Page 74 of Playworld

Konig

Well, tell her I’m sorry for that too.

I paused before saying my last line and reached out to squeeze Hornbeam’s shoulder, I don’t know why, I just did things like this sometimes during scenes—gestures that came out of nowhere.

Bernie

Maybe tell her that yourself.

Hornbeam tensed ever so slightly when I touched him, but then, with something between suspicion and surprise, he looked at my hand and then at me. And then he uncoiled, his expression melted into deep affection, into something between gratitude and pride, as if Iwerehis son. We took a long beat, and then he broke character and, satisfied, sank back in his chair. The script supervisor, who’d been watching, stood clutching her binder to her chest and smiled. The cinematographer sat on the jib’s seat, chin in hand behind the camera, and approvingly nodded. And I had that feeling—one I’d experienced during casting readings before—that was practically telepathic. There had occurred between Hornbeam and me that conjuring of a connection, that making of a true moment—one in which the lie is like life—which is a performance’s own sort of magic. In short, I knew I had nailed it. I have come to trust this gut reaction, and while it never guaranteed I got a part, it was a thing between the other person and me that could neither be taken away nor forgotten. After a beat, Hornbeam said, “Excellent.” Then he stood and reached out to shake my hand once more and held it for an extra beat. “We’re about to shoot a scene if you’d like to stay and watch.”

Hornbeam’s grip was firmer this time. I took this pressure less as an invitation and more as a bid. I realized, I mean, that to say no would be to neglect a necessary demonstration of interest. I was also, I confess, strangely intrigued; I’d been moved by our exchange. I thought of all the onlookers at the barricades, and here I was, inside. It was a privilege to stay, after all. And what else did I have to do? I thanked him and went to stand by the windows facing Ninety-Second Street, next to one of the grips while he adjusted a diffusion panel. There was a bit of a delay waiting for Jill Clayburgh to take her place along with Shelley Duvall. The makeup lady appeared and touched up both women’s faces. Like nearly all film actors I’d ever met, there was something outsized about the features of each woman. Clayburgh’s mouth was disproportionately wide. While Duvall, thin as a needlefish, was as tall-necked as Alice after eating the caterpillar’s mushroom.

“Quiet on the set, please.”

“Quiet on the set.”

“Roll sound.”

“Speed.”

The AD held the clapboard in front of the lens. “Seventy-two Apple, take one.”

After the clack, Hornbeam said, “And…action.”

But there came a great commotion outside.

The audio engineer, irritated, shucked his earphones. “I’ve got pickup,” he said, and nodded in my direction. Hornbeam checked his watch, muttered, “Cut,” and, along with the entire crew, turned toward the windows. The grip I stood next to was already watching outside. “This,” he said to me, and pointed, “is just the best part of my day.”

Across the street, the Nightingale-Bamford School was letting out. Because it was so bright and balmy, all its students were congregating out front. More girls gathered in one place than I’d ever seen in my life, filling the block, their blue kilts and white blouses adding to this thronged effect: girls talking to girls, girls milling about, girls calling out to one another. A girl, here and there, standing alone. The noise they made was something louder than recess, a sound between laughter and slaughter, as if the school itself were shouting. I stared at them and, before I knew what I was doing, before I made the conscious decision to leave, I walked out of the room, down the stairs, out of the town house, and then onto the sidewalk. I crossed the street toward the school. Six stories tall, Nightingale’s brick facade blazed orange in the afternoon sun, while still more girls poured from the entrance’s bright blue doors to mass below the second floor’s giant bay windows. These faced out from what appeared to be a theater or an assembly hall, high-ceilinged as it was, and were raised to welcome these breezes, carrying on them the park’s scent of mud and grass and stiffening Nightingale’s two flags: America’s and the school’s blue pennant. The auditorium’s tall windows opened onto a wrought-iron balcony running their length. Girls sat along this too, tightly bunched, their backs pressed to the short railing, chatting shoulder to shoulder with their neighbors. Others called between the grate on which they sat to classmates on the street below. There was some strict rule against standing on it, I gathered, for they awkwardly peered over their shoulders or between its diamond-shaped pickets and ornamentalfittings but would not lean out. I was in the midst of them now, surrounded at both eye level and above; I turned a full circle once and then gazed up at this terrace, marveling at being so swarmed, until the girl sitting on the balcony’s corner turned to look at me.

She had blond hair, thick and curly, that she’d pinned back almost brutally, and a very high forehead. Thin lips. A lightly blued darkness beneath her eyes. Through the thin pickets’ iron, she smiled at me. And a great silence fell, followed by a blurring of everything beyond her distinct figure: a deep focus that was closer to calm. She sat clasping her knees and resting her cheek upon them, and she held my gaze tranquilly, contemplatively, as a cat might, stretched in a store window, confident and undisturbed behind the glass. It was her vividness, coupled with this quieting of all background, that was so unique and novel I was afraid to move. Twice in my life, perhaps, would I subsequently recall being so captivated by the sight of someone, would time itself feel so arrested. But this was the first. Its effect was at once clarifying and total. Any feelings I’d had for Deb or Bridget or even Naomi paled and were then erased. And then she glanced at something behind me. This released me from whatever eddy in which I’d drifted, in which we’d been stuck; the whole hubbub suddenly resumed, and, shaken, I turned to see a trio of boys shambling up the block.

They were from another private school—Dwight or Collegiate, I could not say. Their shirttails had sprung from their belts; like mine, their collars were unbuttoned. They carried their blazers over their shoulders and shouldered their backpacks. Wading into this crowd, they seemed unfazed by Nightingale’s horde. They said hi to several girls who in turn said hi back, then made straight for the school’s entrance. At the blue door, they were greeted by a student with a clipboard, who checked off their names and ushered them inside. When I turned again to look toward the terrace, the girl had disappeared. I hurried toward the entrance after the trio, certain, somehow, that they’d lead me straight to her.

The greeter dragged a finger down her list, unable to find my name. She asked me to repeat it and then squinted at me as if I were lying. “Follow me,” she said, and led me inside. Girls were still racing past us and out of the school. Girls came running down the stairs we climbed,elementary-age girls in pairs and trios jumping the final steps. A couple of times the greeter looked over her shoulder at me, dubiously, as if I were playing some sort of joke on her. After passing through another set of double doors, we arrived at a stage’s wing. “Shhhh,” she said to me before I could speak. The three boys were waiting here, along with several others milling about. It reminded me of weigh-ins before a wrestling match. They were watching a boy onstage as he performed his monologue. When he finished, he cupped his hand to his ear and then spoke to someone I couldn’t see. He said thank you and exited the stage toward us. Before directing the next boy to take the stage, the greeter took his picture with a Polaroid camera and wrote his name on its white border. I waited, watched, listened. The breezes gusting through the windows mostly drowned out his voice when he began to speak, and then the boy after him. How much time passed? Everything seemed to take forever and happen in a blink. Until finally the third boy took the stage, leaving the greeter and me alone, and she leaned toward my ear. She was taller than I was, broad-faced and big-boned. She wore mascara and heavy makeup, like a mom.

“You’rePeter Proton,” she whispered. “My little brother was you for Halloween.”

The boy’s monologue had just concluded.

“He’s your biggest fan,” she said.

“I saw this girl,” I said to her.

“I’d ask for your autograph, but he wouldn’t believe me—”

“She was sitting on the terrace,” I said. “Blond hair.” And I pulled mine back so hard it made my eyes slant. “Like this.”

The greeter frowned and crossed her arms. “Oh,” she said. “I knowexactlywho you’re talking about.” She held out a clenched hand to inspect her fingernails. “I can introduce you if you’d like.”

“Really?”

“Maybe if I took your Polaroid and you signed it,” she said.

I nodded, and she aimed the camera at me and took the picture. She handed me a Sharpie and, after I signed the photo, said, “Follow me,” and led me to the edge of the wing and then stepped aside and pushed me onstage.

Beneath me, standing in the center aisle, was the teacher holdingtryouts. She apologized for running so long. She had draped a sweater over her shoulders and bowed its arms across her chest. She introduced herself, and her name was obliterated from my mind, because the girl from the balcony was seated on the floor behind her, with her palms pressed to the floor and her legs outstretched, one crossed over the other. She had a friend with her, just as pretty, who had a shock of strawberry-blond hair. The friend scrunched her nose at my appearance, but the girl recognized me from earlier. She seemed pleased I’d found my way here, and her readiness to be entertained I took as both an invitation and a challenge.