Thirty-three Swoons

by Martha Cooley

  “The display of masks . . . it’s great, Danny. And it’s got me thinking, let’s you and I do something together! We haven’t, not since you left for college. Not as adults.”

  She frowned quizzically. “Sure we have. We see plays sometimes, we go out to hear music . . .”

  “That’s not what I mean. We should produce something. Act together.”

  Her brows rose. “Like, onstage?”

  “No, no! But you’re a designer, and I collect props—that means we could put something together, right? Make something interesting?”

  She crossed her arms skeptically. “As an example . . . ?”

  “I don’t know. I’m thinking of masks. Which leads me to actors, the people who wear them. You and I both love good acting. Onstage, I mean. Much more than film acting. Yes?”

  “True.”

  “Of course there are wonderful film actors. But nothing holds a candle to a good stage performance.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “Well, maybe we could produce a book of photos.”

  Danny smiled and snorted at once. “Photos of what, Cam?”

  “Of an actor! How about that? Just one actor. Not a famous one, and certainly not a screen star. Just somebody who acts. A good amateur would suffice. But here’s the thing: the photos would show this actor with unusual props.” I paused. “We could use my collection to create some great stage pictures. You know, scenes we’d dream up ourselves—nothing taken from plays or films. Things we’d imagine.”

  “Who’d take these pictures? And who’d be the actor?”

  “The photographer’s easy. Sam could locate someone who’s just getting started, and who’s talented. And willing to take risks . . . And Stuart could play the part of the actor. He’d be perfect.”

  “Sam would help us, if he liked the idea.” Though her tone stayed neutral, I sensed she was climbing on board. “I mean, once he gets behind a project, he’s like a bulldog.”

  “Yeah, I know . . . But we’d have to make this idea work. We’d need a theme, something to tie it together.”

  “Like . . . ?”

  “I haven’t given this any thought before now, Danny! The idea’s just coming to me . . . How about something like Thirty-Three Swoons?”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s the title of Meyerhold’s last production. Before they shut down his theater for good.”

  “Meyerhold? The director who did the sketches? Thirty-Three Swoons?”

  “Yep. It’s a set of one-act farces by Chekhov. In each one, the characters keep fainting—every few minutes, someone else passes out. Thirty-three times altogether.”

  “What’s the idea behind it?”

  “I haven’t read the one-acts, but I know what Meyerhold was going for: a tragicomic approach. Fun, larky moments alongside real weirdness. That’s how he liked to work.”

  Danny pondered this. “And your idea is to have Stuart faint thirty-three times?”

  “Not really faint, of course! But he could mime a lot of different faints.”

  “The point being?”

  “Just to play with the whole idea of swooning! Think of all the plays you’ve seen in which people faint. It happens constantly, in everything from Shakespeare to Noises Off. Dramas are full of swoons—realistic, farcical, symbolic . . . People faint onstage for all kinds of reasons. Fear, surprise, distress . . .”

  She began nodding. “Betrayal, delight . . .”

  “Shock, as in the sight of someone dead, or back from the dead . . .”

  “Or something that happens. Loud noises. Thunder and lightning.”

  “A kiss.”

  “Yeah . . .” Now she was absently twirling the rings on her right hand. “You know, I like this, Cam,” she murmured. “It’s got possibilities. Why don’t I come over one night next week and we’ll talk about it? Don’t you go saying anything to Sam or Stuart, okay?”

  “Of course not!”

  I WALKED her to the subway. Danny whistled softly as we proceeded—a few bars from Monk’s “Well, You Needn’t,” which she carried beautifully.

  “Someday, would you teach me how to whistle properly?” I asked when she’d finished.

  “Why, sure.” Her tone was teasing. “When I sense you’re ready, that is. Don’t hold your breath.”

  “Very funny. Oh—another thing,” I said as we reached Sixth Avenue. “You didn’t tell me what the perfume Jordan left you smelled like.”

  “That’s right!” She rummaged in her backpack. “It’s show-and-tell time! Or rather, show-and-smell time.” Extracting a delicate flacon from a pouch, she handed it over. “Jordan enclosed a note with it, saying he’d bought the bottle at a flea market in Moscow. He put one of his own perfumes in it. Not Lune, something else.”

  The bottle’s dome-shaped stopper was covered with tiny sculpted blossoms. Embossed on the curved surface of the flacon was a round medallion that read Chypre.

  “This is an old Coty bottle,” I said, rotating it. “One of Coty’s earliest perfumes.” The stopper was snugly closed. I jimmied it off and raised the bottle to my nose. The scent was a little thin, but I could detect its notes: oakmoss, sandalwood, bergamot. The same green chords of the original Chypre, but with something aerial layered over the scent’s fernlike base. Lilac, perhaps, and a hint of patchouli.

  “Reminds me a little of Mitsouko,” Danny said, referring to one of her favorite Guerlain perfumes.

  “Mitsouko’s from the same era,” I said. “And this one’s related to Chypre, but different. Better, I think, even though it’s thinned out a bit.”

  “Remember how in his letter to me, Jordan said he’d named this perfume Somersault? He must’ve liked that sketch by Meyerhold, the one with the somersaulting clown.” She was sniffing at the perfume as she spoke. “I’ve got to guess what this really smelled like, right? When it was at full force, I mean. It’s still pretty great.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Replacing the stopper, she handed me the bottle and its pouch. “You take it, Cam. I’ll keep Jordan’s letter and sketches, and you keep this.”

  I accepted her offer.

  AT FIVE the next day, I closed up my shop and walked over to Hudson Street. Although I didn’t know where Nick’s job site was, it would be visible, I knew, for it had an exterior scaffold.

  Figuring the building was south of Tenth Street, I began heading downtown on the west sidewalk of Hudson, scanning both sides. After a half-dozen or so blocks, I saw Nick from across the street. The sun’s oblique rays illumined the building’s entire façade; the metal rigging on which he stood was gleaming. With the tip of his trowel, he was probing the upper sill of a second-story window, checking for spots in need of repair. His sleeveless undershirt looked brilliantly white against his tanned skin.

  He didn’t notice me. I crossed the street, slipping my arms through the straps of my knapsack and hitching it onto my back so my hands were free. Then I began hoisting myself up the scaffold. It lacked a proper ladder but offered secure foot- and hand-holds, and I scaled it easily. As I reached the second-floor platform, Nick turned toward me, one hand shielding his eyes from the sun. He hadn’t yet made out who I was.

  “What the hell,” he began before recognizing me. “Cam! You’re not supposed to be up here, baby—it’s dangerous.”

  I moved across the wood planking, one hand on the rigging’s tubular rails. As I neared Nick, he reached for my hand. “There, I’ve got you,” he said.

  “Don’t worry, I don’t have vertigo,” I told him.

  He squinted at me. “Is it Danny?” he said after a moment.

  “No,” I said. “Or yes, indirectly.”

  “She’s in trouble?”

  “No, she’s doing well. She and I are doing well, too.”

  “Good. But why . . . what are you doing here?”

  I hesitated; he noticed. “Change of pace,” I answered.

  He stared at me. “Here to tell me something?”

  “Yes, I am.”


  At that he put down his trowel. “I know already,” he stated quietly. “I can spare you the speech.”

  “There’s no speech,” I said.

  “You’re leaving—this, us . . .” He was searching for the right descriptor. “Me.”

  His sideburns were graying; beneath the visor of his baseball cap, small wrinkles scored his forehead. A vigorous man, but no longer young. And immured in silence, as Jordan had been—which accounted, perhaps, for the strength of Nick’s hold on me. For that potent blend of desire and despair he’d stirred in me right from the start.

  “I have to,” I said.

  Removing his cap, he ran the back of a hand across his forehead. “Could get lonely,” he announced, replacing the cap.

  “It already is. Has been all along. Through no fault of yours, Nick.” I touched one of his forearms.

  He steered me cautiously to two overturned tubs of spackling compound, and we sat. His smile was quiet, expectant.

  “Here’s the thing,” I said. “Lately it’s occurred to me I’d have trouble explaining our relationship to Danny if she were to ask me about it. Which she will, you know. At some point. And whenever I try to imagine what I’d tell her, I draw a blank.”

  Though his expression was unreadable, he maintained a clear, steady gaze. I knew he was present, attending. Taking a breath, I kept going: “That’s another way of saying I’m having trouble justifying this—our affair—to myself. I’m not staking out some sort of moral position here, Nick. It’s not about right or wrong. Or about you, even.”

  “I’ve been waiting for this.” He was nodding slowly, as if confirming an inner hypothesis. “I figured it wouldn’t be too long . . .” As if a mask had just slipped, his dismay was revealed in the sidelong glance he threw me. “The door stays open,” he said, low-voiced.

  Silently I reached for his hand. He would read my wordlessness for what it was, a final refusal. Between us there’d be no maybes, just as there’d been no what-ifs. Our fingers briefly commingled. “Be well,” we both uttered at the same instant; then we turned away from each other, and I shimmied down the rigging without looking back.

  “GOOD, GOOD,” said Stuart.

  We were back in Brooklyn. Stuart had invited me to accompany him to a performance of Macbeth—something absurdly portentous, he’d said, done by some hot new troupe from Tokyo. Probably worth seeing, if only for the comic relief of hearing “Out, damned spot!” spoken in Japanese. And there’d surely be splendid sets and costumes.

  Stuart had guessed right. We’d loved the staging but were completely fed up, by the end of act two, with the actors’ overheated declamations, so we’d slipped out at intermission and made for the nearest bar. The same one, in fact, at which we’d had drinks with Danny several months earlier. I’d just finished telling him about my break with Nick.

  “Brave girl.” With his fists, Stuart gave the tops of my hands a gently brisk pummeling. “Ya did whatcha hadda do.”

  “Guess so. It feels—I feel—pretty shaky.”

  He knew I meant it, and rubbed my hands more gently. “Sometimes invention’s the mother of necessity, not the other way around, you know.”

  I cocked my head at him. “Try that again?”

  He clucked his tongue. “Carl says that to me, too. What, am I turning into an obscurantist? Do I regularly say things the people closest to me cannot understand?”

  “Just translate yourself into standard English.”

  He closed his eyes and pressed his forefingers on his temples, faking deep concentration. “Okay . . . what I meant was this. First, you invented: you came up with all those dreams, a whole slew of them! And then, precisely because you’d dreamed them, you knew what had to be done. So you see: the invention exposed the necessity.” He drummed the tabletop enthusiastically with the sides of his forefingers. “And not just with Nick. That situation would’ve resolved itself, sooner or later. It’s Danny I’m talking about! She’s the plate you had to step up to.”

  “We’re using a baseball metaphor?” I jeered, although Stuart loved the game. “You’re right,” I added. “She was indeed that plate.”

  He gave a self-satisfied grunt. “So how’s your project coming along, anyhow?”

  In rough strokes, and with Danny’s permission, I’d told him about our Thirty-Three Swoons. He’d responded with enthusiasm. “We’re still working on selecting props and coming up with specific stagings. Fear not—we’ll let you know when we’re ready to bring you on board.”

  “What about Sam? Has he rounded up a photographer yet? I don’t intend to be shot by just anyone, you know. Sam better find someone suitable.”

  I rolled my eyes; he rolled his in return. “Calm down,” I said. “Just think of this as fooling around. No fuss, no muss.”

  “Ten-four.” He depressed an imaginary antenna on an imaginary walkie-talkie. “So. Now maybe you and Danny can relax a little with each other?”

  “I’m trusting this’ll help. In earnest. But not too earnestly, if you know what I mean.”

  “But of course! Feel your way forward . . . isn’t that how everyone should approach relationships? Like you’re in some totally pitch-black room trying to figure out where the furniture is, so you don’t keep banging your shins?” Arms extended before him, he scrunched the air with his fingers. “Danny seeing much of Sam, by the way?”

  “I don’t know. That’s their business.”

  “Oh my, such well-drawn boundaries! Can’t we hear every shrink within a ten-mile radius applauding?”

  I yanked both of his hands toward me, flattened his wrists on the table, and pretended to slap handcuffs on them. He submitted, mock-straining; then he mimed his way out of confinement, using the thumb and pinkie of one hand to pick the lock of the other.

  “Free at last,” he said, grinning. He placed a finger on the tip of my nose. “Are you?”

  “Who knows?” I shrugged.

  “Gotta take a blind leap, you know.”

  Lost? But I already am . . . “A blind leap toward what?”

  “Yourself, what else?”

  “Oh, right, I forgot. That. My self.”

  He leaned forward and tapped his forehead several times against mine. I tapped him back. This was an old game between us: the Forehead Fandango, Stuart had named it. It signaled confession, rendered or requested.

  “I’m scared,” I said, surprised to find I could do no better than whisper. “Because I’m the person Danny needs most. What do I know about escaping loneliness? Or assenting to oneself? Or being open for business?” I gave his forehead one more tap. “I’m just pretending, Stu! What am I supposed to be for her?”

  “You’re just pretending? Then pretend you’re in a cabaret.” He raised his chin so our noses grazed. “Wilkomen, bienvenue, welcome,” he sang softly, his warm breath meeting mine. Then he leaned back, doffed an invisible top hat, and lay it over his heart.

  I GOT home, fell straight into bed, and had the first ordinary dream I’d had in ages. Someone resembling a frizzy-headed Larry from the Three Stooges recited loudly, in a heavy Brooklyn accent, the witches’ famous speech in Macbeth (“double turl . . . fire boin”), while off to one side a bunch of Japanese actors engaged in zany swordplay.

  And when I awoke, I realized that the person I most wanted to tell about my dream wasn’t Stuart (though of course I’d get around to telling him, too), but Danny.

  FOR HER I wish to be present, implicated. To stop loving only from the sidelines; to rise to the occasion. Will we grow close in some sense I’ve not yet experienced, can’t envision? I don’t know, any more than I know if she’ll emerge intact from mourning’s tunnel, once she’s crawled all the way through.

  But I’ve declared myself ready.

  Who knows how long I’ll be granted the grace of connection? It too will end one day. For this, no rehearsal is possible. I imagine the hard beauty of letting go, being let go of: acts of relinquishment, the sole ones left to perform.

  EPIL
OGUE (January 2000)

  HUMANS REQUIRE palliatives. At some point every person summons his or her double, and eventually that double will diddle the truth.

  I did, after all! While Seva was in prison, I tried to get him to assert falsehoods about himself—failing to see that even someone who’d spent a lifetime promoting varieties of theatrical strangeness might not be able to handle the particular perversity I was pushing on him.

  Certain masks an actor wears at his peril. Homo sapiens, homo faber, homo ludens: each person gets to be all of these in the course of a lifetime! But also homo nefas.

  AND FOR myself, now?

  The curtain’s come down on my performance in New York, which ended successfully the day Camilla and Danny met in Prospect Park. Their encounter on that Saturday afternoon and evening was all—everything—I’d hoped for. My work was done, my raison d’être fulfilled. I could disappear, as I’d needed and longed to do for quite some time. To evanesce, like a scent . . .

  Camilla and Danny are fooling around with their swoons for now, but it won’t be long before they undertake other projects. Their imaginations are compatible: they find the same things funny, intriguing, perplexing, dreadful. Seva’s begun animating a new theater—for it’s his energy boosting Camilla. Your theater’s any stage you can construct for yourself. So get out there and act on it! And out she goes. With neither a director nor a direction—yet ready to play things out, see what ensues.

  She’s in possession of that small flask of her father’s olfactory magic, to remind her of Jordan’s errant charms. And Danny, lucky girl, has Seva’s sketches of Pierrot, his favorite clown! I can’t help but wonder what Danny will do with those drawings. Show them to Stuart, I suspect. “Meyerhold?” he’ll say, incredulously. “You sure they’re his?” And after Danny tells him where she got them, he’ll run off to tease Camilla. “Absurd!” he’ll yelp at her. “How’d you manage to sit on such a terrific stash without even realizing . . . right in your own basement, you dummy!”