After Annie (9781468300116)
Page 8
They told each other about all their affairs one afternoon in a course they were taking in Northern California—some New Age communication course—and they spilled everything, secrets they thought they would take to the grave. Annie only had her three, but Herbie’s list went on and on—women they had both worked with, a friend of Annie’s, some hookers in Vegas— his confession went on into the evening. In the end it was Herbie, of course, who was devastated. It took him months to get over it. But finally, they both realized they felt better being clean with each other, so they decided to keep it that way. After that, the only fucking around they did was together.
Herbie unpacks and puts on his golf clothes, which remarkably resemble the clothes he was driving in: tan pants, a white polo shirt, and a black cashmere sweater with the sleeves rolled up. He has his first lesson in half an hour. Good, he thinks. Take my mind off.
He meets the golf teacher outside the pro shop—tall, tanned, sun-bleached blond hair, a little older than the car valet and the bellboy, but not much. Herbie notes how they all have blond hairs on their tanned, ropey arms.
“Well,” says the boy, looking at his clipboard, “how about we get right down to it, Mr. A-Ron? Ready to hit a few golf balls for me?”
“Actually Dan, I’d rather…”
“That’s Don.” He holds out his hand. “Don Merritt, Mr. A-Ron.” He shakes Herbie’s hand forcefully, as if to make him remember the name.
“Mister what?”
He checks his clipboard again. “You are Mr. Herbert A-Ron, are you not?”
“Aaron. Aaron. You never heard that name before?”
“I certainly have. It’s in the bible. A-Ron was the brother of Moses.”
“You a Mormon?”
“Uh, no I’m not.”
“Aaron. It’s pronounced Aaron.”
“I’m sorry, Mr.… Erin? How ‘bout if I call you Herbert? Or Herb?”
Herbie nods vaguely. He hates this kid. “Look, here’s what I want to do: first I want to sit down with you at the bar and I’ll explain exactly what I’m looking for here. Otherwise we’re just gonna waste a lot of time, okay?”
“The bar?” Don’s voice is up an octave now. “Ha, ha, no, I don’t think we can do that, Mr. A-Ron. Oops, sorry.” He laughs. “But that’s just the way we say that name down here. I’ll get it.” He laughs again, manfully. “No, we can’t, uh, we can’t go to the bar. My boss would not look kindly on that. No he wouldn’t.”
“Here’s the deal, Dan. I don’t want your standard golf lesson. I’ve had many, many golf lessons and believe me, they’re worthless. For me, I mean. For everybody else, I’m sure they’re fine. So what I want to do is sit down with you—it can be at the bar or not at the bar—and tell you what I’m looking for here, okay?”
Don takes a moment surveying the driving range, like he’s looking for spiritual help; then he looks at Herbie and purses his lips. “All right, tell me.”
“I want you to help me work on my swing—my swing, not your swing—without all the mishigas.”
“The what?”
Herbie sighs a big one. “Mishigas. It’s a Yiddish word. It means, like, a lot of nonsense or the whole rigmarole, you know?”
“Sir.” Don’s all fluffed up now, like a gamecock. “The Nine Secrets to Power Golf is not nonsense.” He declares this fervently. “It is not a rigmarole or a… mitchicass. It is science, sir. Pure, tested and proven science. And it has helped many, many golfers to a more successful and pleasurable golf game.”
“Look…”
“The Nine Secrets to Power Golf was created by Mr. Mac McFeely, who is without a doubt the finest teacher for the higher-handicapped golfer—I think—in these United States.”
“Look, Dan…”
“Don, goddammit!” He hangs his head like a puppy dog. Then he starts walking in a big circle, head still down, his ears all red. Herbie muses on how blond people’s ears turn red when they get mad. “I’m sorry, sir,” says Don finally. I’m getting a little sore here.”
“Don, Don, my son. You have to understand something: I can’t remember nine secrets to anything. I can’t remember two. I don’t want secrets. I just want to hit the fucking ball.”
The lesson proceeds downhill from there. Don, in an effort to change the air between them, suggests that he videotape Herbie as he hits the ball. This is not a good idea. Herbie launches into a diatribe about how he never watches himself on film— that it’s the very death of his creative process; it makes him selfconscious and therefore unable to be his free and instinctual self. Don looks like he’s in a nightmare, unable to understand a word of what he’s hearing. Herbie could be speaking Farsi, for all he knows. The lesson ends in the pro shop with Herbie trying to get back the money he paid for the other eight Secrets to Power Golf that he’s never going to learn. Finally he and the head pro negotiate a deal for half and neither of them feels very good about it.
Still steaming, he goes to his room, showers and puts on his drinking clothes, which are very similar to his golf clothes. Then he goes to the bar and finds his spot, separate of course from all human contact. The bar has one of those “nineteenth hole” motifs and he’s in no mood for it. “A bar should look like a fucking bar,” he says to the approaching bartender. After he downs his double mojito—for some reason, he’s decided that’s the appropriate drink—he surveys the room and sees, in a dark corner, Don, the golf teacher, pouring his heart out to a preppylooking young woman. He gets another drink and carries it across the room.
“If we had started here, like I said,” he says to the miserable young man, “none of this would have ever happened.” The girl instinctually moves her chair back, preparing for a fast getaway. “This is a good life lesson for you: when a drunk suggests you go to the bar first, listen to him. He knows of what he speaks.”
Don looks up at him warily.
“You got blindsided. You didn’t do anything wrong; you just walked into the wrong guy at the wrong time. Here.” Herbie puts a hundred dollar bill on the table. “Get drunk and forget about it. You’re a good kid.” Then he winks at the girl, who blushes, and goes back to his spot at the bar. He’s got to revamp his plans, he thinks. First he’s got to get out of this phony, tarted-up Holiday Inn and find a simple place with a good bed. Then he’s got to find a real bar.
It takes him about an hour to locate his car in the vast parking lot. This is not helped by the fact that he can’t remember what kind of car he’s driving or what color it is. “You are one sad fuck,” he says to himself when he finally gets into the car. He fills his little pipe, takes a toke and puts the car in gear as he lets out his breath. Let’s cruise this town, he thinks.
Once he nears town, he can barely move because of the drunken children, would-be Irishmen and Shag dancers. But he’s happy to go slow. He needs to calm down. Then his phone jingles.
“Where are you?” It’s Olive.
“Driving around. It’s spring break—you wouldn’t believe this fucking place.” He listens to Olive smile. “So, how’d it go?”
“Really good, I think. I got a callback.” There’s lots of excitement in her voice. “Already?”
“Yeah. About an hour after I got home, Jeffrey called and said they loved me and they want to see me again tomorrow.”
“Why?”
She can tell he’s not happy. “Why do they want to see me again?”
“Yeah.”
“Because they liked me, no?
“Then let them hire you. Callbacks suck. They’re a brilliant way to lose a part that they already want you for. Just tell Jeffrey to tell them to make you an offer. See what they do.”
“I don’t think so, Herbie. I’m gonna to go back. I won’t lose it.”
“Do what you want.”
There’s a long silence while Olive listens to him drive through the crowded streets.
“Let’s talk later. When you’re not driving, okay?”
“Fine.”
“Take it easy.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
He punches the disconnect button and feels himself filling up with anger again. He can’t lose it today. He speed dials Jeffrey, who starts right in about the callback and how great it is. Herbie cuts him off.
“What did they say?”
“They want to see her again tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I know that part, but what did they say? How did they say it?”
“I only spoke to the casting person and she said, where did this girl come from? Where have I been hiding her?”
“She said that?”
“Yeah.”
“So they want her. It’s over. They’re pregnant. Have them make an offer.”
“You’ve got to be kidding! No one’s ever heard of her. They want to make sure. They might want to line her up with some of the other people—make sure they all look like they belong in the same play. You know what they do.”
“Yeah, they jerk themselves off.”
“If that’s what they want to do, that’s what they do. She’s going in at ten thirty. If they want her to jump through hoops, she’ll jump. That’s show business.”
“Don’t fucking tell me about show business. Your job is to represent her, not them. Do your fucking job.”
Jeffrey hangs up on him. Herbie’s too mad to drive, so he puts the car in the first lot he sees and walks toward the beach. It’s chilly, maybe around fifty degrees, and he can’t understand why everybody wants to have their shirts off. Fucking kids think they’re going to live forever.
He passes a bar that he thinks he recognizes from back in the days when he thought he was going to live forever. They had good crab cakes, he remembers. He goes in and wrestles himself some space at the bar—forget about getting a stool—but he manages to get one elbow on the bar and that’s enough to establish a beachhead. He can hold this spot all night if his legs hold out. He orders his double mojito and a crab cake sandwich and tries to negotiate a little more room by shoving his hip into the guy next to him.
“Easy fella. There’s room for everybody,” says the guy, whose belly is taking up at least three spaces.
“Yeah, sorry,” says Herbie. “I’m getting a sandwich. So I need a little room.”
“No problem. You in town for the golf?”
“No, I’m a shag dancer. I eat to keep my strength up.”
The guy thinks this is hysterical. He grabs the guy next to him by the shoulder. “I ask this guy if he’s here to play golf,” he screams over the din, “and he tells me he’s here for the shag dancing.” They both think this is the funniest thing they ever heard and they both tell it to a third guy, who’s one stool down. “He’s got to keep his strength up!” A whole new round of laughter.
The three guys are down from Southern Ohio for a week away from the wives. Their faces are the color of dried blood from the sun and the drink.
“So, seriously,” says the fat one, “you play golf?”
“Not for a long time, but I’m here to, you know, takes some lessons, screw around.”
“Which one? Take some lessons or screw around?”
Herbie shrugs. This is more social contact than he’s had in a while.
“Where you from?”
“New York.”
“The city?”
“Yeah.”
“My wife drags me there once a year—to see the shows—but I could never live there. Too crazy for me.”
“It’s a lot safer than walking around than this fucking place. You could get raped by a leprechaun.”
This brings another round of laughter as the big guy repeats the joke to the other two. Herbie signals the bartender that he’s buying drinks for everybody.
“You want to play tomorrow? We’re going off Pine Tree Hill at nine forty—best public course in America.”
“Sure. Sounds good.”
“Thirty-five bucks you can play all day.”
“I’ll be there. You might have to be a little patient with me; I haven’t played in years.”
“Oh Christ,” says the big guy, “you’ll fit right in. I just had my hip replaced and they gave me one that doesn’t know how to play golf for shit.” Laughs all around. Then the guy in the middle says that he has that disease you see on TV where he has to pee every five minutes, so his game is not what it used to be because his concentration is off. And the third guy, who’s quieter than the other two, says that he’s really a tennis player and doesn’t know much about golf at all.
“You’re probably the best golfer in the bunch—don’t worry,” says the big guy. “What’s your name?”
“Herbie.”
The guy points to his chest first. “Bill, Alan, and Bud, whose real name is Charles.” They all shake hands and the drinks come, along with Herbie’s crab cake. He takes the top piece of bread off and cuts into the cake with a fork, where he finds little bits of red and green pepper mixed in. He calls the bartender back.
“Why do you have all this shit in here? A crab cake is crab— just crab. It’s not a fucking salad.”
The guys—his new buddies—find this hysterical. The bartender, who’s about the same age as the kids out in the street, doesn’t know what to do.
“Do you want something else, sir? A burger?”
“No. Just give me the check.”
He pays up and tells the guys he’ll see them in the morning. This has been altogether too much human contact for one day. When he gets back to the room, he turns the TV on; then he turns it off; he paces for a while, talking himself down. Then he dials Olive’s number.
“Hey, Grumpy,” she says.
“You at the bar?”
“No. I took the night off to work on my audition. Ten thirty tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I know. Don’t let them put you through any shit.”
“I won’t, but why would they?”
There’s no response from Herbie.
“Why are you so weird about this? What is it about callbacks that makes you so pissed off?”
“Callbacks are a rigged deal. They’re about his insecurity —the director’s. He liked you but he doesn’t trust himself— probably because he knows he doesn’t have any fucking talent— so he wants you to make him feel better.”
“Okay, so I’ll make him feel better.”
“It’s not okay. It’s a false situation. He doesn’t need to see anything new or different from you—he just needs somebody to pat him on the back and tell him he was right the first time. But that puts you in an odd position: do you repeat what you did the day before? That’s no good because repeating is bad acting. Do you show him something new? That’s dangerous because the only reason you’re back is that he liked what you did the first time. So what do you do? I went up for a TV pilot once—years ago—and did a good audition—right off the top of my head, of course. And they asked me to fly out to L.A. to read for the network. So I rehearsed the scene hundreds of times, working it to death and I went in and stunk up the place. The director, the guy I read for originally, comes out afterward, hysterical. ‘What happened?’ he says. ‘Where was the guy I saw last week?’ I’m not good when I do that. Every time I tried to over think it, work it out in my mind—I fucked it up. Not just acting—with everything. After sixty years of this shit, I finally learned to trust it.”
“Your instinct?”
“Yeah.”
“So what’s your instinct for me tomorrow?”
“Okay; first, you should go in and tell the director to grow the fuck up.”
“Gee, that sounds like a great idea. Are you stoned?”
“Yeah.”
“Hang on a second.”
Herbie can hear her walk across the room and open a drawer. Then, after she fumbles around a bit, the sound of the cigarette lighter and a big inhale, a long pause, then the exhale.
“I only need one hit,” she says with a scratchier voice.
“Me, too.”
“Really?” There’s a long pause as they think about this phenomenon.
He doesn’t answer for a while. They listen to each other breathing.
“I’m angry because my life is over. I had a brilliant life and it’s over. Every day it gets worse. I don’t know… how to talk, how to relate to people. I don’t know how to fucking breathe anymore. And I can’t… right myself, you know? I’m like a little baby; I tipped over in my crib and can’t set myself up again. I’m waving my arms and I’m screaming my head off, but there’s nobody who can set me up straight again.”
Olive is crying.
“What are you crying about?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh Jesus. If you want to cry, then fucking cry.”
Olive takes a moment to pull herself together.
“I think what you have to do is help me, Herbie. I think that’s why I’m here.”
He grunts.
“Annie made me promise to call you when I needed help. She said you’re the best in the world. The best. So help me, Herbie. Tell me what to do.”
He’s silent.
“If you had a callback tomorrow, what would you do? I mean after you told them all to go fuck themselves? Then what would you do?”
That gets a smile. “Maybe I’d ask the guy to direct me—have him tell what he thinks is going on under the scene, you know? Some subtext. And then I’d take the adjustment and go back on instinct. Then at least I could be a good actor.”
“That’s pretty brilliant.”
“Yeah, because he’ll feel like a good director when you make the adjustment he asks you for—so then he can relax and just cast the play and stop jerking himself off. That’s all this is really about—making that poor shmuck feel better about himself.”