A Company of Three

by Varley O'Connor

  To work at Crispins, an actress of Irene’s age and experience had to be either non-Equity or famous, and Irene was neither. But Cynthia Brown, the ingenue lead in the opening Shaw, had been ill, and Andre needed a strong standby capable of playing the role. So Irene was hired, with the rest of her summer left up in the air, but with suggestions of two ingenue roles for later in the season that Andre hadn’t yet cast.

  As a director Andre was a wizard, masterful with actors, bringing halting scenes to life with a few whispered words. His black eyes darted from one cog in the Crispins’ machine to another, the wheels in his largely impenetrable mind turned sixteen hours a day.

  Patrick made it to Crispins because Andre liked him so much. Andre believed in his talent, believed it was there, only hiding. But Andre also drew sustenance from Patrick. By day two he had Patrick sitting behind him in rehearsal; in a frustrating moment Andre would turn and say, “So, Patrick, what do we do?” or “Where does that leave us?” And Patrick, knowing he was not being asked for a solution but for respite, would respond with a witticism or an encapsulated story, and Andre would laugh and turn back, refreshed, to the work.

  Our house was a one-story brick-and-wood cottage on an acre of land. There was a small forest of birch, maple, and oak in back, and a farm down the road; we heard baying sheep and howling dogs at night from our screened-in back porch. Irene took one bedroom and I took the second. Patrick requested the handsome living room, using the cushions and an extension mat to sleep on the floor. Privacy wasn’t an issue with him, since he rarely slept more than five hours; the last to bed and the first awake, he would, annoyingly, greet us in the morning, bright-eyed and showered. After rehearsal, we’d bike to town and buy groceries for dinner and linger in the twilight over beers on the porch, and these evenings were close to idyllic—ideal, complete.

  One night a car pulled into our driveway as the last of the light vanished in the trees, and Irene, standing and tugging at the back of her cutoffs, said, “See ya later. I’m summoned to Andre’s.” She put on her socks and boots and departed. She looked gorgeous. Patrick got up and opened the door, peering out after her.

  “I think it’s Morris,” he said.

  “Not Morris,” I answered.

  “I’m sure it was Morris.”

  Andre didn’t drive, and each year chose a minion from among the apprentices to serve as chauffeur. Morris was a skinny obnoxious guy who liked Fleetwood Mac; I couldn’t believe he’d been chosen. Being chauffeur was a cushy, coveted job, a position of trust, and always led to another better job the following summer.

  Someone in the office had leaked the details of Irene’s unusual contract and there was talk that Andre was “interested” in her. I’d heard about this and was sure Patrick had too, but we hadn’t said anything about it. Being summoned wasn’t strange. Andre spent days in rehearsal and conducted business at night, at home. Since Irene’s fate had not yet been determined, it was logical that he’d invited her to his house to discuss it.

  We were running lines at the kitchen table when Irene returned: we heard the back door, but she attempted to walk down the hall right by us.

  “Hi!” Patrick said cheerily.

  “Oh, hello,” Irene answered. She came in and sat down.

  “So tell,” Patrick said, lighting up a Gauloise.

  “There isn’t much to tell. Maybe Hermia in Midsummer, Masha in the Chekhov.”

  “Oh my God,” Patrick said ecstatically: “‘I am in mourning for my life, I am unhappy….’ And you’d get to dip snuff.”

  “I know,” she said, “it would be great.”

  “But he didn’t say anything definite?” he asked. “You’d be a marvelous Nina—” and he recited, “‘Men, lions, eagles and partridges, all living things have completed their cycle of sorrow, are extinct. For thousands of years the earth has borne no living creatures on its surface, and this poor moon lights its lamp in vain.’”

  “I’m going to bed,” Irene said.

  “Pleasant dreams, dearest!” he said to her back. “Something happened,” he whispered.

  “So it seems.”

  But in the morning we all went off to rehearsal as usual. I found Patrick on the green behind the community center at the end of the day, talking to Bryan. There was something distinctly movie-starrish about Bryan—a mild noblesse oblige, shades, and capped teeth. But his face was comfortably craggy, and I had seen him pacing the lobby of the theater one afternoon with his Shaw script, nervous, intent, and I’d thought: the work never changes then, despite fame—it springs from a central, universal place.

  “I should go,” Bryan said to Patrick, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” and nodding a friendly farewell to me, he crossed to the sidewalk that led to the street.

  “Where’s Irene?” I asked Patrick.

  “She got a note telling her to see Jan in the office. We’re to meet her at home.”

  We waited on the porch, and she came in presently, sat down, and looked out at the trees; I went to the kitchen and brought her a beer.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Let’s eat out tonight, huh?” She took a long pull on the bottle. “Like a special occasion.”

  “What happened?” Patrick said.

  “I don’t know,” she answered, “I honestly don’t.” She brought up her legs, and hooking the heels of her boots on a rung of the chair, propped her arms on her knees. “I go back to the city tomorrow. I was informed that with Cynthia, well, my services are no longer required.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  “Was Andre there in the office?” Patrick asked.

  “Oh no,” she said. “This is via Jan.” Patrick and I were rendered momentarily speechless. “I feel funny,” she said. “I’ve never been fired from anything. I’ve never imagined myself as the kind of person who is fired….”

  “Irene,” Patrick said, “what happened last night?”

  She was silent, then the pitch of her voice dropped. “He said he was attracted to me.”

  “No,” I said, “are we in a movie?”

  “Well, but it wasn’t like 0-0-0, sleep with me, baby, and you’re in luck. He was acting uh, sexy, lounging on the couch, like in class with the chairs put together. God, I don’t know … and asking me questions about myself.” She set her beer on the floor. “Hinting at the roles, telling me he thought I was talented. We went outside to look at his pool and he put his arm around my waist and said I was pretty. I thanked him and he kissed me, but nice, like a father. I wanted to be gracious, and as soon as I could without being obvious about it, I moved away. I guess I wasn’t supposed to do that.”

  “Irene,” I said, “like a father?”

  “Never mind,” Patrick said, “go on.”

  “When I left,” she said, “we were as friendly as when I arrived. But we were supposed to discuss the rest of my summer and we didn’t.”

  “You don’t seem surprised,” Patrick remarked.

  “Or shocked,” I added.

  “Because it goes back to last fall,” she admitted. “He called me at home after my first scene in class. He got me the audition for the show on East Fourth. Sometimes we had drinks and dinner together, but I just felt flattered. He seemed interested in me as an actress.”

  “That’s naturally part of the attraction,” said Patrick. “Remember Samantha?”

  “It’s perfect,” I said, “in a really disgusting way. It all fits.”

  “But he’s such a cultivated person,” she said quietly, sipping her second beer. It was dark and we had put on a light.

  “Irene,” I said, “he got you here hoping to get something going. He couldn’t, so he’s sending you home, and that isn’t right.”

  “No, it isn’t,” said Patrick.

  “But Cynthia really was sick,” she protested. “And it’s true that since I’m Equity they can’t afford me, and maybe he didn’t tell me that he had to let me go himself, because he feels badly about it.”

  “I think that Andre and Crispins will
do fine,” I said to her, “without you defending them.”

  “If only it were clearer,” she said.

  “It never is,” Patrick replied.

  “I feel awful,” she said.

  We all did.

  “Now listen to me,” Patrick said, sounding unusually adamant. “You are going to be perfectly fine. Because none of this has a thing to do with you or your abilities.”

  Overnight Patrick drew up a pact that we all signed in the morning.

  “It says,” he announced, “that in this ravaging business we must stick together. Therefore we pledge that whomever of us becomes powerful first will look after the others.” I thought it was melodramatic, but Patrick seemed deadly serious about it and it seemed to make Irene feel better.

  “In blood,” Patrick said after signing, and producing a safety pin from his pocket, he pricked his thumb and then pressed it to the paper.

  Irene giggled, and did the same.

  “No,” I said, when she handed the pin to me. “It looks dull. Get it out of my face, Irene. I signed the stupid thing, didn’t I?”

  Patrick looked stricken. “Oh, great,” I said, “oh, brother. Okay, come on, give it to me,” and I stuck the pin in so deep that blood ran onto my palm.

  “Thank you, Robert,” Patrick said.

  Irene laughed. “Extremist,” she said. “Next time try keeping it simple.”

  THERE WAS A FLURRY of gossip for two or three days, but attentions were soon diverted by an endless supply of more proximate scandal. Stacey, an apprentice and the daughter of a famous Broadway star, seemed determined to sleep with the entire company. That was only one of many offstage dramas. It was nice to get away and go out on tour to the Berkshires and then along the coast.

  I found myself calling Irene. I told her about the towns we passed through, the details of the day’s performance. The night she told me she had broken up with Neal, I hung up and said to myself: “Don’t.” I refused to set myself up for another rejection.

  In a dream that night I made love to her on my mother’s diningroom table, our images reflected in the luster of the wood, the light from the chandelier falling on our naked bodies. I awoke in a sweat, cursing my own imagination.

  I began to flirt with a woman in our company named Alix. Alix reminded me of a young Katherine Hepburn. She was from Vermont and had a refreshing no-nonsense way about her—like Brenda, very different from Irene.

  Mostly I lived through the summer drawing each ounce of passion spent on the stage back into myself, preternaturally aware of the faces of the other actors, their voices and motions, the constantly increasing and diminishing levels of the audiences’ attention; I was alive in the moment of the play as I had never been before. I’d come out of the theater after a show, and the joy, the acute sense of life I’d feel, would spill over onto the world so that whatever my eyes alighted on—a rock, a tree—shimmered with significance. I stood by the harbor in Mystic so struck by the deep, white-capped green of the water, the nets of the fishermen spread across the decks of the creaking, rocking boats, that I fantasized about signing myself on to a ship. One afternoon I ate lunch on a grassy hill near the campus of Williams College and then lay back, hands under my head, to look at the sky. There was a crackly, restless quality to the air; the gigantic fluffy white clouds gathered and grew dark, moving and changing so rapidly, it was like time-lapse photography of a storm, like an old biblical film I had seen of the Creation. It was too beautiful to leave, and I lay watching until the entire sky was black and the thunder crashed and reverberated in the ground and the rain, at first softly and then in a torrential shower, soaked my whole body.

  We returned to Crispins in July to rehearse a new cycle of plays, in time for the last performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Patrick had been cast as Starveling, one of the rustics. He and I were in the kitchen the next evening when Irene called. Patrick talked to her, “What? Oh, it isn’t.” He covered the mouthpiece and said to me, “There’s a blackout in the city.” Back to Irene, “Where are you? No, do not go up to Times Square…. I know it’s exciting but stay in the Village, do you want to talk to Robert? All right, he’ll call you tomorrow. Prudence! Good-bye.” He shook his head and sat down at the table. “She hadn’t considered that it could be dangerous. She thinks she’s still in Kansas riding bucking broncos.”

  I went back on the road for ten days. When I called Irene, she’d broken from Lynn Singer. No matter what Lynn thought, Irene was not really a good commercial type; she wasn’t ordinary looking enough. Her eyes were too far apart, watchful, changeable, deep. With those eyes you could never think she was exclusively any one thing.

  “They make you look almost—sophisticated,” I said.

  “They do?”

  “I said almost, Irene. Don’t get your hopes up.”

  “Listen, I should meet you somewhere, see the shows, get out of the city. What I’ll do,” she said, “is come up for Andre’s closing party and see you and Patrick both. I was a member of the company, if only for a week.” It was a point of honor, to prove that she hadn’t been bothered by what Andre had done.

  WE WERE DOWN to rehearsing for our last cycle of plays. In the surprise of the summer, Clarence came out to act in the last two shows and moved into Irene’s old room. Stacey, the promiscuous apprentice, had broken her foot, but gamely hobbled about on a cast with a rubber hoof and developed an embarrassing crush on me. I encountered her everywhere, looking up at me soulfully. I listened for her distinctive step-and-a-thump and ditched her when I could. It wasn’t that she was bad looking; she had thick tawny hair and evocative, pale blue eyes. But she gave me the creeps.

  Patrick thought it was a scream. “Stacey has been in lust many times,” he told Clarence, “and we’re talking daily. But never until Robert has she known love.”

  “Do you mind?” I said.

  When Irene arrived she agreed to be my girlfriend for the party to keep Stacey at bay. “We’ll stick next to each other like Siamese twins,” she said. I picked her up at the bus stop alone. She disembarked, rumpled and pretty.

  “Well then, you haven’t been swallowed by the city,” I said, and we walked to the theater. She didn’t want to talk about herself.

  “Later,” she said. “For now let’s pretend that my stupid life doesn’t exist.”

  There was a shuttle service running to Andre’s. We were picked up by Morris at six o’clock. We traveled down a dirt road and up a precipitous hill that veered sharply right through trees, throwing Irene, in the backseat between myself and Clarence, close against me. The road flattened out, running into a clearing that led to the house, and I said to her, “What’s the story? Are we engaged? Are we living together? What?”

  “Oh, definitely engaged, darling,” she said, leaning into me. Clarence had a diamond pinky ring on and in the spirit of the evening, he lent it to her.

  The house had manicured grounds, and the living room, opening out to glass doors displaying the pool, was elegantly appointed with Chinese antiques and a gleaming grand piano. It was already crowded, but much of the acting company hadn’t yet arrived and most of the faces were strangers, people from the city. We spotted Andre, busy talking to someone, and passed through the dining room on out to the pool. Patrick and Clarence went back inside, leaving Irene and me alone by the bar.

  “I feel awkward,” she said. “Oh, not about you,” she said. “Here, give me a kiss.”

  “Mm, good,” I said, “Maraschino cherry.”

  She plucked another one off the bar and then slumped a little. “I shouldn’t have come. I feel embarrassed.”

  “Andre is the one who should feel embarrassed, not you,” I told her. “You want another drink?”

  “Oh, all right.” I turned and heard her say, “Take my hand, take my hand, I just saw Stacey.”

  Yes, there she was, pushing through people at the glass doors and heading, step-thump, in a beeline toward us. Irene wrapped an arm snugly around me, blotting out practically eve
rything but the feel of her pressed to my side.

  Stacey smiled up at me, sadly this time. “Hi, Robert…. Oh, hi, Irene.”

  “How are you, Stacey?” Irene said. “Have you had a good summer?”

  “Yes,” she answered. She plainly didn’t know what to do with her hands; she folded and unfolded them and finally grabbed the sides of her dress. It was a nice summer dress; she’d clearly taken pains to look attractive.

  “I’m sorry you hurt your foot,” Irene said.

  “Yes, well in two weeks I get the cast off.”

  “That’s soon,” Irene said.

  “Good-bye,” Stacey said abruptly, and thumped away.

  “Let’s get out of here,” said Irene. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  We crossed quickly through the house—pausing to bum a cigarette from Patrick for Irene—and ran down the front steps and off toward the road. As we went through the house we felt heads turn, and a group at the door stared at our linked hands. “They’ll think we’re off making mad, passionate love,” she said. “Got a light?” I struck a match and touched it to her cigarette.

  The paved drive turned into gravel and then a dirt road. “Can you walk in those shoes?” I asked. She’d traded in her boots for a pair of delicate high-heeled sandals; her legs looked good in anything, but in those shoes they were spectacular. “Sorta,” she said, wobbling a little, and then she gave up, took off the shoes, and carried them.

  “It’s so pretty here, after being in the city.” She looked up at the sun sinking into the trees. “Here, step.” She threw the cigarette down and I put it out. “Robert? I didn’t come to see you in New Haven because I was jealous. I still felt hurt and it would have been too hard to pretend I was happy for you. I’m sorry.”

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  “If I’d just gotten a play in the city this summer, one measly play.”

  “There’s less theater in the city in the summer…. How are things otherwise? How is Ruth?”

  “Much better, very well really. She’s engaged—like we are.” She grinned, holding up Clarence’s ring, and her face lit up like a lantern.