Page 122 of Playworld
“That’s Julie and Jim,” I said, “the lighting technician and lighting board operator.”
“And what about the girl,” Naomi asked, “sitting next to the director?”
“Oh,” I said. “That’s the script assistant.” And as if I were possessed by my father, my eye twitched. “That’s Liz.”
“Huh,” said Naomi, and crossed her arms.
Liz looked over her shoulder at me. She smiled her toothy smile and waved. I told Naomi she could watch us shoot my scene from here or the soundstage.
“Doesn’t matter to me,” she replied, a little coolly.
I decided to take her to my dressing room. Once there, I turned up the TV’s volume and had her sit in my chair.
“Maybe I should get back to the office,” she said.
I took a deep breath. “I’d like it if you stayed,” I said.
“I don’t know what I’m gonna do, we’ll see,” she said, miffed.
I marched to the set. The scene took maybe a half hour to shoot. The entire time, it was as if I could see Naomi’s face in each camera’s lens. To my relief, she hadn’t left; to my annoyance, she was still there, because it was as if she were my girlfriend.
“Do I get to meet your costars?” she asked, and so I took her to the soundstage and introduced her to Natalie Forrest, who played Lava Girl, and of course Andy Axelrod, who, after exchanging niceties with Naomi, after singing my praises to the catwalks, caught my eye, nodded toward my guest, and, to my horror, gave me the thumbs-up.
Walking Naomi out, she stopped me. “Ugh, I forgot my purse in your dressing room.” It was sitting atop my desk, among a scattering of maps and hand-copied tables, next to several pewter figurines that stood in for my friends and for the monsters that surrounded them. The ceiling monitor beamed the empty set of Lava Girl’s lair. Naomi said, “Close the door,” and took a seat on my bed, bouncing a couple of times on the mattress to test its firmness. Then she called me over to her.
“I loved watching you perform,” she said, and pulled me close, locking her hands behind my legs. “You’ve got great comic timing.”
The compliment made me ashamed. None of this, I thought, required any talent. Even if it did, that wasn’t why she was complimenting me.
“So,” she said, “was this where you and you-know-who had your little love nest?”
“Who?” I asked.
“Don’twhome. Liz.”
“Oh,” I said.Oh,I thought, dumbfounded suddenly by Fate’s operations. She’dbelievedme back then.
In response, I kissed Naomi, because I didn’t want to lie anymore.
“All right, Peter Proton, let’s see those superpowers in action.”
My superpowers. One of these, I was starting to realize, was detachment. When Naomi and I were together, it was as if my mind rode a thermal above our bodies, my wingbeats as quiet as my other exertions. I was tireless because of this levitation and distance, and terrifically lonely, sometimes strangely angry. And this anger I occasionally took out on her with an endurance whose limit I’d yet to touch and which made her delirious with pleasure. But more than anything, when we were together, I wasbaffled—the feeling bordered on defeat—not only because I could not recapture the intensity of our first time but also because the further removed I was in mind and body from her, the more delight Naomi expressed, the closer I brought her to me. I thought it was supposed to be the opposite. Was that what had happened with Amanda?Something must be wrong with me,I thought,with my heart,I was certain of it, attracting, as I had, the opposite of what I’d wanted. “I love how you touch me,” Naomi whispered afterward. “I love how you just…throw me around.”
On the mornings when I wasn’t shooting, I still came into Manhattan. On these days, it was Naomi who drove me into the city—this after we dropped off Danny and Jackie at their day camp’s bus stop and then returned to the house for what Naomi had begun to call “the pushy” in a girlish voice that sounded disturbingly like Danny’s. It was an act we always prosecuted in my room, since my side window faced the house’s driveway, with a clear view of Melville Lane. Afterward, we showered separately. The marble floors in my bathroom were always so cold and slick with steam, which also fogged the mirror over the sink. No matter how often I wiped its glass to see myself, I disappeared again. I’d dress for my day. I’d wait at the foot of their entryway’s stairs. Naomi would appear at the landing, freshly made up, and as she descended, gently dinged the railing with her ring.
Naomi and I didn’t speak much during the drive into Manhattan. What was there to say anymore? Our destination was Sam’s office, a five-story building on Thirty-Fifth Street between Eighth and Ninth. The company’s name, the only one on the buzzer, wasShah Shirtwaists. You entered through a short, dimly lit hallway. On the left was an antique, manually operated birdcage elevator. Straight ahead was the main office, whose walls were fashioned of exposed brick and divided by black wrought-iron beams. It was high-ceilinged and had an open floor plan, with the exception of Sam’s glass-enclosed workspace at the very back. When you entered, there was, to the immediate right, a receptionist’s desk, unmanned, and, to the left, running the length of the entire area, a row of seven desks, each occupied by an older, nattily dressed gentleman—suit, tie, Jew—except for the one at the end and nearest Sam’s office, which was reserved for Naomi, a part-time salesperson at the company. So far as I could tell, these men spent their entire day on the phone, departing for lunch en masse at twelve on the number, departing at five on same, schlepping past me, at the front desk, in Seven Dwarfs fashion and, before leaving, saying their schlumpy, schmaltzy, kvetchy, kvelly, menschy, schlimazely, alta-kaker-y goodbyes.
Answering the main line and greeting the rare visitor—my desk was perpendicular to the office’s front door—was my job, for which Sam handsomely paid me on a per diem basis, and one I enjoyed more than any acting job in my entire life. It was Naomi who trained me; it was here she’d first been employed by her husband. “You want to learn any business,” she said, “you start as the company’s receptionist.” In later life, I’d find this to be true, but I cannot say I learned anything about Sam’s business during my short stint manning the phones, although I did love operating the switchboard, a gray metal contraption with a rotary dial on its left and, on faded, cream-colored tabs, the names and extensions of every employee, these still stamped clearly on my memory. I cannot say why answering the phone and directing a call or taking a message pleased me so; it was, perhaps, the sheer mindlessness of it, the uncomplicatedness of it, the comparative lack of responsibility. Or the fact that the office’s volume was never too heavy, my supervision cursory, which allowed me to generate my Griffynweld campaign’s entire spreadsheet of random monster encounters.
Naomi took me to lunch on my first day. She waited until Sam and the salesforce had left and then approached my desk and said, “You hungry?” When I nodded, she said, “I want to show you something first.” Instead of leaving, she stepped onto the antique elevator, where I joined her in the car. She closed the accordion cage, which made a great bash, and cranked the deadman’s lever toU. “Next stop,” Naomi said as we climbed, “fifth floor: towel terry, French terry, terry storage.” The pulleys groaned, the pistonspffed,the heat rose as we did. Each floor that sank past was dark but for the ceiling-high, street-facing windows, these covered by papyrus-colored shades whose edges were radiant with sunlight. Naomi pulled the lever and we stopped with a sound that resembled train couplings colliding. Naomi opened the gate, and I stepped off the car. It was dim as a cavemouth and absolutely stifling up here. My steps on the thick hardwood planks were muffled as they were on the concrete soundstage. The air was so oppressive, there was so little circulation, it made me want to gasp. On rows of pallets were stacked enormous rolls of terry cloth, many in disarray, come loose and unspooled. Some were in mounds piled waist- and shoulder-high; others even taller, so that in the low light they resembled sand dunes. One spark, I thought, and thebuilding would explode into a fireball. Naomi took off her suit jacket, removed her shoes, and climbed onto the nearest hillock on her hands and knees. Then she stood and began to walk atop this rolling landscape, pausing to turn to look at me and then continuing with her arms out to the sides for balance. She ascended one of the largest piles and then she faced in my direction. She smiled as she let herself fall, disappearing from sight. I found her lying in a great impression, arms outstretched and legs spread, laughing to herself. I too leaped from this precipice to land on my back with a dusty thump, and then she embraced me. The air was desiccated as a desert, and later, I watched motes through the window’s glowing frames, my shirt soaked through by then, my hair heavy with fibers, my hand in Naomi’s as we stared at the black ceiling.
“Let’s get you fed,” she offered, pulling me up from this nest’s depression.
—
Twice we were nearly caught.
One afternoon, while parked again at the Dead Street, Naomi pushed me away from her in the back seat and refastened her bra.