Attack of the Theater People

by Marc Acito

  “In the obituaries?”

  “You know a better way?”

  I reach into my back pocket and hand him Kelly’s Equity newsletter. “I think I saw some cheap sublets in this.”

  As he scans the paper, I feel a spark of hope ignite inside me. Say what you want about Nathan Nudelman; with his blatant disregard for ethics also comes the sense that anything can happen. And often does. I’m actually relieved I don’t have to go back to school this fall, because I now feel certain I am going to have the most marvelous adventures. I may not hop a freight train or work on a fishing boat, but I’m going to get out in the world and do…something. A whole lot of something. I don’t know what it is, but I’m certain it’s going to make me a better actor. No, not just a better actor. A great actor. A brilliant actor. And in a year I’ll reaudition for Juilliard, and they will be amazed. I’ll show them. I’ll be the best damn me they’ve ever seen.

  But before I can find myself, I need to find a job.

  Five

  In the days that follow I traipse all over Manhattan, not in the transcendental, one-with-humanity mode of Walt Whitman, but because I can’t afford mass transit.

  For two years Juilliard has been my whole world, an oasis where I spent every waking hour. Now, as I pound the pavement on the Yupper West Side, luxury condos sprouting up every other block, I’m keenly aware how Manhattan is twenty-three square miles of Not For You: windows full of products You Can’t Buy, posters for events You Can’t Afford, restaurants full of food You Can’t Eat. You can’t walk fifty feet in Manhattan without passing food: bagels, deli, pizza, ice cream, hot dogs, Chinese. I want to run into every Korean grocery I see and buy a softball-sized corn muffin, devouring the crunchy mushroom top, then working my way down to the spongy but gritty interior.

  As I stagger through a heat wave so torturous I keep my sheet and pillowcase in the fridge until bedtime, I grade myself against the thousands of people I pass: Better Looking than Me, Better Dressed than Me, Better Shape than Me. So many suave urbanites in pleated seersucker shorts with skinny belts and baggy cotton socks that sag around their ankles like deflated concertinas. God, I wish I could afford baggy socks. My socks seem so inconsequential.

  Lorenz Hart was wrong: I don’t like New York in June.

  When I say I’m broke, I don’t mean it the way most people do, which is to say, not actually broke. No, I’m really broke, like borrowing-money-from-my-friends kind of broke. You know, the guy whose name is always accompanied by the rolling of eyes. The one whom they invariably wonder about years later, saying, “I don’t know. After he got kicked out of Juilliard, Edward’s life just spun out of control.” If I don’t get my act together, I’m going to end up like one of New York’s many mad vagrants, wandering the city wearing a shabby overcoat and a woolly hat even though it’s ninety degrees.

  But two years of acting school have provided me with only such useful life skills as how to sit in a seventeenth-century tailcoat or analyze Chekhov. Apparently, a semester of typing at Wallingford High School is not enough to qualify for temp work, unless it’s for a company where quick brown foxes jump over lazy dogs. And, thanks to the second-worst Broadway season of the century (the worst being the season before), restaurants now have more waiters than the chorus of Hello, Dolly.

  I try to get on the lists to be a cater waiter but discover those jobs are controlled by the Gay Mafia. Invade their turf and you’ll wake up with a head of arugula in your bed. I’m seriously considering getting a squeegee and a bucket to intimidate commuters into paying me for cleaning their windshields when Willow lands me a gig in the cosmetics department at Bloomingdale’s. She needs a sub while she tours the tristate area as Titania in one of those shoestring productions where the actors travel in a van with the scenery. Shakespeare in the Truck.

  Bloomingdale’s cosmetics department is like a bazaar out of The Arabian Nights, packed with aggressive merchants hawking their wares. Every three feet someone entices you with magical elixirs, potions that promise to transform you into an object of desire: “Would you like to sample Fascination? Rhapsody? Midnight Rendezvous? Have you tried our Rejuvifying Skin Tonerizer?”

  Two kinds of people work in the Bloomingdale’s cosmetics department: beautiful women and the gay men who love them. On closer inspection, not all of the women are beautiful; some are merely ordinary but determined. The men, however, definitely give off the fussy, epicene air of boys who sewed their prom dates’ dresses, and I feel ashamed to be in their company. Surely I’m not that nellie.

  I stand on the outskirts, a sentry armed with an atomizer of something called Indulgence, while Willow trains me in how to get perfume onto a customer’s skin before anyone else does. Like animals in the wild, we want to mark them with our scent.

  Willow’s approach is more holistic than her competitors’. “I don’t think of myself as a fragrance model,” she says. “I’m more like an aromatherapist.” As such, Willow focuses on the underlying needs that compel someone to use cosmetics in the first place.

  “Would you like to be happier?” she asks, beaming in the manner of an airport Hare Krishna.

  Only the most hard-hearted New Yorkers grumble, “No,” as they pass. Some laugh. But some stop, more bewildered than intrigued.

  “Close your eyes,” Willow says, waving her hand in front of the shopper’s face. I’m half expecting her to add, “And click your heels three times.” Instead she squirts the fragrance in the air and, leading the customer forward with the lightest touch on the elbow, says, “Step into the world of Indulgence!”

  Really.

  After watching her a few times, it’s my turn. To my surprise, the first person I speak to stops, a dowager with a face like a crumpled paper bag.

  “Close your eyes,” I say.

  “Why?” She’s that kind of dowager.

  “So you can step into the fragrance.”

  “Oh. All right.”

  She closes her eyes. Holding the bottle aloft with one hand, I reach down with the other to guide her forward. But as I touch her elbow, she flinches, opening her eyes just as I squirt her with a faceful of Indulgence.

  “OWWWW! MY EYES! MY EYES!”

  Someone calls security. Someone calls 911. Someone comes running with water, eyecups, and wet towels.

  Someone gets fired.

  Once again Paula comes to my rescue, such a Paula thing to do, by convincing Marcus to get me a job at the moving company where he’s working.

  “This is what you need, Edward,” Marcus says. “Honest labor by the sweat of your brow.”

  It’s not the sweat of my brow that I’m worried about; it’s my hands, particularly as I stagger backward down the stoop of a brownstone hauling the end of a fish tank. “Shouldn’t we have emptied this first?” I ask.

  Marcus snorts. “And done what with the fish?”

  I don’t have an answer. My only experience in transporting marine life is carrying home a minnow in a baggie from the Knights of Columbus Italian festival. Still, lugging a five-foot-long aquarium full of tropical fish seems, well, fishy. I raise the tank to eye level and find myself staring at a sea creature resembling Mick Jagger. The muscles in my arms start to quiver.

  “I’mnotsureIcanholdthisup,” I grunt.

  “‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,’” he shouts. Marcus, that is, not the fish.

  Since graduating, Marcus has become belligerently Shakespearean, because the only casting calls he’s gotten have been for Puerto Rican hoods, Harlem pimps, and Colombian drug lords. Having been trained classically (and raised like nobility), Marcus regularly rails against this egregious racism.

  “I should be playing kings, not criminals,” he says.

  But what he doesn’t see is that the problem is not just the color of his skin; it’s the texture. And there’s just no nice way to tell someone his face looks like an overcooked omelet.

  As I descend the steps, I raise the tank above my head, the sweat stinging my eye
s as Marcus continues with Henry V:

  In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man

  As modest stillness and humility:

  Step.

  But when the blast of war blows in our ears,

  Then imitate the action of the tiger;

  Step.

  Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood…

  Stiffen your own sinews, I think. I’m dying here.

  Step.

  Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;

  Step.

  Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;

  If he doesn’t shut up, I’m going to land on my aspect.

  “Whew,” I say when we finally reach the sidewalk, “I didn’t think we’d—”

  “Watch out for the…”

  I glance over my shoulder just in time to get goosed by a fire hydrant, which sends me toppling backward onto East Sixty-fifth Street. I look up, but am blinded by a rushing waterfall followed by a noise that sounds like, well, a five-foot-long aquarium crashing onto a sidewalk. I wipe the water from my eyes and gape in horror as dozens of fish flop in the gutter before disappearing down the sewer, along with both our jobs.

  Naturally, Marcus is furious, and doesn’t laugh at my jokes about the fish returning from whence they came or that perhaps we should call it East Sixty-fish Street. No, as far as he’s concerned, I owe him big-time.

  Which is how I find myself bound and gagged in Central Park.

  “I still don’t get it,” I say as Marcus ties my wrists to a six-foot-tall crucifix with the word CAPITALISM written across it. “Shakespeare in the Park is free.”

  “On a first-come, first-served basis,” Marcus says, gesturing with his head to the crowd waiting outside the Delacorte to see Twelfth Night. “But the first served are the corporate sponsors.”

  Since Paula is putting in extra hours waiting tables at the Murmuring Peach and Willow is busy getting smacked in the head by the scenery whenever the Midsummer Mobile turns a sharp corner, I’m the one who has to sweat inside a velvet doublet and wool hose with a mask over my eyes and a dollar bill taped over my mouth. Our performance consists of Marcus reciting Shakespearean soliloquies, a sign around his neck reading, NOT FOR PROPHET, while I try to pose in complementary attitudes without falling over. When I ask him what it all means he accuses me of being too linear.

  The whole endeavor reminds me of mask class, something I should have been good at, but wasn’t. I mean, here was an approach to acting from the outside in, instead of the navel-gazing of all those three-minutes-alone-in-your-room exercises. By wearing a mask, we were supposed to absorb the chemistry of acting, adapting our physical identities by simultaneously engaging and controlling our feelings.

  Yeah, I didn’t get it either.

  The crowd’s reaction to our piece ranges from smirking ridicule to open hostility, which only makes me feel more idiotic. I’ve just leaned over as Marcus begins Hamlet’s “How all occasions do inform against me” speech when I notice a pair of snub-nosed black Oxford shoes with white socks.

  Cop shoes.

  “Okay, fellas,” says one of New York’s finest, “time to move along.”

  Marcus ignores him, a foolish move considering the cop has that broad, bullnecked look that seems to be a requirement for the NYPD. He looks like a mailbox with a hat. New York’s widest.

  “C’mon, Shakespeare,” he says to me. “Get a move on.”

  Marcus interrupts his soliloquy. “This is a free country. We have a first amendment right to free speech and assembly.”

  “Well, this is New York, and you can’t perform in the park without a permit.” The cop rests his hands on his belt, uncomfortably close to his gun, handcuffs, and billy club.

  “C’mon, Marcus, let’s go,” I say, but, since my mouth is taped shut, it comes out, “Mhmm, mhmm, mmh mmh.”

  “What are you gonna do?” Marcus says to the officer. “Arrest us?”

  “Mmh mmh, mmh mmhmmh.” (“Shut up, you asshole.”)

  The cop takes a step forward. “If you don’t disperse right now, that’s exactly what I’m gonna do.”

  “MMH MMH. MMH MMHMMH MMH MMH MMH MMH.”

  (“I’LL LEAVE. JUST UNTIE ME AND I’LL GO.”)

  Marcus sticks out his chin like he’s angling for a fight. “Then take us away.”

  “MMMMMMMMMMMMMH!”

  (“FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!”)

  Six

  Marcus fails to see why getting arrested, handcuffed, frisked, fingerprinted, photographed, then served a stale bologna sandwich and a summons to appear in court for disorderly conduct might not be something I’d care to repeat.

  “Next time we’ll lose the cross and bind you with golden handcuffs instead,” he says on the subway back from jail. “The symbolism’s better, and you can run from the cops.”

  “How do you expect me to do this again?” I say, waving my summons. “I can’t even pay the fine.”

  Marcus frowns, his onyx eyes as dark as a starless night. “Then don’t. I’m not.”

  “But they’ll put us in jail.”

  “‘I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience,’” he says. “That’s what Dr. King said to my mother.”

  I rest my head on my crucifix. “Marcus, has it occurred to you that the corporate sponsorship of Shakespeare in the Park might not be a cause worth getting jailed over?”

  Marcus purses his lips, like he’s chewing on the idea. “No.”

  Despite Paula’s disapproval, Marcus continues to pester me to be his partner in mime, suggesting The Merchant of Venice at the New York Stock Exchange, Richard III at Trump Tower, and Othello in front of any Korean deli that discriminates against blacks. But Paula reminds me that this is my second brush with the law—such a Paula reminder to make—having been arrested in high school for stealing a ceramic Buddha. (Not to mention nearly getting caught for embezzlement, money laundering, identity theft, fraud, forgery, and just a little prostitution, all of which occurred against her better judgment.)

  “Honestly, Edward,” she declaims, “another arrest would suggest a disturbing pattern of lawlessness.”

  I agree, but the more I resist, the tetchier Marcus gets, particularly since he has so few auditions. It’s like sharing a cage with a panther. An angry, socialist panther.

  So, when Natie calls to say he’s found us an apartment, I’m off quicker than a tube top at spring break.

  The building is right in the middle of Hell’s Kitchen, a scab-colored tenement across from what can only be described as the Devil’s Playground. Garbage cans crowd the curb; broken glass, cigarette butts, and the occasional derelict lie in the gutters. Air conditioners hang precariously in the windows like open drawers.

  “The neighborhood’s in transition,” Natie says.

  “To what? Landfill?”

  He opens the front door and out flows a stream of Spanish—the only bit of which I can understand is, “Fuck you.” We walk up a steep and very narrow stairway to a voice like a methadone addict. In withdrawal.

  “On the plus side,” Natie says, “we can make as much noise as we want.”

  I am not unfamiliar with shabby living conditions. This past year I’ve resided on a section of Amsterdam Avenue sketchy enough to think of as the Amsterdamned. But at least I had a safe route to the subway. Walk out the door of this building and you’re in Beirut. Hell, walk in the door and you’re in Beirut.

  The hallway walls are the color of phlegm. Granted, it’s healthy yellow phlegm, not the army-issue green you snort out when you have a sinus infection, but, between the gunky amber walls and the fetid humidity, it’s a distinctly mucous environment. When we reach the fourth floor he opens one, two, three locks, pushes back the door, and I gasp. It’s like the moment when Dorothy steps out of her sepia-toned house into Technicolor Oz. The walls are a soothing Wedgwood blue, the floor painted a gleaming dark green. Overhead, faux sunbeams radiate from behind whipped-cream clouds. What’s more, the place i
s crammed full of theater memorabilia: posters for 42nd Street and something called How Now, Dow Jones; a swastika arm-band mounted with a shot of Mary Martin and a handsome young Nazi in the original The Sound of Music.

  I peer at the photo. “Is this the guy who lives here?”

  “Yeah,” Natie says. “That’s him, too, after he became a stage manager.” He points to a middle-aged man in a tuxedo with Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera. He’s still blond and handsome, but weathered like an aging surfer.

  “Why’s he moving?”

  Natie takes a sudden interest in a poster for Willy!, the deservedly forgotten musical version of Death of a Salesman, and I instantly know all. Handsome, weathered men working in the theater only give up great apartments for one reason. I get a prickly feeling as I wonder whether I can really inhabit the space of someone who died of AIDS.

  Then I see the couch.

  It’s a claw-foot tub sliced in half and fitted with cushions, just like in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. If it’s possible to have romantic feelings for a piece of furniture, then I’m in love.

  “What are we supposed to do with all his stuff?”

  “We keep it,” Natie says. “It’s part of the deal.”

  “The deal? How did you find this place?” I sit down, rubbing my hand along the velvet cushion. Is it possible this is from the ill-fated musical version of Tiffany’s starring Mary Tyler Moore? And is that the barber’s chair from Sweeney Todd?

  Natie explains: “I saw this announcement in Kelly’s Equity newsletter about a memorial service for a guy named Eddie Sanders—don’t look at me like that; it was very touching. Bernadette Peters sang ‘Unexpected Song’ from Song and Dance. Afterward, we were having cocktails at this place called Joe Allen’s—cute spot, very theatery—and I overheard someone ask the executor of the estate what he was gonna do about Eddie’s apartment.”

  “Natie, you didn’t.”

  “Listen, this guy is taking care of, like, twenty sick friends. He’s totally overwhelmed. If you think about it, we’re doing him a favor.”

  I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to think about AIDS or sex or gay men, the latter leading inexorably back to the first. And I seriously wonder which ring of hell Natie’s going to inhabit for crashing a memorial service.