Page 19 of Playworld
“For what?” I asked.
“Attention.”
While I squinted, considering this, a smile flickered across Brent’s mouth.
“You’re hired,” he said.
Dad told me to wait in the hallway while he and Brent signed papers, though he intentionally left the door ajar. He was a big believer that an overheard conversation was more authentic than a direct one. “He’s got the gift,” he said, “he’s in the moment.”
But Brent, who had even less patience for the talent’s parents than the kid, replied, “I’ll be in touch.”
My talent, if it could be called that—my gift, which Brent and my father had immediately recognized—was for naturalism. Down the road, as my list of professional credits grew, it would require almost no effort, in dramas like E. G. Marshall’sRadio Mystery Theater,to play a child possessed by a demon—to speak, that is, through my own mouth as if I were inhabited by another being. To weep over my father’s body after he was assassinated at the end ofThe Talon Effect.To deliver commercial taglines with total conviction:Boy,I’d say,this is good-tasting tuna,before I was made to spit the mouthfuls of bread and fish into a garbage can after each take. To bear witness, with growing shock in the shot’s background,to the woman playing my homemaker mom toss her broom aside and then run her fingers over her lips, her hands over her dress, and make the same moaning sounds Naomi sometimes did when we kissed.When I eat a York Peppermint Pattie,she said,I get the sensation that a cool breeze is blowing through my hair. And across my long white dress. Oh.Oh. To fake faking it. To be at a twice remove. I could cry at will but feel nothing, feel everything but give nothing away. I did not connect it to the fire at the time, to that walk from Al and Neal’s apartment to our destroyed home, but the transformation felt morphological, so that as I moved through the world in this near-perfect disguise, I felt as if I had just a bit of extra time to process things, could exert the slightest delay while I took stock of any situation before showing my hand.
What was odd was that the only time it happened with Naomi was when we were physical with each other.
—
“Touch it,” she ordered. We had already moved to the back seat.
I placed my hand on her lap. If fur were on the verge of becoming liquid; if, like cotton candy, it might delicately melt in my mouth, that was what the material felt like. She’d laid her stole over her legs, so that I might run my fingers through it. “This is Russian sable,” she said. “The most expensive kind there is.”
She placed her palm over mine; her hand was cold and dry. Sometimes, as now, I was aware of how much my company meant to her, and the feeling was as weighty as the garment, as nearly suffocating as it was pleasant, and my discomfort, which won out today, was like the first night we met, so I felt an overwhelming urge to flee.
“Did Sam buy you this?” I asked, not completely innocently.
Naomi released my hand, cleared her throat. “He did.”
“What about your necklace?”
“That too.”
“What about the car?”
“That’s all me, mister.”
“Do you think he’d be jealous if he knew about us?” I asked. Sometimes, when we were together, I was certain he’d appear on the street and accuse us of terrible things.
“If he noticed my existence, then maybe.”
She considered me for a moment. I considered Naomi, arms crossed and back pressed against her door.
“Is there anything about us to know?” she asked.
I shrugged. I was not sure I could say.
“Is this what you really want to talk about?” she asked.
I petted the sable again. “My grandfather was a furrier,” I offered.
At this, Naomi visibly relaxed. Took my cue. “Whose side?”
“My dad’s.”
“What was he like?”
“I never met him. He and my grandma lived in California. He died when I was four.”
“Do you know where he was from?”