The Voiceover Artist

by Dave Reidy

  Holding the frame in my hand, it occurred to me that I hadn’t thrown away any pictures of Larry and me. This was probably the only one I’d ever had. A relationship like ours didn’t lend itself to photo opps. We’d never been to a wedding or a charity gala together—we’d never set up a date with more than a day’s notice. I wouldn’t have had any photos of Larry and me if the Twin Anchors hadn’t allowed a photographer to walk around taking pictures and Larry hadn’t bought one to make him go away. The purge had made artifacts of our relationship scarce, which made this image seem more precious. And there were some things about Larry and me, I decided, that I did want reminding of—like the fact that we’d once posed for and purchased this picture to get rid of a photographer and back to our conversation.

  The plant that had been hiding it died soon after of not-so-benign neglect, but the photo of Larry and me is still on top of that cabinet, kept mostly out of sight behind the wilting, browning leaves of my latest victim.

  •••

  FOR MONTHS, THE only place I heard Larry’s voice was on the radio. He had kept most of his old clients—Jewel Foods and Wendy’s among them—but Hertz dropped him. His replacement was a guy who sounded a little like Larry but had only a pale shadow of Larry’s vocal command. In Larry’s hands, the Hertz work had been crisp and precise, like the driving of a champion road racer. The new guy was cruising wet city streets on bald tires. I wondered if some higher-ups in creative at the agency that handled the Hertz business had worried I might cut them off from Skyline’s talent if they continued to work with Larry. That thought had me feeling like a big swinging dick in this business, a far cry from the quiet assistant I’d been when I started out, until I wrapped my head around its discouraging flipside: the agencies still working with Larry might have decided that, if they could have Larry Sellers, they could live without Elaine Vasner and her list.

  In August of ’96, cabbing home to my apartment after visiting a sick girlfriend in the hospital and dining out alone, I heard the first spot Larry did for a client he hadn’t booked through me. The advertiser was Connolly Auto, a family-owned trio of dealerships known for bottom feeding: buying up cheap airtime on the big AM stations, making a low-end spot, and running it for years. The spot opened and closed, as all Connolly Auto spots did, with the dealer’s jingle, which lifted and twisted a Cole Porter melody and rhymed “Connolly” with “quality.” But this time, instead of some non-union, no-talent stooge, it was Larry sandwiched between the singing, his subtle vocal touches drowned out by a loud instrumental loop of the ridiculous jingle.

  When the spot was over, I leaned my head against the cab window. This was not on-camera work in Hollywood. It was a bad local job I would never have allowed Larry to take. I knew there was no way Old Man Connolly had paid the rate I’d demanded for Larry. And while his voice may have been helping the Connolly Auto brand, the spot was poison to Larry’s. Worst of all, everyone in the business would hear the spot eventually—Connolly’s run-it-into-the-ground media strategy would make sure of that. I was still the top agent at Skyline—making almost as much money without Larry as I’d made with him—but hearing that spot gave me the feeling that everything I’d worked to build was being torn down around me.

  •••

  A FEW WEEKS after hearing Larry’s Connolly spot, I was in my office when the receptionist, Lisa, showed up at my door.

  “Excuse me, Elaine?”

  That she had gotten off her ass instead of picking up the phone at her desk told me something was wrong. “Yes?”

  “I have a call for you,” Lisa said. “It’s Larry Sellers.”

  She almost whispered his name, as if she were scared to say it to me.

  I hadn’t told her to screen Larry’s calls. But there she was, standing just outside my doorway, asking for verbal permission to transfer Larry’s call to my phone, a task she’d done without a second thought a hundred times before. I had the horrifying thought that, for months, without my noticing, everyone at Skyline Talent—even Lisa—had been seeing me as a jilted woman.

  I turned her pity back on her. “Lisa,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Yes?”

  “What are you doing? Go back to your desk and transfer the call.”

  “Okay.”

  Ten seconds later, my phone trilled, I answered, and I heard Larry’s voice say my name. He didn’t sound sheepish or ashamed or chastened. He sounded as he always had.

  We met for a drink that night at Trader Vic’s. We were both a little stiff at first, and the jokes Larry made to loosen things up fell flat. But soon the Mai Tais were doing their work, and we were more comfortable. Larry mentioned a play he’d seen at the Goodman, and we discovered we’d seen it the same night. We hadn’t run into each other, though, and if Larry had seen me with my date, an ad guy a few years younger than me, he didn’t cop to it. I asked after the bartenders and regulars at the places we used to drink together, places I mostly stayed away from now, and Larry inquired about my girlfriend, Nancy, the one I’d been visiting in the hospital the night I heard his Connolly Auto spot. I told him that Nancy’s cancer seemed to be heading into remission. This bit of good news about a woman he’d never met brought a warm, genuine smile to Larry’s face, and the brief glimpse into his big, soft heart gave me a lift.

  We went upstairs to the Palmer House and got a room. I’d supposed we were too drunk to do any more than pass out, but once we were alone, we attacked each other, pulling off our still-buttoned clothes and clacking our teeth in the frenzy. I pushed Larry down onto the bed, put my hands on his chest, and ground him into me, expelling as I fucked him all of the anger and frustration and anxiety I’d accumulated in the past nine months. Even as I grunted and seethed my way to orgasm, I listened to every note Larry made, the sounds of feelings that words could only sell short.

  I left him before the sun came up. I was meeting a new client and needed a shower and a change of clothes. As I sat in the back of the cab, I replayed the evening in my mind and realized that Larry hadn’t tried to tell me everything was rosy with his new agent, and that I hadn’t bragged about how well things were going at Skyline. And I’d left the Connolly Auto commercial unmentioned, like you would a big red pimple on the nose of an old woman. In fact, this date, for all it felt like old times, was different in that we never talked business. Not once.

  A week later, Larry would spend a half-hour of our evening rendezvous recounting a voiceover session he had done in the old Capitol Records Building in Hollywood. He would describe, in detail, the acoustics and layout of the enormous studio and what he called the “Come Fly With Me vibe” of the place. I don’t think we ever got together again without discussing the industry from one angle or another. But I remember believing, as the taxi covered the eight blocks from the Palmer House to my apartment in the gray darkness of the early morning after our reunion, that my relationship with Larry, which had always been business first, had changed in a way I hadn’t imagined possible—that what was personal between us had finally trumped the professional.

  •••

  FOR THE NEXT four years, Larry and I saw each other whenever he came to town. I dated other men if they asked and I was interested, but the bar for my interest was set pretty high. I turned down more than a few good dinner invitations because I preferred to wait and see if Larry called. More often than not, I spent those would-have-been date nights alone, but I didn’t mind, because I knew Larry would be calling any day now, and if he didn’t, I’d call him myself.

  I was alone—in my office, long after close of business—when the questions came.

  Why is it that Larry has never once, so far as I know, been jealous of another man in my life?

  Does he believe that he’ll always have me, no matter what?

  Is he looking for another woman? A better woman?

  If he meets her, will Larry leave me all of a sudden, over drinks, the way he left Skyline?

  It was official: I wanted more from Larry, and I was r
eady (finally) to offer him more of myself (if he wanted more), to let him into the dark places he’d glimpsed (maybe) in the way we made love. I wasn’t sure what had made me ready. Maybe it was my bastard uncle dying (alone, he rotted for days—serves him right) three years before. Or maybe it was my turning forty-eight and the end of the twentieth century. Whatever the explanation, I should have made some good-faith effort to answer the questions I’d asked myself.

  Instead, I tried to make Larry jealous.

  At a benefit for the American Cancer Society, I met Bill, a lawyer who had lost his wife seven years before to breast cancer. Bill was a good ten years older than me. His hair was thinning at the crown of his head and he had gone a little soft in the middle. But his suit looked like it cost more than Larry’s entire wardrobe, and its perfect fit reinforced my impression that Bill, though not a scintillating personality, was comfortable in his own skin.

  After two rounds of martinis picked up from passing trays, Bill asked me out with the same quiet confidence he’d shown when he started chatting me up.

  “Why not?” I answered.

  And when he asked where we could meet for a drink, I said, “How about Miller’s Pub?”

  Bill met me outside that night, and we walked into Miller’s together. I looked for Larry at the end of the bar. He wasn’t there.

  That was fine. I didn’t need him to be.

  Bill and I took stools in the middle of the bar, just to the right side of the tap handles. James, in his white shirt and black vest, saw me right away, but instead of bringing me my usual and addressing me by name, he laid cocktail napkins in front of us and said, “How are we doing this evening?”

  James was leaving it up to me to say whether or not we knew each other. His sticking to the bartender’s code gave my date with Bill the feel of an affair, which it wasn’t, but I was hoping Larry would see it just that way.

  “We’re dandy, James,” I said. “How are you?”

  “Can’t complain,” James answered, smiling politely. “What can I get you?”

  “What do you say, Bill?” I said. “Martinis worked pretty well the first time.”

  Bill smiled and shrugged. “All right with me.”

  I looked at James, and he nodded.

  “Two martinis,” he said.

  “With olives, please, James.”

  “You got it.”

  I sat with my body facing Bill, resting my right elbow on the bar. He made a couple of jokes—bad puns, really—and I laughed at each of them, leaning toward him and putting my hand on his thigh. When James checked on us and returned with two more rounds, I made sure he saw me having a good time.

  Bill paid for the drinks and left a huge tip. I hoped the money became a nice detail when James followed the part of the bartender’s code that demanded he tell Larry everything.

  Bill and I left together. When we were halfway down the block, away from Miller’s, I stopped and turned to him.

  “Well,” I said. “I should be getting home.”

  “Oh,” he said, looking disappointed. “Of course.”

  “Thanks for the drinks,” I said. “And the conversation.”

  “My pleasure.”

  After an awkward moment of watching Bill try to decide what to do next, I made his decision for him. I took a quick step toward him, put a hand gently on his face, kissed him quickly on the lips, and stepped away before he could wrap his arms around me.

  “Good night, Bill.”

  “Good night,” he said, stammering a little. Then, excitedly, he added, “Can I hail you a cab?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, yelling back to him over my shoulder. “Thanks.”

  I walked the damp sidewalks of Wabash Street in the direction of my apartment, leaning into a cold, northerly wind and bubbling with anticipation. I was certain that Larry would call the next day, or the day after, or the day after that. We would meet for drinks somewhere—not Miller’s this time. We’d talk shop, like we always did, and I’d watch Larry repeatedly, silently talk himself out of asking any questions about the man I’d taken to our old place. And even with all we were leaving unsaid, I would guzzle down a feeling only Larry could give me: being with someone who really knew me. Then we’d get a room somewhere. And when the door had closed behind us, I would stand there in the dark—Larry would have to come to me. He would kiss and press and paw me, and we’d fall onto the bed. He might try to mention Bill then, but I’d shush him and urge him on and listen to him say how good it feels until we’re finished, and I’m in his arms, and we both understand that we’re back where we belong with no reason to ever leave again.

  But Larry didn’t call the next day. Not the next day, either. Bill called, though, on that third day, and asked me to dinner.

  “Why not?” I said.

  And I went and I drank until it wasn’t so hard to laugh at wordplay that wasn’t funny. There must have been ten good bars between the restaurant he picked and Miller’s Pub, but when I suggested we have a nightcap there, Bill jumped at the chance—I think he thought that Miller’s was becoming our place. Once again, we sat near the taps and James brought us martinis. By that point, I thought everything Bill said was hilarious, even though it wasn’t, and we laughed until closing time. Before we parted on the street, Bill pulled me in for a long kiss. When I thought it might go on forever, I pushed him away and, smiling, I fanned myself with my hand, as if his cold, wet lips had burned me up with passion. Then I found a cab home, feeling certain that Larry would call the next day to reclaim me.

  But he didn’t.

  I told myself that this was silly, that I should just call Larry myself and invite him out for a drink if I wanted to see him. But something inside me wouldn’t let me do it. So I waited for Larry to call, and Bill called instead, and I agreed to see him again.

  After dinner at a French bistro in Old Town, we cabbed downtown to Miller’s.

  “It’s tradition, now,” Bill joked.

  When he had finished his drink, Bill went to the bathroom. I caught James’ eye.

  “Two more martinis?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Have you seen Larry?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  Suddenly, I hated that goddamned poker face of his.

  “Bullshit, James. He drinks here whenever he’s in town. When’s the last time you saw him?”

  “I haven’t seen Larry since the last time he was in here with you.”

  I smiled, then, and tried a different tack. “All right, James. I’ll ask you this. If you had seen Larry, would you tell me?”

  At that, James shifted his attention to a guy at the far end of the bar who may or may not have been calling for it, and our conversation was over.

  With just a few moments before I had to bury myself again beneath the woman I’d let Bill believe I was, a woman who was falling for him and thought he was the funniest guy around, I considered the possibilities. James might be telling the truth, I thought. Maybe Larry hadn’t been into Miller’s. Maybe he hadn’t called me because he was in L.A., auditioning for TV pilots or recording books on tape. Maybe he had no idea I was seeing anyone else. But what scared me was the good chance James was lying, that Larry had been coming into Miller’s and, when James told him I’d been showing up with the same big-tipping, suit-wearing lawyer, Larry had thought about it and decided he didn’t give a shit.

  I managed to plaster a smile on my face when Bill returned, but I felt hollowed out by the idea that Larry had given me up without a fight, without even a phone call. It didn’t matter to me that I couldn’t be sure this was the case. That I believed it was possible told me all I needed to know. And every day that Larry didn’t call would make that possibility look a little more like cold, hard truth.

  Before last call, Bill led me out to the street and pressed his lips over mine.

  “Come back to my place,” he said.

  I thought about the offer just long enough to remember that Larry hadn’t given me any good answer to the o
nly question I was still asking.

  Then I said, “Why not?”

  •••

  OVER THE NEXT few months of Larry not calling, I learned some things about Bill, starting with just how sweet he was. From his colleagues, I learned that Bill had a reputation as a canny attorney, but I saw none of that slyness in his personal life. He was honest and straightforward in ways I’ll never be.

  In bed, Bill was competent, if unimaginative. He treated each session of lovemaking as a test he either passed or failed and made my orgasm the only report card. Bill passed most of the time, but just barely.

  Something else I learned: Bill had even more money than he’d let on. In the late eighties, he’d won a class-action judgment against a big credit-card company. His take was fourteen million dollars. Since then, Bill had made wise investments—he was still working mostly because he still liked the work. Once he’d let me in on these little secrets, we started going to the city’s best restaurants on weeknights I might otherwise have ordered takeout. At least once a month, Bill would fly in a chef from New York to make dinner for the two of us in his Randolph Street penthouse. When we’d been together six months—only Bill had been counting—he took me to Paris for four nights. We stayed at the George V and ate each meal in a restaurant recommended by a chef Bill knew personally. I felt like I was living someone else’s life, but it was a nice life.

  Bill mentioned Miller’s Pub whenever we passed its garish, red neon sign—“That’s where it all started,” he would say—but we stopped going there, mostly because I stopped suggesting we go. I kept thinking I would run into Larry somewhere—if not in the best restaurants, then on the street or at the theatre or in a bar downtown. In Paris, I was certain I saw him drinking in a brasserie where Bill and I were having lunch. It wasn’t him, of course, but I needed three long glances to be sure. Once the spell had been broken, I could see that the man at the bar was taller and thinner than Larry had ever been, and I wondered if my memory of him had become so distorted that the man I was missing—and living it up to spite—wasn’t Larry, either.