The Voiceover Artist (25 page)

“I'm really happy for you, Simon,” I said. “Saying you want to get into voiceover is a long way from making a demo, sending it out, getting an agent, and getting work. Doing all that took balls. I'm proud of you.”

As I spoke, I watched Simon's eyes narrow and his mouth untwist from its smile. My guess was that he thought I was fucking with him.

“I mean it,” I added, as earnestly as I could.

“Thanks,” he said, flatly.

I didn't understand Simon's reaction, but I was too happy to bother figuring it out. My life with Erika was what mattered, and for the moment, it was safe.

A flash lit up the sky, which had gone from clear blue to a pale gray. Thunder followed a second or two later. Behind us, wind was thrashing the trees that lined Lake Shore Drive and carrying a white food wrapper over the softball fields.

“We're about to get soaked,” I said.

It was a weather prediction even
I
could get right, and as soon as I'd made it, the rain started coming down, and hard. Simon and I stood up and looked around. A cluster of tall oaks was the only cover nearby, and they made better lightning bait than shelter.

Sidestepping in its direction, I shouted to Simon, “There's a fieldhouse between the softball fields and the golf course.”

Simon nodded and wiped his wet hair out of his eyes.

I started to run, and Simon followed. We stayed on the concrete bike path at first, dodging the already overflowing puddles. Then a man, a jogger headed in our direction, was nearly blown down onto the concrete barrier's second level by a gust of wind. He caught his balance at the last moment and, when he headed inland, Simon and I did, too.

We cut across the softball fields, the green of the outfield almost fluorescent against the gray light all around it. It had been a long time since I'd run anywhere, and even longer since Simon and I were crossing a wide-open stretch of land together, running as fast as we could. What carried my feet over and into the mud puddles was my sudden confidence that a mistake I'd made more than three months before would not undo every good thing that had happened since.

We cut through a row of young trees between the softball fields and the golf course, and I saw the fieldhouse. I called for Simon's attention and pointed it out. A few seconds later, he passed me. Now that he knew where we were going, Simon was trying to get there first. I let him: I didn't need this win. Simon could have it.

I ran through the water spilling in sheets from the eaves of the old fieldhouse and came to a stop in the narrow, covered courtyard between its two wings. Simon was doubled over with his head down and his hands on his knees, breathing heavily and spitting frothy saliva from his mouth. I pulled off my t-shirt and wrung it out. Vapor rose from my bare arms in the cool, humid air. I wiped some of the water from my eyes with my hands and peeked up and out from under the eaves. It was still raining, but not quite as hard as it had been, and the western sky, behind the storm front, was a bright, milky white. Catching my breath, I watched the rain spill over the fields and had a moment of good feeling, the kind usually killed by any reminder that my comedy hadn't taken me to New York yet. But this moment seemed to spread out in time and even in space, wrapping itself around the fieldhouse and the softball fields and the oak trees. Erika seemed to have done the impossible: carved out a place for some happiness alongside my ambition.

Then I felt Simon's eyes on me. He was standing a few yards away, his waterlogged t-shirt stretched unevenly across his bony shoulders, giving me the cold, hard look I remembered from the days I'd invaded his bedroom to mock him. But I wasn't making fun of him as we stood in the fieldhouse. I wasn't saying anything.

“What about you?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

There were a couple of headshakes before he said, “How're things going with your comedy?”

I had almost forgotten this part. Simon's success and failure couldn't be measured on their own terms. He needed to hold them up next to mine.

“Things are going pretty well, I guess,” I said. “I'm in a two-man show at the Improviso Theatre. It's a good gig. I'm glad to have it.”

That was all I wanted to say. But Simon wasn't finished with me.

“Have you done a show yet?”

With Simon back in his measuring mode, I found I could read him again. And what I read was him asking,
How real is this gig?

“We opened a month ago,” I said.

“How are the houses?”

Is anyone making any money on this show?

“Good.” I stopped short of saying the houses were sold out. Offering that detail felt like taking Simon's bait.

“Nice,” Simon said, nodding. “When is the show?”

“Thursdays at
10
.”

That's primetime,
I thought, but I kept my mouth shut.

“Where is it, again?”

This question was Simon's way of telling me he'd never heard of the Improviso.

“The Improviso Theatre,” I said, enunciating the words clearly. I nearly added,
Did I stutter?

“What's the name of the show?”

I smiled. Simon knew that I'd been in shows with terrible titles like “Cirrhosis, Where Art Thou?” and “Cubs and Bulls and Bears: Oh My!” He might have been banking on the answer to this question undercutting everything else I'd said. I had long admired Raam Kersati's righteous hatred of goofball comedy shit like silly names for shows, but I'd never appreciated it as fully as I did in this moment.

“Raam and Connor,” I said.

“Raam?”

“It's a guy's name. Raam. And Connor. That's the name of the show.”

Simon smiled then, too. The expression looked genuine to me, as if the part of him that wanted good things for both of us had fought through to his face.

“You're a marquee name,” he said.

“It's a very small marquee.”

Simon laughed, startling me. His voice was my baritone, but Simon's laugh—a high-pitched, clipped eruption—was all his own. I wasn't used to the sound, but I liked it. I wondered if I would've spent less energy antagonizing my brother and more trying to entertain him if Simon, in his muteness all those years ago, had found some way to laugh.

The smile faded, though. Now that Simon had his voice and an agent and a national radio commercial on his reel, tying with me wasn't good enough. He wanted to win now, just as I always had. He needed to see that I was jealous of him, or threatened by him­. That's how he'd know he was winning. By the time we'd made it to the fieldhouse, Simon must have realized that, though the point tallies were as close as they had ever been, he'd lost this round of the fight he'd started years before. And it wasn't my success in comedy that had decided things, really. It was my happiness—my ability to be happy for him—that told Simon he was losing. Thanks to Erika, I'd defended my title exactly how I liked to: without throwing a punch.

When you win that way, you don't rub it in. I gave Simon what privacy I could without stepping out into the rain, which was still coming down in a steady, soaking drizzle. I walked in front of the east wing of the fieldhouse, staying under the building's long eaves. With my back to my brother, I twisted my t-shirt into a thick cord, wringing the water out of its fibers. Then I unfurled the shirt and slapped it against the wall, leaving a wet mark on the masonry.

“Any of this stuff getting you any closer to
Saturday Night Live
?”

Simon was standing at the mouth of the courtyard, looking at me and leaning forward a little, demanding an answer with his body.

That kicked up an anger I hadn't felt in years, the kind you reserve for the people who know where you're weak and aim for that spot. It was one thing for Simon to ask me how my comedy career was going so he could run the numbers on his own worth. It was another for him to dare me to admit I wasn't where I wanted to be, just moments after giving him a glimpse—I
know
he saw it—of the happiness I'd finally found.

I could have let it go. I could have left. Nothing Simon had said had changed anything about my life with Erika or my show with Raam or my chances of getting a shot at
SNL
. I didn't need to say another damn word to him. But Simon had ignited my desire to win the old-fashioned way.

“Raam got an offer from
SNL
years ago,” I said, “and he turned it down.”

Simon shrugged.

“They're scouting talent for the season after next,” I said. “They'll see me in this show.”

“When?” Simon asked. What he meant was,
What makes you so sure?

“I don't control when,” I said. “What the fuck do you know about it? Do you know when you'll get another voiceover job? Or
if
?”

That shut him the fuck up, but I kept going.

“No,” I said. “You don't.”

As we stood there, I swear I was glad that I was the guy who'd fucked Simon's girlfriend. That's what told me it was time to leave.

“I'm going,” I said.

I started out into the rain without cutting the distance between Simon and me. We'd started with a handshake, but finishing with one would have come too close to an apology neither one of us would be making.

“Thanks for meeting me,” Simon said.

I stopped and turned around to look at Simon, and when I saw his face, I laughed because I could see that he was being sincere. After saying all of that hurtful shit, Simon was thanking me for the chance to say it.

I turned my back on him and shouted over my shoulder, “Good luck, Simon.”

Coming out of my mouth, they sounded like the last words you might say to someone you were finished with. That was no accident. But the mindfucking thing is, I
did
wish good things for Simon, even then. I didn't want them to arrive that day or that year, not after all his shit-talking, but I still wanted his life to work out, eventually. I guess I was becoming the better person Erika already believed I was.

The rain stopped as I approached Lake Shore Drive. When I came out from under the viaduct, the sun broke through the clouds in shafts of light. With a damp shirt over my bare shoulder, I walked home to the apartment I was sharing with the woman I loved.

 

•••

 

AS THE DRINKING
 went on that night in Carbondale last April, Simon got quiet. He sat in his folding chair, sipping his beer, his closed mouth spread out in a smile. Occasionally, he'd do a few headshakes and answer a direct question, but most of the talking he did was done with nods and shrugs. Maybe I should have found his return to silence and gestures comforting, but I didn't. I found it irritating.

If he can talk,
I thought,
he should say something, instead of making me carry the conversation with his girlfriend at his own goddamn apartment.

I shot him a couple of looks, but he missed them. He stared with smiling eyes at the rods of the porch railing or the ratty evergreen branches poking through it. It would've been one thing if Simon were just enjoying being drunk. But I got the idea that Simon was letting his happiness fill him in a way that left Brittany and me on the outside, watching. If I'd been happier myself, and less drunk, I might have decided that Simon hadn't experienced enough happy moments to know they should be aimed outward. Instead, I wound myself up into believing that Simon might as well have been jerking off in front of me while, not knowing what else to do, I tried to make his girlfriend laugh.

Eventually, Simon stood up and gave us a wave that meant,
Good night.

“It's not even midnight,” I said. I wasn't trying to get him to stay. I was trying to make him feel bad for leaving.

Simon shrugged.

“He can't manage his stutter very well when he drinks,” Brittany said. “You've probably noticed he hasn't said much in a while.”

“Oh.”

That took the edge off my anger, but didn't erase it. It wasn't Simon's silence that had bothered me. It was the way he'd indulged himself in it.

Simon took a step toward me and extended his hand. I shook it without getting up. “G'night, brother.”

He gave me a nod that meant,
Thanks for coming.

I felt like a fucking chump for having driven all the way from Chicago for this.

Brittany stood up, knocking her folding chair back against the railing. “I'm going, too,” she said. “There are some sheets, a blanket and a pillow on the couch for you. Stay up as long as you like. Bourbon's in the kitchen.”

“Thanks.”

She took my hand and pulled it until I stood up. I wobbled onto one foot before righting myself.

“It was great to finally meet you,” she said.