.
She collected the cards, then laid out three more rows. ‘This set is a little more mysterious. You see these three?’ She pointed to three of the cards. One was an empty blue square. One was a solid red rectangle. The other was a striped green star. ‘Sometimes the pattern is that they’re all different. Do you see that? These three have nothing in common, and that’s exactly what they have in common. Understand?’
I said I did.
‘This is how to succeed as an actor. Point out the hidden pattern. Find meaning in the mess. People will kiss your feet.’ I watched her pick up the cards again. I didn’t understand what she meant at the time, but I could tell that what she was saying was true. ‘Practice practice practice. You’ve got the brawn, now work on the brain. You want the big time, don’t you? The big roles?’
‘Yes,’ I answered, though by then I really didn’t. When she looked up at me, I stared deep into her small, blurry eyes. ‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘No need to thank me,’ she replied. She shuffled and laid down more cards, pointed to three circles. ‘Easy,’ she said, and clucked her tongue.
Then she was quiet. She shuffled the cards. She looked at me and shook her head. I thought maybe she was lost in her own reveries and would tell me a story about her dead husband or something funny that happened when she was young. But instead, she put down the cards, placed one hand on my knee, the other over her tanned, bony chestplate. ‘Your mother is a lucky woman to have such a boy,’ she said, exhaling as though it hurt her to adm
it such a painful truth. She lifted her hand from my knee and caressed my face, lovingly, reverently, and shook her head again.
Nothing ever happened under the covers of Mrs Honigbaum’s bed, but from then on, each night before I fell asleep, she recited some prayers in Hebrew and put her hands on my face and shoulders. Whatever spells she cast, they didn’t work. Neither of us was very surprised.
KRAPP HOUR (ACT 2)
Anne Carson
Cast: various pairs chatting while they wait in audience for show to start
[1st]
if you’re talking to Sylvester about African art don’t call anything an idol it drives him nuts
Sylvester’s descended from kings
so he says
walks like a king sits like a king
has king rages
what’s he so angry at
his father
ah
whose advice was go to law school so he took up art
painting sculpture what
connoisseurship
which means
art deals big money the brand package but also stupid museum labels that call everything an idol because they’ve no idea what it is
hmm
I heard he ran away from home with his best friend at age seven
ran away where
and his dad brought them back
I bet
and next day arranged for the beheading of the best friend
no shit
and he made Sylvester watch
this was in Africa
it wasn’t Winnipeg darling
you’re gossip central aren’t you
I was at one of those dinners Dave gets invited to
oh me too that’s how I met Isabelle Huppert
no
I thought I told you this
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