Page 81 of Playworld
“You busted a crown, didn’t you?” she called after him. Then she raised an eyebrow at us in sick glee.“Knick-knack paddywhack,”she said,“give a dog a bone.”
—
On Thursday, I was back in school and hurrying to the library, when I spotted Mr. Fistly walking toward me. He was strolling, deliberately, down the hallway toward his office, reading a sheet of paper, but just as we passed each other he paused without looking up and, having seen me through the eyeball in his ear, said, “Mr. Hurt, join me in private, please.” From her desk, Miss Abbasi glanced at me as I passed. She let me register her disappointment and then returned to her typewriter’s keys. I had no idea what I’d done wrong and checked off the list: I’d turned in my excuse to Mr. McQuarrie for missing school all week; miraculously, my assignments were in on time; my grades had improved since wrestling season had ended; I was wearing loafers; I even checked my zipper. Mr. Fistly took his seat, placed his elbows on his desk, pressed his fingertips together so they formed a steeple, and began to speak.
“I have just received a rather disturbing call from Mrs. Metcalf. Does that name ring a bell?”
“No, sir, it does not.”
“Exactly,”he said. “You are unaware of her identity because you have set eyes on her once. At the Nightingale-Bamford School. After not only auditioning for her play but apparently accepting a lead role in it. Upon which you did her the discourtesy of neither returning her calls nor attending rehearsal this week, inconveniencing her terrifically while embarrassing me as well, since she is a respected colleague. I would have you inform her yourself that you did not intend to participate in her production and apologize, but I think so little of your character I find that sort of object lesson would be lost on you. Not to mention that I trust your follow-through even less. So please reserve this Saturday for detention. I didnotexcuse you, Mr. Hurt.”
I turned around at the doorway to face him.
“Make a point of seeing Mr. Damiano before this afternoon is out. In fact”—Fistly shot a cuff and checked his watch—“he is at the moment in his downstairs office. He will inform you as to how we are going to proceed with the matter.”
The office to which Fistly referred was the basement theater. It was below Boyd’s modern wing. The flight down was like descending through an aquifer, since Boyd’s swimming pool was also located here. With each step the stairwell turned warmer and more humid, the smell of chlorine grew more powerful, and the metal handrail became slicker with condensation. The basement theater was to the left, at the end of a long hallway, past Boyd’s school store and the cavernous book storage room next to it, presided over by Mr. McQuarrie. He sat at his desk now—the space’s only light a small lamp—licking his finger to flip through a stack of pink receipts, like a monk over an illuminated manuscript. When he caught my eye, he flashed a naughty smile—“G’day, Mr. Hurt”—and I hurried past, suppressing a shiver.
The theater was a low-ceilinged room, long and rectangular, black-walled and dimly lit but for the tiny square of stage at its far end. Mr. Damiano, who presided here, taught honors English and drama. He was bearded and bearish in build, and his facial hair, grown to his cheekbones, hid what I’d once noticed were terrible acne scars. He was a teacher who did not have students so much as acolytes and was a fan, in all months of the year, of patterned scarves knotted at their ends. In short, he reminded me of the worst of my father’s students—lovers of costume but actors in name only. He stood by the entrance, leaning against the lighting booth, and briefly acknowledged me as I entered. He was smoking a cigarette contemplatively. Everything Damiano did—but especially now, aware, as he was, of me watching him watch Robert Lord and Kingsley Saladin, his two favorite seniors, rehearse a scene—was adverbial. He beheld themlovingly, devotedly, considerately,obviously.Italics his. I took a seat on a foldout chair and it squeaked. Damiano raised a finger to his lips and nodded toward the pair of students. Lord launched into a monologue, and Damiano, sensing my eyes on him, began to mouth the words in tandem, as if he were so stirred by the language he had to simultaneously perform it himself. “All the world’s a stage,” he and Lord began:
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow…
When they finished the scene, Damiano placed the cigarette in his mouth so that he could clap slowly, emphatically, and then said to me, confidentially, “Not bad, huh?”
“Huh,” I replied. “Notbad.”
“Give me a sec,” Damiano said gruffly, having taken the bait, and went to have words with his charges.
Once the pair had left, Damiano flipped one of the chairs around and straddled the seat. He had a Styrofoam cup in one hand; he took a final pull at his cigarette and then dropped the butt in his coffee. “I hear you’re in the new Hornbeam picture.” When I nodded, he said, “I’m not crazy about his work,” as if he’d recently had to turn down a starring role with him due to other commitments. “What’s he like on set?”
I considered playing dumb, to confirm that I took such experiences for granted. But I recalled an exchange between Diane Lane and me during my first day of shooting, in which she shows me a shortcut to factoring and I steal a glance at her profile as she writes out the solution. “Look at her,” Hornbeam said after the first take, “like you’re cheating off her test but want to get caught.”
“He’s precise,” I said, my precision surprising me. “He points you exactly where to go.”
The answer drew a jealous smirk. “Lucky you,” he said.
I let that one hang.
“Speaking of luck,” Damiano continued, “I need a role filled in our spring production ofAs You Like It.Plan to be here from nine to five every Saturday for the next month.”
It took a second to process this horror. “What if I don’t want to?”