You in Five Acts

by Una LaMarche

  “Who delivers on a Sunday?” She took off her reading glasses and walked over to the buzzer while I went back to my bacon. I’d barely registered the exchange; my parents used to joke that every time they talked, it sounded like the grown-ups in the Peanuts cartoons, just a bunch of dull, wordless wah wah wahs. So when the doorman’s voice crackled through to say that someone named Libby was there to see me, it took me a few seconds to catch up.

  It felt like slow-motion, Nana’s barely contained look of delighted surprise, the way she said, “It’s for you, Davy,” using the nickname that made me feel like I was six years old again and sitting with her in the planetarium at the Museum of Natural History, counting the minutes until the show was over and we could go to the gift shop for astronaut ice cream. Then the mental dominoes started falling and I realized that I didn’t know a Libby, and that it had to be you standing downstairs in the lobby, talking to Bobby the weekend doorman, and that Nana was already telling him to send you up, and that I was still in tube socks and boxers, and that Dad was doing tree pose in spandex bike shorts like some sort of statue erected in the center of the living room to commemorate the utter humiliation of my life.

  “Call back!” I pleaded, leaping up. “Tell him I’ll come down!”

  “Who is this girl?” Nana asked. “One of your school friends?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t have time. “Dad!” I yelled, sprinting into my room. “Put on regular pants!” I ran my fingers through my hair, taking in my unmade bed with the faded Mets comforter, my open suitcase of dirty clothes, the framed bumper sticker over the dresser that read IMPEACH TRICKY DICK. I grabbed the nearest pair of jeans and pulled them on, shoving my feet into my boots so fast I almost tripped over a dusty medicine ball. My T-shirt didn’t smell great, but I pulled a sweater on over it and hoped for the best.

  I got back to the living room just in time to see Dad rolling up his yoga mat, still in the bike shorts. “Come on!” I said. “This isn’t funny.”

  “It’s a little bit funny,” Pop-Pop said. He hadn’t moved from the dining table and was watching me with a glint of amusement in his eyes.

  “You didn’t mention you were having company,” Dad said. “A heads-up would have been nice.”

  “I didn’t know!” I shouted. I vaguely remembered telling you, probably overeagerly, that I was up for rehearsing one-on-one, any time, any place. But I think I’d also promised Ethan I would go to Staten Island, and that was definitely never going to happen, just like you, in my grandparents’ apartment wasn’t supposed to happen.

  “Relax, honey, we’re excited to meet your friend,” Nana said. “But Kevin, you really should change.”

  “Don’t act excited,” I said. “Don’t act any way. Just—” Don’t exist. Evaporate, please. “—be normal.” I swallowed nervously as I heard the telltale chime of the elevator doors opening. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Dad stepping back into the sweatpants he’d slept in. It wasn’t much of an improvement, but it would have to be good enough.

  Nana, displaying a staggering lack of smoothness, opened the door before you’d even had a chance to knock.

  “You must be Libby,” she said. I shoved my hands into my pockets and then took them out again, crossing my arms over my chest. No pose felt casual.

  “It’s Liv, actually.” You appeared in the doorway, so improbable in the space that you looked like a hologram superimposed over the fading floral wallpaper. You were glowing, your cheeks rosy from the cold. Nana took your coat and you stepped into the apartment. If what you saw surprised you, it didn’t register.

  “Hey,” you said.

  “Hi.” We locked eyes and I smiled dumbly. “I would’ve come down if I’d . . . um.” I could feel my family staring at us, which made me even more self-conscious.

  “No, it’s OK, I’m early,” you said. “I like your place.”

  “Thank you,” Pop-Pop said, standing up.

  “Sorry, Mr. Roth,” you said, moving past me to shake his hand. “I mean, I like your place. It’s really homey.”

  “Call me Phil,” Pop-Pop said. “Also known as ‘the actor’s grandfather.’” I gritted my teeth; this was just as embarrassing as I’d feared. And I was still tripping over your apology that you were early. Early for what? How could I have made a date with you and forgotten about it? We hadn’t even been drinking.

  “I’m Barbara,” Nana said. “Davy’s grandmother.”

  “Which makes you . . .” you said, turning to my dad with an expectant smile.

  “Dave’s dad,” Dad said, extending his hand. “Although I would also accept much-older brother.”

  “I’m an only child,” I said quickly, and everyone laughed.

  “Are you hungry, Liv?” Nana asked. It was a rhetorical question, since she was already making a plate. Within minutes, you were perched on the couch in your socks, balancing food on your knees and drinking coffee out of a mug printed with the title of a failed pilot I’d shot a few years back. I sat next to you, more awkward in my own (sort of) apartment than I had been at the movies. I felt like a goalie, my whole body on edge, ready to leap up at any second to block a dangerous shot.

  “So how do you two know each other?” Dad asked. I’d been so preoccupied with his pants situation that I’d failed to notice his scraggly five-day beard growth or the shirt he was wearing, a souvenir from the Jewish Museum in San Francisco, printed with the words YO, SEMITE under a picture of trees.

  “We’re in Showcase together,” you said.

  “The play,” I practically screamed.

  “See, he doesn’t tell us anything,” Nana said. “Do you two play friends, or . . .” Her eyes twinkled.

  “Strangers,” I said, before she could finish. It was like I could only speak in two-syllable barks designed to stop conversation in its tracks.

  “We meet on a bridge under cover of darkness,” you said, leaning in conspiratorially, raising an eyebrow. “At the turn of the century.”

  “Interesting,” Pop-Pop said. “Do I know this play?”

  “Nope, it’s an original,” you said. “This guy, Ethan, wrote it—” You kept talking, but I stopped listening. This guy. You didn’t call your boyfriend this guy. I floated silently to the ceiling.

  You held court, with Dad and my grandparents in the palm of your hand. I remember watching them fall for you, all of them leaning in, warming themselves on your glow like you were a fire in the middle of winter. You told them all about growing up in the city—you lived just a few blocks from where Nana and Pop-Pop met at the Village Vanguard, which made them like you, and ID’d Thelonious Monk on the radio, which made them love you. You even handled awkward questions—“Are you Jewish?” Nana asked bluntly at one point, as if she could actually see the chuppah in the distance—with ease.

  “Jew . . . ish,” you said wobbling your hand. The gold polish was gone, replaced with a dark, mossy green. Still bitten, though. For some reason that detail always stood out. It meant you had . . . I don’t know. Appetites, I guess. “My mom’s Puerto Rican,” you went on—hopefully not noticing my flop sweat—“so we eat pasteles at Pesach.”

  “We’ll have to try that,” Pop-Pop chuckled. The conversation kept going like that until Dad gave me a super conspicuous nod of approval and I finally decided to call the game.

  “So, do you, uh . . . want to run some lines?” I asked, standing up so fast I almost toppled the coffee table.

  “Yeah, we should probably get to it,” you said. “It’s past two.” You held up your palm, which had D, Sun, 2pm written on it in purple ink. I must have looked confused, because you laughed and said, “Good thing one of us remembered.”

  “We might need to get your head checked,” Dad laughed.

  That’s not me, I should have said. I knew I would never forget a date with you. I knew it and I said nothing. All I wanted was to get you alone. I d
idn’t know what I’d done to deserve the luck of you showing up on my doorstep out of the blue, but I wasn’t about to question it.

  That was my first real mistake.

  • • •

  “Sorry about the mess.”

  We were sitting on opposite ends of my air mattress, which made squeaky little farting noises every time we moved, giving me great motivation for my character being moved to swift and unexpected suicide.

  “It’s really fine,” you said.

  “We’re getting our own place soon,” I heard myself lie. “This one’s kind of small.”

  “I like it. It feels like people really live here, you know?” You leaned back on your elbows, a loose tendril of hair grazing my pillow. “My house is like a museum.” You ran your fingers over Pop-Pop’s line of presidential figurines, standing guard at the headboard like a chorus line of historical chaperones.

  “I remember it being more like a zoo,” I said, trying to find a casual place to put my hands.

  You laughed. “That only happens when my parents go out of town. Like once a month.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Lucky.”

  “I guess,” you said. “. . . It’s kind of lonely.” You looked at me sheepishly, the hint of a smile in your eyes. “I had like five imaginary friends.”

  “So you’ve always been popular, then.”

  “I wasn’t creative, though,” you said. “Their names were all Fifi. Fifi I, Fifi II, Fifi III . . .” You laughed and shook your head. “I had a harem of clones.”

  “Mine’s worse,” I said. “I had an epileptic dog named She-Bo.”

  “No!” You cracked up.

  “Yup. And he was real.”

  “She-Bo was a he?” You had to put down Millard Fillmore to wipe tears from your eyes.

  “Genetically he was a he,” I said, grinning. “I don’t know how he self-identified.”

  “Stop it, I’m dying.” You took a deep breath, but it failed to control your giggles. I’d never seen you so uncomposed. It was fucking amazing.

  “You’re—” You’re beautiful, I wanted to say. But I couldn’t. I didn’t want to be that guy anymore. I was actually trying to keep friends.

  “Hey.” You sat up straight, and your sweater slipped down over one golden shoulder. Your face was still flushed from laughing, your eyes warm, dark pools that I gladly would have drowned in if you’d asked me. Did you mean “hey,” or “heyyyyyy”? My heart beat wildly against my ribs.

  “Isn’t that the lady from the lobby?”

  “Huh?”

  You leaned in closer, and I realized you were looking past me, to the radiator cover by the window. On it was framed picture of Pop-Pop and Roberta Zeagler, the founder of our school, whose giant wrinkled face hung over the water fountain by the security desk. I saw her every day, but didn’t even think about it anymore, because she was just my grandfather’s old friend who had died before I was born, just a name that meant nothing—except when it got me a second-semester transfer to an elite New York school I probably couldn’t have acted my way into, anyway.

  “Is it?” That was the best I could do, feign stupidity.

  A few awkward seconds ticked by until you shrugged and smiled. I could tell you knew but kept silent to spare my feelings. It was kind. Maybe that’s why I was so eager to return the favor later on, so eager to turn away so I couldn’t see what was happening right in front of me. Except, cowardice feels different from kindness. You can tell by the sting. You can tell by the shame.

  “Should we . . . ?” you finally said.

  “. . . Oh, right. Yeah. Let’s rehearse.” I’d forgotten completely about the script on my lap. I hoped I could remember how to read.

  “Anything but the . . . you know,” you said, smiling down at your knees.

  “Yeah, that would be weird to do without . . . someone else here,” I said, attempting a laugh that sounded more like a grunt. My breathing was getting fast and shallow. As if on cue, your phone pinged.

  “Ethan?” I asked.

  “No,” you said, frowning at the screen as you typed something quickly with one thumb. “For once. I just forgot about something else I was supposed to do today.”

  “We can run lines any time,” I said. “So, if you need to—”

  “Nah, I’d rather be here.” You curled your legs underneath you and shot me a smile that made me forget everything else. I needed something to do, fast, to distract me from the fact that I wanted to kiss you so badly my head felt like it might explode.

  I flipped open my script to a random page and started reading. “The stars are like diamonds in the dark,” I said, substituting volume for any kind of emotion. “They’re the only things in this city that are free.”

  “Oh! Um, ok . . .” You flipped through until you found the right page. “Catch one for me, and we’ll be rich.”

  “We?” I asked, making tentative eye contact with you. “A moment ago you called me a stranger.”

  “That was a moment ago,” you said, looking up at me with a coy half-smile. I wasn’t sure if it belonged to you or to Viola. “In this moment I feel differently.”

  “How can so much change in one moment?” I asked. “The world is the same. I am the same. You are the same. Nothing has changed except the time.”

  “Time changes everything,” you said solemnly. Then you threw your head back and laughed, breaking character. “Oh, God. How did we get ourselves into this?” you groaned.

  “I know, right?” I smiled. “Maybe we can ditch Ethan and just rewrite the script.”

  “I wish,” you said, not looking at me.

  “Should we keep going, then?”

  “Why don’t we just improvise?” You chucked your pages on the rug and raised your eyebrows, and I’ll admit for a second I thought you might be thinking what I was thinking.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, half expecting my voice to crack like I was twelve.

  “Let’s pretend we’re on a bridge,” you said. “What would you say to me?”

  I looked at you cautiously; it felt like a dare. “As Viola?”

  “No,” you laughed. “Just as me. Or even better, a stranger. If you met a stranger and you were the only one around for miles, what would you tell them?”

  “Wow, I don’t know.” I leaned back against the wall, feeling the mattress wheeze under my weight, knowing that every second it was getting closer to the floor but not caring. “Everything, I guess.”

  “So tell me everything,” you said, leaning forward until your elbows were balancing on your knees. “Start at the beginning.”

  So I did. Just like I’m doing now. I started at the beginning and told you everything. About getting famous too early and letting it go to my head. About treating girls like shit and my friends only marginally better. About the divorce and the career flameout and how it caught up with me in Toluca Hills, ending in a school suspension after I got wasted during lunch and thought it would be a good idea to sneak into the gym and throw empty beer cans into the lap pool. I confessed it all, and you listened without judgment.

  But there’s something else I need to say that I didn’t know yet on that Sunday afternoon:

  Forgive me.

  Chapter Twelve

  February 24

  78 days left

  A FEW WEEKS LATER, I did something even scarier than letting my guard down with you: I went to Staten Island. When I said OK (the third time he asked) Ethan reacted like no one had ever gone to his house before . . . because apparently, no one had ever gone to his house before.

  “Hell no,” Diego said when I asked about it during our second, slightly less humiliating scrimmage. “If the subway won’t go there, neither will I. It’s a practical rule, not a prejudice.”

  You were less diplomatic. “There’s a borough hierarchy,” you explained at the end of re
hearsal on Friday, as I was gathering my stuff to go with Ethan to the ferry. “You should only travel to the ones that rank above yours.”

  “So we can never leave Manhattan?”

  “Brooklyn and Manhattan are basically even now,” you said, your brows knit together adorably like you were crunching actual numbers for a Buzzfeed quiz on the sexiest borough. “Parts of Queens are catching up. The Bronx is far, but at least you don’t have to take an orange boat.”

  “Hey, great poems have been written about that boat,” Ethan said. “Also Method Man grew up there, and my house could fit three of your apartments, so.” He was in a great mood, not only because I was going to be the first friend to come over since middle school (it was going to be a sleepover, because Ethan didn’t trust that I would actually make it unless he personally escorted me) but because rehearsals had been going especially well ever since your surprise appearance at my apartment. Not that he knew about that. He just knew that we had a different rhythm. Like two people who had been texting pretty heavily for the better part of two weeks.

  It had started out slow—a few hours after you’d left, I wrote something like, Thanks for listening to me play my tiny violin. You didn’t respond right away, which sent me into a brief panic, but then around ten P.M. you’d texted, U are fucking awesome and I love ur violin—play you mine sometime? which had the approximate effect of six 5-hour Energy shots taken back to back.

  Then it was on, kind of. Really it was on and off, over and over, like a little kid playing with a light switch. We never talked much at school, but walking to the subway after rehearsals had become pure torture. Neither of us could say anything without a teasing smile, and it had gotten to the point where I could barely look at you half the time, because being with you made me feel drunk, which was almost the same as feeling brave, which brought me dangerously close to telling you how I felt. I could restrain myself for the duration of the ride to 86th, at which point I usually texted you some stupid joke with a winking emoji just to keep it going. (There was always plausible deniability with the winking emoji—it was just silly, unless it wasn’t, and who could tell?) Then I’d wait for one of your middle-of-the-night missives, never bothering to wonder why you were always awake at two or three or even four A.M. They’d always wake me up because I deliberately turned the ringer volume to the loudest setting, just in case. I barely slept.