I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore (24 page)

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Madame Podyelka may have been a charlatan, but any class that gives the actor a chance to perform is useful, and Madame’s living room was filled with a colorfully various crowd. There were the few gifted actors, a natural clique respectfully hated by the second-raters. There were the opportunists, who would not rest till they were banking movie money. There were the non-pros, using the class as therapy for social problems. Most various of all was Madame, her fingers covering her mouth or eyes as she heard a scene, her body at a tilt, as if to look straight upon the art were to see it too well.

“Now, children, who will give us an improv?” Madame would say in her tenderly inarticulate palette of accents, roughly, “Chu fill gef es in em
prof?
” And the chosen one would be directed to the center of the room and excruciated in free-associative skits. Other students were called upon to play adversary roles, always The Father, The Mother, The Lover; and it was notable that, for all her almost brilliantly irrelevant advices, Madame always cast these supporting roles from the ranks of the crack troops. In his first days in the class, Roger Ryder had been about to drop out when Madame called him up, assigned him his prototypal partners with a doleful wave of her hand, and gave him the most provocative experience of his career. “The Father is very wrathful,” Madame moaned, “because the boy wants to be an actor and not go to doctor school.”

The Father, a compact, somewhat collegiate chap who had taken part in the Marriage Contract Scene from
The Way of the World
the week before, bore down on Roger with the eyes of Moses and the hands of Grendel. It wasn’t Roger’s story—his parents were lifelong theatre buffs—but it was
someone’s,
surely, and the two men fought as if there were agents in the house.

Roger was barely holding even with The Father when Madame wailed, “The Mother lives only to quarrel with The Father. The boy is her weapon!” Was he ever. Two minutes later, when Madame had Roger seek sympathy from The Lover, he found himself shaking in her arms.

Odd how profoundly someone else’s story can affect us. Roger scarcely heard Madame’s analysis of his performance, or the tense discussion that followed, though a few assaults on his “honesty” pricked his ears. “It
was
honest, darlings.” She turned to Roger. “Was it true?”

“It was…” Roger hesitated. “… fictions.”

Behind him somebody snorted.

“It is a story,” said Madame, smoothing out her dress. “It is a role. Is it a true story? Or just a pretty story?”

“I thought it was true,” said The Father. “I felt it.”

“Of course,” said Madame. “I know that you feel, even if you are not tall enough for father parts. Next time, you must portray a tubercular heiress’ sympathetic physician, from a poor family, and everyone has no neck and tiny eyes. Now, children, let us discuss
commedia dell’arte a soggetto.
”

Roger viewed improvs with a loathing fascination; they shattered one’s defenses instructively. On the Circuit, from the Eagle to the Botel, one mastered evasions; improvs taught plain speech. Cramming soap script in the green room before set time, Roger realized that Madame had made him too good for soap; it was her kind of story, all confrontations, but the lines spun circles of themselves, with little hooks on the ends to snap into the next episodes. Roger’s character had become enmeshed in an adulterous triangle, the refurbishing of a luncheonette by idealistic kids, and a tangled international espionage scheme. But, as the writers had to keep everything elastic, he had yet to utter the simplest declaration. It was a job, and a good one—but not acting. “‘Why this is hire and salary,’” Roger told his housemates at dinner, “‘not revenge.’”

“Have you noticed how much sexier Roger is,” said Albert, “now that he’s made it to TV?”

“Fame is sexy,” Little Roger explained.

“I’m not famous yet,” Roger said.

He was something comparable: a batch of notorious men. The Viking, the wrestler, the Colt model, and Roger’s other modes were seen and seen again, at tea, on the beach, on Christopher Street, in Bloomingdale’s, always in the inviolable solitude of self-esteem. He was emphasizing a short-and-slim creation, a teenager with extraordinarily pale skin and black hair. Everything about the youth was tender and subdued except his cock, which was perversely big. The one time Roger wore this mode to the gym, three men followed him from the locker room to the showers, one to glower, one to dote innocently, one to look pleadingly at him. The Father, Roger thought. The Mother, The Lover. Strung out on the opposite wall and knowing no joy. As the other two watched, The Lover crossed to Roger’s side of the room two nozzles away, then moved to the shower next to Roger, so close you could smell the snot hardening in his nose. Roger turned his back on him, but The Lover sucked in his breath and ran a finger up the crack of Roger’s ass. Roger jumped as if bitten. “Please,” The Lover said. “Just let me touch you … please.” As he knelt, Roger grabbed his towel and fled.

“At last you’re playing for the team,” the gang leader told him, tying his sneakers one locker over. “The boys will be so thrilled. They still resent your failure to dance for them at the Royal Party. Keeper says we’ll have to tattoo the name Trouble on you, because that’s all you are. You know, I believe I like you best of all like this. There’s something so dangerous in the mating of youth and power. I notice you took that nerd out to the Pines last weekend. Don’t, again.”

“I don’t take orders from you.”

“Nay, you will.”

“All right. Now, all
right!
” Roger dug in with a look. “So I ups to him,” Jimmy Durante used to put it.

The gang leader examined himself in a mirror.

“We have to talk,” said Roger.

“Bench press,” said the leader, flexing his pecs. “Go for the burn.”

“Listen.”

“You made a deal. You were told the rules. You will observe them.”

“It was a con. You knew I didn’t believe you.”

“Monty Clift tried that on me. Look what happened to him.”

“It hasn’t done anything for me.”

“You’re not using it, young fellow. You’re so bright. Keeper and Tony, now, they are totally unreproachable in bed, ruthless kismet. But they lack smarts. I know. You know. They know. We want brains. That was you, my boy. You were to be our entrepreneur. And look what? An affair with something in underpants from some shopping mall in New Jersey!”

“How about letting me ride my own wishes?”

“On whose magic?”

“No fightin’ in da locka room, peoples,” said the attendant, not looking up from his magazine.

The leader pulled Roger into the Jacuzzi room. “I dispose of the gift as I see fit!” he cried. “Six weeks of dabbling remain; then you work for me. Need I recall to you that the more you please me today, the lighter will be your chores later?”

“Fuck him! Fuck him now!” The leader and Roger turned to find the three men from the shower watching them. “That’s what he wants!” The Lover spoke.

“No, it isn’t,” said Roger.

The Lover pushed forward furiously; the leader grabbed him by the hair, swung him around, and threw him against the wall. “Make him know!” The Lover screamed from the floor, as the other two discreetly dispersed. “Doesn’t he deserve to know?” The Lover leaped up at Roger, and the leader downed him again with a kick to the stomach.

“Know what?” Roger asked.

The Lover keeled over, holding his belly and dry-heaving.

“Come,” the leader told Roger. “Get used to it.”

“Know what?”

“Yes; show no pity. I love a heartless man.”

“Why should I pity him? He attacked me.”

“Come.”

The improvs impressed Little Roger, when he came along to Madame’s.

Make me know what?

The improvs free you to say what you wouldn’t dare say as yourself.

And Little Roger was coming out to the Island, though he could not afford to become an official housemate. He stood on the top deck of the Fire Island Empress and shrugged because some of the passengers were old, and some were unattractive, and some were grouchy. “It’s time they knew,” Little Roger told Roger Ryder.

“Knew what?”

Little Roger was willing, nay eager, to try an improv. “What makes you think I can’t take it?”

“Okay.”

“I
can.
”

“Children, what could be meaner?” Madame would say. “But an actor’s life is a chain of improvs. No?”

At the soap, they asked him, Could he do a romance with Tina?

“Sure,” he replied, though he had a feeling that somewhere deep in the show’s plotting he and Tina were blood cousins.

“You haven’t gone anywhere in three days,” said the leader. “I’m violently peeved.”

“Say nothing!” said Madame. “Be
eyes!
”

Yet her improvs were not mimed.

“Darling,” she said to Little Roger, “it is now. We will let the friend play The Father, yes? So fitting. So true. And no Mother or Lover. We keep it simple, da? The Father is mad at the boy because he can never do a thing right. The boy is sensitive. The Father is strict. Out of ferocious love, he must teach the boy discipline.”

Madame set them in an amusement park. “The boy has an ice-cream cone,” Madame intoned. “He must not drop it.
Ferocious love.
”

Fear in his face, Little Roger endeavored to eat his ice cream and earn approval.

“The father loves the boy no matter what he does,” Madame groaned.

Roger Ryder played a terse, conflicted father.

“The boy drops the ice cream,” Madame mourned.

Roger Ryder slapped Little Roger’s face. “Don’t cry,” he warned, “or I’ll slap you again.
Don’t you dare cry.
”

Little Roger cried.

Roger Ryder held him. Ferocious love, he thought. The caption.

“No,” said Madame. “Yes, but no. It looks so pretty but it is not correct.”

“Why was the little boy sad?” asked a student. “Children have the world to play in.”

“It was sentimental trash,” said another student, an actor who had never had a job in his life except as a masseur. “I feel degraded by your performance here today.”

Roger Ryder still held Little Roger.

The leader had trouble finding Roger Ryder alone after that. They met at length early one Friday afternoon as Roger came out of the Pines Pantry with the groceries. “What drivel about an ice-cream cone,” the leader reproved. “Real men don’t have fathers.”

Roger Ryder smiled vaguely.

“Real men kill their fathers, perhaps metaphorically.”

Roger walked on.

Keeper loomed up a few yards down the walk in what appeared to be cellophane jodhpurs.

“Hi, Keeper.” Roger gave him a minute flash of the Handcuff Man as he passed. “Taking your Hallowe’en early?”

“Yo hey, good buddy.” Keeper fell into step with an arm around Roger’s shoulders. “Listen, you got to make good with the chief. He gets mad at you, boy, and you are in
bad
news.”

“We’ll work it out somehow, I guess.”

Keeper shook his head. “You don’t know him. He goes crazy when he’s mad. He’s got like…” —Keeper searched for the precise term— “… these magic powers.”

They had stopped at the ferry landing. At the far end of the harbor, a boat was gliding in.

“You got somewhere we could talk, man?” Keeper asked. “For your own good.” Roger Ryder dumped his grocery bag on one of the benches facing the water, and sat.

“Talk, Keeper. I’m ears.”

“Yeah. Because I just want to help you, see?” Keeper sat. “If you play along, it’s a breeze. If you don’t play, you lose bad. Now that is the deal. You got no choice. Look, I know you’re smart. But I’ve seen smart guys go up against him before, and they all go down. They
all.
What’ve you got against us, anyway? We have fun.”

The boat disgorged its singles and groups of clones and queens, reveling and grumping, along with the usual persistent straights, largely Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head couples from New Jersey.

“We have fun,” Keeper repeated.

Roger looked at him, weighing the risks in honesty. Oddly, Keeper had not chosen to be handsome. It was a rugged face, a good match for the implausibly supreme physique, but not likable. The eyes were nice.

“It’s not fun, Keeper.”

“You aren’t doing it right. Why don’t you change into a runaway orphan and come home with me? I’d sure be sweet to you. You wouldn’t have to do a thing. I do all the stuff.” Keeper was murmuring, drawing Roger close. “Wouldn’t that be nice? I love it when a little orphan begs me not to hurt him.”

Roger shot him a bad look.

“Now, I never do hurt them. They just think I will because orphans are the most helpless little cuties there ever could be. Don’t you see that? Huh? They’re so hot when I teach them how to coco.”

“Stop. Stop.”

“Yeah—”

“Keeper!” Keeper stopped. “It’s just not my part, okay?”

Keeper started again. “Do you do the muscleboy who needs a trainer?” He took Roger’s hand in his. “One-on-one.”

“Keeper,
no.
” Roger pulled his hand away, rested it on Keeper’s arm.

Keeper shook his head in disapproval.

“Listen, is that arm real or magic?” Roger asked.

“My muscles are mostly real. But I had no chin.” They watched the last tired travelers shuffle off the boat, a queen led by an avid dachshund and two plops. One of the mainland teenagers who work the ferry line was rehitching the tyings as they passed, the queen pouting in mock swoon and the plops staring as if eyes were wishes.

“It’s funny,” Keeper went on. “We don’t really look different now from before. You go wild during the first three months and then you settle down into something like you were. Just improved. Except Jocko—he’s always changing around somehow. You should stay away from him, man. That dude is radical.”

“Keeper, has anyone gotten free?”

“To what?”

“Free of the gang.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.
No way.
”

“He tricked me. I thought it was some kind of joke—”

“You
used
it, man! He gave you what he promised and you took it. Now you’re on the slate, you got to chalk up. Want to sit in my lap and I’ll rub your neck?”