Our Town (2 page)

“You mind if I try?” Dorothy asked as she stepped forward one long step, quietly but convincingly, as though she already knew him. Like she’d seen his type before. Like she knew what it would take to train him, like the dog she had when she was little. She’d put him in his place, if necessary, but still let him feel tough, like a man. She reached down with her long fingers—only one ring, an opal set in silver on her pinky—and pushed his hands gently to the side. She angled the gold latch down and twisted, and then pulled apart the jacket halves like an avocado, cut in half—the zipper half the pit half. And then young Dale was free.

“Thank you,” he looked up and said. He was nervous. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, so he put them in his tan jacket
pockets and felt the tartan, flannel fabric on his palms. Then they started sweating, so he rubbed them against the soft lining before he pulled them back out.

“It’s no problem, darlin’,” Dorothy replied. “I saw you strugglin’ over here and I felt like I could maybe do some good.”

Dale breathed audibly. Loudly, with relief. “Well you certainly did that,” Dale said and then smiled, and Dorothy saw how perfect his teeth were. And then she noticed his eyes—orange blue, a sunrise ocean—and fell straight into his dimples. And then she saw how shy he was. And how surprised he was that someone noticed he needed help. Dorothy saw all that and she smiled, too. She stepped one baby step closer and then put up her little right hand, palm down, parallel to the floor, so that he had to kiss it.

“I’m Dorothy,” she said, and then she smiled bigger. Her teeth were perfect, too. “Dorothy White.”

Dale put out his right hand and grabbed hers and reached to pull it toward his mouth, but he paused halfway near his chin as he wasn’t sure what to do with his left, so he pushed it into his back pocket as if he were going to remove his wallet, but he didn’t like that fit, so instead he came back empty-handed, then pushed it flat against his leg.

“Dale,” he said quietly. “Dale Kelly,” and he finally pulled her hand the rest of the way to his lips and kissed its smooth back. A little too close to her knuckles, she thought. A mistake, but a cute one. She figured she’d let it slide.

“It’s nice to meet you, Dale Kelly. I guess we’re playing opposite each other. At least that’s what I can gather from our pages,” she replied, pointing toward her pink leather purse with her pink-painted fingernail. Her pink purse housed her cigarettes—Lucky Strikes, she didn’t switch to menthols until later—and her compact and a roadmap and her script, which pointed out from the top. “See, I’m new to all this, you know, and—”

“You have a really beautiful voice,” Dale interrupted, much braver than before. Forgetting he was nervous. He’d stopped thinking about his hands. He’d stopped thinking altogether. Instincts took over. Speaking
only as he felt. “Really amazing. Your speaking voice. I’ve never heard anything like it, really.”

Dorothy stopped, too, suddenly short on breath. Now she was nervous. Struck by his newfound courage, she had no idea what to say. So she just smiled and hid behind her teeth. And she was usually quite the talker.

“Thank you, I guess,” she replied, bashful. Newly bashful.

“No, no, I mean it,” he said and put his right hand on her forearm and then pulled his left from his pants pocket and grabbed her pinky finger, the one with the ring. “It’s like velvet, or something. Like the way velvet would sound. Or, I don’t know. I guess that doesn’t do it justice,” he said and he waited. “I’ll think of something better.” But he never did.

“Well thank ya, again,” she replied. “You know, where I’m from,” suddenly aware of what he’d noticed in her cadence, and so willing to exploit it, “
every
body just talks like
this
.” She held the
k
in “like” and the
s
in “this”—impersonating her more deeply southern kin, entirely aware of herself—and she knew it was over. She had him straight lassoed. The cat’s in the bag.

And then she was the most beautiful girl Dale had ever seen. And him her. And she was right. It was over. Again, straight lassoed. Hooked. Both of them had each other hog-tied, but to each other, so it was sweet. He pulled his arm from her shoulder but continued to hold her pinky. Didn’t want to give that up.

“Where was it you’re from, anyway?” he asked.

“Georgia. Americus, Georgia. You prolly never even heard of it.”

“No. No, I
prolly
never even heard of it,” he parroted.

“You should go. It’s real pretty. If you ever wanna get away from all this, I mean,” pointing toward the hollow furniture.

“I’d love that.” He paused. “You wanna take me?” impersonating her twang.

She cocked her head and smirked. “Yeah, I think I’d like that.” She looked down at her tootsies but then back up. “I’ll certainly try my best.”

No one spoke for a time. Neither was much for cordiality. Dale eventually let go of Dorothy’s hand, but they still looked in each other’s eyes. Then, big and loud, they heard their names—both their names—being called from a megaphone, and they looked up to where they heard the noise.

“Dale Kelly. Dale Kelly. And Dorothy White. We’re gonna need you on set for the high school dance scene. The high school dance scene, everybody. So let’s be ready. Let’s make this first one count!”

This was Dorothy’s first acting job. And it was Dale’s, in fact, as well. He’d done some theater in high school—but certainly nothing that ever paid. And she got hired for her looks and charisma and, most importantly, her accent. The role required a specific regional dialect, and her meter fit just right. And so the first time they acted they did so together. And they were both nervous. But more excited, still, because they were both new to acting and had gotten into it because they were pretty, essentially just leashed up and led around and told what to do. Which can be disconcerting, not knowing what the future holds. But now they each knew somebody else—somebody else like them—so now things might be easier. So they ran to their marks, and they hit their cues, and they acted, for the first time, together. Teamwork, you know? And they were believable—the swooning cheerleader and the varsity wrestler had real spark. They were young, not yet overdoing it. Not yet overapplying
the method
. Not yet overcompensating for their developing jowls. They didn’t know how to act, yet. They were only being themselves. They just liked to be around each other, and their viewership, watching at home, believed that truth. And the confidence they built from that scene allowed them to be successful in their other scenes, with other actors. And they saw, in each other, a future. Just themselves. Themselves together. Just together. And then they were happy. Happy as baked clams.

*
  
*
  
*

Dorothy and Dale only had four more scenes opposite each other during the filming of the pilot for
Crossing Robertson
—neither of their
characters was primary—but they all went quite well. On their last day of shooting, Dale finally asked Dorothy to drinks. After work, they went to a local bar that never checked for ID. Dale had three Budweisers and Dorothy drank Sazeracs. She knew her alcohol. Daddy’d taught her how. After that they went back to Dorothy’s rented studio apartment. Dale still lived with roommates, and Dorothy preferred they be alone. They talked all night—and it was perfect—and didn’t kiss until six in the morning, and an hour later they had sex in the sunlight from the window. And they were tired when they woke up at noon, but when they walked to breakfast they thought it was okay. When they got to breakfast they knew it was worth it.

AFTER THEY ATE
, then went back to Dorothy’s studio apartment, Dale had to return to work. It was past three, and they needed him in makeup.

“I don’t think they need to make you up at all,” Dorothy said and grinned as she rolled over—rolled up in her bed sheets like a sloppily rolled cigarette—as she watched Dale pull on his chinos. Dale winked and then, before he continued dressing, walked back to the bed and kissed her as best as he could, his ring finger hooked under her chin, to slightly lift her. But he was late, so he pushed off and pulled his shoes on and didn’t tie them, and Dorothy watched as her door slammed shut behind him with his shirttail still untucked and his pants not even buttoned.

Dorothy wasn’t needed on set that day, so she bought a
Daily Variety
and went and sat at a diner and read it—back to front—with a cup of coffee. Although her sensibility was quite continental, and catching up on her reading was usually something she quite enjoyed, she found the magazine, today, rather hard to take in. Her mind was elsewhere. She knew she’d fallen. Might not be able to get up. So she went home and sat and waited and Dale called after he was done shooting that night and came over, and then Dorothy had to leave early the next morning, and she left him there. They didn’t have any more scenes to shoot with each other, but for the next month
they saw each other every day. Dorothy temporarily suspended her audition schedule to ensure she’d have free time for him. And soon Dale vowed to find them a place where they could be together—just them!—and once he got his first real paycheck, that’s what he did. He kept that promise.

*
  
*
  
*

Before Dale and Dorothy had found their first apartment, Dale had bought a ring. It was a modest ring—he hadn’t made his money, yet—but a ring nonetheless. And it was pretty, for what it was. It was accommodating.

He’d ask for her hand, he’d decided, the day they found the place of their dreams. They’d seen a few apartments, but for Dorothy they weren’t enough. And although Dale could’ve been fine anywhere—all he wanted was her—he supported how picky she was. It was endearing, in the beginning. So he held on to the ring, at every showing they saw, and he waited for the right time to ask her. He was under the impression that the only way an engagement could be seen as official, in the eyes of the law, would be if he asked Dorothy for her hand with a witness present. Even though this was, in fact, only true for the wedding ceremony, Dale was young, still, and had, until this point, traded on his looks to get by, forsaking the benefits of things like school. Or reading—that’s for chumps and squares—relying instead on his looks and physicality to remove himself from trouble. But he was ready now, no matter what anybody told him. He’d found himself a woman, and he thought that made him a man.

*
  
*
  
*

“What do you think, baby?” Dale asked.

Dorothy stood in the living room and heard Dale’s question. But before responding she left and walked to the kitchen, testing the room’s balance and flatness. The way it felt against her feet. She took
small, measured steps. Noiseless. She was always light on her feet. She opened the wooden pantry—painted fire-truck red, with shined gold handles—and smelled for dust. She ran her little fingers along the bottom panel then put them to her nose. Not much. Newly finished. All well and good. Then she went to the bedroom. Large, colonial windows. Clear panes, white shutters. Good light. Good closets, too. There were two of them, in fact, in the bedroom. His and hers, and also one for jackets in the foyer, with equal amounts of shelving. No squabbling over space. Although she knew she’d bleed into his eventually. She was a bit of a clotheshorse. Then she went to the bathroom. Firm cabinetry. Solid. Black and white tiled floors. And a toilet with a pull flush. How quaint. The kind she had when she was young. And a bathtub big enough for two. And then the mirror. A square mirror. A large, full mirror. Not bright enough to see your pores, but okay. Still pretty. The fluorescent from the ceiling would be fine for now. She could fix that later. She’d been gripping her hands—tightly—into fists at her sides but then she stopped and relaxed, and she looked into the mirror and tightened her black bandana around the bun atop her head. She unbuttoned her blouse’s top button. Too much. Act like a lady. She buttoned it back up. Then she squeezed her hands together in a ball before her and smiled, as big and natural as she could.

“You install some vanity lights in there and this place is perfect,” she said as she walked back into the living room—past the female real estate agent—and toward Dale. She neared him and ran to him and jumped into his big arms.

But Dale pushed her away, and Dorothy fell back surprised. He put his hands to his temple and waited a while. Nobody spoke. Not even the real estate agent.

But then—but then—he pulled his fingers from his face and opened his eyes—sunset eyes—and got down on one knee and pulled the ring from his pocket. He snapped open the box and asked her, as sincerely as he could.

“Well, I guess it’s now, if this is where we’re livin’. Would you want to marry somebody like me, honeypunch?”

Dorothy blinked and squeezed into herself, but then she put her hand to her head and fell to the floor in a heap—real dramatic-like—her white dress spilling up and exposing her undergarments. Dale ran to her, and even the realtor took two steps, but without letting go of her clipboard. He spooned her up and carried her and dropped her onto the staging couch in the room’s corner—just strong enough to hold her. It was cheap but she was light. And she opened her eyes—her blonde eyes, even more perfect than his—and she said to him, with sweet breath, “You didn’t have to bother with all that, baby. You know I’m always yours. Yours and only yours, baby. Yours and only yours.”

And Dorothy and Dale were beautiful and young and engaged, and they always held each other tight. All the time. Even tighter when they were tight—when they were drinking—but they always liked to be together. As much as they could be together they were. And so the real estate agent began to scribble, fairly sure she’d made a sale.