Page 83 of Playworld

I took her out to dinner that night and hired her back after dessert.

Bernie

The girl I like doesn’t know I exist.

Konigshrugs at this insurmountable problem.

Bernie

How do you fix it?

Konig

The same way you treat male pattern baldness. Look, Bernie. In matters of love…

A Beautiful Womanwalks past father and son.Konig, Slowing Down,turns toWatchher progress.

Konig

…maybe let the game come to you.

I looked up to see Amanda standing at the barricade and leaning her elbows on its beam. She waved at me excitedly, and because the scene had ended, I went to join her.

“This is amazing,” Amanda said. “Aren’t you nervous with all these people watching?”

I scanned the crowd. “I don’t really think about it,” I said.

“You never get stage fright?”

“Only when I talk to you.” Which was, I could not help but notice, the most forthcoming thing I’d said to her since we’d met.

“And who is this young lady,” Hornbeam said, “consorting with such a poorly mannered host?” He was standing behind me, waiting for an introduction. After I made this, Hornbeam lightly took her elbow. “Why don’t you stand over here with the crew?” he said, and touched her crown as she ducked under the barrier. “Or better still, how would you like to be in the shot?”

Amanda looked over her shoulder at me and widened her eyes in disbelief. I shrugged, as if to say,Good luck.Hornbeam, as if he’d been planning this for some time, led her to where the beautiful extra stood. I watched as Hornbeam sawed his hands, giving them direction. As Amanda listened, a shyness left her features that made her appear older. When Hornbeam returned to my side, he explained how the scene was going to change. When we rolled, Amanda and the extra walked side by side, playing mother and daughter, chatting as they passed us, and this time Hornbeam and I both turned to regard them. During one of the final takes, Amanda smiled at me as we passed each other—this being the shot Hornbeam ultimately used—alluding, I thought, to something that hadn’t happened between us yet, as well as to these unanticipated circumstances that put us where we were: on set, in this scene, and, when I thought about it during the film’s premiere, forever.

—

Later, we took the crosstown bus together. Amanda remained quietly elated. We were seated in the back, Amanda by the window, which she’d slid open. “Not in a million years,” she said, “would I have thought I’d be in a movie today.” We entered the transverse, and the park’s leaves flashed past like a green wind. She watched this blur for a minute and then turned to face me. “You are full of surprises,” she said. She scanned my eyes after she spoke, as if to confirm a suspicion, and I experienced the dual feeling I would so often suffer in her presence: that she was waiting for me to do something and that to do so would be a complete mistake.Which is to say that my ear’s blood beat was as loud as the bus’s gargle. “Whydoyou get stage fright when you talk to me?” she asked.

I shrugged.

“Am I so horrible?”

I shook my head. “I worry…” I said.

“That?”

“I’ll say something wrong.”

When I didn’t elaborate, she said, “And?”

“You won’t like me anymore.”

Amanda raised an eyebrow. “What makes you think I like you?” To my horrified expression, Amanda said, “I’mkidding,” and knocked her shoulder to mine. She turned chatty. Here was the difference between Amanda and every other girl I’d known so far. She noticed things I hadn’t realized I had until she spoke them aloud. That on the city’s East Side, for instance, the crossing islands are more beautifully manicured, but nobody sits on them. That at night its avenues are deserted, but Broadway always seems crowded. That the East River, she observed, is half as narrow as the Hudson but more menacing. “Do you know what I mean?”

I did. “I do,” I said.

“This is our stop,” she said, and pulled the bell string.