“Please help me,” said Manny.
I sent the email. I opened the window and let the laptop drop onto the street.
I went to the kitchen table. Manny looked at me, and then at the man who was meant to be me, and then at me. The man’s beard, which had been a copy of mine, had disappeared. He was clean-shaven.
I tugged Sacred Centers out of his hand and stuffed it in my bag.
He kept the gun on Manny.
“You have no intention of helping,” said Manny to me. He turned to the man who was meant to be me and said, “Stanley has arrived—here is your man. May I now go?”
The man said, “What do I want to know about what else is planned for me in this performance.”
“You’re involved,” I said to Manny.
“The Made-Up Man,” said the man to me.
“You’re not a victim,” I said.
“He’s not the made-up man,” said the man.
Manny jumped to his feet, upsetting his roller bag.
The man adjusted his aim accordingly.
“I am involved and I am a victim!” said Manny.
“I don’t respect you,” I said.
“He has no character,” said the man who was meant to be me.
Manny glanced at the door. He glanced at the gun.
“I signed no nondisclosure agreement,” he said.
He explained that my uncle had approached him through social media and offered him five hundred euros for each night he stayed in the apartment, with the opportunity for two hundred and fifty more per ad hoc request. My uncle had required that Manny ask T to ask me to put him up, which, at the time, seemed permissible. Despite what Manny had read about my uncle’s reputation (violations of privacy, injury and wrongful death lawsuits, suspicion of criminal involvement in Eastern European illegal immigration networks, subsequent exploitation of illegal immigrants), he agreed, he arrived, he endured my idiocy, abuse, and denial (I should see a therapist immediately, he’d never met a man so unaware of himself). He saw fit to accept a number of ad hoc requests (taking me out to a restaurant to ask me about graduate school and employment, taking me on a walk to offer me an unsolicited assessment of the nature of my relationship with T), attempted but aborted another (taking me out to a café to ask me about my mother and my father and my brother and my aunt), and rejected several appalling ones (telling me the story of how he recovered from his first breakup, telling me the story of how he recovered from his worst breakup, giving me a hug).
“Do you understand why I am providing you with this information?” said Manny.
I nodded. “You’re not important.”
“This is not his story,” said the man who was meant to be me.
Manny went on: after I walloped him with the shoe and rampaged out, that was it, he’d decided to end the business relationship. Before he finished packing, though, he was approached by a preposterously dressed woman who sang instead of speaking, who introduced herself as “Mystery.” Mystery offered Manny twice the nightly rate to remain in the apartment until I returned. Manny refused. Mystery upped the offer to five times the rate. Manny asked for ten.
“With that revealed, I know what conclusion you’ve come to,” said Manny. “That is why I want you to listen closely: no sum, however high, could make me execute a request detrimental to T.”
He cited turned-down requests to invite T to the restaurant, on the walk, and to the apartment.
“That is why I am here,” he said. “I could not rely on you to keep her out of it.”
I put down my bag.
Manny drew a breath.
I took the gun from the man’s hand—he didn’t resist—I stepped back and pointed it at the floor.
“Go,” I said to Manny.
He snatched an envelope off the table, one I hadn’t seen, and tore it open to a bundle of rubber-banded cash. “You must know that what you have done—what you are doing—is irresponsible and selfish,” he said.
He counted the bills, quick as a banker.
“When I arrived, T sent me many texts,” he said. “She hoped to meet the both of us for a coffee. She hoped to visit us here, in this apartment.”
He opened the door, looked both ways.
“Would you consider me ‘important,’ would you ‘respect’ me,” he said, “if I told you how I persuaded her to keep away?”
“You don’t love her any more than I do,” I said.
“He might,” said the man.
Manny did a little air hump.
“I informed her of your attempt to place your dick in your professor.”
He slammed the door behind him.
“Unfaithful! Desperate! Unimaginative!” he screamed.
My mother had told my aunt, I realized, and my aunt had told my uncle, and my uncle had told whoever he’d needed to tell to achieve whatever he’d needed to achieve.
Manny’s roller bag bumped down the hall.
“And you, ‘artists,’ hear me! I am not prohibited from reporting your activities to the authorities!”
His roller bag clabbered on the steps.
“Arrest! Incarceration! Litigation!”
The lobby door shut with a whump.
The man who was meant to be me looked me in the eye.
“I’m not sure who I am,” he said.
“You’re a performance artist!” I yelled.
I sounded but didn’t feel drunk.
He looked straight ahead. His posture loosened.
“Perform!” I said.
“I’ve been thinking about something my uncle said to me at my aunt’s birthday party,” he said. “He sat me down at the breakfast bar. He had a proposal. He said that I was the man for it because I was ‘actual.’ He said that I know why I take the actions that I take.”
He opened a tin case of hand-rolled cigarettes.
“I’ve been thinking about this idea a lot,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about it even when I didn’t know that I was thinking about it. It’s because I want to believe it. It’s a view of myself that’s easy.”
He checked both sides of the cigarette and then he put it in his mouth.
He said, “It’s clear to me now that my uncle said this only because he believes the opposite to be true, that I don’t know why I take the actions that I take. That my view of myself is made up.”
He offered me a cigarette. I tucked it into my shirt pocket.
“I’ve been thinking about my father,” he said, closing the tin case. “My father is an American man. He tells himself, and others, that he’s the kind of man who says what he means and means what he says. That he’s a mystery he’s solved.”
He searched himself for a lighter.
“I don’t want to admit it, but I try to be like my father. I’m trying to believe, for example, that I came to Prague because of a woman.”
Someone in the hallway sighed.
“Because of the idea of a woman,” he said.
Someone in the hallway sighed differently.
“I’ve been thinking about my aunt,” he said. “My aunt is an American woman.”
He was doing an impression of my heaped-forward way of sitting, of my leg-bopping. But without the beard, his bruised face was his, not mine, and his antihero growl registered nowhere near my voice. There was something else: lodged in his ear was a wireless earpiece.
He found a lighter.
I plucked the earpiece out. His talking stopped; he put down his props.
From the earpiece came a voice.
The voice was my uncle’s.
My uncle was saying, “I am trying to believe, for example, that I am coming to Prague because of myself, because of the idea of myself.”
He stopped, waiting.
I moved close to the man who was meant to be me. I held the earpiece between us, so that the both of us could listen, and I said, “I hear you.”
My uncle said, “I am understanding the project now.”
The man who was meant to be me sai
d, “I understand the project now.”
My uncle said, “I am understanding the origin now, the motive of my uncle and my aunt, it is in me now, I am seeing it, I am re-seeing it: there is worry about me. My aunt hears worry from my brother and from my mother, and she goes to T, she hears worry from T. She thinks. She goes to the garage, to the workshop, to my uncle, she says, ‘We must help Stasiu. Let Stasiu be the one to help with art. Let Stasiu be the one to help with what is next.’ And my uncle, he is working, he is working on the film noir and the detective novel and the crime mystery and the thriller, and America, always America, the shining surface of America, he is working on a project of a scale of which he has but dreamed, of a mode of great darkness and truth, a project that is to be a living shadow of a life, an actual life, close to it, cast by it, and he says to my aunt, ‘I love you.’ They plan together. They plan to make me the made-up man. My uncle plans plot, my aunt plans the proposal that my uncle will give to me. They plan the parts in secret, not sharing: this is my uncle’s condition. My aunt’s condition: ‘It must help him.’ They are working. My aunt, she is working, she is working like she has not worked since marriage. It is renewal. The day my uncle is to offer the proposal to me, the day of my aunt’s birthday, they share, they review. My aunt is broken into horror. She says, ‘This is destructive, this is not instructive.’ ‘Destructive is instructive,’ says my uncle. They fight. The fight is old and bad, but new and worse, and family, and my aunt says if the plot does not change, she will not betray the project but she will move out, she will never return, she will bring heartbreak to herself and to my uncle. I am understanding now: this is the most important moment for my uncle. This is the moment of great darkness and truth. He re-sees. He re-sees the why of how previous projects, Country-Western Country and O Say Can You Pee, failed. You do not instruct the community, such as America, by instructing the community, such as country-western music. You instruct the community by instructing the individual. And you must use the community, all of the community, to instruct the individual…”
At almost the same time, with a delayed overlap, as if translating, the man who was meant to be me was saying, “… I understand the origin of the project now. Everyone was worried about me. My aunt went to my family, she went to T, she listened. No one could help. She thought about it. She went to my uncle, who was working on a project, his most ambitious to date, a shadow-project—”
I pulled away from the man, keeping the earpiece.
My uncle said, “My uncle says, ‘Action is not a shadow made by man! Man is a shadow made by action!’”
I threw down the earpiece and stomped it.
The man who was meant to be me didn’t react.
I screamed that this wasn’t canvases or clay, this was people, people whether or not they’d been paid, whether or not they were in the know, this was despicable, this was unethical, this wasn’t being artists, this was being criminals.
“I’m sorry I hit you,” I said to the man.
“I can stop,” I said.
“You,” I said. “You can stop.”
“I made a mistake,” said the man, still imitating me.
He did a face that I pretended to read: me beginning to swerve away from myself.
I flipped the table—it cracked to its side on the floor.
“I shouldn’t have come,” he said.
I tapped the gun against my leg.
Sweat poured from all parts of the man’s face.
“Why do you think you know how to be me?” I said.
He looked at his hands. “I don’t know what I’ll do next.”
I thought about what my uncle would want me to do next, which was any action that would artistically enrich The Made-Up Man, and what my aunt would want me to do next, which was access another way of seeing things, and what my dad would want me to do next, which was leave, and what my mom would want me to do next, which was grow up, and what my brother would want me to do next, which was be my best self, a self just outside and above the borders of my ordinary everyday sum-average self, a self to push for, and what T would want me to do next, which was I didn’t know what because the T I’d known since she’d moved out was a T I’d imagined.
“You’ll talk to me about it,” said a woman in a dress in the doorway.
It was the made-up woman. She was now meant to be T.
“There’s still time,” she said.
Her dress was one that T would wear, bright and classy, and her hair was done like T’s, down and dark and wavy, and her voice was like T’s when T spoke in the voice of the character she played in Black and White and Dead All Over.
“I’m here,” she said.
I shut the door on her and locked it, and I grabbed the man who was meant to be me by the shoulder and yanked him backwards. He slammed to the floor, flat on the back of the chair. I planted my foot on his face. He squirmed—I pressed his cheek, pinning his head to one side. I pointed the gun at my foot on his face.
He stopped moving.
I fired—I fired all six rounds—every one a booming blank.
The man rolled, hands on his ears, grimacing.
My hearing hummed and popped. I stepped back, I waved smoke.
The man wasn’t grimacing. He was grinning.
I clubbed him in the head with the gun. He threw up his hands. I circled, to find an opening, and I clubbed him again. He tried to get up and couldn’t. Then I wasn’t sure if what I’d seen was a grin or a grimace, the prelude to laughter or to pain, and I stopped, embarrassed and outraged, and I might have clubbed him again but the woman who was meant to be T was at my side, keys in hand, wrenching me by the arm.
She looked like T, she smelled like T.
The gun fell out of my hand.
She was speaking.
Blood was welling from above the man’s ear.
The man and the woman were speaking Polish.
We were lifting the man to his feet.
We were walking the man down the stairwell.
We were walking the man through the alley to the street.
We were helping the man into a cab.
“I am acting,” the man was saying.
The cab left.
There was lightning.
The woman kept her hand on my arm. “I am no longer acting, okay?”
I went inside for my bag and she followed.
There was no one on the stairs or in the hallway or in the apartment.
“Do not leave me here,” she said.
I went outside with my bag and she followed.
There was no one in the alley or in the street.
“I am coming with you, let me come with you.”
I waited for a cab.
“Listen,” she said. “I am not going to act, I don’t want to, but if I stay with you, Lech is going to pay me more, he wants me to stay with you. Allow me. Just please do not hurt me, okay?”
A cab pulled up.
“Okay,” said the woman.
She was trembling.
I got in the cab and said, “Airport.”
“Airport,” said the driver.
The woman who was meant to be T tried to scoot in beside me but I blocked her.
“No!” she screamed, shoving me, striking me, “my family, my family!”
I closed the door on her again.
“I’m helping her,” I said to the cabbie.
The cabbie pulled up to the curb at Departures.
I didn’t get out of the car.
The cabbie opened the door for me. “Airport,” he said.
I showed him the ticket to T’s play.
The cabbie pulled up to the curb at the theater.
In the lobby the lights dipped, dimming and undimming, the end of intermission. I stood still. Audience members glimmered. They drank and chatted, herding. Some wore dresses and suits and ties, some wore what looked like costumes, outfits and wigs and masks. I followed them into the house, toward the seats, but an usher stopped me at the entran
ce and asked to see my ticket. I stepped aside to go through my pockets.
Afiya passed, laughing, surrounded by middle-aged men and women.
There was no ticket. I bought another at the box office.
“What show are you in?” said the usher.
I didn’t understand.
“Your makeup,” she said, pointing at my eye.
I was seated in the front row, far left. I waved my hand in front of my face. I’d stopped being able to see out of my hurt eye.
The lights went out, the curtains went up.
The behind-the-scenes set of an old-time radio drama: a booth, a table and chairs, microphones and scripts. Jazz played, low and rich and dangerous. The edges of instruments sparkled in the pit. In the Chicago production, the intros and outros had all been canned.
The live music lifted me a little outside of myself.
I floated in the dark.
T wasn’t in the second act until halfway through it.
The actors entered, lit.
I gathered in myself: I found that I could read the actors’ faces. T had told me about objectives. In this production, every actor’s every action was supported by a simple clear intention, a moment-by-moment motivation. Find a secret. Hide a lie. Kill an anger. Induce a love. Some of these objectives were worked out ahead of time with the help of the director. Some of these objectives were improvised onstage, grounded in an actor’s intellectual or emotional understanding of a character. All of these objectives, for as knowable as they were on their own, created mystery when they were put together. You don’t always see them, T had said. But they’re there.
I saw them.
T entered, her character fake-aloof.
The Made-Up Man Page 20
