The Poser (7 page)

From the network of rafters above to the stage below, the comedian's shadow stretched like a jinni out of its bottle. “Y'know, my wife and I. We've been married for ten years—I think it's ten, right, Doris?” The comedian in his rumpled velvet suit turned to the wing where Max and I stood. “Doris, is it ten or twelve? Doris! Oh, Jesus. Asking how long you've been married—that's like diggin' up a grave and askin' the corpse how long he's been buried.” The crowd groaned, a notice of pain somewhere between plea-for-help and war cry.

Pacing in the shadowed wings, Max and I could judge the audience's size only by these spurts of noise. Glasses clinked. Chairs scraped against the floor. Voices rose—“Be funny!” “Get off!”—like sea-thrown bodies, surfacing for a moment before sinking again into the black depths.

“Don Q., more like Don
eewww
,” Max said, pacing. All day he had been anxious. That afternoon when one of the microphones kept emitting feedback, Max, in a huff, referred to one of the stagehands as a “pig's heart.”

“My wife, she's quite a doll.” Don Q. scratched the side of his head. “I mean, literally, she's a doll. I bought her at the toy shop on Sixty-third Street and I tell ya, I got no complaints.”

His shadow extended its arm like a dancer at the end of a routine.

“My wife—when we get home, we're in bed, and she says to me, ‘C'mon, baby. It's been so long since we made love.'” His shadow, the second comedian, gave the line a real what-the-hell-can-I-do oomph, and the most absurd picture came to me: of the lanky shadow in bed next to a bewildered woman tugging the sheets up to her neck. “‘C'mon, let's make it a special night, honey,' she's saying to me. ‘When we were young, we did it all the time. C'mon, make love to me,' she says. So I tell her, ‘Baby, I already
did
. You didn't notice?'”

He was an excellent comedian, the shadow. He made the circumstances so unamusing that one had to laugh.

“You find this trash
funny
?” Max asked.

Just then we heard Don Q. say, “Thanks, baby. Thank you!” A thin bouquet of applause was tossed at the stage. He exited through the far wing, the shadow behind him distending, then collapsing, like an umbrella.

The spotlight beamed upon the microphone, not ten feet from us. It seemed music should be playing. Music should be playing. There was a palpable vacuum of entertainment, the kind of parlous lull that required music, that could only be cured with music, yet no music played. The crowd, already testy, grabbed on to the kindling of silence until a conflagration of talk, shouting even, flared up in the hall.

“Where is he?” Max ragefully pulled the ears of his bow tie. We wore tuxes (cummerbunds, bow ties, wingtips), rented from a tailor Bernard knew in the Garment District. “Where the goddamn is he?” We were under strict orders not to move until the stage manager found us. This had been the principal lesson of the sound check.

Footsteps seemed to imply milling.

With a swift waddling motion, like a man with pants around his ankles, Max hurried to peek around the proscenium. He rushed back. “People are leaving, goddamnit.” The illuminated microphone was not ten feet from us. “In five minutes we go onstage no matter what.” Then he said, “Right now. Ready?” and, with no warning, nudged me onto the stage.

The instant I stepped out, a spotlight found me, like a prison's searchlight locating an escaped inmate—too bright for me to see the audience. Max soon joined me onstage and, in his own spotlight, took long, butlerish steps to the microphone, a few paces to my right. I clasped my hands behind my back and stared at the circle of illuminated wood at my feet. This was the plan. Before an imitation, I was to appear like a wind-up toy not yet wound: arms clasped behind my back, head bowed. When a volunteer came to the stage, I was to spring to life.

“Ladies and Gentlemen . . . Ecchem . . .” The sound of Max clearing his throat was grandly amplified. “Hello-OOOO—ANAEEEENNANENANA!”

The feedback shrieked, leaving in its wake a series of gasps.

“My . . . my . . .” Max's voice sounded meek, of all things, now that it commanded the hall. “My apologies. Perhaps I should have asked the microphone for a date before approaching it so rudely?” From the crease in his voice, I could tell he was smiling, but the crowd had disintegrated from a unified audience to factions of conversation.

“It is my great pleasure,” Max tried again, sucking in a deep breath, “to present to you Giovanni Bernini, the World's Greatest Impression—AEENENEEEENENNE.” Groans and gasps and what you had to assume were cross expressions emanated from the dark. The heat of the spotlight was unbearable. My collar clamped around my throat, and I was feeling very embarrassed to occupy a stage in such a costume with so many strangers expecting me to do something. It seemed absurd that I, of all people, should stand in front of others as an example of what a person is.

“This goddamn . . .” His mutterings amplified, Max grappled with the stand, trying to rest the microphone in its perch without causing further disturbance. Once he had, he lifted up the stand and walked it to the edge of the stage. Sweat coating the sides of his face, he returned to center stage, smacking his hands. “My plain voice will do!” he declared from his spotlight, his baritone carrying without problem across the hall. I lowered my head again. Out of the dark came purposeful coughs. They disliked us now.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, without further ado, I present . . . GIOVANNI BERNINI, THE WORLD'S GREATEST IMPRESSIONIST!” Without looking up, I knew Maximilian was sweeping his arm toward me, folding his legs in an exaggerated curtsy. I was doing the same. This was supposed to be comical—the oddly matched pair bowing in unison—but there quivered only that tightrope of silence. I thought I heard a boo.

“I know
I've
always distrusted performers who require volunteers. If I were down there among you, I would most certainly
not
volunteer myself. But! I
would
hope someone else had the guts, the temerity, the courage to step across this stage, to join us in this bath of light, so I, safe in the darkness, could see what all this nonsense was about!”

A raggedy gust of coughs. Snickers.

“One brave soul,” Maximilian said again. His tone remained jocular. It was as if, since stepping onstage, we'd somehow exchanged moods. “Who will be brave enough to grace this stage, to make this night a memorable one for all of us?”

“Okaaay, I'll do it,” a voice shot out from the dark.

“Excellent!” Maximilian was saying. “No one will be disappoint—” He managed to feign composure, to not suffer some baroque seizure, as I was sure I would, when recognizing the bewitching figure cutting a path through the tables. Who knows how white my face became, how taut my mouth, when I made out that shape in that kelly green dress excusing herself from between the backs of chairs.

As soon as Lucy Starlight mounted the stage, a spotlight cocooned her, too. I was supposed to be firmly in my
wound
position, but I watched—gawked, more like—as this was my first real chance to study her. She ranged over to Max, the rim of their spotlights touching, feet away from me. Her shiny calves, her wriggling hips, the whole female affront she aspired to—where was it? Her thread?

“What's your name, sweetheart?” Max asked as she sidled next to him.

“Lucy.”

“Lucy what, dear?”

“Starlight.”

“And what do you do, Lucy Starlight?”

“I'm a singer,” she said in a mock baritone.

“And what do you sing about?”

“Horrible tales of heartbreak and love,” she said in that same deep voice, drawing some laughs. I wondered if it was supposed to be an imitation of Max.

“Now, Ms. Starlight, have you ever been impersonated before?” In the absence of microphones they were both consciously projecting. It gave their dialogue a scripted, ironic tinge. Nothing I could use.

She shook her head and hid her cheek behind her shoulder, like a shy child.

“Are you ready then, Ms. Starlight, for the amazing transformation, the incomparable experience, the thrilling adventure, the delicious delirium of being mimicked by the
World's Greatest Impressionist
?” Max asked, swinging his left arm toward the crowd as if opening a cape.

She nodded hard.

“Giovanni, take it away!” His spotlight went out. It was just Lucy and me, floating. The light encased her like glass, the motes dancing above her like snowflakes. Given her posture, it seemed that her hands should have rested on her hips, but she instead held them limp and expectant at her sides as if, despite the jeering tilt of her head, she awaited a kiss.

The rim of my spotlight inched toward her, ahead of me.

Any connoisseurs in the audience would have gnashed their teeth at what followed, would've mistaken me for a noisy, foot-stomping poseur for at that moment, before a large audience, Giovanni the Fraud commenced a rank parody of his art. He copied as best he could her vowel-happy voice, her tilted head. He stumbled around in that rangy gait, despite not having her thread, the seam that when pulled would unravel her whole. I was no better, really, than a younger sibling who echoes what his older brother has said immediately after he's said it, to grab on to his coattails, as it were, and leach some of his person.
I faced the audience and said, “Horrible tales of heartbreak and love.” I said, “Oh, I'm a singer, I sing, and please, I sing.” I leaned my head forward, lunged in a circle. That's when they started booing.

They threw boos at me like bottles. Those boos whizzed by my ears. Boos smashed against the stage, echoed through the rafters, and I, believe it or not, was thankful, for it's what I expected all along. To be thrown on my ear, railroaded back to Sea View, for Giovanni the Monster to be tarred and feathered and cackled out of town. Those boos purified me. I closed my eyes and stood still, washed as in a cleansing rain. And just then, with my eyes closed, my arms outstretched, I realized they weren't booing at all—they were chortling, hooting,
applauding
. What I heard was the sound of mob laughter. I was terrified.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, Giovanni Bernini!” Max shouted, and the hall filled with applause. “Giovanni Bernini!” It was a misunderstanding. I was going to be caught, I was sure. They would pelt me with ashtrays and glasses when they realized I'd tricked them, that I hadn't really done it.
“The World's Greatest Impressionist!”

With protesting hands and a modest smile, I accepted the applause, though my heart was pounding. I stole a glance at Lucy, who, confined to her spotlight, leered at me like an angry sibling. Her look indicated that we shared a secret, but whether that secret was my failure or success I couldn't know.

Max said, “A round of applause for Lucy Starlight,” and Lucy batted her eyes and curtsied with that theatrical irony, though something about the act, you could tell, had rattled or satisfied her. Before that first wave of clapping subsided, she had already disappeared down the stairs, through the maze of tables—ignoring hands offered to congratulate her—her green dress eaten up by the dark. I nearly sprinted after her, began to, actually, and then remembered I was onstage and, wind-up toy that I was, wound down.

“Giovanni Bernini, the World's Greatest Impressionist!” Max declared, the vindication like wine in his voice. At this there was no applause, just the quiet of anticipation. He was right. Everyone wanted a nibble of magic, the duet of spotlights.

“Who would like to be next?” he asked now. “Who next will be impersonated by the incomparable, the inexplicable, the indefatigable Giovanni Bernini?” Immediately, fifty hands went up.

 • • • 

“You demented genius!” said a jubilant Maximilian after we'd exited through the wing to a shadowed nook backstage. “This is just the fetus of the whole thing, boy—just the goddamn slimy-headed fetus!” He hugged me. “I know you sensed it, my boy. I know you did 'cause I did!”

A hundred hands must've cluttered the dark that night, but we had time only for ten. All of their threads, thank God, curled out of their person. I gave a tug, and that was that. A paunchy lawyer. Two transparent teens.

Our last volunteer that night was a schoolteacher. She liked to nod four times after saying something true. Max asked her: “You teach which grades?” And she said, “Second and first graders. That's right,” and nodded four times. After the imitation, I'd returned to my default position, staring at my feet when she all but tackled me. She pecked me on the cheek and then rushed back to her spot beside Max, eyeing me like a bashful fawn. The crowd
ooohed
with delight, and, without thinking about it, I scampered over to her, pecked her on the cheek, and hurried back to my mark—the spotlight running with me—batting my eyelashes. The crowd ate it up. I bowed, they
hurrahed
more. Giovanni the Thief bowing! I was delighted, it's true, and yet I could not shake the feeling that I was tricking these people, or they were tricking me, that together we were collaborating in some vital deception.

Despite these strange notions, I said, “Mmm-course” to Max, because I had been confined to that spotlight all night, and it was such an odd, pleasing feeling to be hugged.

“Just the beginning!” he said, walking to the corner where he crouched down, and from behind a wooden scenery of pink clouds, dragged what appeared to be a bucket. It contained, I saw as it came closer, two bottles of champagne. He removed one. “I got these in case tonight went as swimmy as it did,” he said and then turned to face the wall as if for the privacy of a urination. There was a
pop
and he tilted his head and the bell of the bottle rose into view over his considerable hair-scape. He turned, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Ah!” he added viciously, then handed me the bottle.