The Confessions of Edward Day (8 page)

We went to the Cedar because it was quiet, and over beers and fries worked out our plan. We would take time off work as much as possible for three weeks and concentrate on nothing but the pursuit of parts. We would try out for everything, suitable or not, wild stretches and stuff we thought beneath us, even musical revues. We would drop our head shots off at agencies, take our meals at diners, prepare our pieces at night in my apartment. We would be relentless, we would urge each other to the limit, we would succeed.

And we did. In two weeks I had two callbacks and Madeleine had three. We stayed up late refining our readings, drinking coffee until we were revved past endurance. Then we got into my bed and blasted ourselves into oblivion with athletic sex. It was great. I felt sleek, powerful, cagey; in the mirror I detected yon Cassius’s lean and hungry look. Madeleine was glowing from all the sex and edgy from lack of sleep. She was living on fruit and coffee. One of her callbacks, an enormous long shot we’d chosen because she was so definitely right for it, was for the role of Maggie in a revival of
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
. She wanted it almost beyond endurance. The call had sent her dancing around the apartment, over the couch, knocking down chairs. “I’m Maggie,” she crooned. “They know it, they know it, I’m Maggie.” But they didn’t know it and she didn’t get the part. When the call came, she broke down and wept. She was hysterical actually; I couldn’t get near her. She lay on the bathroom floor kicking her feet and pounding her fists against the tiles. Then she got up and vomited into the toilet. It was pure nerves and rage. I got her cleaned up and tucked into bed where she cried herself to sleep. In the morning she was pale and haggard, but she took a shower, disguised the dark circles under her eyes with makeup, drank two cups of black coffee, and set out for another day of rejection. She came back with a callback for a new play at the Bijou and a week later she got the part.

I’d been striking out all over town and my last shot was a new play about criminal activity in a bakery. I had a scene for the callback and Madeleine and I worked it over so scrupulously that I didn’t need the book. When the audition was over the stage manager reading with me looked like he’d run into a
train. The director stood up and shouted, “That does it.” I had the part.

Naturally Madeleine and I wanted to celebrate. I called Teddy, got his machine, and we shouted “WE HAVE JOBS!” into the receiver. Within the hour Teddy called back, as excited as we were. “No burgers tonight,” he said. “Meet me at Broome Street. Dinner’s on the pater.”

T
eddy had an evolving theory about the importance of actors in the survival of the human species. At Yale he’d been in a play about Charles Darwin, with the result that he had actually read
Origin of the Species
, which inspired in him an informed but idiosyncratic respect for the theory of evolution. Actors, he maintained, are imposters and imposture is an evolutionary strategy for survival. He described the butterfly whose wings so resemble a leaf that even water spots and fungal dots are mimicked, a perfect imitation of random imperfection. All manner of camouflage delighted him, the lizard who turns from bright green to dull brown as he wanders his varied terrain, the deer on his father’s land in Connecticut, coppery red in the coppery fall and drab gray in the winter, when the world is monotone and dull. The actor, Teddy concluded, is selected for survival, like the white moths in a British mining town which, as the coal dust blackened the local birches, mutated to black. Predatory birds couldn’t see the black mutants so only blackened moths survived to reproduce themselves.

Because humans have only other humans as natural predators, and are, by nature, tribal and territorial, what could be
more essential to the flourishing of one’s genetic material than the ability to pass for the prevailing type, to play before the fascist, another fascist; to offer the drug-crazed, gun-wielding holdup artist a fellow in addiction. In their predilection for imposture, their insistence upon the necessity of a counterworld in which they play all parts, banker and pauper, murderer and victim, man and beast, actors are equipped for survival. They are human chameleons, born with a natural ability to take on the coloration of the psychological and physical environment. And, according to Teddy, it is this evolutionary edge that accounts for the paradox of the actor’s social condition. He is both lavishly admired and eternally suspect. Actors make ordinary people uncomfortable, yet they inspire reverence and awe.

It was nonsense, but entertaining, and Madeleine hadn’t heard it before, so we encouraged Teddy, over glasses of white wine and plates of grilled fish, to expand upon the struggle for existence and our part in it.

“So according to your theory,” Madeleine observed, “actors are born not made.”

“Exactly,” Teddy agreed. “There’s got to be something genetic going on. I mean, what is the attraction of a life in the theater? It’s certainly not the money. Yet look how many there are in every generation who are drawn to it.”

“I thought it was something to do with exhibitionism,” I put in.

“The common error,” Teddy said.

“But I don’t want to blend in,” Madeleine protested. “I want to stand out.”

“Of course,” Teddy said. “You want to be recognized as Madeleine Delavergne, the actress who can play all parts, from ten to ninety, male or female, aristocrat, cutthroat or tramp.”

As Teddy ticked off this list, Madeleine made small adjustments in her expression and posture, her spine straightening at “aristocrat,” her eyes and lips narrow at “cutthroat,” her mouth ajar and eyes sultry at “tramp.”

“She’s good,” I said and we laughed.

“Now if you want to see an actor who only wants to be seen,” Teddy said, “check out Guy Margate in that Italian thing. I saw it last night.”

I hadn’t thought of Guy in weeks and I found I didn’t want to think about him. “Has that opened already?” I said. “I’ve lost track of time.”

“Is it any good?” Madeleine asked.

“It opened last night and no, the play’s not good, though I’ve seen worse. Guy has a lot of lines and he’s in the altogether for the whole last scene, so it feels like there’s more of him than anyone else.”

“He’s naked?” Madeleine’s eyes were wide.

“Starkers,” Teddy said. “He has a towel around his neck and I kept thinking he was going to wrap it around, you know, but he never did.”

“This I’ve got to see,” Madeleine was giggling like a teenager.

“Haven’t you already seen it?” I snapped.

“Darling, you don’t have to answer that question,” Teddy said, and Madeleine, frowning, replied, “Believe me, I’m not going to touch it.”

“See that you don’t,” I said.

“Children, children,” Teddy chuckled. “Play nicely.”

I
had no intention of going to see Guy’s play, but the next day he called Madeleine’s machine to tell us he had left two comp tickets in her name at the box office and Madeleine insisted it would be rude not to go. “Why us,” I complained. “Are we the closest thing he has to friends?” To which she replied, “I don’t understand this antipathy you have for Guy. After all—”

“He saved my life,” I finished for her.

“Well, yes, Edward,” she said. “He did.”

I can hardly remember what the play was about. An Italian family, all staying at a beach house. Two brothers, one girl. Something like that. Or maybe it was a brother and sister, and the brother’s friend. The older generation included a doddering grandfather. Generational conflict, the changing world, expectations too high or not high enough.

As Teddy promised, Guy had a lot of lines and in the last scene he appeared naked, save a thin towel across his shoulders which he used to pop someone, his brother or his friend, or maybe it was his father, someone who was shocked to find his friend/brother/son naked in the kitchen at nine o’clock on a Sunday morning. Guy had a nice monologue near the end, to the effect that his family was smothering him and he didn’t know what to do with his life, which he delivered while holding a glass of milk.

I watched halfheartedly, one eye on the stage, the other on Madeleine, who appeared to be enjoying it much more than I
was. She laughed at all the lame jokes and she followed the actors closely as they moved about. Her eyes never left the stage. When the lights came up on Guy’s bare back at the open refrigerator pouring out milk, I gave her a close look, noting something, amusement, admiration, maybe just intense interest, that irritated me. Guy turned around and the audience gave the requisite inhale attendant upon full frontal nudity. There was a lot of it on the stage in the ’70s, more than there is now.
Let My People Come
was just around the corner, a cast of fifteen without a stitch on for two hours, they even had an orgy onstage, so people were getting jaded about all that, still, a naked man or woman in a social setting where everyone else is clothed always creates a frisson. I looked at Guy, who was drinking his milk, staring out over the footlights, a self-satisfied smirk on his face. He was loving it; he was in heaven. His sister or girlfriend, or his brother’s girlfriend, whoever she was, sitting at the kitchen table, spoke to him. He turned to her, jutting his hips forward, and praised the virtues of milk. The audience, save one, laughed. Madeleine’s mouth was open, the corners lifted, her expression engaged and titillated. I studied my knees. Disgruntlement and disgust were churning into something solid in my gut. I wanted to get up and walk out, but I knew Madeleine wouldn’t forgive me and I didn’t want to risk that. Also, if I left, I was in effect leaving her alone with Guy, who was strutting about the stage, spewing his lines like a sick baby, while his fellow actors stood by attending their cues. What else could they do? He was a hog of an actor, over the top and out of control; he even managed to upstage the girlfriend/sister’s
weepy confession of her long-repressed, undying love. I recall one line—“You were a fling for me”—at the conclusion of a longish tirade about his inability to love. He tossed it at her like a brick, blindsiding her, so that she appeared to be struck dumb. It was one of those perfectly dead moments when everything comes together, the banality of the script, the ineptitude of the direction, the stereotyped superficial performances of the actors, the moment when the complete falsity of the enterprise is manifest and you know a play really stinks. If, instead of yelling the idiotic line, Guy had whispered it, there might have been hope; the actress would have had something to do, she wasn’t bad, she might have made something out of it. But Guy made the scene all about his character, a big, stupid, naked, self-absorbed, unfeeling ape.

“He’s got no subtlety,” I said to Madeleine after the show. We were drinking beer at Jimmy Ray’s on Eighth Street. “There’s nothing going on underneath. If the guy’s a dick, that’s fine, but there’s got to be something behind that, I mean, there’s a reason he’s a dick. It didn’t just happen; he wasn’t fucking born a dick.”

“What did you think of his dick?” Madeleine asked.

“That’s an incredibly crude thing to say,” I snapped.

She laughed. “It just seems to be on your mind.”

“Frankly, I was too aggravated by his acting to notice, but I’m sure you have an informed opinion.”

“I didn’t think his acting was that bad. It’s not a great part, but he made the best of it.”

“Oh please,” I begged.

The play got two reviews and the critics agreed with Madeleine. One called Guy’s performance “stalwart,” the other said he’d attacked a difficult role with “brio.”

“If the audience is conscious that the actor is attacking his character,” I told Madeleine, “it’s all over, it’s a failed performance.”

“You need to get over your envy of Guy,” she replied. “It’s not very attractive.”

Of course everyone was talking about Guy’s success; you couldn’t go out for a burger without hearing about his latest coup. The reviews resulted in the acquisition of an enthusiastic agent and a callback for a play at the Public and another at St. Mark’s Theater. Christopher Walken beat him out for the part at the Public, but who could complain about being bested by Christopher Walken, etc. The Italian thing ran for its allotted stretch during which time Madeleine and I began our own rehearsals, so I didn’t actually see Guy for several weeks. Then, one night, Teddy invited a few friends to his apartment for drinks and there he was, the new, improved, Equityed and agented Guy Margate, lounging in an armchair before a nonfunctional fireplace with a glass of Teddy’s good Scotch and a pretty, rabbity blonde leaning over him to give him the benefit of her cleavage. Madeleine and Mindy went into a giggling clutch at the door. “Who’s the blonde?” I asked Teddy.

“She was in the play, the sister. Or was it the girlfriend?” Teddy said. “Her name is Sandy. Sandy something.”

Sandy was laughing and Guy watched her with that peculiar avidity he had, the dead gazing upon the living. His shoulders
were bigger than I recalled; he must have been lifting weights. He was unshaven, his hair unkempt. Was he going for an Italian-stallion look? He lifted the Scotch to his lips and his gaze, surveying the room, settled on me. I nodded—yes, I recognize you—nothing more personal than that. Then he spotted Madeleine behind me, she was still buzzing with Mindy, and his focus narrowed to a fine point. If he had used his eyes that well onstage he might have made something of that character.

Which was Guy’s problem in a nutshell. He could never see himself from himself. He created character from the outside looking in, he constructed a persona. Basically anyone can do it, politicians do it nonstop. It’s not, perhaps, a bad way to start. But Guy could never inhabit a character because he was himself so uninhabited. Nobody home, yet he wasn’t without strong emotions. I didn’t know that last part then.

Madeleine released Mindy and threaded her arm through mine, rubbing my shoulder with her chin. Guy took this in with only a compression of his lips, but I knew he wasn’t pleased. I bent my neck to brush Madeleine’s hair with my lips, my eyes on Guy, and I smiled at him pleasantly, complacently, as a poker player smiles when he lays a straight flush upon the table.