Robin and Ruby

by K. M. Soehnlein

  In his bedroom he finds his well-worn paperback copy of Franny and Zooey, its white cover, with a single green stripe and black calligraphic letters, smudged with fingerprints. The inscription, in his mother’s handwriting, says, “We must all find a way.” Beneath her signature she wrote the date, Christmas, 1978, which was right after Jackson died. Robin read Franny and Zooey in a trance that winter, too young to understand the story’s philosophical bent. What he took from Salinger’s novel was simple desire: he fell for the young hero, Zooey Glass, the smart, caustic, and handsome actor who smoked cigarettes in the bathtub while arguing with his mother about what was wrong with his younger sister, and it was that image that led him to announce, the next year, that he’d found his calling. It’s embarrassing to remember all this now, the impulse of a fifteen-year-old to choose a path borrowed from a novel, because acting, like life, has proved to be much more difficult that he ever imagined. He still doesn’t trust himself onstage; “acting” at this point seems like an accumulation of lessons and missteps and fleeting moments that might be breakthroughs or might just be small technical improvements.

  He suddenly understands why London has been weighing on him so heavily: It’s a test. It might be his one real chance to find out if he’s got what it takes. To discover if he’s talented, as opposed to just easy on the eyes or lucky.

  Then he remembers Calvin’s screenplay.

  He opens another beer and carries it to his bedroom. On the wobbly card table that substitutes as a desk, he finds the dog-eared page where he last left off.

  INT. NIGHTCLUB, NEW YORK CITY—AFTER MIDNIGHT

  Synthesized music, bright flashes of light, but we only see one table on screen. In a booth, seated, CARTER looks back and forth between BENNETT and AGNETHA, who sip their cocktails and smoke. (Characters must shout to be heard.)

  BENNETT

  I’m bored. Where’s my nose candy?

  CARTER

  Don’t pressure me, you pretentious fucks.

  AGNETHA

  You’re a tyrant. You bore me.

  CARTER

  Boredom is a neurological impossibility. Scientists have shown that what you experience as boredom is actually the motivational part of your brain shutting down. Boredom is fear.

  BENNETT

  (sarcastic)

  I find that scary.

  AGNETHA

  The hell with this, you cocksuckers.

  CARTER

  We could go back to my place, snort blow, and play truth or dare.

  The script arrived in the mail earlier this week, a sloppy pile of type-written sheets thickened in spots with Liquid Paper and a cover page announcing “Entering and Breaking, by Calvin Kraft.” The role Calvin had in mind for Robin was Carter (“overeducated and handsome”), a twenty-year-old rich kid who seemed a lot like Calvin: too smart for his own good, letting insults fly whenever he opened his mouth, then retreating into sulkiness.

  The first time Robin met Calvin was when he showed up at the apartment on 71st Street to take Ruby out. That night, Robin had plans to meet a friend, but he lingered out of curiosity and to satisfy his mother, who wanted his opinion on the new boy in Ruby’s life. Calvin turned out to be one of those tall guys who carry themselves with a stoop. His blond hair hung greasily across his eyes; you wanted to push it out of the way. His mother insisted Calvin call her Dorothy, saying, “Even my children call me Dorothy. I haven’t been Mrs. MacKenzie for years.” There was some awkward small talk, the four of them suffering through introductions. Then Robin mentioned that he was on his way to the movies to see Amadeus. “They say Milos Forman’s film-making is outstanding,” Calvin said, pronouncing the name “ME-lowsh,” and then, in what Robin would come to recognize as Calvin’s characteristic ability to recalibrate featherlight small talk into cutting insult, he continued, “There’s no way I’ll see it. The subject matter is retrograde, no matter how contemporary they try to make it. Film’s supposed to look to the future. Opera’s a dead art for dead souls.”

  Dorothy gasped in shock.

  “Uh-oh,” Ruby said, a giggle in her throat as she took in their mother’s reaction.

  Dorothy was a devoted subscriber to the Met, and there wasn’t a milestone in Robin’s life that wasn’t marked by the background crescendo of an aria on the turntable. There might have been one playing at that very moment, perhaps something from Mozart meant to send Robin off to the movie.

  A year later, Dorothy had yet to warm to Calvin, though Robin had forgiven him the blunt first impression, especially since Ruby seemed contented enough. She seemed to take some rebellious pleasure in the way her boyfriend didn’t kowtow to their mother. It had been so long since his sister had dated anyone. (Had she ever, seriously?) Calvin and Ruby spent a lot of time together, though they didn’t display a whole lot of physical intimacy. And besides, Robin found Calvin amusing, despite his pretensions.

  So Robin had invited Calvin to visit Carnegie Mellon with Ruby and Dorothy to see him perform. He’d been cast as Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Before the show, knowing his family was in the audience, he’d been nearly sick with nerves. The director had complained that Robin was sometimes too self-conscious onstage, and so that night he decided to try something new, to underplay rather than go for broke. Onstage, he could feel the other actors struggling to adjust to his reined-in presence, but he also felt for the first time that the role was a natural extension of him rather than a mask he put on and took off. His drama professors were always talking about the “performance breakthroughs” that happened when “you got out of your own way.” Robin wondered if maybe he’d finally had one.

  Calvin was teeming with praise, his opinions carrying loudly through the backstage dressing rooms. “You found the fault line between sorrow and rage,” he proclaimed. This was an embarrassing compliment to receive in front of the rest of the cast, some of whom clearly thought Robin’s changes had been disruptive. Even his mother had been more subdued.

  Later, in the men’s room of the restaurant where they were having a celebratory dinner, Calvin cornered Robin at the urinal. He was working on a screenplay that he wanted Robin to see. He said it was inspired by Liquid Sky, a film that had opened a couple of years before and that was still playing at one Manhattan movie theater at midnight. Robin had seen this “new wave” film and found it unbearable. It reminded him of a certain kind of underground nightlife that always seemed out of reach on his trips downtown: arty fashion plates speaking in flat voices that seemed to signify detachment or irony or some other kind of superiority. But Robin agreed to look at whatever Calvin wrote.

  For months now, Calvin had been leaving Robin biweekly answering machine messages saying, “It’s coming soon, I’m wildly inspired, I’m rewriting it with you in mind, it’s going to blow you away.” But when the screenplay arrived (the original copy, which made Robin take notice), Robin found that “Carter,” though clearly the hero, the last man standing, was anxious and full of himself and not particularly likable. If he’d been a muse to his sister’s boyfriend, what did this character say about him? And was the script any good? He couldn’t tell. It was certainly repetitious; there were three long phone conversations between Carter and his best friend, Bennett, during which Bennett snorts coke and rambles on about sex and disease, while Carter quietly masturbates (the notation in the script reading, “We don’t see but we are left with no doubt that Carter is pleasuring himself”). Carter is described, in one scene, as “hungry for something new.” In Calvin’s cover letter to Robin, he wrote, “Nudity is optional, but I want to test the limits. Feeling dangerous?” It was a dare, and also weirdly coy. Robin wondered if he should warn Ruby that her boyfriend had some of the telltale signs of a closet case.

  He looks up from the script and his gaze lands on the movie poster he’s Fun-Taked to the wall: Brad Davis looking outrageously humpable as a French sailor in Querelle. A fantasy unwinds of Calvin’s film as a wild success: beautifully shot, smartly edited, a cool soundtrack laid o
n top. It gets picked up by a New York distribution company, gets a long theatrical run at the Bleecker Street Cinema, gets reviewed by J. Hoberman in the Village Voice. Robin gets written up in Variety as “Someone to Watch.”

  Unlike some of his classmates, he wasn’t out hustling for an agent, didn’t go on a thousand auditions, hadn’t acted upon the conventional wisdom that said, “If you don’t get cast in a feature film by the time you’re twenty-one, you’ll never have a career.” Maybe he was lazy, just didn’t have the hustle in him. Or maybe he was wise, taking his time until he was sure of his own talent. When you’ve been told your whole life that you’re good looking, it’s easy to doubt that anyone values anything else about you. Good looks get attention, but not all attention is a good thing.

  Peter first noticed him for his looks. Robin would catch him staring from the podium at the front of the lecture hall. Robin knew that stare. Men who wanted sex used it, dirty thoughts raging behind their eyes. He’s fallen for it so many times, letting guys do things to him just because being wanted still felt, even after many years, like an opportunity that might not come again.

  Without warning, everyone he’s ever had sex with is in the apartment with him now, crowding him, heavy breaths on the back of his neck, damp as drafty air. There’s one in particular: his name was Darren, a dancer with haunches like a thoroughbred and a dazzling white smile. He worked on a cruise ship, performing in some kind of Broadway revue, and he had docked in New York for half a week. Darren had spotted Robin at a bar in the West Village, Uncle Charlie’s, and had rescued him from a drunk in an ugly knit sweater whom he couldn’t shake. By the time Darren shipped out again, Robin had lost track of what day it was. He’d followed him back to the small hotel room where he’d been put up for the week, and since then had hardly seen the light of day. After the second day, they’d scrapped the condoms. Darren had assured him he didn’t have “it,” and Robin, not yet nineteen, didn’t know not to trust a stranger with a voice like music and the body of a satyr.

  He wonders, not for the first time, did Peter ever see beyond the surface, did he care about me beyond his lust? Was Peter simply hot for him, while Robin was convinced they were falling in love?

  The phone clangs, snapping him from the dream. The ringer is loud; there’s only one phone in the apartment and they need to be able to hear it from every room.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Robin.” It’s Peter.

  “I was just thinking about you!” He tamps down his excitement, and adds, “On and off, all night.”

  “I’m just saying hi. I was a little concerned.”

  A little concerned is a start, something to work with. “Can I see you?” Robin asks.

  “Um, I could swing by in the morning.”

  “Not tonight?” Robin already knows this isn’t what Peter wants. He pushes anyway, “I just think, if we could talk—”

  “Yeah, um, but my plans…I’m on my way to meet…” He cuts himself off.

  “You caught me by surprise, and I didn’t get to ask everything I wanted to.”

  “I’m meeting Diana and a bunch of her friends at this place. It’ll be crowded.”

  “A bar?”

  “A club.”

  “Which one?”

  “I forget the name. Something with an R.”

  “Is it a gay club?”

  “I think it’s mixed. New wave music. Diana wanted to go.” Silence. “So, yeah, just saying hi.”

  No invitation is forthcoming. “Okay, then. Tomorrow. Come by around noon.”

  After he hangs up, Robin is all agitation. Why bother calling if…? And then he gets an idea. On Peter’s last trip, he and Robin went to the gay bookstore, Giovanni’s Room, and spent an hour browsing. Peter bought him a gift, a copy of The Memoirs of Hadrian, about a gay Roman emperor, a book that Peter said helped him realize how ancient and storied the history of homosexuality was. The guy behind the counter was friendly, sort of flirty, and gave them all sorts of tips about things to do in the city. Sure enough, when he calls the bookstore now, the boy who answers is happy to field Robin’s question about a mixed club that plays new-wave music and starts with an R. “Revival,” he says without hesitation. “It’s on 3rd Street, in a building that used to be a bank. You can tell by the big columns out front.”

  The location is on the far side of Center City, too far to walk, and too expensive a cab ride. He could take SEPTA, but at night it’s a scary few blocks between apartment and train stop, and he usually runs most of the distance, clutching his keys between his fingers like brass knuckles.

  He opens the last beer in the fridge. Has he already drunk four?

  There’s a noise in the hallway. Robin turns to see the door opening. In walks George.

  Robin peers past him. “Are you alone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That was quick.”

  “Yeah.” George drops onto the couch and slumps. He eyes the beer in Robin’s hand. “Open one of those for me?”

  “Last one.” He passes him the bottle. George chugs halfway to the bottom.

  “Didn’t go well with the Prince of Denmark?”

  George shakes his head, shutting his eyes for a moment, as if clearing his vision. “Turns out all he wanted was a quickie.”

  “Wham, bam, thank you ma’am?”

  “More like, wham, bam, thank you, Sambo.”

  Robin chuckles, but the look on George’s face is grim. His body is tightly coiled.

  “I get to his hotel room, he gets on his knees before we even get past the small talk. He starts going down on me, saying stuff like, ‘Oh, your byoo-tee-full black pee-niss, your smood black skeen.’ And then he’s like coming, and it’s over.”

  “He didn’t get you off?”

  “I couldn’t even stay hard. I vould like to see your black pee-niss orgasm.”

  “Did you tell him we say ‘African American’ now?”

  George doesn’t smile. “So I’ve been racially fetishized and blue-balled all at once. He probably gave me gonorrhea on top of it.” George stands and walks to the bathroom, taking the beer with him. He leaves the door open.

  Robin follows, as George starts the water for the shower. He’s already pulled off his shirt and is kicking off his shoes. The troubled expression on George’s face is somehow unfamiliar, and it takes a moment for Robin to realize what it is: A mixture of anger and sadness that comes from being insulted. His feelings are hurt. This is not the usual even-keeled, easily amused George.

  “He’s a fool,” Robin says.

  “He’s a fucking colonialist motherfucker.”

  Robin feels like he’s on thin ice, but he wants to try again. “I mean, he’s a fool not to take his time with you. You’re looking foxy.”

  “Please,” George mutters. “Don’t you start, too.”

  George steps into the shower, closing himself in behind the opaque curtain. Robin gets his second glimpse today of George’s naked back and ass. It seems especially perilous this time, in the midst of this discussion, and he glances away, his eyes trying to rest on something neutral: a stain on the linoleum, a burn mark from one of his cigarettes.

  “The thing is,” George is saying through the hiss of the water, “I knew this guy was blunt, but that seemed normal enough. I didn’t expect to fall in love. I thought I’d get a little something more than ‘your skeen is so smood und shiny, Gay-org.’”

  “You can’t expect anything from men,” Robin says. “Men suck.” He waits for a response, and when he doesn’t get one, he steps out of the bathroom. He hates seeing George like this, and he hates that his own reaction is all mixed up with some buzz of desire. This buzz can’t be about George. It’s the four beers he drank. It’s Calvin’s dirty screenplay. It’s the still lingering effect of Peter’s blue tennis shorts tenting up in the car, Peter tempting him before cutting him loose.

  Later, George joins him on the couch for the network news, which is saturated with coverage of a hijacked TWA flight tha
t’s been diverted to Beirut. A passenger has been killed, his body dumped on the tarmac. Then the story shifts to local news, the ongoing investigation into the Philadelphia police department over the bombing of MOVE. There’s a quote from Ramona Africa, the only woman who survived the conflagration, saying the police fired on her as she ran out of the flames: “No one was supposed to survive.”

  George says, “I’m gonna grow out my dreads and call myself George Africa, and then I’m gonna live among my people and fight the Man.”

  “What about me?” Robin says. “You’re all I got, George Africa.”

  “Except you’re going to London, so fuck you, Blanco.”

  There’s something distinctly not-jokey in George’s voice, but Robin doesn’t know what to do with it. His mind begins to zoom forward to a day when George no longer wants to be his friend, no longer wants anything to do with him.

  Impulsively, he stands up and blocks the TV.

  “No more news. It’s Saturday night. We should get out of the house. Do you feel like driving?”

  “I got a parking spot right out front.”

  “Well, I have an idea. This club. It’s called Revival.”

  “What kind of music?”

  “New wave mostly.”

  George curls his nose. “I can’t dance to that. And what if your ID doesn’t get you in?”

  “If it doesn’t work out, we don’t have to stay.”

  He doesn’t tell George until they’re well on their way why he wants to go there. “Aw, man,” George says, and slaps his hand on the steering wheel.