The Me You See (16 page)

Stefia was only sixteen.

“Okay,” David said, sitting the two of us down before blocking.
“Here’s the deal. This is a big scene. This is a huge scene. And this is one of
those scenes an actor could get injured in.”

“Well, block it the right way so we don’t, David,” Stefia
teased.

“Follow the blocking and you’ll be fine,” he corrected.
“It's easy to get lost in what’s happening and find yourself out of control.”

“You’re the director,” Stefia said, with a polite curtsey.
“We are your loyal servants.”

I snorted and gave David a sweeping bow, adding, “Good sir,
we are here to do your will.”

“Okay, you guys,” David laughed. “I get it.”

David walked us through where he wanted us to stand, where
he wanted us to move, what he had envisioned for the scene and how he thought
it would play itself out. Lots of times he would give a direction, and then look
to Stefia to see her reaction. Like then Paul is going to jump on top of you
and straddle you with his knees… I mean, she was the sixteen-year-old, right?
We had to be careful with her.

We tried it a few times, at every rehearsal, but it didn’t
feel right. I thought once we were off book and weren’t fumbling with a script,
it would get better, but it didn’t. It felt weird. It felt fake. And I knew it
wasn’t right because David looked so tentative. He walked around the stage,
rubbing his chin with his fingers, then he poked at his temples. He sighed
three times before he said anything.

“You’ve got to let go,” he finally said to me. “You’re
holding back.”

He was right. I was.

“I don’t want to hurt her,” I said. “I’ve never had to act
a scene like this. How do you make this believable without causing actual
pain?”

“I’ll let you know if it’s too much,” Stefia interrupted.
“I’m not little. I’m not weak.”

“I’m not saying you are, I’m just…”

“Trust me. I’ll let you know.”

“But how are you going to let me know? If you say stop or
you’re hurting me or don’t do that I’m going to assume that’s all part of your ad-libbed
lines.”

“It helps to have a code,” David suggested. “Something that
has nothing to do with lines so you won’t get confused that she’s ad-libbing.
Maybe an action, but not something that’s obvious to the audience if it
happens. So…think on that, okay?”

“Okay,” we said at the same time.

“Now, let’s run it once more,” David said. “And this time,
I want you both to let go. I challenge you to try and make me stop the scene
because it’s too much.”

Stefia grinned and said, “I’m always up for a challenge.”

And so we took it. At first it was hard to get into that
hardcore character. There’s something embarrassing about being that physically
violent—or physically vulnerable—when someone is watching. But we kept at it.
Stefia’s eyes encouraged me to keep going, giving me a power that I wouldn’t
have known I could even pretend to have. David just kept watching intently and
nodding, so I knew we were getting closer.

By the time the scene ended, Stefia had smacked me in the
face, I had called her a few names that weren’t in the script, and we were both
breathing so hard I thought she was going to pass out.

I looked up.

David smiled.

“You’re getting there,” he said. “That was a huge
improvement.”

I smiled.

“Was that okay for you, Stefia?” David asked.

She was still sitting on the floor by the bed where scene
had ended, trying to catch her breath. But she nodded at David.

“Positive?” I asked, putting my hand out in front of her to
help her up.

“Yes,” she said, pushing herself up on her own. “Positive.”

She stood up, gave me a quick smile, and straightened her
clothes.

I got it. We’d keep it professional. In a role like that,
it was easier for us to not get involved too much with each other. The better I
knew her, the harder it would be to toss her around.

And besides, she was only sixteen.

**

After the last dress rehearsal, everyone went to a little
place in town called Beidermann’s. Tradition, Stefia said. Burgers, fries, and
shakes all on Niles’ and James’ tab.

“Nice guys, paying for all that,” I said, sitting by Stefia
and waiting for our food.

“They’ve got money.”

“Are they a couple?”

“Oh, god. No,” she laughed. “James is married to Mary.
Niles and them all went to college together. Theater geeks from the beginning.”

“Theater geeks…with money.” I laughed. “Is Niles married?”

She turned to take her food from the waitress who was
balancing all of our food on one tray.

“Niles? No. Not married. Why?”

“Just trying to figure this whole theater group out,” I
said, taking my own plate as Stefia passed it to me. “I’m not from around here,
you know. Kind of seems like everyone knows everyone and everything about them,
except for me.”

“You’re an implant.”

“An outsider,” I said, putting my hands up and wiggling my
fingers like I was talking about a ghost.

“But that’s okay,” she said. “And besides. Not everyone
knows everyone here. Or everything about them.”

“Oh, come on,” I said, taking a fry and pushing it through
the puddle of ketchup I had squirted on my plate. “This is small town America.”

“People still keep secrets,” she said, and when I raised a
doubtful eyebrow, she continued. “Okay. See the table over there?”

Stefia pointed at a teenaged couple sitting against the
opposite wall. They were eating ice cream cones and laughing.

“First date?” I said.

“Nope. They’ve been dating six months.”

“They look happy.”

“She’s pregnant. Just found out a month ago.”

“Oh?”

“It’s not his.”

“Oh.”

“He doesn’t know.”

“Wait. He doesn’t know she’s pregnant or he doesn’t know
that it’s not his?”

“Neither,” she said. “He doesn’t know either thing.”

I wagged my head with an I-told-you-so smile.

“See, Stefia? That’s what I mean. This is small town. You
know lots about lots of people. Everything about everyone, that’s how small
towns work.”

She took a bite of her burger and then wiped a drip of
mustard off her chin.

“But that guy with Miss Pregnant?” she said, pointing back
at the couple. “He doesn’t know the biggest important news about her. Get it?
Not everyone here knows everything about everyone.”

“I thought everyone in small towns liked to talk.”

“Oh, they do. But they also know how to keep secrets.”

The waitress brought our shakes and we all moved to make
room for them on the table.

“Mmm, chocolate,” Stefia said when she sucked some of hers
up the straw. “My favorite.”

“You know, you should really cut out of this little town,”
I said.

“And go where?”

“Somewhere with a bigger theater district.”

“Oh. Sure. New York, where everyone’s dreams are chewed up
and spit out.”

“No, not New York,” I said, shaking my head. “New York is
too cutthroat. Everything they say about New York is true. You never get a
chance to do a show. But there are a billion other hubs for theater around the
country. I mean, even just head down to Minneapolis…”

“Or I could just stay here.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re really talented and they need people like
you there.”

She shook her head and took another pull off her shake.

“Come on, Paul. You expect me to believe you don’t say that
to all your leading ladies?”

“I don’t. I promise.”

“Paul, seriously.”

“Listen,” I said. I set my shake down and turned my chair
to face her. “Look at me.”

She turned to look at me with a grin, but then saw how
serious I was and her smile faded. “You’re a really talented actress. You’re
good.” Then I leaned in closer by her ear and whispered, “You’re way better
than everyone in this show. Shit, you’re better than me…”

“I am not.”

“I’m serious,” I said, sitting back in my chair

She smiled half-heartedly, but did not look away.

“That’s called a compliment, by the way. You need to learn
how to take a compliment.”

“I’m fine with compliments,” she said, finally turning back
to the table and swirling her straw in her shake. “I’m just not a fan of the
strings that are often attached to them.”

I took my last fry and shoved it in my mouth.

“I just think you’re talented,” I said, “and I thought you
should know. No strings attached.”

“Okay,” she smiled. “Thank you for the string-less
compliment.”

She was gorgeous and she was sixteen and she was
ah-ma-zing. No strings attached.

**

The opening night crowd for
Don’t Mind If I Do
was
almost sold out. We figured that had something to do with all the local press
talking up the sinful nature of the show, and Niles telling people to stay home
if they didn’t want to see it.

An hour and seventeen minutes into the show, my big scene
began. It started by me shoving her across the stage. She completed a well-blocked
trip and fell on the ground, which wasn’t hard because my nerves had caused me
to push her harder than normal. Then I sauntered over to her, kicked at her
side and told her to get up. I screamed a ton of disgusting things at her,
lines that you wouldn’t believe someone could actually put in a script, and yet
if they were anything different, you’d call the entire scene unbelievable.

 I grabbed her by the arm and dragged her kicking and
screaming over to a dresser next to the bed. More lines were tossed out. We
both blared and shrieked at each other until it seemed the stage lights might
fall down on top of us. A few cast members off stage were watching, one
stagehand biting her fingernails. I mean, biting her fingernails even after she’d
watched it at least twenty-five times in rehearsal? Opening night made
everything way more intense. It was the lights, the audience…everything.

Two minutes and a bunch of dialogue into our scene,
Stefia’s character was supposed to start fighting back. And I don’t know if it
was nerves or what but she gave it all she had. And the more she gave, the
harder I fought her. We got into it something serious. She was fighting back
and I was fighting her and I wondered for a second if we weren’t acting
anymore.

It was then I realized we’d never figured out the code to
tell each other we’d gone too far. I mean, we had been following the blocking
exactly, but everything seemed more sharp and vivid than it had ever been in
rehearsal.

What was it David had said? These were the scenes when
actors get lost in what’s happening and lose control? Everything was different
with an audience. When people watched, it multiplied everything you did by a
million.

I grabbed her by the neck and looked into her eyes. I
searched for something on her face that said what we were doing was still okay.
I pushed her backwards onto the bed. She flipped over and tried to crawl away
on her hands and knees but I grabbed her by the ankles, pulled her towards me
and turned her onto her back.

She is sixteen.

She is sixteen.

She is sixteen.

I was supposed to tear her costume right down the front of
her. There were two reasons this was supposedly okay. First, since the bedding
was positioned just so, and because of how she was blocked to lay on the bed as
this happened, the audience would never see any nudity from Stefia. David had
assured her of that multiple times. Secondly, her costume was specially made so
that no matter how hard I tore the fabric, it would only rip down to a certain
point. Which meant I would see minimal nudity, if any, from Stefia.

That’s how it was supposed to go.

She lay on the bed, still acting as though she was trying
to get away, and I climbed on top of her, straddling her between my knees. I
grabbed at the neckline of her costume and tore with the same force I’d torn in
all the dress rehearsals.

I swear. I did.

But the tear didn’t stop. It went right past the fabric
panel that was sewn in to stop the tear.

Now, Stefia was on the bed and the audience couldn’t see
what I saw. None of the other actors or stage hands could see what I saw. David
Jeffery Hank couldn’t see what I saw.

What I saw was the word
Hate
. Right there, etched in
thick, puffy red letters into the skin below her breasts.

Hate.

She was a cutter.

Stefia realized I’d seen it about the same time I realized
what it was and for a millisecond we were thrown right out of the scene. I
stared into her eyes and saw a mixture of anger and fear and almost an apology
for having put it there to be seen. You could have heard a pin drop; the
silence was closing in on my ears, louder than any applause I’d ever heard in
my life.