Three Balconies

by Bruce Jay Friedman

  “I love you, too.”

  Julie had taught him to say “I love you” at the end of all conversations, whether he felt like it or not. On automatic now, he had once said “I love you” to his accountant.

  Harry was unable to reach Vera by phone, but he did get through to an assistant in Manhattan who said she was delighted – on Vera’s behalf – that he had agreed to be in the movie. After taking Harry’s measurements for Wardrobe, she gave him instructions on how to get to the set on the upper West Side. Since no mention was made of airline tickets or hotel accommodations, Harry concluded that he had been put in the category of people who were Friends of the Production and were just participating as a lark. And they were above such considerations as expenses and getting paid. Harry did not bring up any of this since he did not want to have to tell his daughter that he had blown the deal. He was still upset with himself for agreeing to send Megan away to boarding school. To compensate for that cold decision, he had virtually dedicated his life to supplying her with treats and making sure she had a trouble-free existence.

  Harry arranged for an elderly Russian woman who was a year-round resident of the hotel to look in on Megan while he was away. His daughter had mentioned that a vanload of Lacrosse players from her school was going to be passing through Miami. He wanted to make sure she didn’t hop on the van.

  While he was packing, it occurred to Harry – and it bothered him – that he did not have time to lose enough weight to make a significant difference in his appearance. He did what he could by having Special K and skimmed milk for breakfast, drinking a lot of water, and eating only half the portion of stuffed veal that was served on the flight. It troubled him as well that there would be no time to do anything about his hair, which had whitened up in the Miami sun. He had a feeling that if he called the Manhattan salon and said “I have a little part in a movie,” Dennis, though far from happy about it, would squeeze him in for a cut n’color on an emergency basis. But there wasn’t enough time. And even if there had been, it would look as if he had come directly from the salon to the set. Harry’s hair looked best when he was three days into a rinse. So he would just have to show up as a white-haired butterball.

  Harry made his way through a small army of uniformly scruffy young people who were shouting into walkie-talkies. He gave his name to a woman in a tailored suit who appeared to be in authority. Barely looking up from her clipboard, she directed him to a holding area marked by a sign that said “Extras.”

  “Forgive me,” said Harry, with the quiet confidence of a poker player holding a winning hand, “but I have a speaking role.”

  After checking a cast roster, the woman’s attitude softened. She led him to a curbside trailer with a placard affixed to it marked “Daniel,” the name of the character Harry was scheduled to play in the movie. Harry thanked the woman and made a mental note to thank Vera as well for the courtesy. He stepped inside the trailer and saw that his costume was neatly arranged on a bunk bed; the suit was not one Harry would have picked out for himself, but he tried it on all the same. It fit nicely, causing him to rethink his feelings about earth tones. The shoes, however, presented a problem. It was not just the tassels. Though Harry did not care much for tassels, he could understand that the character he played – who lived in a small town – might very well love them. But Harry had always been a tough fit when it came to shoes – he had a wide foot – and the tasseled shoes were particularly uncomfortable. He might have soldiered on with them, but he had a feeling that any discomfort he felt would creep into his performance. And no one would attribute it to the shoes. They would just conclude that he was a lousy actor. So he decided to wear his own shoes – which were as comfortable as bedroom slippers – and carry the tasseled ones to the set, just in case the cinematographer felt that Harry’s shoes threw off the look of the picture.

  Once Harry was fully costumed, the woman with the clipboard, who had been waiting in the street, led him off to a much larger trailer for hair and makeup. After briefly examining Harry’s hair, the stylist decided that a snip here and there was all that was required; he made a big fuss over Harry’s hair texture, calling over an assistant to share in his admiration for it.

  Soon afterward, as Harry was having his makeup applied, a pretty young actress took a seat beside him. Chin in hand, she tucked her legs beneath her, as if she were about to listen to a lecture by her favorite professor. He recognized her as a star of Indie films. She said she had seen and admired one of Harry’s Two Big Pictures on cable and wondered if he would have a drink with her sometime to discuss film.

  “Absolutely,” said Harry, who felt he could get such a meeting past Julie, considering its underlying serious nature.

  The clipboard lady, who had become some kind of personal assistant, led Harry to the set itself – a huge loft that had been gotten up to look like a New England bookstore. Though Harry had the Two Big pictures and divided credits on a few adaptations, he had, surprisingly, never made an actual visit to a movie set. But he was on one now, in costume and carrying the tasseled shoes. Vera looked up from a trio of assistants and Harry thought – or imagined – he saw his and Vera’s whole affair register on her face, like a split-second movie – straight through from his motheaten opening line (“You don’t happen to be a model . . . ?) to her face-saving farewell salvo (“Just remember, Buddy, I’m the one who dumped you”). She didn’t seem to have aged much – she still had the legs and the great hair – maybe a little hardness around the eyes and a slight stoop to her shoulders. She came toward him with a confident stride, extending a businesslike hand. Then, as if to say “the hell with it,” she gave him a big hug and offered both her cheeks to be kissed. She glanced at Harry’s shoes – and the tasseled ones he was carrying – and before he could explain she seemed to make a quick directorial decision and told him not to worry about a thing.

  “You’re going to be great,” she said, with just the faintest tinge of a British accent. “And don’t worry about the lines . . . so long as you don’t drop any factual information.”

  “They’re great lines,” said Harry, one writer to another. “Why would I want to change them?”

  Vera then introduced Harry to the male star. Though the actor had been described by the hair and makeup people as a wonderful human being, he did not come across as being all that wonderful to Harry.

  “You do this often?” he asked Harry, after a perfunctory handshake and the hint of a sneer. Harry had only been sneered at once or twice in his life and he remembered each occasion.

  “Only when I’m asked,” said Harry, wondering what he had done to offend the man.

  He then recalled that early in his career, the actor had been rejected for a part in one of Harry’s Two Big pictures. He had evidently held it against Harry, who – apart from putting in a good word for a girlfriend – had nothing to do with the casting. Harry noted with some surprise that the star seemed overweight and, frankly, quite slovenly, the type of fellow who bowls once a week for exercise. Considering the star’s attitude toward him, Harry was somewhat gratified by this. Yet moments later, when it was time for the star to do a scene – and he had slipped into a smoking jacket and had his makeup freshened – he was transformed into the trim and handsome individual the movie-going public admired. Harry was aware of cinema magic, but this was ridiculous.

  Harry was scheduled to play opposite the female star who was generally cast as a pert and spunky – but not particularly sexy – type who was always challenging authority. As if to demonstrate a dimension of herself that had never been tapped, she was off in a corner of the set, doing hot Latino dance routines. Harry felt they came off as being stubbornly pert and spunky. Nonetheless, when Vera introduced Harry to the female star, he went into automatic flirt mode.

  “My God,” he said, “I’m standing here with America’s sweetheart.”

  “I’ve heard about you,” she said, acknowledging the flirt with a wagging finger.

  When it was time for
their scene, Vera called for quiet on the set. The response was immediate – a hushed and almost reverential silence. Harry wondered what might have happened if years back he had met this Vera, who commanded the respect and admiration of not only a huge cast and crew but of The Industry itself – instead of the disorganized teenager he had virtually found on 23rd Street on her way to a class at the Fashion Institute. Of course, this Vera might not have been terribly interested in Harry.

  Vera showed Harry his “mark,” assuring him once again that he was going to be fabulous. After sizing up the shot, she told Harry to go straight to his Pushkin line. Then she called for action. Harry had expected to begin with “Hi” and “Need any help?” The change in sequence threw him off stride. In addition, what suddenly seemed like the enormity of the moment began to get to him as well. There was so much at stake – a part in a major movie, the huge cast and crew looking on . . . all those careers . . . the millions being spent, even though he wasn’t getting any . . . Though he had rehearsed the line on the plane, perhaps a bit too flamboyantly (the flight attendant had asked Harry if he was ill) his mind went blank. He was unable to bring forth a single word. Vera called for the cameras to stop rolling. She told Harry not to be upset.

  “It happens all the time,” she said.

  After allowing Harry a moment to compose himself, she signaled for the action to begin again. On his second go-round, Harry got the words out.

  “May I interest you in Pushkin?” he heard himself ask the female star. And then, taking a chance, he added the phrase, “Russia’s greatest poet.” Though he was not entirely pleased with his delivery, he saw Vera smile. With a little roll of her hand, she encouraged him to continue. Harry relaxed a bit then. Dipping into his knowledge of nineteenth-century Russia – and with the female star looking on, a tight smile on her face – Harry began to comment on the Tsar, the Winter Palace, the gorgeous imperial uniforms and Pushkin’s financial problems. Gathering confidence, the bit firmly between his teeth, Harry gave a colorful account of Pushkin’s fatal duel with his wife’s paramour, raising the possibility that the poet’s rival, D’Anthes, might have cheated by wearing a steel vest. He described in detail Pushkin’s final moments and Nicholas II’s graciousness in not only settling the poet’s debts, but also establishing a trust fund for his family.

  “Can you imagine an American President doing that for a poet?” was his rhetorical question to the stupefied actress.

  “No, I can’t,” she ad-libbed flatly.

  Then, as Harry paused, struggling to remember the names of Pushkin’s survivors and the attending physician at the fatal duel, Vera signaled for the cameras to stop. She led the cast and crew in a round of applause.

  “Was that a take or was that a take?” said Vera.

  That led to a second round, that was even more enthusiastic.

  Pulling Vera aside, Harry said : “I hope I didn’t do too much.”

  “Oh, no,” said Vera, “You did just enough.”

  Harry sailed through his brief remaining scene. With the Pushkin monologue in the bank, he saw no need to embellish his “Hi” and “Need some help?” dialogue. Feeling he was a genuine member of the cast now he was confident enough to ask the still photographer if she would mind taking a picture of him with the two lead actors. They agreed, the male star somewhat begrudgingly. But – always the star – he flashed a charming last-minute smile when the camera was actually pointed at him. That gave Harry a great souvenir for his daughter – and for his office wall, the main purpose of which was to impress repairmen. Not wishing to offend Vera, he asked for a picture to be taken with her as well, though he had a feeling it would not make it to the wall. With his arm draped across the director’s shoulder, he felt unaccountably protective of her, which of course was absurd. Vera was a powerful force in the industry. Harry was hanging on by his thumbs. It crossed his mind that she might throw him a screenwriting bone. When he saw that no such offer would be forthcoming, he graciously thanked Vera for thinking of him as an actor and gave her a final hug. Then he waved an overhead goodbye to the cast and crew – like Nixon – and left the set.

  Back in the trailer, Harry undressed, got into his own clothes, folded his costume neatly and placed it back on the bunk bed. He considered taking the tie – as another souvenir – but decided it would be tacky of him, even though he was convinced that people like Brad Pitt and Val Kilmer took home entire wardrobes and the studio didn’t dare complain, for fear of alienating them on future projects.

  And then Harry was back on the street . . . in the rain, no less – no hairdresser, no makeup artist, no stand-in (he’d actually had an extra with his measurements and a similar costume fill in for him during one of the breaks – presumably to save Harry’s energy) – just another normal person at the end of the day. He felt sad about all this and realized he was experiencing a bittersweet moment. Even though Harry was pissed off at The Industry for turning its back on him, he had to concede that movies led the way when it came to bittersweet moments. Maybe the theatre too a little bit, but mostly the movies. When all else failed, you could always have some terrific actress (and now Harry was saying terrific) biting her lip (did Clinton get that from the movies?) or some actor suddenly realizing he’d made a romantic mistake and running through the rain so he could get back to the terrific actress before she was about to get on a plane and marry an accountant – and kiss her in the rain and everyone would forget they’d spent two hours being exposed to a stunted and moronic sensibility.

  “How come they let you go on and on like that?” asked Megan, who had been examining her tan in the mirror.

  “It wasn’t my idea,” said Harry, who had flown back to Miami and was in high spirits once again, the bittersweet moment just a memory. “I got my teeth into one of the lines, and the director told me to keep going.”

  “So you have a huge part now,” said Megan.

  “I wouldn’t call it that. ‘Substantial’ is more like it.”

  “This means that we’re definitely going to the premiere.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Harry, who did not want to set up his daughter for a disappointment, although he himself had wondered if an invitation was part of his deal, such as it was. “The premiere is generally a benefit for rich people to raise money for a disease. But we’ll definitely see the movie before the general public does.”

  “I hope so,” said Megan, concentrating on the mirror. “And I don’t understand why my legs get tan and my face is still white.”

  Harry awoke in the middle of the night with a horrible thought. He’d been sleeping lightly, playing back – and savoring – his Pushkin scene when it suddenly occurred to him that none of the cameras had been focused on him. Not that there weren’t several in evidence. But they all seemed to be positioned behind Harry and trained on the female star – so that all of the shooting was over . . . and past . . . his shoulder. Harry calculated that during his Pushkin monologue, an audience would only be able to make out a sliver of his profile, if that. Harry was shaken and could not get back to sleep. He kept kicking himself for not being aware of the camera; if he had, he would have been able to crane his head around and get more of himself in. It took a great deal of selfdiscipline for him to prepare Megan’s breakfast in the morning and not let on that something awful had happened. But later in the day, it occurred to Harry that perhaps there had been a camera that he had missed, a small discreetly placed one that was assigned to supporting players. And it had been trained on Harry. Or perhaps the main camera, through some technological advance – had the capability of curling around to pick up not only the female star’s performance but Harry’s as well. Only when Harry had considered these possibilities was he able to relax and to enjoy the rest of his stay in Miami.

  Several months after returning to New York, Harry received an invitation for two to a screening of the movie for supporting players, hair and makeup people, cameramen, technical crew and various family members. Julie had graciously bowe
d out – the pressure of all her counseling. Megan had gotten a special pass from school so she could come down from Connecticut to attend the event along with Harry.

  “What’s a grip?” Megan wanted to know as they took the subway uptown to the screening.

  “I’m not exactly sure,” said Harry. “But grips, gaffers, they’re behind-the-scenes people who work in the trenches and really make the movie happen.”

  “How come we have to go to the screening with them?” she asked

  “It’s not exactly a disgrace,” said Harry, trying to be patient. “And you keep forgetting. I have a nice little part . . . but it’s not as if I took over the whole production.”

  The movie, which fell under the heading of suspense/adventure, held Harry’s attention for the first hour or so. But he could not tell if this was because it was good – or because he was in it. The story was multi-layered and the locales far-ranging. As he waited for his scenes to come up, Harry wondered how and where Vera, the kid he had virtually found on the street, had learned so much. She had never seemed the type to pore over Kurosawa films frame by frame. And yet here she was, entrusted with the fate of a big budget multi-tiered motion picture. As his admiration for her grew, Harry wondered – generally – what she would be like now as a lover. As he became older, his thoughts along that line became less specific. And then, out of loyalty to Julie, and a resistance to all the built-in complications, he put the whole business out of his mind.

  “Are you enjoying it?” he asked Megan.

  “Of course,” said his daughter, who enjoyed most movies and was not discriminatory as to their content so long as they were made in the Nineties. “And quiet. Everyone can hear you.”

  Harry settled back in his seat, resigned to his fate, which was to spend a major part of what remained of his life trying to impress his fifteen-year-old daughter.