A Company of Three

by Varley O'Connor

  She bought a pack of Merits as we left, lit one, and gave me a drag, and outside the Pizza Hut she took my hand while I unlocked her door on the passenger side, but it didn’t mean anything, she was always taking my hand.

  PATRICK CAME IN the next morning and regaled us with the news about Ben: described the foundation and frame of his house, his trailer.

  “Yes, a trailer. You can imagine my chagrin. As for the house, it’s industrious of him, but I couldn’t help remarking that it would have been more honorable to apprise me of the circumstances before inviting me there.”

  “Oh, come on,” Irene said, “you didn’t really care.”

  “He’s a nice guy, isn’t he?” I said.

  “Yes,” Patrick answered, “he’s a very nice guy.”

  I’d appreciated Patrick’s forthrightness.

  “What,” Irene said, “about Ben? Well, he doesn’t have his regular options. Secret lives are harder to lead outside of the city. For one thing, he can’t throw out an arm for a cab whenever he pleases.”

  I thought of my own secrets, of hers, and of all our secret channels of isolation. When the three of us were together and it was right, everything we had run from seemed to recede, and everything that we wanted stood on the bright verge of taking its place. It tasted and felt as if it were already there. More real than a promise, better than any dream.

  THEN THE NEXT DAY in rehearsal, watching a run-through of the first scene, I had a horrible revelation: it wasn’t funny. It was truthful, the moment-to-moment playing was exquisite, but it wasn’t funny at all. We were five days from opening and it didn’t even look like a comedy, it looked like two very good actors playing a scene in a soap. We had come up with The Days of Our Lives.

  They finished the scene, looked praisefully at each other, and turned, smilingly, to me. Christ. I had to tell them. I sat thinking for what must have been a long time because Irene got up and walked to the edge of the apron and peered out at me: “So?”

  This first scene, especially, had to be funny, brisk. If it wasn’t, by scene 6 we’d be doing a dirge. Light, bright, brisk, I thought, they’re supposed to be young, for Christ’s sake.

  “Let’s try it again,” I said, “double time. Everything you were doing, twice as fast.” Patrick, good, soldierlike, headed for the bed, to his opening position. Irene stayed where she was.

  “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “I said do it faster.”

  She looked back at Patrick, now sitting on the bed taking off his shoes, and then back at me, “Why?”

  “It’s not funny.”

  “Oh?”

  Oh brother, I thought. I got up and walked to the stage. “It has the potential of being funny but it isn’t. Let’s just try a few things.”

  “This isn’t ha-ha belly-laugh humor,” she said, holding her ground. “It’s not farce. These people have to connect in this scene or why would they keep coming back here every year?”

  “You’re connecting,” I said, “now I want you to be funny.”

  “We’ve worked hard for the reality here,” she said, “and I don’t want to disturb it. We do the stuff hiding the clothes, that’s funny, isn’t it?” Patrick still sat on the bed, his shoes off, all ready to take off the rest of his clothes.

  “What do you want to do, Robert,” she said, “reduce the whole scene to low comedy?”

  “No!” I shouted.

  Patrick’s eyes became huge. Kate, the stage manager, a sensitive young woman, delicately cleared her throat.

  I walked away down the aisle of the auditorium, trying to steady myself. “Irene,” I said, turning back, “I want you to do exactly what you’ve been doing, only faster.”

  “I’m telling you a speed-through will wreck it.”

  “Did I say speed-through?”

  “Patrick,” she said, turning her back to me, “What do you think? Do you see what I mean?”

  “Yes, but we could try it—or,” she was undoubtedly glaring at him, “if you really think it would jeopardize the truth of—” he looked at me. “I guess I shouldn’t interfere.”

  “No, you shouldn’t,” I said. I walked back to the stage. “Irene—”

  “Robert.”

  “This is no biggie I’m asking,” I said, Woody Allenish.

  She looked ready to cry, but instead she hopped off the stage, grabbed her purse, and started for the doors.

  “Irene!” I said. “What are you doing?”

  “Leaving,” she said.

  I went after her. Great, I thought. I conducted the fucking rehearsals making sure we had a goddamn democracy, sitting on myself so they’d never take the situation wrong, God forbid, and the first time I suggested I’m the goddamn director, not even the reason they had jobs this summer, this was what I got.

  She was heading for the parking lot, marching very purposefully in the direction of our car. I remembered she had the car keys.

  “Goddamnit,” I yelled, “will you come back and talk to me?”

  She stopped and turned to me. “Come back to rehearsal,” I said to her. “Now.”

  She turned away and started walking again, and like some damn buffoon I grabbed the back of her shirt, gave it a yank—this was supposed to stop her—and ripped it right off her. Then she stopped.

  I was holding the back of her shirt in my hand. She looked at me like the jerk I was—well, I knew I was a jerk about the shirt but I continued to think myself right about everything else.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  She ran to the car, unlocked it, got in, and drove away, while I stood on the strip of grass at the edge of the parking lot watching. Then I went back to the auditorium.

  “What happened?” Patrick asked. He and Kate were sitting together on the apron.

  “I tore off her shirt.”

  “You did what?” I had it in my hand even then; his eyes dropped to it, scandalized.

  “Can I borrow your car?” I said to Kate, and she got me the keys. “Take a break,” I told them, “have a Coke.”

  NO FIGHT IRENE and I had was about any one thing: we fought about the entire structure of our relationship, our past and our future, and as soon as we had any part of the relationship solved, there were other complications, including the major one now that was always coming up, the distinct possibility that I was about to get a lot of what I wanted and she would get very little.

  I knocked on her door.

  “Go away.”

  “Irene, you’re being paid.”

  “Tough.”

  I tried the knob, found it locked. My anger had begun to break up, leaving a residue of righteousness and a sneaking suspicion that my underlying power, my noblesse oblige—my wounds—were precisely what had made her behave as intractably as she had.

  And yet, yet goddamnit—I leaned against the door and as I did she must have opened it because I fell in, which made me furious all over again, though I wasn’t about to show it.

  She laughed.

  “Okay,” I said, meaning maybe it is funny, but don’t.

  She’d put on a new shirt. She went away and sat down on her bed.

  “I’m sorry about your shirt.”

  “It’s okay.” She looked out the window, as if she’d lost interest in me and our fight. I smelled her perfume in the room, the Chanel that Patrick selected for her at Crispins three long years ago. What an ugly room it was. The light picked up stains and worn patches on the rug; too many different, anonymous people had stayed here, the furniture was bland and haphazard and even her possessions—the bottles and jars on top of the dresser, a scarf draped across the mirror, her old white robe tossed on the bed like a person thrown there—didn’t change its relentless lack of identity. It felt to me like an old train station, a place where no one ever stayed and never would, a place where you only waited to get somewhere else.

  “I shouldn’t have lost my temper,” I said. I stood four or five feet from where she sat on the bed. I hadn’t been looking at her
, and when I did now I had this overpowering desire to hold her. She looked up and I felt a rush of energy between us, saw a dare in her eyes; but I wouldn’t let her know how I wanted her, wouldn’t give her that, I wouldn’t give myself that.

  “I—you know what this means to me. The play.” She turned away again. “It’s very important to me, and it’s hard here. How everyone defers to you.”

  “That doesn’t have anything to do with us,” I said. Did she want me to apologize for my success, my reputation?

  “I get—confused, Robert.”

  I sat down beside her, “You’re going to be sensational in this play.”

  “I am?”

  “You don’t know? I’ve told you.”

  Not enough, her eyes said. I realized nothing would ever be enough. I wanted to say Goddamnit, Irene, I’m not the one who let you down. I’ve never let you down. I didn’t spoil your career, take it from you. Though I had let her down, and sometimes, I knew, it all converged in me. Our lives and our work were braided together, and neither one of us knew anymore how to separate them.

  “You’re very careful in what you say,” she said.

  “I tell you you’re brilliant. I tell you you’ve never been better than you are now. What do you want from me?”

  “Oh,” she said simply, “I’ve become one of those neurotic actresses I never wanted to be.”

  “Imperious,” I said.

  “Needing endless reassurance,” she agreed. She took my hand. “Let’s go back.”

  We walked like that down the stairs and outside, playing friends again, while I realized, I don’t want to be your friend. I sat stiffly driving back, watching her in the rearview mirror driving behind me, glad the fight was over and I’d gotten my way but feeling no satisfaction, no resolution, only unspeakable tension and the desire to be away from her and this lying play about love. What kind of sicko was I, watching her kissing Patrick and wanting to kiss her myself?

  I was right; the faster pace opened up the comedy in the scene. It sharpened what they already had and gave them the confidence to take steeper comedic risks, so that we ended up with more contrast, the broader humor making the poignant moments more poignant, the sudden moments of heat, of sex, stronger, more startling.

  But I couldn’t stop feeling nervous and angry. I drove them too hard the last days of rehearsal, polishing pieces of business that couldn’t really be set until I saw the show played for an audience, going three, four hours overtime at the first tech and dress, exhausting them when I should have been conserving their energy: pacing them, pumping them up. My behavior practically screamed I don’t trust you. I sat watching them together onstage and Patrick was every man she’d ever been with. I thought with comforting familiarity, I’m outside again, watching. What I want is everlastingly beyond my grasp. There were no more tantrums or fights; they were models of cooperation, knowing that somebody had to be reasonable. But on the morning of the opening, when I saw Patrick’s pallor and bleary eyes, I knew he’d been up all night, worrying over his performance. I watched him pour a cup of coffee and saw his hand tremble.

  “Good morning,” I said. “How’re you feeling?”

  He presented me with a beaming artificial smile and said, “Fine, and you?” I mumbled an answer and he limped away with his coffee.

  “How’s your knee?”

  “Fine, why do you ask?”

  Before I could answer Irene came in. “‘Lo big guy, how’s tricks?”

  He smiled painfully, and left. I had noticed when they arrived in Missouri that he hadn’t brought his walking stick—what he called the shillelagh from Cork—and took it as a sign that his confidence was up. I’d spent the last five days tearing him down. I was one of those directors who put his own insecurities ahead of the actors and the play.

  “He’ll be okay,” Irene reassured me. “I know this play, Robert. I’ll get him through it.”

  By 7:30 Patrick could barely walk or breathe. We drove to the theater with Irene saying, “Deep, from the diaphram,” him saying, “I’m trying.”

  I sat mournfully in the greenroom while they made up, and all I could say at five minutes was, “Well, you’ll be great.” I added, turning to Patrick, “Don’t get safe on me, huh?” He smiled weakly.

  “Pace,” I said to Irene, who then hit me. “Break both your legs,” I said, hugging her. “Just do what you did in rehearsal,” I told Patrick.

  I’m getting out of this business, I thought, climbing the stairs. The rumble of the audience turned me to water. I hid around the corner from the lobby, then darted into the theater as the lights went down.

  The music came up. I stood at the back of the theater listening to Tommy Dorsey and heard a crash. I knew what had happened: Patrick had tripped taking his place in the dark.

  The lights rose, and everything looked good—the props, the furniture, the two of them in bed, sleeping. His side of the bed, the part of the sheet covering him, was going up and down awfully fast, but other than that, no problem.

  He woke up, saw her beside him, sat bolt upright: “‘Oh, Jesus.’”

  Laughter, first line! His energy was a bit high but, oh well, here he was supposed to be hysterical.

  He grabbed his shorts from the floor, put them on under the sheet, trying not to awaken her—more laughter. Got out of bed, found his sports coat on a chair, put it on; looked around, taking in her scattered clothes with an expression of growing panic and dismay and said, “‘Jesus H. Christ.’”

  Nervously he took a bottle of hair lotion and dumped some on his head, began combing his hair, back to her, as she awoke and sat up, watching him.

  God, she looked pretty.

  “‘That’s a real sharp-looking outfit,’” she said, and he leaped about a foot in the air and then clung to the dresser, and they brought down the house. The laugh crested and he looked at her; she looked at him; and they stared at one another as if encountering foreign creatures.

  Home free, I thought. With an audience there I saw things we could work on, but mostly I stood thinking to the back of their heads, how’s this for acting? He jumped a page of text but she picked it up without missing a beat and nothing seemed out of sync. It didn’t matter, the audience was falling in love with them, they were head over heels, I thought, ecstatically.

  At intermission I found him slumped in a chair and Irene rubbing his neck and shoulders.

  “Great!” I said, “It’s going fantastic, how you feeling?”

  “Tired,” he said. “I don’t think I can get through act two, my knee’s killing me.” At least he was behaving like himself again.

  “Sure you can,” I said. “Good house tonight, huh?”

  It wasn’t Lear, wasn’t even Anouilh, but it was theater and it had worked.

  FOUR DAYS INTO the run Maria Valdez arrived from New York to see the play. She appeared in a white rental Ford, wearing a tight T-shirt, tight black pants, and high heels. Her thick black hair crackled in the dry August afternoon. Her escort was yet another good-looking Latino. We came out of the house to greet them.

  “Hector!” I said. He’d worked in the employees’ cafeteria at ABC. “How ya doing?” I held out my hand and he shook it, saying “Don’t tell me—tuna on rye, double cole slaw, strawberry yogurt—”

  “Perrier with lime,” I said.

  “His name’s Robert,” said Maria, affectionately. She cared about this one; her eyes sparkled looking at him. “You know Patrick,” she said, “and this is Irene.” He smiled, the sun glinting on his shiny black hair.

  “Get a load of this place,” Maria said, lifting the glasses she wore on a glittery chain and putting them on; she looked over the lawn and up the stone steps at the terrace, where we had been waiting for them. “I’ve done how many, O’Doherty, six national tours? They ever put me up in a place like this?” She said to me, “I hadda change agents to someone at William Morris to get into the Hyatt. Patrick, you don’t know what I’ve been through to get here. I got my period this morni
ng, I start rehearsal for that flop I’ve gotta be in day after tomorrow, are you good in this play?” She had taken his arm and they started into the house. If Patrick wasn’t gay, I thought, they’d be married, a grand theatrical couple in the old style, touring the world, hobnobbing with Wallis Simpson and summering with Coward.

  Reno’s had gotten a face-lift for the party that night. Hildy set candles on the tables and shut off the overheads, someone had brought a tapedeck and played rounds of Motown, Cole Porter, and The Police. Maria dragged Ben across the dance floor, attempting to teach him to fox-trot, a losing proposition. A willowy kid named Larry, an apprentice who was over the moon for Patrick, sat in a corner watching his idol, face shrouded by cigarette smoke.

  AFTERNOONS, PATRICK PLAYED the piano in the music room, Chopin nocturnes and popular standards, “My Romance” and “Everything Happens to Me.” It smelled like a hothouse in there, roses from the opening were set in vases on the mantlepiece and the piano, but it was my favorite room in the manse: the roses, the silk-covered overstuffed chairs, the blue tiles around the fireplace, the small leaded windowpanes, his open music. Two days after Maria left was our day off, late August now, and Patrick had gone somewhere with Ben. Feeling the luxurious emptiness of the day, I took a book and sat down in the music room to read. Five minutes later Irene came in, rustling a newspaper.

  “This idiot says I’m like a different person at the end of the play.”

  “The idiot’s wrong,” I said. “You’re thirty years older at the end.”

  “It’s hot in here,” she said. She turned on the ceiling fan and Patrick’s music sheets stirred on the piano.

  I kept reading, but she sat down on the piano bench, and sighed.

  “What?” I said, without looking up.

  “How do you do it?” she asked. “Turn everything off?”

  “I’m just trying to read. Are you talking about the review?”

  “Forget it.” She got up and started out.

  “Hey,” I called to her, and she turned back. She wore a gauzy white blouse and cutoffs. “Are you looking for a discussion?” I asked. “A fight?”