Page 75 of Playworld
“Do you have something prepared?” the teacher asked. “Or would you prefer to read from the play?”
“Yes,” I said.
The girls giggled. The teacher turned to shush them.
“I have something prepared,” I said.
“Whenever you’re ready then,” the woman said, and sat.
I began my Shakespeare monologue from Miss Sullens’s class last semester. I had needed to memorize only ten lines for the assignment, but for extra credit, and to impress Miss Sullens, I’d learned it all. I spoke the lines of both characters to set the scene, shuffling to the left for one and to the right for the other. “ ‘I dreamt a dream tonight,’ ” I said. “ ‘And so did I.’ ‘Well, what was yours?’ ‘That dreamers often lie.’ ‘In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.’ ‘O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
“ ‘She is the fairies’ midwife,’ ” I continued, and to indicate Queen Mab’s size, “no bigger than an agate-stone / On the forefinger of an alderman,” I stuck out mine and then closed one eye to consider its pad, which allowed me to stare at the girl’s face down my sight line and consider her for a moment unabashed. As I painted the picture of Mab’s carriage, “drawn with a team of little atomies,” I made my hand gallop from the top of my head and then “over men’s noses as they lie asleep.” I closed my eyes and snored; my snoring startled me awake. I described Mab’s wondrous vehicle, its “waggon-spokes made of long spinners’ legs, / The cover of the wings of grasshoppers, / Her traces of the smallest spider’s web, / The collars of the moonshine’s watery beams.” And while I lashed this team with my cricket’s bone whip, which I pinched as if it were a toothpick, I turned to Mab’s wagoner, “a small grey-coated gnat,”who was suddenly bounced from the car. I watched him buzz about my head and land on my cheek. And bitten there, I slapped myself, so hard that the crack, which knocked me sideways, caused my audience to cover their mouths and laugh while I regained my balance. “ ‘Her chariot,’ ” I continued, “ ‘is an empty hazel-nut,’ ” and I held out its shell in my open palm toward the girl, so that she might look at it more closely. “ ‘And in this state she gallops night by night / Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love.’ ”
Applause followed. The teacher stood and clapped vigorously. As with my Hornbeam audition, I knew I’d killed it. She mentioned the character I’d be playing, which, like her name, was instantly erased from my memory. She also handed me the rehearsal schedule, said we’d be starting next week, and asked if I had any conflicts. “No conflicts,” I said, distracted, trying to hurry things along, since the girl and her friend had gotten up and left the auditorium. The teacher confirmed the school I attended, and then took my phone number. I thanked her and jumped off the stage, straight into the auditorium, and then bashed through the doors. I looked in both directions and ran through the now deserted hallways and then down the stairs and out of the building.
I spotted the girls on Fifth Avenue, walking uptown. Once I’d caught up, I kept a good half block between us. I was in a state of high alert. It was unclear what I should do next, although the girl occasionally turned around to walk backward, just a couple of steps, thumbs tucked beneath her pack’s straps, to confirm that I was still there and, with a slight nod, indicated I follow, until her friend grabbed her elbow and turned her around. They stopped at the Ninety-Seventh Street corner and waited for the crosstown bus. I joined them but remained at the edge of the crowd of passengers gathered there. I checked my watch. How had it gotten so late? I occasionally looked in the girl’s direction, and each time I did it seemed she’d just glanced in mine. Her friend cleared the heaped mass of hair from her eyes and glared at me. Her disgust blew my chin east, like a weathervane. But here was the bus, finally, which stopped and growled, its engine giving off a hot diesel stink, its doors’ pistons popping and hissing when they opened. The girl kissed her friend goodbye; her friend frowned at me as I boarded. I resisted the temptation to wave to her,ta-ta.The tokens, as the driver pressed the plunger, jangled likemaracas filled with pirates’ gold. The doors folded closed and the light changed, we entered the Central Park transverse, and soon we were at speed.
The bus was crowded, but somehow the girl had managed to secure a seat in the rear corner. I swung gently back and forth on the straps, catching glimpses of her as we raced crosstown: she was watching out the window, which she’d slid open; she was staring directly at me; she’d closed her eyes and was smelling the early-evening air. The setting sun’s light and the trees’ lengthened shadows streaked across her face. The park’s high stone walls ripped by. We stopped at Central Park West, then at Columbus. She did not get off at Amsterdam but stood as we approached Broadway and pulled the bell’s wire. The bus creaked to a stop, and she followed the passengers off, past me, and made her way down the rear exit’s steps. Before the doors closed, I pushed them open and followed her again. She walked halfway up the block; I walked behind her half as slow. Then she turned around, waiting until I stood before her. She adjusted her book bag on her shoulder before she spoke.
“That whole ride you could’ve talked to me,” she said.
I realized I was smiling.
“Do you have a name?”
When I told her, she said, “I’m Amanda West.”
“Amanda West,” I repeated back to her.
“You’re not much of a conversationalist,” she finally said. As if to confirm her observation, I offered no reply. “I liked your performance,” she said. She had gray eyes—a color I’d never seen before. “I couldn’t have done that,” she continued. “Get up onstage and just…be someone else.” I decided not to disagree. “Okay,” she said, “since the cat’s got your tongue…” Then she reached out, took my wrist, and turned my hand palm up. From her jacket pocket, she produced a ballpoint pen and bit off the sea-blue cap. Its end, I noticed, had been chewed off. She wrote her phone number on my skin and, when she finished, closed my fingers over the digits.
“When you get up the nerve to speak, why don’t you give me a call?”
It was the diorama hour, when evening is just beginning to descend and everything is brilliant and discrete. When the city seems scrimshawed on a lit bulb. The lights in stores have just begun to shine throughtheir windows, their interiors part of the exterior. The spring air, now that the sun had fallen behind New Jersey’s towers, had a touch of coastal chilliness. Beneath us, the 1 Train rumbled into the station and groaned to a stop. Amanda looked over my shoulder and then let go of my hand. From the south, just cresting the hill, a bus appeared. Its roof lights were as bright as ladybugs; its corrugated siding seemed made from a thimble’s steel. In its emerald interior, a shade as vibrant as a horsefly’s eye, the passengers swayed. And in that cicada quiet, since the city is always in a state of ambient noise, Amanda waved goodbye and then boarded. The doors closed, and I watched her ease toward the back, the vehicle gargling as it departed, which conferred the illusion of her standing still before me, for just a moment longer, before being ripped from my sight.
Headed above Ninety-Sixth Street.
That borderland.
Where no one else I knew lived.
—
I got the part in the Hornbeam film.
I was still in a daze when my parents greeted me at the apartment with the news. They met me at the door as if they’d thrown me a surprise birthday party. I had committed Amanda’s number to memory on my walk home; I’d walked the entire distance in a state that felt much bigger than happiness. Borne aloft and weighed down, the way swimming underwater can feel like flying. Dad said, “I’m proud of you, boychik,” and cupped my cheek in one palm and kissed the other. Mom said, “Way to go, kiddo!” and when she hugged me, she slapped my back several times. Oren, standing behind them, tapped his index finger to his temple as if to congratulate me for taking his advice. All of them mistook my bemused expression for a sense of accomplishment, although I cannot say I was displeased.
“They’re messengering over the script,” Dad said. “Brent’s coming by in a few minutes with your contract.”
Oren said, “Do you want me to help you with your lines?”
To everyone, Dad said, “My son, landing a starring role, just like his father.”
Mom said, “I’ll call your teachers Monday and get your homework together for the rest of the week.”
Dad said, “Maybe drink some coffee tonight and read the script through.”
When the fact that we were all crowded in the foyer finally dawned on us, Mom said, “Let’s eat dinner and properly celebrate.”