by Leah Stewart
For the rest of the conversation, she tries, but she can’t get back there. Max keeps them in the past, to help her out maybe. Sensing what she needs from him to find the right emotion, the way the best actors do. But now talking about their fights and their love scenes feels searching, effortful, backward, evoking their characters’ past to play a scene in their own lives. Her buzz ebbs away until she feels only how tired she is, how soul-sappingly tired. No one’s going home with anyone tonight.
Still, there’s a possibility between them, the convention just a week away. Out on the street, Max hugs her and steps back, his hand still cupping her shoulder. “I’ll see you soon?”
She nods. He leans in to kiss her on the mouth. A light, close-mouthed kiss. A kiss like a question, like a reminder, like encouragement.
Josie and Max know to be discreet—public kissing, public anything—but it’s hard to be careful all the time. Be careful, Josie! They kiss, and a camera flashes in the dark.
IV.
We may be asked, “How is it possible that an actor can experience the life of a murderer if he has never killed anyone?” Our reply is that it is not necessary to commit murder in order to experience the feeling of a murderer. We are already being trained in the technique of murder when we are seized, very often for trivial reasons, with the impulse to drown our neighbor in a glass of water.
— I. SUDAKOV, “The Creative Process”
One.
Charlie doesn’t know how many days have passed. He has no means of keeping track. Perhaps three, perhaps three times three. All the days are the same. Already he has learned that he should ration his sleep for nighttime because the nights are far harder to endure. But of course, the human mind being a contrary animal, the days are when sleep comes without effort. It comes like a magic carpet through the window to take him away. He doesn’t dream of being kidnapped, not yet. He dreams that his mother has a message for him, that she keeps saying he’ll find it in the drawer, but he doesn’t know what drawer she means. He dreams that it’s his cue but he can’t find the stage door. He dreams that Josie calls him but hangs up before he reaches the phone. He remembers little of this when he wakes, just a bright then fading image: his mother’s face, Josie’s face, replaced by the midnight walls.
When he’s awake during the day and especially at night, he tries to summon memory like dreams. He closes his eyes because the small space inside his head is better than the small space outside it. He looks for a memory he wants to live in, and when he finds one, he plays it in his head until he wears it translucent, until he can see through it to the unimaginable present, and then he searches for another one, quick, quick, before he’s overwhelmed by fear.
Right now, in what the slight lessening of darkness tells him is very early morning, he goes in his mind to Josie’s house, Josie’s bed, early in their relationship. The first time he stayed all weekend, not planning to, just going back there with her after dinner Friday night and finding himself still there Sunday morning. She opened a spare toothbrush for him. Both of them naked, her leg warm against his, and they’re talking about learning to act, how he took so many classes and she never took one.
“You’ve never taken a single class?”
“Nope.” She laughs. “You’re so astonished. I guess that’s a compliment?”
“Yes, it’s a compliment. I trained for years, and you just do it.”
“I’ve read a little, here and there, but I don’t find a lot of it helpful.”
“What have you read?”
“Let’s see. Something by Uta Hagen—”
“Oh, one of my professors was obsessed with her.”
“Really? I thought that whole transference thing was silly.”
“No triggers for you, huh? No inner objects?”
“Remind me what those are?”
“They’re . . . a visual cue for an emotion. Something that was there when you felt something. Like, if I wanted to remember how I feel right now to play a scene, I might picture that lamp.”
“Why wouldn’t you picture me?”
“It’s supposed to be an object. Also, it’s supposed to be linked with a specific memory, not your whole experience of a person.”
“What are you feeling right now?”
He grins at her.
She grins back.
“Your thigh,” he says.
“I knew you were going to say that. Try again.”
“All right, I’m feeling . . . contented.”
“Contented?” She pulls a wry face.
“No?”
“It lacks drama.”
“I’m feeling passionate?”
“Now you’ve gone too far the other way.”
“Happy.” He wants to say love, but neither of them has said it yet, and so there is also fear.
“Happy’s good. Did you ever try transference?”
“Oh sure. It was required. I was doing the speech from Richard II when Richard comes home to the news that he’ll lose his kingdom.”
“Of comfort no man speak,” she says.
“Yup. So there’s grief, of course.”
“There’s a shift from joy to terror.”
“Yes! Exactly. So I remembered my girlfriend freshman year. One day I left class early because I was sick, came back to the dorm. I was actually thinking about calling her, maybe she’d bring me a milkshake, when I heard her voice through the walls. She was promising the guy next door that she’d break up with me soon.”
“You’re kidding.”
“She was sleeping with the guy next door! She kept saying, ‘It’s just so awkward.’ Then instead of confronting her, I waited, all pathetic, for her to break up with me, and after she did, she was dating the other guy so for months I kept running into her in the hall. That’s what I used.”
“What was the object?”
“The milkshake. I went out and got myself one.”
“A milkshake for grief. I still think it’s silly. Tell me something else you learned.”
“Um, psychological gesture. That’s Michael Chekhov. How you do something leads to why. Move with caution and you’ll feel caution.”
“Okay, that makes more sense to me.”
“You were supposed to imagine your character’s body, then put it on like clothes.”
“Now that I don’t do. I mean, I move like the character, of course, but the clothes part sounds weird.”
“Well, you step into the character. You become them, and you don’t need your own memories, your own emotions, because you have theirs. You’re possessed, or you possess them. It’s a little bit more mystical, this approach.”
She leans over and kisses him with such tenderness that he’s confused. “Why’d I deserve that?”
“I just suddenly felt sad at the thought of little freshman Charlie lying in his bed, listening to his girlfriend debate how to dump him.”
He kisses her back, surprised by the strength of his grateful response.
“And then it’s also sad,” she says, flopping onto her back, “to think of you making yourself feel that again for acting class. That seems torturous.”
“Yes,” he says. “But it also lets you believe the bad shit that happens to you is useful.”
“Sure,” she says doubtfully.
“You know what I miss about that time? How sincere we were. How seriously we took it all. Standing in a circle, throwing balls at each other to practice radiating.”
“Radiating?”
“Yeah, like sending each other energy. You were supposed to be able to catch the ball without looking. Do you want me to teach you other stuff I know? Stage combat?”
“Please. You don’t think I’ve got that down?”
“Hand to hand, sure, but what about swords?”
“Are you kidding? I can swordfight.”
“Oh that’s right, I’ve seen that. Okay, I know.” He jumps up. “Come on, get out of bed.”
“I already know how to act. I’m naked.”
“Come on, trust me.”
She sighs, but she gets up.
“Okay, now walk behind me and try to walk like I do.”
She says nothing, so he glances over his shoulder at her. “Watch me and do what I do.”
She shakes her head at him in playful reproof. “I got it. They’re not hard instructions. Go.”
They walk around the house for several minutes until Charlie can tell—how? who knows?—that energy has passed between them, that they’re moving in unison. He stops and she bumps against him. He turns and puts his arms around her.
“I liked that,” she says. “First I was studying you, and then I was imitating you, and then I was just being you. I became you.”
“Right? And how do you feel?”
She gives him a smile with wonder in it. “I love you,” she says.
Then what did you feel, Charlie?
Joy.
Two.
He must have drifted at last from memory into sleep because he’s startled and confused when the door opens. He’s not where his mind told him he was. Thomas and Adan unchain one ankle and two wrists so he can eat his meager breakfast as usual, and after Thomas takes the empty plate away, Adan announces that he’s earned the right to remain at this less confining level of confinement. “You’re happy, Ben” is how he says it.
Charlie supposes he’s been good. “Thank you,” he says, to keep being so. He’s relieved every time one of them calls him Ben. His own experience of this island suggests his captors may experience spotty internet connections. Funny to think that he found the crappy signal frustrating a short time ago, however long ago that was. Funny that what he feels right now is gratitude. He is grateful that the internet doesn’t work properly. He is grateful that only one of his legs is chained. “Thank you,” he says again.
Adan seems pleased. He lingers, basking a moment in his pleasure. “You walk now,” he says. He makes a circle in the air with his pointed finger to indicate the perimeter of the room. “Much better.”
“Much better,” Charlie agrees.
“I asked,” Adan says. “For you.”
“Thank you.”
“No problem now,” Adan says. “No . . .” He puts his hand on his chest and breathes fast and hard.
“Asthma,” Charlie says.
Adan smiles the smile of a successful problem solver. “No asthma!”
Charlie nods. He’s not sure he can produce a fourth thank-you. He fears that if he tries he might shout or weep. Yes, it is better to wear one chain than four, but it is not nearly as good as not wearing any. There’s something terrifying about Adan’s cheerful conviction that he has given Charlie a wonderful thing. He’s hanging about like a starstruck fan, like whatever he wants from Charlie is something he deserves to have. Charlie is well practiced in the art of polite self-extrication, but how does he perform that here? How, for God’s sake, does he make this guy go away? “You’re my friend,” he manages, trying to sound like Ben Phillips, who might actually believe that.
Adan’s smile freezes, then dissolves. “Yes,” he says, with a solemn unease. Charlie imagines the boy feels guilty, though whether that guilt is about doing too much for Charlie or too little, he couldn’t say. Either way, Adan wants to leave now, which is the result Charlie wanted and the one he gets.
He waits until Adan is gone to move. When they take Charlie to the bathroom, one of them hauls him to his feet. For a moment it feels as if he’s forgotten how to stand on his own. He gets on one knee, like a man proposing, makes it the rest of the way from there. He’s standing. Now what?
This is a stage. This is an acting exercise. Who, given his circumstances, does he need to be? To answer, he first has to consider his aims: (1) survival; (2) escape. The trouble is that the person he needs to be to survive is perhaps not the person he needs to be to escape.
For survival, Ben Phillips was an apt choice. On the show, he was a man confined to a small space who was at the mercy of a volatile and powerful person. Ben survived via his own tenderheartedness, so when Alan Reed’s character wounded him, he responded to the hurt that made that person want to wound. Ben survives in the grip of power that attacks only when it sees a threat. But there are people who don’t need their cruelty to contain an element of effort, people who see weakness and want to stamp it out. Ben Phillips would never survive them.
Alan Reed was himself volatile and powerful. He’d make up lines, and if the writer dared correct him, he’d say, “Well, now it’s written by Alan Reed.” When the second lead wanted to direct, and after he proved the earnestness of this desire by shadowing the directors of multiple episodes, the showrunners gave him the opportunity. To Alan Reed, this was usurpation. On the first day of shooting he showed up three hours late.
But Alan loved Charlie. Charlie survived like Ben survived, by being no threat to him. To this day, Alan addresses him as kid, and Josie is convinced that Alan doesn’t actually know his name. But he survived when survival was paramount.
Who should he be if what’s paramount is escape?
He paces the perimeter of the room. Then again more slowly. This time he checks all the cinder blocks, looking for a wobble, a crack. He imagines working the knife between them until he could loosen one enough to push it out. But he’d have to do it all at once, loosen the block, because as soon as someone came in, his efforts would be obvious, white powdery lines in the dark blue paint. He hates this paint. He hates this color. He imagines going through the world destroying everything this color: a dress, a house, the sky at night. And what if he did get one block loose? It’s not like he could fit through it. He could shout. He could put his face in the hole and shout, but all he can see behind the house is a small scrubby yard and a fence and then a few yards past the fence some laundry hanging on a line.
He leans against the wall, puts his hands on his face. Daniel Craig wore a midnight blue tux in Skyfall. He remembers thinking it looked cool, wondering if he should get one for an event he was attending. What was that event? The Young Hollywood Awards, maybe. In the end, he didn’t wear a midnight blue tux, and if he had, he’d go back in time right now and rip it off himself and burn it.
James Bond. That’s who he should be. “Ha,” he says out loud into his hands. For several minutes, he indulges again in the fantasy that his empty-hand fight training could get him out of here. He could take them all at once, them and all their guns. How satisfying that is to imagine, the deft unstoppable punches he’d throw. But when his imagination gives ground to reality, he wants, once again and forever, to weep.
All right. He has some agency now. He’s on his feet. So what can he do? He has the knife but no idea what to do with it. What does he have that he knows how to use? What is he good at? He’s good at people. He needs to figure out these people. Who does he need on his side for survival? Is there anyone who might be on his side for escape? Adan is the obvious possibility, but Charlie’s instinct is that he won’t go against Denise. Thomas is even more clearly Denise’s lackey. Thomas takes pleasure in his domination over Charlie. Thomas will not hesitate to inflict pain, though Charlie suspects he’ll only do so under orders. Thomas is a man who believes in hierarchy and is glad not to be at its bottom. And Darius—well, Charlie isn’t sure about Darius. Darius has an air of dignified grievance, and Charlie isn’t sure if he, Charlie, is the cause of the grievance or if it’s something else. From what Charlie can gather, Darius is in charge, which means that he might provide necessary protection from Denise, but he has no motive for wanting Charlie to escape. Charlie’s instinct tells him that, like Adan, Darius feels sorry for him. With Denise, he must neither provoke nor show weakness. With Denise, he must try not to exist.
What about the other woman, the woma
n who wears the housekeeper’s uniform? He’s wondered about her, glimpsing her from time to time through a doorway when they escort him from room to bathroom and back. Always in that uniform, with the little tree embroidered on the shirt pocket. The rest of them wear shorts and assorted T-shirts—like crew members, he thinks grimly—and so she doesn’t seem to be one of them. Someone’s girlfriend, he’s thought, someone’s sister, someone’s wife. He’s imagined that she might be trapped in this as he is. If this were a movie, she would be the one to sneak into his room in the middle of the night and let him go.
This woman is the one to try, should he ever get the chance. And if he does get the chance, how could he win her sympathy? Who might she want him to be?
He doesn’t know. He will be anyone for her. But he doesn’t know who to be.
Maybe he could use the knife to get the chain off his foot. He tugs at it experimentally, but it gives no indication of weakness. He crouches to examine first the manacle around his ankle then the padlock that holds the chain to the stake in the ground. Could he pick a lock with the knife? Only if it’s as easy as it looks, which few things are. He’s never even done that on TV. Could he saw through a link of the chain? He examines one, turning it over, feeling every bump and divot with his fingers, as though this will tell him something. What does he know of metal or its fragilities? And if he did get loose? The door is locked. There are armed people on the other side.
He could wait in a corner with the chain, and when the door opened, he could wrap it around the person’s neck. He thinks the person because he’s reluctant to think Adan. He could just knock this person out maybe. And then get his gun.
That will never work, says a voice in his head. This is not a movie. You are not Princess Leia in the gold bikini. Are you crazy? You can’t do it. There’s nothing you can do.
He sits on the floor now with his legs sprawled out in front of him, slumped forward, his hands loosely gripping the chain. He is an empty body waiting to be possessed. Move with despair and that is what you will feel. He might as well still be splayed on the ground and chained. He pictures himself that way, his long limbs stretched, not with freedom or joy or the making of snow angels but by chains; and the hands on the other side of those chains are sometimes fists, sometimes limp, rolling one way and then another, the head tilted back to the floor or sometimes rolled with the chin toward the shoulder; both hands and head moving, when they do, purely for the relief of a change in position no matter how small. He imagines he sees this body from above. Now he must put it on like clothes.
