Blackbird (10 page)

“I’m really sorry about the auditions. Needless to say, Mr. Dead End is a major horse’s ass of this or any season.”

“Well” – I did my patented nonchalant who-gives-a-shit shrug – “Brock’s horse’s-assdom is neither here nor there at this point, is it?”

“Perhaps not. By the way, you didn’t really bloody the old fool’s nose, did you?”

“Of course not,” I said. “I just yelled at him. Called him everything short of Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, cried a little, told him to take his play and sit on it, but I swear to you, no blood was shed.”

“I thought not, but one can dream, can’t one?”

“Then are you going to the auditions at the J.C. tonight?” Cherie uttered her very first words since my arrival, maybe even her first of the day.

“Hark” – Efrem cupped a hand to his ear – “Garbo talks.”

“Yes, Mommy,” I nuzzled Cherie’s sweet-smelling hair, “I think I
will
go the auditions at the J.C. tonight.” I hadn’t actually decided for sure I was going until Cherie asked me. I’d been toying with the concept of actually having a few weeks of evenings free for a change, and it didn’t seem such a bad idea. “I’ve got a few things to take care of before tonight, though. I’ve got to have a little talk with Brock, for one.”

“To apologize?” Efrem asked, horror in his eyes.

“To talk my way out of having to enter the old fart’s class for the remainder of the semester, I hope.”

“How come?” Cherie said, speaking into my shoulder as usual.

“Because there won’t be one helluva lot to do in there for those of us not involved in the show. Because I’ve already passed the class even if I never go back. Because if I never see Brock’s ugly shriv face again, it’ll be much, much too soon. Need I go on?”

“Please don’t,” Efrem said through a snorting little laugh.

The three of us sat and listened to Johnnie Foley do “Alice’s Restaurant.” He knows the whole twenty-some-odd-minute version by heart, and performs it at the drop of a hat. He had gotten to the whole “eight-by-ten color glossy photos under the pile of garbage” part, when Cherie said, even softer than usual: “Can’t wait till Saturday.” She smiled a satisfied little smile at the mention of our weekend plans. My stomach tightened in advance nervousness at the thought of it. I wondered if maybe I hadn’t made a big mistake.

I excused myself from the choir room a few minutes before first period and tromped on over to the Drama bungalow. Brock looked a little bit apprehensive at the sight of me, but he didn’t mention our little difference the morning before – no talk of suspension, no nothing – and damned if I was gonna bring the subject up. It was a very easy matter to convince old Brock to let me finish out the semester with a paper, a report on some play or other.

“That’d be fine, Rouss,” Brock said, forcing a smile that twitched a little on one side. “Do you have a particular play I mind?”

“No,” I lied. “Not yet.” Actually, I planned to write a paper about
The Boys in the Band
. I’d read it eight or nine times, had in fact taken it out on indefinite loan from the library – meaning the librarians didn’t exactly know I had it. I had most of the play memorized, in fact, so it would be a cinch to rattle off a report good enough to get by Brock, who thought you were a genius if your subjects and verbs agreed. And the thought of old Brock reading a report on
Boys in the
Band
was automatic laughs. The old guy was a homo-hating asshole if there ever was one – he once referred to Tennessee Williams as a pervert, in class.

Anyway, I probably wouldn’t have to see Brock more than once or twice for the rest of the semester, and I also wouldn’t have to watch the cast of
Hooray for Whatnot
rehearsing constantly during sixth period. Both of which spelled relief as far as I was concerned.

I went to the library third period. Mr. Katz winced a little while giving me permission to skip his class again. But there really wasn’t much he could say – I was an Honor Scholar, and besides we were covering the thirties in class, and I knew just about everything worth knowing about the thirties from the movies. Crystal was in the library, at the same table in the same chair I’d found her in on Monday. She smiled as I approached.

“I’m sorry about yesterday,” I said.

“That’s okay,” she said. “I heard about what happened.”

“I didn’t hit him.”

She smiled, rolled her eyes. “I know that.” She dug the deck of cards out of her purse and gave them a quick shuffle. “You ready?” she asked.

“I guess.”

“There’s still an awful lot on your mind,” she observed, correctly, “but let’s give it a shot, anyway.” She placed the deck face down between us on the table. “Now, just clear your mind as best you can.

Don’t try to concentrate or anything, just go with your first impulse.

Just colors, black or red, that’s all.”

I shrugged a here-goes-nothing.

I got thirty-seven out of fifty-two.

Crystal looked across the table at me and smiled as if to say, “I told you so.”

Chapter Seven

I assumed the auditions would be held in the theater, but when I got there the place was shut up tight as a drum; there was nobody at all around the theater building. It was about five o’clock – most of the day classes were over, and night school wouldn’t be starting for a couple of hours. Since our school doesn’t have a theater of its own, we always do our plays in the J.C.’s theater, which was the only building on the whole campus I was familiar with. I was beginning to wonder if this was the right day. I felt a little tremble starting in the middle of my stomach; I was starting to feel like a little kid who’s lost his mom somewhere in Disneyland.

“Okay, Johnnie Ray,” I said to myself,
sotto voce
, “you can either start looking for the right room, or you can jump the next bus and go home.” I looked past the theater building toward the classrooms, building after building of them – a blind search didn’t look all that promising. But instead of just making a decision, any decision, and going with it, I stood there for a while, my arms wrapped halfway around myself, shifting weight from one foot to the other, stuck there in a holding pattern for a few minutes. After a while, the basic chicken-shit in me started rapping, telling me things like, “Hey, it wouldn’t be any fun anyway, and besides I probably wouldn’t even get cast,” and I had just about decided to forget the whole thing and go home, when a guy with hair down to his shoulders walked past me.

I called out “Excuse me,” but the guy just kept walking. I said, “Hey,” and started after him. I was pretty sure it wasn’t somebody from my school, so I assumed he knew his way around better than I did. He was wearing old faded jeans, and his walk reminded me of Todd’s, except this guy was a little wider in the ass than Todd. He wasn’t walking all that fast, but he was taller than me and I had to make a real effort to catch up with him. Which I finally did.

“Excuse me,” I said again, and the guy finally stopped.

“Yeah?”

“Uh.”

Yes, that’s what I said. Uh.

“Uh?” The guy sort of half-smiled, and one eyebrow went up.

He had thick, dark Tyrone Power eyebrows that looked like they might be planning to merge into one big brow. He seemed to have too many teeth for the size of his mouth, and the teeth were fighting it out for space, doubling up in front of each other in the process.

His hair was much longer than I usually like on a guy, parted just off center and tucked behind a big Clark Gable ear on one side.

He was cute.

Really cute. Cute enough to briefly render me a total mongoloid, which is my usual reaction when I’m really attracted to a guy, which I immediately was to this guy.

Funny thing: he wasn’t even my type, which is blonds. And he wasn’t really handsome, not ridiculous movie-star handsome like Todd. But, I’ll tell you, there was something about the guy that really tied my tongue. The guy looked down at me (he was a full head taller) and cocked his head to one side.

“Somethin’ I can help you with?” His voice was deep and husky; he’d be a bass if he sang.

“Do you know where the auditions are being held?” I finally managed to spit it out. My voice came out strange, even higher pitched than normal. “For the student projects, I mean.”

“Sure do. I’m headed there myself.” He started walking and gestured with his head for me to come along.

Walking along the corridor, I found myself constantly gravitating toward the guy. Every now and then my arm would just touch his, and it was like wiping over an electrical outlet with a wet rag. When I got really close to the guy, I could smell him. Not like disgusting unwashed B.O. or anything, just his smell.

“You must be from the high school,” he said after a moment.

“Uh-huh.”

A few more steps.

“What’s your name?”

“Johnnie Ray.”

“Like the singer, huh?”

“Yeah.” I was surprised. Not that many people close to my age have ever heard of Johnnie Ray, the singer, since most of his hits came out before we were born.

Mr. Long-Hair started singing “Walking My Baby Back Home” way off key and sort of on one note. He was no singer.

“What’s your name?” I asked, just for conversation.

“Well now,” he said, looking straight ahead, “they often call me Speedo.”

Which, of course, is the first line of “Speedo” by the Cadillacs.

Which I’m sure he thought I didn’t know, so I said, “And I suppose your
real
name is Mr. Earl?”

He stopped dead in his tracks, smiling that funny half-smile again. I’d surprised him – I thought I might.

“Yeah.” He put his hands on his hips and just stood there looking at me for a second with his head cocked off to one side again.

“Yeah.” He started nodding and smiling, really smiling this time. You know how some people smile with just their lips or just their mouths? Well, this guy smiled with his entire face. I mean, he showed a whole smileful of cute crooked white teeth, and his cheeks came out and his eyes crinkled at the corners, and it was a smile and a half. He offered this big, tan hand to me, and after a second’s hesitation, I took it. His hand was very soft, but his grip was strong. I like the feel of it. He pumped my hand vigorously, still nodding and smiling.

“Name’s Marshall,” he said. “Marshall MacNeill. What’d you say your name was?”

“Johnnie Ray,” I said, a little disappointed that he’d forgotten my name so quickly. “Rousseau.”

“Johnnie Ray Rousseau,” he repeated to himself. “Johnnie Ray Rousseau.” He nodded an equivocal little nod and said, “All right.” And off he walked, this time humming “Speedo.”

“Marshall MacNeill,” I repeated softly to myself.

I followed Marshall MacNeill halfway across the campus to a classroom with maybe fifteen people in it, and absolutely no furniture. Not a stick. What people there were (and I didn’t recognize any of them) were either standing or leaning or sitting on the floor, talking among themselves, most of them smoking cigarettes and either using the chalk trays beneath the one blackboard for an ashtray or just dropping their ashes onto the linoleum, the sight of which made me cringe. That’s one thing I really hate about smokers: the world is their ashtray.

Marshall stopped me just as we entered the room, reaching around me and putting his hand on my shoulder, which sent a tremble through me I would have been surprised if he couldn’t feel.

He called across the room, “Hey, Libby. Look what I found.”

A fat woman sitting in a far corner of the room (talking to a longhaired bearded guy who looked like Jesus in jeans) turned around, spotted us at the door, and smiled so big she nearly hit the bearded the guy with her cheek.

“Marsh!” she cried like she’d just sighted her long-lost lover walking up the road to home. She managed herself up from the floor with what I considered an amazing lack of difficulty for her size and did a kind of lumbering waddle over to Marshall and me. She was one of the fattest women I’d ever seen. She was wearing a humongous red paisley muu-muu sort of a dress and no shoes and about thirty-seven bracelets on each arm, and she was dragging a big dirty macramé purse uglier than Crystal’s. She looked a lot like Mama Cass.

“What’d ja bring me, Daddy?” she said, smiling that big, fat smile of hers and giving me an obvious once-over, then a twice-over.

“He followed me home,” Marshall said, hooking his arm around my neck; I ended up with my head practically in his armpit. “Can I keep him?” My blood pressure shot up high enough to break the machine, and I could practically hear my dick revvin’ up for a boner.

The fat lady laughed ha-HA up a full octave and quickly down the scale, and said, “Marshall, you crazy-fuck.” Which startled me – I’d never heard a woman say fuck before. “Hi, I’m Libby,” she said to me. “You here for the auditions?”

“Of course he is,” Marshall said. “Don’t you think he’d be perfect for the boy?” He grabbed my face with one hand, pushing my cheeks together and making my lips pooch out, and said, “Just look at this face. Have you ever seen a more innocent face in your life?”

Libby slapped at Marshall’s arm and said, “Marsh, would you let go of the child’s face. What’s your name, baby?”

“Johnnie Ray.” It was a wonder I could talk at all: Marshall’s arm was still around me, his hand sort of dangling off my shoulder, and it was making me crazy. I’d never had a guy, let alone a guy this cute, be so physical with me before, and I was flattered that this good-looking college dude was being so palsie-walsie, but if he didn’t stop touching me, I was going to be in big trouble, erection-wise.

“Well, it sure is good to see you,” Libby said. “The turnout from the high school has not been what we’d hoped for.”

“How many kids have been in?” I looked around the room again; there was nobody there from school.

“Baby, so far you are
it
,” Libby said, ever smiling. Her head moved from side to side when she talked. I took an immediate like to this big dame. “Have you ever done any acting before?”

“Sure, I’ve been in – ”

“Shit,” she said, “I’m desperate. I’ll take you if you can read. If you can repeat what you hear, like a parrot. I need a boy.” Suddenly, she looked askance at me, as if trying to read my fine print. “How old are you?”