Page 87 of Playworld
There is a second stage to this process, a special brand of sublimation, which occurred later that week and altered my fate. Like quite a few things that happened in my youth, it is also something you can watch on YouTube: a scene fromTake Twothat’s a famous tearjerker, like Ricky Schroder’s with a dead Jon Voight inThe Champ.We shot it my last day on set. It takes place in Konig’s dining room, now his ex-wife’s town house. He has brought Shelley Duvall to dinner, with whom he has patched things up. He has figured out the ending to his movie, and he’s elated because he’s secured financing for his next picture—which, he informs the guests, he’ll shoot on location in Spain. Clayburgh, meanwhile, has struck up a relationship with Elliott; Gould holds her hand atop the table, he is so in love. Like Konig, Clayburgh is also in high spirits. She’s just landed a major role in a Bertolucci film—she is out from under Konig’s shadow, she’ll spend most of the upcoming winter in Italy. It is all at once authentically celebratory and also a game of one-upmanship—in other words, decidedly adult. The scene is shot tight: the camera tracks right, in what appears to be a circle around the table; it loops, swinging back, with each piece of happy news, to my character, Bernie, to whom no one is speaking, who is registering his progressive abandonment, and who can’t help himself finally—at the scene’s climax, he smacks the table. Everyone turns to look at him. The camera fixes on him, in close-up, and, eyes full of tears, he says, “Why did you bother? Having kids. Me. What was the point? Jesus Christ, I’m like Charlton Heston inPlanet of the Apes.This whole time I’ve been thinking I’ll finally get back to Earth when this is it. This is my home.”
Nailed it on the first take. And after Hornbeam held the shot at its conclusion, I just broke down. I couldn’t get it together, even after Hornbeam yelled,“Cut,”and the entire crew erupted into applause. Even afterHornbeam, who, along with Jill and Shelley and Elliott, rubbed my back until it warmed my shirt, and even Diane appeared and put her arms around my neck—here too my sobs turned to laughter. I laugh-cried myself into comfort. I knew I’d done something excellent, but everyone’s appreciation sounded far off; and not for a second did it occur to me that the sadness I’d so torrentially tapped into came from elsewhere.
“You decide to become a great actor,” Hornbeam said to me later, “and nothing’s going to get in your way.”
Perhaps Oren was right after all.
—
Now, however, back at Boyd full-time, I devoted myself to a detailed investigation aimed at answering the following question: Why was Amanda in love with Rob Dolinski instead of me?
There were obvious and glaring differences between us. There was, first and foremost, the figure he cut. He was easily over six feet tall, with a classic swimmer’s frame. His dark double-breasted suits accentuated this—he even occasionally wore a vest—their tailoring, cuffs to hems, imparting to his movements lines that cohered in a geometry unknown to me. He had some of the actor in him too, evinced by his choice of tie or shirt, one of which (or both) was always light blue, and had the effect of turning onanotherlight behind his already bright eyes, which like a husky’s were hard to look away from. Butlooking awaywas one of Dolinski’s most devastating weapons of seduction: in the mornings, say, upon entering Boyd’s bustling front hall, Dolinski, midconversation—with a teacher, perhaps, or with whomever he’d happened to walk into the building—made it a habit to shoot a glance, midsentence, at some girl his junior, who’d been trying very hard (she too midconversation and seated on the pews with several half-huddled friends) to intentionally ignore him. But having felt the flash of him and confusing, as Elliott liked to say, her hope with her evidence, she’d meet his gaze full-on. And like the proverbial deer she then froze in anticipation—of a smile, a nod, some sort of acknowledgment—but was flattened by his dismissal, by the complete and utter indifference with which he strode past.
The most impressive thing about him was not his poshness, which I considered the definition of Upper East Side (and corroborated by checking his address in the Boyd directory, the Carlyle—“a verywell-appointed building,” Dad had remarked when I asked), but the fact that nearly all the teachers adored him. I often spotted him lounging in Miss Sullens’s office, chatting about books. He’d pulled down Mr. McElmore’s pants, but they could be seen yukking it up as they waited in line together at Kris’s Knish, parked just inside Central Park, on Ninety-Sixth Street, as if it had all been in good fun.
“Just have one more look,” Dolinski pleaded with Mr. Heimdall as the two departed the chemistry lab.
Heimdall, mock annoyed, briefly eyed the marked-up exam Dolinski held. “You’re determining the concentration of sulfuric acid, Robert, not interpreting a passage of Shakespeare.”
To which Dolinski replied, “Compounds can be as elegant as sonnets.”
“Be that as it may,” said Heimdall, smirking with real affection, “come by at office hours. I’ll be easier to butter up then.”
Miss Brodsky—this was mind-boggling—once took his arm. Dolinski was standing by the front-hall pews, talking to Sophie and Andrea, when our permanently unfriendly IPS teacher sidled up to him, clutched his elbow, and, in a gesture that was both girlish and motherly—was, when I thought about it, Naomi-ish—pressed her shoulder to his and tilted her head as if she were going to rest hers there.
“Well, well, well,” Brodsky said, to the ladies as much as to him, “look at you, all grown up and handsome. Do you remember what a terror you were in ninth grade?”
“Yes,” Dolinski said, with a generous, self-effacing batting of his eyes, “and I also rememberyoubeing my favorite teacher.”
“You and your sweet lies,” said Brodsky. And then she noticeably gave his arm an extra squeeze. “You almost make me want to be a different woman.”
One afternoon, I spotted Sophie, Andrea, and Dolinski leaving the building, so I followed them. They were headed “under the stairs,” to the carport that was at the bottom of a ramp between two buildings on Ninety-Seventh Street. I too descended, breathing the trio’s smoke, which wafted toward me as I tapped the iron railing on my way down the steps and, once arrived, and having no idea what I was doing, took a spot at the far end of the space across from the three upperclassmen, leaning against the wall and trying not to be too obvious about myout-of-placeness. I glanced, now and again, toward the stairs, as if my buddy were arriving any second. At first the trio paid me no mind, but it wasn’t long before I had their attention.
“Waiting for someone?” Andrea asked me.
“Dude’s a narc,” Sophie said, and then, like my grandmother, tusked smoke through her nostrils.
“It’s Griffin, right?” Dolinski said. Then to Sophie: “He and I were in detention a couple of weeks ago.”
I was shocked he remembered my name.
“McQuarrie,” he said gloomily, “was our proctor. He never did get around to tying us up in his little dungeon down there, did he?”
I shook my head, disarmed by the olive branch of his inclusion.
He said, “You wrestled my friend Vince Voelker. From Dalton.”
“I guess you could call it that,” I said.
For Dolinski, smoking was an art. Even I, who’d never taken a single puff, could appreciate his grace. He took in each lungful with gusto, as if he were testing his wind, letting it float out on his words as he spoke. “He told me you were one tough nut.”
My heart had been bruised by Amanda, it was true, but I couldn’t help finding this cheering.
“Istill think he’s a narc,” Sophie said.
Mr. Damiano appeared. He was greeted by the trio warmly, familiarly. When he spoke, the unlit cigarette in his mouth jumped like a seismometer’s pen. He was offered a light by Dolinski—his Zippo tinging when he opened it and whose scent of butane also reminded me of my grandmother. He covered the flame with his hand, even though we were hidden from the wind. Damiano, acknowledging my presence, said, “Your date not show?”
I shrugged.