“And why did he scream that way, why did he say it was all a trick, a mockery of his dreams, that ‘filthy thing in the earth.’ Why did he scream not to be ‘buried forever in that strange, horrible mask’?”
“Maybe he became confused,” said Nolon. Nervously, he began pouring from the thin bottle into each of their glasses.
“And then he cried out for someone to kill him. But that’s not what he wanted at all, just the opposite. He was afraid to you-know-what. So why would he—”
“Do I really have to explain it all, Mr. Grissul?”
“I suppose not,” Grissul said very softly, looking ashamed. “He was trying to get away, to get away with something.”
“That’s right,” said Nolon just as softly, then looking around. “Because he wanted to escape from here without having to you-know-what. How would that look?”
“Set an example.”
“Exactly. Now let’s just take advantage of the situation and drink our drinks before moving on.”
“I’m not sure I want to,” said Grissul.
“I’m not sure we have any say in the matter,” replied Nolon.
“Yes, but—”
“Shhh. Tonight’s our night.”
Across the street a shadow fidgeted in the frame of a lighted window. An evening breeze moved through the little park, and the green glow of a candleflame flickered upon two silent faces.
CHET WILLIAMSON
. . . To Feel Another’s Woe
CHET WILLIAMSON was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and he currently lives in Elizabethtown with his wife Laurie and son Colin. His first short story was published in 1981, since when his fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Playboy, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Twilight Zone, New Black Mask and many other magazines and anthologies.
His first novel was Soulstorm, published in 1986, which he followed with Dreamthorp, Ash Wednesday (a Horror Writers of America Bram Stoker Award nominee), Lowland Rider, McKain’s Dilemma and the latest, Reign. His novella, “The Confessions of St. James”, appeared in Night Visions 7.
“. . . To Feel Another’s Woe” is an unusual twist on the vampire theme that benefits from the author’s knowledgeable depiction of the New York theatre scene.
I HAD TO ADMIT SHE LOOKED like a vampire when Kevin described her as such. Her face, at least, with those high model’s cheekbones and absolutely huge, wet-looking eyes. The jet of her hair set off her pale skin strikingly, and that skin was perfect, nearly luminous. To the best of my knowledge, however, vampires didn’t wear Danskin tops and Annie Hall flop-slacks, nor did they audition for Broadway shows.
There must have been two hundred of us jammed into the less than immaculate halls of the Ansonia Hotel that morning, with photo/résumés clutched in one hand, scripts of A Streetcar Named Desire in the other. John Weidner was directing a revival at Circle in the Square, and every New York actor with an Equity card and a halfway intelligible Brooklyn dialect under his collar was there to try out. Stanley Kowalski had already been spoken for by a new Italian-American film star with more chutzpah than talent, but the rest of the roles were open. I was hoping for Steve or Mitch, or maybe even a standby, just something to pay the rent.
I found myself in line next to Kevin McQuinn, a gay song-and-dance man I’d done Jones Beach with two years before. A nice guy, not at all flouncy. “Didn’t know this was a musical,” I smiled at him.
“Sure. You never heard of the Stella aria?” And he sang softly, “I’ll never stop saying Steh-el-la . . .”
“Seriously. You going dramatic?”
He shrugged. “No choice. Musicals these days are all rock or opera or rock opera. No soft shoes in Sweeney Todd.”
“Sweeney Todd closed ages ago.”
“That’s ’cause they didn’t have no soft shoes.”
Then she walked in holding her P/R and script, and sat on the floor with her back to the wall as gracefully as if she owned the place. I was, to Kevin’s amusement, instantly smitten.
“Forget it,” he said. “She’d eat you alive.”
“I wish. Who is she?”
“Name’s Sheila Remarque.”
“Shitty stage name.”
“She was born with it, so she says. Me, I believe her. Nobody’d pick that.”
“She any good?”
Kevin smiled, a bit less broadly than his usually mobile face allowed. “Let’s just say that I’ve got twenty bucks that says she’ll get whatever part she’s after.”
“Serious?”
“The girl’s phenomenal. You catch Lear in the park last summer?” I nodded. “She played Goneril.”
“Oh yeah.” I was amazed that I hadn’t recalled the name. “She was good.”
“You said good, I said phenomenal. Along with the critics.”
As I thought back, I remembered the performance vividly. Generally Cordelia stole the show from Lear’s two nasty daughters, but all eyes had been on Goneril at the matinée I’d seen. It wasn’t that the actress had been upstaging, or doing anything to excess. It was simply (or complexly, if you’re an actor) that she was so damned believable. There’d been no trace of acting, no indication shared between actress and audience, as even the finest performers will do, no self-consciousness whatsover, only utterly true emotion. As I remembered, the one word I had associated with it was awesome. How stupid, I thought, to have forgotten her name. “What else do you know about her?” I asked Kevin.
“Not much. A mild reputation with the boys. Love’em and leave’em. A Theda Bara vampire type.”
“Ever work with her?”
“Three years ago. Oklahoma at Allenberry. I did Will Parker, and she was in the chorus. Fair voice, danced a little, but lousy presence. A real poser, you know? I don’t know what the hell happened.”
I started to ask Kevin if he knew where she studied, when he suddenly tensed. I followed his gaze, and saw a man coming down the hall carrying a dance bag. He was tall and thin, with light-brown hair and a nondescript face. It’s hard to describe features on which not the slightest bit of emotion is displayed. Instead of sitting on the floor like the rest of us, he remained standing, a few yards away from Sheila Remarque, whom he looked at steadily, yet apparently without interest. She looked up, saw him, gave a brief smile, and returned to her script.
Kevin leaned closer and whispered. “You want to know about Ms. Remarque, there’s the man you should ask, not me.”
“Why? Who is he?” The man hadn’t taken his eyes from the girl, but I couldn’t tell whether he watched her in lust or anger. At any rate, I admired her self-control. Save for that first glance, she didn’t acknowledge him at all.
“Name’s Guy Taylor.”
“The one who was in Annie?”
Kevin nodded. “Three years here. One on the road. Same company I went out with. Used to drink together. He was hilarious, even when he was sober. But put the drinks in him and he’d make Eddie Murphy look like David Merrick. Bars would fall apart laughing.”
“He went with this girl?”
“Lived with her for three, maybe four months, just this past year.”
“They split up, I take it.”
“Mmm-hmm. Don’t know much about it, though.” He shook his head. “I ran into Guy a week or so ago at the Circle of Three auditions. I was really happy to see him, but he acted like he barely knew me. Asked him how his lady was—I’d never met her, but the word had spread—and he told me he was living alone now, so I didn’t press it. Asked a couple people and found out she’d walked out on him. Damn near crushed him. He must’ve had it hard.”
“That’s love for you.”
“Yeah. Ain’t I glad I don’t mess with women.”
Kevin and I started talking about other things then, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off Sheila Remarque’s haunting face, nor off the vacuous features of Guy Taylor, who watched the girl with the look of a stolid, stupid guard dog. I wondered if he’d bite anybody who dared to talk to her.
At
ten o’clock, as scheduled, the line started to move. When I got to the table, the assistant casting director, or whatever flunky was using that name, looked at my P/R and at me, evidently approved of what he saw, and told me to come back at two o’clock for a reading. Kevin, right beside me, received only a shake of the head and a “thank you for coming.”
“Dammit,” Kevin said as we walked out. “I shouldn’t have stood behind you in line, then I wouldn’t’ve looked so un-macho. I mean, didn’t they know about Tennessee Williams, for crissake?”
When I went back to the Ansonia at two, there were over thirty people already waiting, twice as many men as women. Among the dozen or so femmes was Sheila Remarque, her nose still stuck in her script, oblivious to those around her. Guy Taylor was also there, standing against a wall as before. He had a script open in front of him, and from time to time would look down at it, but most of the time he stared at Sheila Remarque, who, I honestly believe, was totally indifferent to, and perhaps even ignorant of, his perusal.
As I sat watching the two of them, I thought that the girl would make a stunning Blanche, visually at least. She seemed to have that elusive, fragile quality that Vivien Leigh exemplified so well in the film. I’d only seen Jessica Tandy, who’d originated the role, in still photos, but she always seemed too horsey-looking for my tastes. By no stretch of the imagination could Sheila Remarque be called horsey. She was exquisite porcelain, and I guess I must have become transfixed by her for a moment, for the next time I looked away from her toward Guy Taylor, he was staring at me with that same damned expressionless stare. I was irritated by the proprietary emotion I placed on his face, but found it so disquieting that I couldn’t glare back. So I looked at my script again.
After a few minutes, a fiftyish man I didn’t recognize came out and spoke to us. “Okay, Mr Weidner will eliminate some of you without hearing you read. Those of you who make the final cut, be prepared to do one of two scenes. We’ll have the ladies who are reading for Blanche and you men reading for Mitch first. As you were told this morning, ladies, scene ten, guys six. Use your scripts if you want to. Not’s okay too. Let’s go.”
Seven women and fifteen men, me and Guy Taylor among them, followed the man into what used to be a ballroom. At one end of the high-ceilinged room was a series of raised platforms with a few wooden chairs on them. Ten yards back from this makeshift stage were four folding director’s chairs. Another five yards in back of these were four rows of ten each of the same rickety wooden chairs there were on the stage. We sat on these while Weidner, the director, watched us file in. “I’m sorry we can’t be in the theater,” he said, “but the set there now can’t be struck for auditions. We’ll have to make do here. Let’s start with the gentlemen for a change.”
He looked at the stage manager, who read from his clipboard, “Adams.”
That was me. I stood up, script in hand. Given a choice, I always held book in auditions. It gives you self-confidence, and if you try to go without and go up on the lines, you look like summer stock. Besides, that’s why they call them readings.
“Would someone be kind enough to read Blanche in scene six with Mr Adams?” Weidner asked. A few girls were rash enough to raise their hands and volunteer for a scene they hadn’t prepared, but Weidner’s eyes fell instantly on Sheila Remarque. “Miss Remarque, isn’t it?” She nodded. “My congratulations on your Goneril. Would you be kind enough to read six? I promise I won’t let it color my impressions of your scene ten.”
Bullshit, I thought, but she nodded graciously, and together we ascended the squeaking platform.
Have you ever played a scene opposite an animal or a really cute little kid? If you have, you know how utterly impossible it is to get the audience to pay any attention to you whatsoever. That was exactly how I felt doing a scene with Sheila Remarque. Not that my reading wasn’t good, because it was, better by far than I would have done reading with a prompter or an ASM, because she gave me something I could react to. She made Blanche so real that I had to be real too, and I was good.
But not as good as her. No way.
She used no book, had all the moves and lines down pat. But like I said of her Goneril, there was no indication of acting at all. She spoke and moved on that cheapjack stage as if she were and had always been Blanche DuBois, formerly of Belle Rêve, presently of Elysian Fields, New Orleans in the year 1947. Weidner didn’t interrupt after a few lines, a few pages, the way directors usually do, but let the scene glide on effortlessly to its end, when, still holding my script, I kissed Blanche DuBois on “her forehead and her eyes and finally her lips,” and she sobbed out her line, ‘ “Sometimes—there’s God—so quickly!’ ” and it was over and Blanche DuBois vanished, leaving Sheila Remarque and me on that platform with them all looking up at us soundlessly. Weidner’s smile was suffused with wonder. But not for me. I’d been good, but she’d been great.
“Thank you, Mr Adams. Thank you very much. Nice reading. We have your résumé, yes. Thank you,” and he nodded in a gesture of dismissal that took me off the platform. “Thank you too, Miss Remarque. Well done. While you’re already up there, would you care to do scene ten for us?”
She nodded, and I stopped at the exit. Ten was a hell of a scene, the one where Stanley and the drunken Blanche are alone in the flat, and I had to see her do it. I whispered a request to stay to the fiftyish man who’d brought us in, and he nodded an okay, as if speaking would break whatever spell was on the room. I remained there beside him.
“Our Stanley Kowalski was to be here today to read with the Blanches and Stellas, but a TV commitment prevented him,” Weidner said somewhat bitchily. “So if one of you gentlemen would be willing to read with Miss Remarque . . .”
There were no idiots among the men. Not one volunteered. “Ah, Mr Taylor,” I heard Weidner say. My stomach tightened. I didn’t know whether he’d chosen Taylor to read with her out of sheer malevolence, or whether he was ignorant of their relationship, and it was coincidence—merely his spotting Taylor’s familiar face. Either way, I thought, the results could be unpleasant. And from the way several of the gypsies’ shoulders stiffened, I could tell they were thinking the same thing. “Would you please?”
Taylor got up slowly, and joined the girl on the platform. As far as I could see, there was no irritation in his face, nor was there any sign of dismay in Sheila Remarque’s deep, wet eyes. She smiled at him as though he were a stranger, and took a seat facing the “audience.”
“Anytime,” said Weidner. He sounded anxious. Not impatient, just anxious.
Sheila Remarque became drunk. Just like that, in the space of a heartbeat. Her whole body fell into the posture of a long-developed alcoholism. Her eyes blurred, her mouth opened, a careless slash across the ruin of her face, lined and bagged with booze. She spoke the lines as if no one had ever said them before, so any onlooker would swear that it was Blanche DuBois’s liquor-dulled brain that was creating them, and in no way were they merely words that had existed on a printed page for forty years, words filtered through the voice of a performer.
She finished speaking into the unseen mirror, and Guy Taylor walked toward her as Stanley Kowalski. Blanche saw him, spoke to him. But though she spoke to Stanley Kowalski, it was Guy Taylor who answered, only Guy Taylor reading lines, without a trace of emotion. Oh, the expression was there, the nuances, the rhythm of the lines and their meaning was clear. But it was like watching La Duse play a scene with an electronic synthesizer. She destroyed him, and I thought back, hoping she hadn’t done the same to me.
This time Weidner didn’t let the scene play out to the end. I had to give him credit. As awful as Taylor was, I couldn’t have brought myself to deny the reality of Sheila Remarque’s performance by interrupting, but Weidner did, during one of Stanley’s longer speeches about his cousin who opened beer bottles with his teeth. “Okay, fine,” Weidner called out. “Good enough. Thank you, Mr Taylor. I think that’s all we need see of you today.” Weidner looked away from him. “Miss Remarq
ue, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to hear that one more time. Let’s see . . . Mr Carver, would you read Stanley, please.” Carver, a chorus gypsy who had no business doing heavy work, staggered to the platform, his face pale, but I didn’t wait to see if he’d survive. I’d seen enough wings pulled off flies for one day, and was out the door, heading to the elevator even before Taylor had come off the platform.
I had just pushed the button when I saw Taylor, his dance bag over his shoulder, come out of the ballroom. He walked slowly down the hall toward me, and I prayed the car would arrive quickly enough that I wouldn’t have to ride with him. But the Ansonia’s lifts have seen better days, and by the time I stepped into the car he was a scant ten yards away. I held the door for him. He stepped in, the doors closed, and we were alone.
Taylor looked at me for a moment. “You’ll get Mitch,” he said flatly.
I shrugged self-consciously and smiled. “There’s a lot of people to read.”
“But they won’t read Mitch with her. And your reading was good.”
I nodded agreement. “She helped.”
“May I,” he said after a pause, “give you some advice?” I nodded. “If they give you Mitch,” he said, “turn them down.”
“Why?” I asked, laughing.
“She’s sure to be Blanche. Don’t you think?”
“So?”
“You heard me read today.”
“So?”
“Have you seen me work?”
“I saw you in Annie. And in Bus Stop at ELT.”
“And?”
“You were good. Real good.”
“And what about today?”
I looked at the floor.
“Tell me.” I looked at him, my lips pinched. “Shitty,” he said. “Nothing there, right?”
“Not much,” I said.
“She did that. Took it from me.” He shook his head. “Stay away from her. She can do it to you too.”
The first thing you learn in professional theater is that actors are children. I say that, knowing full well that I’m one myself. Our egos are huge, yet our feelings are as delicate as orchids. In a way, it stems from the fact that in other trades, rejections are impersonal. Writers aren’t rejected—it’s one particular story or novel that is. For factory workers, or white-collars, it’s lack of knowledge or experience that loses jobs. But for an actor, it’s the way he looks, the way he talks, the way he moves that make the heads nod yes or no, and that’s rejection on the most deeply personal scale, like kids calling each other Nickel-nose or Fatso. And often that childish hurt extends to other relationships as well. Superstitious? Imaginative? Ballplayers have nothing on us. So when Taylor started blaming Sheila Remarque for his thespian rockslide, I knew it was only because he couldn’t bear to admit that it was he who had let his craft slip away, not the girl who had taken it from him.
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