Lives of the Circus Animals (24 page)

T
he bed was piled with naked parts: bottoms, breasts, a leg, a gut. Frank sat at the foot of the bed, staring at skin, thinking about flesh, the ugliness of it. Without love or lust, the human body was as appealing as a mound of raw pizza dough.

“Does it have to have been bad sex?” said Allegra. “Can't they have had good sex?”

Allegra and Dwight were sprawled on the bed, Dwight on his back, Allegra facedown across Dwight's middle. Her pouty butt was in the air, her T-shirt yoked around her neck. Their jeans and underwear were tangled around their ankles.

Chris, Melissa, and Toby stood by the wall, approximating an audience. Boaz was out in the living room, rigging up the stereo. He refused to watch Allegra do this scene.

Tonight was their last chance to get things right. Tomorrow was opening night, but they hadn't done a tech yet, much less a dress. They were still working out the undressed portion of the program. Nothing was going right.

“Frank?” said Allegra. “Frank? Hello out there? We're waiting.”

“If we're like this for much longer,” said Dwight, “Allegra's gonna turn me straight.”

“Not before you turn me homo,” said Allegra.

Dwight began to laugh, as if that were the most wonderful joke in the world. Frank didn't get it.

“No,” Frank finally said. “You just look silly.”

“Gee, thanks,” said Allegra. She rolled off Dwight and wiggled her jeans and panties up. Dwight was even quicker about covering up, turning around so nobody would see his privates.

“Allegra has a point,” said Chris. “Why does it have to be bad sex? Why do they have to look ridiculous?”

“Because it's a comedy,” said Frank. “And they don't love each other.”

“You can have great sex with someone you don't love,” said Chris. “You don't even have to like them. Which
I
think is funny.”

Dwight told Frank, “Just because
your
love life is in a dark place doesn't mean
we
should suffer.” He thought he was only making a joke.

“Fine. What do you guys suggest? How do you want to represent great sex?”

“Let's go back to the original idea,” said Allegra. “We're naked and we're under a sheet. And it's after sex and we're blissed out.”

“And smoking cigarettes?” said Toby. “That is so tired.”

She ignored him. “We're breathless, we're catching our breaths, we can't believe it was so great. And then we see who we're with, and we slowly become ourselves again.”

“Since we're under the sheet,” said Dwight, “can I keep my underwear on?”

Melissa groaned. “I hate plays and movies where people fuck like crazy, then get up and are still wearing underpants.”

Frank thought about it. “Take everything off,” he said. “Both of you. And scatter it around the bed. Then, as you do the scene, you're not sure whose clothes are whose. You pass things back and forth. Starting with your underwear. Now
that's
funny.” And pathetic. He was determined to include some pathos here.

“I like that,” said Allegra. She turned to Dwight. “We can have fun with that, don't you think?”

Frank led the others back down the hall where the audience would be. Nobody was very interested in seeing Allegra and Dwight naked again; they were only “acting” the role of an audience here.

“I wish I was doing Dwight's part,” said Toby. “I could make naked funny.”

“Toby,” said Frank. “Just focus on your scenes, okay?”

Another day, another set of problems addressed and solved, maybe. Toby forgot half of what they'd worked out two days ago. Dwight was dropping lines. Chris and Allegra were resisting Frank just to be difficult. Tomorrow was opening night and nothing was working, but even
if it did work, what would they have? Dog meat. Frank had spent four weeks of his life trying to turn a piece of unwatchable dog meat into watchable dog meat. He could not wait for this show to be over. He could be free again, but free to do what? Jessie was over. Jessie was dead. There was no chance of Jessie anymore. There was nothing but his stupid job and this stupid show.

“We're ready!” Allegra called out.

“All right,” said Frank, and he led the others down the hall, grumbling, “Let's see what they have for us this time.”

Y
OU: You must know everything.

ME: Is that a moral command or a sarcastic comment?

YOU: You think you have to be a polymath in order to succeed.

ME: I just want to know stuff. History, religion, physics, math.

YOU: But you know only the names. You want to talk about Fermat's equation, Riemann spheres, the Mandelbrot set, and the rest, but you can't even take the time to learn elementary calculus.

ME: I like the metaphors. Hedonic calculus. Moral arithmetic. Irrational numbers.

YOU: But they're just metaphors.

ME: And the clarity. The finalities. When you spend your life playing at questions that have no final answers, it's a relief to know that ten times three is thirty, or thirty squared is nine hundred.

YOU: There's something sick about a playwright wanting to do numbers instead of words. Anything to avoid actors, huh?

ME: Words are so sloppy. I want to be precise.

YOU: If you knew some real math, you'd understand there is no deep truth in numbers. It's a closed system, a tautology. You're like those literary critics of forty years ago who went gaga about quantum physics, thinking it proved everything was subjective, which it didn't. Your discussion of fractals in
Chaos Theory
was pure nonsense, you know.

ME: Not that anybody noticed. They were too busy hating my drama to catch the mistakes in my math.

YOU: You made a botch of my dementia too. I was your model for schizophrenia. All the absurd, irrational things said in my fevers?

ME: And witty things too. “The tune goes round the tangent, but it comes out the cosine of bliss.” That was a direct quote.

YOU: You turned my dementia into lyrical schizophrenia: theater madness.

ME: Would you rather I told the truth?

YOU: No. The truth was awful. The truth was boring. Just a sick man in a hospital room. Sleeping, sleeping, sleeping. Then waking up and talking paranoid shit about his doctors or his family. Or getting well, but only for a month or two, and only well enough to hate his body for betraying him. Or hate his brain for abandoning him—

ME: Or hate his life partner for going on in life.

YOU: I never hated you.

ME: But you didn't love me. You withdrew from me. You shut yourself off. I remember sitting beside your bed in Intensive Care in the last days—

YOU: No hospital porn. Please.

ME: And you told me to go.

YOU: I didn't.

ME: You did. You whispered, “I don't want you here.”

YOU: I didn't want you to see me die.

ME: You were embarrassed by your death. The way you used to be embarrassed about being seen on the toilet. You did not want me, who loved you most of all, to see you suffer that final humiliation.

YOU: I looked awful.

ME: I was used to it.

YOU: I wanted to protect you.

ME: You wanted to die alone. You were ashamed of dying. Or bitter over my being alive. Or something, I don't know what. But I was hurt that you could not share your death with me.

YOU: Why're you so angry? I'm the one who's dead.

ME: Only the dead have a right to be angry?

YOU: Yes.

ME: You have all the rights and I have none?

YOU: You could always join me here.

ME: Don't think that I haven't considered it. But there's nothing like the death of someone you love to spoil the cozy fantasy of death.

 

Caleb stared at what his pencil had just scratched on the page. Here was the crux of his sadness and pain, in the unfinished business of Ben's death. Ben could sleep with all the guys that he wanted, and Caleb could accept it. But then he wanted to die alone, and that hurt.

 

YOU: You sound like you're depressed.

ME: I am.

YOU: You should see a doctor.

ME: I am seeing a doctor.

YOU: What can I do to help?

ME: I don't know, Ben. I just don't know. I don't know anything about anything anymore. (Pause.) But thank you for the offer.

T
he audience for
Tom and Gerry
was in a peculiar mood that evening. They were
too
responsive. They laughed at everything. Henry enjoyed it at first, but it became confusing, annoying, like making love to someone who was ticklish.

“You're sure full of beans tonight,” the Princess told him in the wings while they waited for the curtain call.

“Am I?” But then he remembered that he had cause to be full of something. Nobody knew his good news, of course, but he was reluctant to tell it, for fear that he would gloat.

They took their bows and quickly dispersed backstage. Henry opened his dressing room door and found Jessie sitting there, talking on her cell phone. She signaled hello at him with her index finger.

“Uh-huh. Uh-huh. At what time? Fine.”

He squeezed past her and sat at his dressing table. He was not entirely sure that he wanted Jessie here. He'd like to be alone—for a few minutes anyway. He covered his face with cool, smelly cold cream and watched the highly competent woman in his mirror. She looked so tickled, as if she were laughing at him or herself or the world, he couldn't tell.

She finished and snapped her phone shut. “So how did it go? You must've felt distracted by your big news.”

“I forgot. Believe it or not. But I always forget everything except the show.” He wiped his mouth so he could speak without tasting cold cream. “You didn't have to come get me. You put in a full day today. I'd think you'd like some time to yourself.”

“Not me. And it hasn't stopped. Not even while you were onstage.
I got a big surprise for tomorrow. Do you know who Rosie O'Donnell is?”

He thought he'd heard the name.

“She wants you on her show tomorrow morning.”

“I thought I was doing that
ET
thing.”

“
Entertainment Tonight
is at eight. Rosie tapes at ten. Somebody canceled. She jumped at the chance to get you. And we can fit her in. Oh I went ahead and hired a car and driver for tonight and tomorrow. And one last thing. Can you wait until you get home to take a shower? They're waiting outside.”

“Who?”

“You'll see. Here. I brought you your tweed coat. It's nattier than your ratty old denim.”

She went out into the hall while he changed his clothes. Henry wondered what was up but was too fried to think clearly about anything. He rejoined her and they started down the stairs. There was a curious brightness below, as if a car were parked outside with its headlights aimed at the door. They stepped into the glare.

Two white lights mounted on tripods steamed in the aerosol drizzle. Below were a handful of video cameras, a few journalists, and forty or fifty fans. “Oh fuck,” said Henry.

“There's the car,” said Jessie. “Parked by the curb. The driver's name is Sasha. I'll wait for you there.” And she hurried off, abandoning him to the jackals.

“What's this?” cried Henry in mock surprise. “My autograph? If you insist.” He scribbled his name on one program, then another and another. These weren't anachronistic autograph hounds but “normal” people, regular theatergoers. He hadn't seen so many since the first week after they opened.

“Mr. Lewse?” a male reporter called out. “Is it true you've been cast as the lead in the movie of
Greville
?”

“I don't know if I'm supposed to say anything. But I've been approached.” He continued to sign his name, pretending not to notice the cameras, feigning indifference to the large woolly object thrust in his face like an angora phallus.

“Are you giving up theater for the movies, Mr. Lewse?”

“Do I have to choose? I'd like to have it all. Wouldn't you?” He was pleased by how smooth he sounded, neither flippant nor earnest.

“How do you feel playing one of the most hated villains in popular fiction?”

“Dee-lighted.”

And he was delighted. He was giddy, he was high. Everyone was smiling at him. Three million dollars was nothing compared to this public adulation. The money wasn't quite real. This wasn't real either, but it was more familiar, immediate, and fun.

“Thank you. Thank you so much,” he called out as he backed toward the car. It wasn't a gaudy stretch limo, but large, tasteful, and black. He jumped inside and gave one last wave to the crowd as the car pulled off. He found himself happily breathless, like a younger man who'd just had a very nice quickie.

“How strange,” he claimed. “But I didn't do too badly, did I?”

“Not at all,” said Jessie with a laugh. “You take to this like a duck to water.”

T
hey were all on television: Allegra, Dwight, Henry Lewse, and Bette Midler. They were in a sitcom about a family of shadows left behind in a suburban house when the real family moved to Maine. A silly premise for a sitcom, but not surprising for the WB network.

Toby sat at home, watching the show with his parents. He was hurt that his friends were stars and he wasn't. Then he remembered that he was supposed to be on the show tonight, a guest star.

“Good grief. I'm late.” And he ran out the door without explaining to Mom and Dad.

The show was filming in New York, of course, and his parents were in Milwaukee. But Milwaukee was now in New Jersey. If the bus came soon, he could get to the show in time.

The bus arrived, the door opened, Toby jumped on. “The WB and make it snappy,” he told the driver and flung himself into a seat.

“Toby?” It was Caleb, and he was sitting by the window. “What are you doing here? Where have you been? I miss you.”

Toby was overjoyed to see Caleb again but knew he shouldn't show it. “I've been busy with my career. I'm going to be in a TV show.”

“That's wonderful. I am so happy for you.”

“Are you? Really?”

Caleb was so pleased that he took Toby in his arms and kissed him, right there on the bus, a warm, deep kiss. The kiss was so strong that their clothes evaporated. The whole bus applauded the two nude bodies locked in tender embrace.

And Toby woke up. Alone in his dinky room in the apartment on West 104th Street. There was no bus, no Caleb, only his own dick sticking out of blue flannel pajama bottoms decorated with penguins.

It was sad to wake up alone after such a beautiful dream. Plus he needed to pee.

He tucked his rod back in and got out of bed, which was a baggy futon on the floor. He padded down the hall toward the toilet. They were doing the play here tomorrow, in this very space. He wondered if Henry would come; he wished it were Caleb. What a stupid, corny dream to dream the night before a show.

His erection had gone down enough for him to pee. He aimed at the side of the bowl so he wouldn't wake anyone. He didn't flush for the same reason, but he remembered to lower the seat for the girls.

Out in the hall he heard a hissing in Allegra and Boaz's room. It sounded like Boaz was arguing. He heard Allegra sobbing.

He lightly knocked on the door. “Are you guys all right?” he whispered.

Silence followed.

Then Allegra said, “We're fine, Toby. Go to bed. You didn't hear anything. You're just dreaming us. Good night.”

“Right,” he whispered. “Sorry. Good night. See you tomorrow.”