by Leah Stewart
“Ben! Ben!” he shouts over the edge. He can see only Ben’s hands clinging to the root, his outstretched arms, his upturned, terrified face, all dangling over a pit of despair. He has to save him. “I will save you, Ben!” he shouts, though he has no idea how.
Charlie thinks, as Adan’s face disappears, I will die with people who don’t even know my name. But, of course, he won’t die with them. He will die alone. He will be a great unsolved Hollywood mystery, at least for a little while. What happened to Charlie Outlaw? Where did Charlie Outlaw go? Maybe they’ll make a TV movie. Will they think he killed himself? Will Josie . . . Josie! he thinks. Josie! “Adan, can you do it?” he calls up. “Adan!” His arms tremble, tremble, tremble.
Adan reappears. “We make a rope, Ben.”
“Make a rope? Out of what?”
“Out of . . .” Adan makes a frustrated noise. “Out of sleep.” From behind him, Denise says something sharp. “Hold on, Ben!” He vanishes again.
Out of sleep? Out of sleep? What Adan means is that they’re attempting to fashion a rope out of the string hammocks they’ve been using at night. Thomas, who’s good at knots, is carefully tying them together with the tip of his tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth. But Adan couldn’t summon the English word for hammock, and Charlie can’t make sense of what he said instead. Out of sleep? “Adan!” he calls, in a sudden intensification of his panic, because when he can’t see Adan, he is alone, he’s alone, he’s going to die, he is alone, he can’t do it, he can’t hold on, he can’t survive this, his arms are shaking so hard, what will it feel like to fall so far? Once he starts to fall, will he keep on thinking, like he is now, that somehow he might survive? Or will he feel death’s certainty? Would it be better or worse to be certain? How much pain will he feel on impact? Will death be instantaneous? Are they lying when they say death was instantaneous? How do they know? Will he lose consciousness in the air? Will he die in the air from fear?
Is the best he can hope for that he will die in the air from fear?
A few months ago, he was hoping he’d be nominated for an Emmy. They submitted the episode where his character’s father died. Charlie was really good in that episode, or at least that’s what everybody said. “Adan!” he shouts again, and when he can see Adan, he asks, “Can you do it?”
Adan frowns. “I try, Ben. Hold on, Ben. Hold on.” Gone again.
“I can’t hold on!” he shouts after him. “I don’t know if I can hold on!”
“Hold on,” he hears, faintly, from above.
If he gets back to Josie, he will do anything she wants. He will swear off parties, waving at photographers, smiling in selfies with fans. He will let everyone hate him as long as she doesn’t. He will not need anyone else’s love. He won’t care anymore.
He will never get back to Josie.
“Adan!”
“Hold on . . .”
Beneath his knee, he feels the dirt shift, as if preparing itself to give way. It’s so clear in his mind—the root pulling loose, the cascade of red dirt and rocks, his body falling. He can see it as if it’s already been filmed. The trembling has colonized his body. His teeth chatter. His jaw hums. His legs vibrate against the cliff, helping it toward dissolution. He can’t hold on.
Fear will not help you, Charlie. Remember what it is that you can do better than almost anyone in the world. You can make yourself believe in what you know isn’t real. You are the violinist and the violin. Transform yourself and you transform reality. In one of Uta Hagen’s books, she describes a director and designer arguing about how to create a downpour onstage. The lead actor stopped them cold: “Pardon me, but when I enter it will rain.” Charlie’s long forgotten the actor’s name (it was Albert Bassermann) but easily recalls the line. He wrote it on a strip of paper and tacked it above his bed, reread it most nights before he tumbled into sleep, reciting it like a charm. Pardon me, but when I enter it will rain.
What he’s doing right now is nothing he hasn’t done before. What actor has not spent time dangling off of something? A window ledge, a bridge, a fire escape. He survived all that. Don’t remember the process, Charlie—the harness and the stunt double and the air bag that caught you when you fell. Remember only how it felt to believe you were holding on to save your life and that you could hold on to save your life. Remember determination. Remember faith. He believes the root will hold, the rock will hold, the dirt will hold. Faced with danger, he will narrow his eyes and firm his jaw. He could chase a helicopter, leap after it into the air. That is how sure he is that he can hold on. Josie is up there, though he can’t see her. Josie is up there, and any minute now she’ll throw down a rope.
How long can his self-convincing work? It can work for a little while. Belief must be renewed. In a play, the other actors help you with this. They react to what you said as though you didn’t say it last night or the twenty-seven nights before, and you find your own surprise again. Be in the moment. Concentrate on your object. You have no idea what’s coming next.
A minute passes, and then another. Hours pass. Days.
At first, he thinks a projectile is flying at him, but it’s the improvised rope, skittering down the slope, sending dirt clods and pebbles at his face. He turns his head aside, not fast enough to keep grit out of his eyes or his teeth, and sways alarmingly. The rope stops two feet above him. Are they expecting him to grab it? He could lunge for a helicopter. But there is nothing for him to push off of to make a lunge. If he tries and misses, he will fall.
“Ben!” Adan leans precariously over, the hammock rope wrapped thickly around his waist. “I’m coming down!”
“Coming down?” Charlie repeats. “How? Where?”
Adan points and Charlie turns his head—carefully, carefully—to see a platform of rock, two feet wide, about four feet to his right.
“How, how,” Charlie says, but not loud enough to be heard, and anyway Adan is already climbing down, moving slowly but sure-footed from rock to rock and slowly but sure-handed from branch to bush. Charlie watches in a terrifyingly hopeful suspense. One slip and Adan will fall. The rope might catch him or it might unravel, not actually being a rope, and if Adan falls and the rope holds and dangles him there like a child on a tire swing, will Thomas and Denise be able to pull him back up? Charlie wishes he knew what kind of movie he was watching, action or true-life survival or tragedy. When you know what kind of story it is, it’s possible to predict whether anyone will die. Also, he’d like to know if he’s the main character or if it’s one of them. He’s been thinking all along, as everyone does, that he is, but the main character must have the power to affect the narrative. Adan is the one taking action. Adan is the one standing on the platform, shooting Charlie a smile of achievement and relief, then letting resolution settle over his face as he unwinds the rope from his waist. Adan is the one with a plan.
“We put this around you, Ben,” he says. “Then you . . .” He makes an arc in the air from Charlie to himself.
“I jump?”
“You step. You step.”
Adan comes to the very edge of his platform, holding the rope with both hands. Above him in Charlie’s direction is another, larger root, and Adan tests it, tugging hard, then nods with satisfaction. He holds on to it with his right hand and leans out as far as he can to offer Charlie the rope with his left.
Charlie takes a breath. He keeps his eyes on the rope, only on the rope. He lets go with his right hand to grab it. His left arm accelerates its trembling with the added strain. He pulls the rope across his stomach, pressing it between himself and the cliff. Then he grabs the root with his right hand again, pauses for breath, lets go with his left, and pulls the rope around himself. He manages to fling the end over the length that stretches between him and Adan, so when he lets go to return his left hand, the rope stays. “Yes, Ben,” Adan has been saying the whole time. “Good, Ben. Yes, Ben, yes.”
No
w his right hand again. He pulls the rope through the loop around his waist to make a knot. Then he does it again. Will it hold if he slips? Maybe not. Probably not. He has no idea.
“Now,” Adan says. He points at a small rock halfway between them, at another root just above it. “Step . . .” He pantomimes reaching and stepping. “You step. I pull the rope. You grab my hand.”
So here is what Charlie has to do. He has to let go with his right hand, reach for that root, push to the right with his left foot, reach his foot for that rock, let go with his left hand, grab the root with it, reach for Adan’s hand, swing his foot to the platform. He has to trust the rope. He has to trust Adan. Teachers and fight coordinators and choreographers and directors and other actors have all told him to do this and then do that, and he has obeyed, and so he should be able to obey Adan; this is nothing he hasn’t done before except it is something he’s never done before, and after they tell you what to do, you sometimes make a mistake anyway, but you get to run it again or do another take.
He pictures himself on the platform. He tells himself it has already happened. Then it’s hand, foot, hand, foot, Adan pulling the rope taut and the root giving, but he’s quick to the next one and it holds.
He’s on the platform.
“Okay,” he says. “Okay, okay, okay.” He’s still holding Adan’s hand. He wobbles. Adan grabs him, puts both arms around him. Adan hugs him.
“We did it, Ben,” he says.
“We still have to get back up,” Charlie says into his ear. He is leaning on Adan, his legs trembling so hard it’s all he can do not to collapse against him entirely. This is a strange intimacy, like none he’s ever experienced. He’s not conscious of noting that; he’s too busy trying to persuade his mind and body that it will be better to finish the job of climbing back up than to live forever on this platform, this blessed little utopia.
Adan steps back from Charlie, keeping an arm around his shoulder. “Ben, you see?” He points up the slope to the trail. “You see how I came?”
Charlie nods, gazing up. He’s not sure he does see. Above him, Thomas and Denise peer down. He can’t make out their expressions, but he sees Denise’s swinging braids. Denise calls down something. Adan replies. She and Thomas disappear again.
“I told them you are ready,” Adan says. He pats Charlie gently. “They pull, I push, you go.”
The longer Charlie hesitates, the harder this will be, so he doesn’t hesitate. They pull, Adan pushes, he goes. He is a body. He is a scrabbling animal. All he wants is his life.
Once Thomas and Denise have hauled him the last few inches onto the trail, he crawls away from the edge and leans against the cliff. Up here, nobody hugs him. They don’t even speak. He tries to take the rope off but his hands shake so badly that he can’t undo the knot. Thomas comes over and swiftly undoes it, pushes Charlie forward, neither roughly nor gently, so he can unwind the rope from his waist, then moves to throw the rope back down to Adan. Charlie puts his hands on the trail on either side of him. The dirt is warm. He doesn’t want to cry in front of them. He doesn’t want to cry.
Adan calls something from below, and Denise turns to Charlie. “Help,” she says.
He crawls back to where they are. He doesn’t trust his legs. He takes hold of the rope, behind Denise, and pulls as hard as he can until Adan is on the trail. Then he crawls away again. He watches as the three of them slap one another on the back, as Thomas unties the rope from the tree, separates the hammocks. Denise inspects the hammocks, frowning, and then she balls them up and returns them to the packs. He watches Adan approach, crouch to offer him water, which he drinks. “I saved you, Ben!” Adan says. Charlie nods. Adan beams. He watches Denise approach, Thomas at her heels. “Up,” she says. She steps over his legs and walks on past, so sure of herself she doesn’t even pause to confirm obedience. Once Thomas has walked on, too, Adan helps Charlie to his feet. He keeps his hand on Charlie’s shoulder as they walk single file, and Charlie is grateful for that, and grateful, too, for the warm dirt of the cliff face above him, which he hugs so closely that he will stain the side of his shirt red. He watches the shifting muscles in Thomas’s back, the swinging tails of Denise’s braid. He watches the trail retreat from the edge of the cliff, curving back into trees and then widening until two people could walk side by side. Though they don’t. There is no way to fall here. There is nowhere to fall. It hits him with force that now he won’t fall. He feels like a skeleton enchanted into animation at the moment the enchantment ends.
A few more steps to a boulder and then he collapses. First, he sits on the boulder, then he slides down it until he’s sitting on the ground with his back against rock. Adan hesitates next to him, looks entreatingly after Thomas and Denise, who haven’t noticed that Charlie stopped. “We go, Ben,” he tries, but Charlie feels no inclination to respond. He rubs the soft moss growing on the boulder, which feels to him very much like the fur of a dog. “Ben, we go,” Adan pleads. Charlie closes his eyes. He turns his face to press his cheek against the moss. He hears Adan’s shifting feet as he hesitates. He touches Charlie on the shoulder, but Charlie doesn’t open his eyes. “Ben,” he whispers.
Charlie thinks, That’s not my name.
Adan calls after Denise and Thomas. His footsteps move away. Charlie imagines he is alone. He would like to be alone. But all three of them return, their voices rising, that pleading note still in Adan’s. Denise’s voice is like knives. Charlie doesn’t care. The knives fly past him. He doesn’t flinch. “Get up,” Denise says. Charlie doesn’t even bother to shake his head. She prods him with her foot. “Get up.” Listen, Denise, who do you think you’re dealing with? Charlie has been dead many times. He knows how to be still. He can slow his breathing until you’d think he wasn’t breathing at all. He won’t even flutter an eyelid.
Now she prods him with the gun against his leg. Subtle. “Get up,” she says, layering threat on threat in her tone. She moves the gun up, pushes the muzzle hard enough against his shoulder that he slips and opens his eyes. He’s angry that she got him to open his eyes. “We move now,” she says.
He shakes his head. Adan starts to speak, but she interrupts him with two harsh words. She steps back and aims the gun at him. “Get up now.”
“No,” he says.
“Now.”
“I’m going to rest. If you don’t like it, shoot me.”
“Now.”
“Shoot me.” He doesn’t even look at her, though if he’d been acting, he might have stared her down as he said the line. Maybe not. It would’ve depended on the role. Everything depends on the role. He closes his eyes again. If she is going to shoot him, he sees no reason to watch.
She doesn’t shoot him. She lowers the gun, shrugs, says something to the other two that makes them laugh. Charlie hears them move away, settle down somewhere, talking and then not talking. He doesn’t know what happens after that. His mind releases him into unconsciousness, and for a while he sleeps.
He wakes to Adan gently shaking his arm. “Ben. Wake up, Ben.” When he sees Charlie’s eyes open, he sits back, satisfied. “Good. You rested. Now we go.”
Charlie looks at Adan from far away. “No.”
Adan’s eyes widen. “Ben, we go now.” He glances back over his shoulder. “She—”
“Fuck her.”
“Ben, no. No. We need to go.” Adan hesitates. “I tell you something.” He drops his voice to a murmur, looks Charlie earnestly in the eye. “Darius—not police. Not police, Ben.”
“What do you mean?”
“Police not . . .” He pantomimes shooting.
“The police didn’t shoot Darius?”
“Yes, Ben. They not shoot.”
“Who shot him then?”
Adan sighs. “Denise.”
“Denise shot Darius?”
Adan nods solemnly.
All the muscles in Charlie’s body
tighten. “Why?”
Adan hunts for the words. “If police catch Darius . . .” He mimes grabbing. “Denise think Darius . . .” Now he rotates his hand up and away from his mouth in the gesture that usually indicates singing.
“Darius would sing?”
“Yes,” Adan says, with an emphatic pleasure at his understanding, and Charlie feels an absurd urge to laugh because Adan doesn’t get the pun. Adan is just confused about the right word. Adan straightens out of his crouch. “Denise,” he says, with a rueful headshake. He holds his hand down to Charlie.
Denise shot Darius. Charlie didn’t prove, when he defied her, that Denise wouldn’t go so far as to kill him. All he proved was that she didn’t kill him right then. The spot where she pushed her gun muzzle into his shoulder throbs as if it’s bruised.
You always have a choice. What choice does Charlie have? He takes Adan’s hand, gets wobbly to his feet.
Two.
The pregnant woman in the waiting room is doing a terrible job of pretending not to watch Josie. Under the impression that she’s getting away with it, because Josie appears to be absorbed in her phone, she is flat-out studying her now, her head cocked, her mouth slightly open. When she first looked up from her own phone and noticed Josie—in the row across from hers, two seats down—she quickly looked away again, then snuck one surreptitious glance after another, but Josie never glanced up, and she grew emboldened.
The woman takes in Josie’s red hair—ponytailed; her face—no makeup; her sandals—silver, with a cork-bed sole. Josie wears cropped jeans and a loose-fitting blue-and-white shirt, and sometimes the woman thinks she sees a slight abdominal curve under that shirt, and sometimes she thinks that’s just the shirt. The internet can’t solve the mystery: She searches Josie Lamar pregnant and finds only gossip long past its expiration date. She has a thrilling little hope that Josie is pregnant, that they’ll meet again and again here in the doctor’s waiting room, that they’ll turn out to have due dates only a few days apart—though Josie will have to be a lot more pregnant than she looks, because the woman is already five months along. And Josie will also be having a girl, and they’ll decide to get together outside the waiting room, first for new-mom commiseration and later, when the girls are older, for playdates, and the girls will grow up best friends, and she’ll say casually, “Yeah, Josie and I are meeting at the playground this morning,” and her daughter will be so used to hanging out with a celebrity that she won’t even think it’s remarkable. She’ll be one of those people who downplays her intimacy with the famous, knowing that the information makes other people get weird.
