The Cosmopolitans (22 page)

Valerie was very, very impressed with her new protégé. “Bette, you can tidy up
my
life anytime you wish.”

But Hector wasn't sure what they had all agreed to, in the end. Especially how much it was going to cost. “Bette? Did you get all that down?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “I took notes.”

“Could you read them back to me?” He mopped his dripping brow.

“Of course,” she said, expertly flipping open her steno pad.
Darky savage. Darky savage. Darky savage
.

Chapter 22

T
here are many men and women of all temperaments and stations in life on this earth who are sleeping with, making love to, and sharing their day with someone who may not be their first choice. Or even their third choice. Someone who really is not the “right person” for them for multitudes of reasons that will never be transformed, and yet, there can be a kind of tenderness there. There can be a relief, perhaps, that they will never be
that
close. That they will never matter
too
much. In a strange way, this arrangement suited Earl. Confiding everything to a man whose beauty slayed him, whose passion filled his heart—well, what had that led to? Anthony crippled by his family and then dying for no reason with everything unresolved? Earl knew he was in the company of millions of others whose mates had died tragically and could never be replaced. Yet they had gotten some recognition and subsequent caring while he only had Bette. He had tried to replace Anthony, day in and day out. There
were all the men, so many of all ages and mind-sets, whose beauty moved him to insanity, to wanting and dreaming and craving and internalizing, always leading to heartbreak. To absence. To missing and losing. Always.

Earl did not see a way that this would change. He didn't intend to give up trying, but being with Hortense would allow for that. She would never, ever know what possessed him, and this would, in a sense, free him. He would be freed from his real feelings, distracted by her, and not lying at home alone at night shaking with loneliness. To have something else to fill his time. And Bette? He had tried living out the other half of love, not the body but the sharing of truths and matching of intellects, and where had it gotten him? He'd hoped she'd be some kind of anchor, permitting him to find love again, but instead she was a trap of comfort, keeping him from really living. Now she claimed they needed to
talk
. Well, he absolutely had no intention of ever speaking to her again. There was nothing there for him. And despite her whining, he'd told her so a number of times, clearly. He told her that
something's wrong and it's really big
. She hadn't listened. He told her he wanted to feel loved. He told her he couldn't bear to keep being the person no one else wanted to be. He told her clearly and openly over and over again. Yet she wanted him to change how he felt. She wanted him to come clean with Hortense and therefore return to nothing. Well,
fuck Bette
. Bette's plan was a recipe for loss, and he was staying out of the kitchen. No one was going to tell him how to feel. She didn't have the right, no matter how long they'd known each other.

There were ways that Hortense annoyed him. She didn't know anything, nothing. She had no information. But he liked explaining things to her, watching her eyes widen and then assimilate the newfound facts. She was smart, that one, naturally smart. So what if she couldn't see through the system? He didn't need that from anyone else. He had plenty of reality and insight himself. What he did need was some sweetness, someone who wanted him to be happy, who took care of things, and who built him up. Someone who believed he could do it, instead of spending their time trying to help him face that he couldn't. He liked her naïveté, it worked for him for now, but it didn't have to work forever. He didn't want it to. She was getting something out of it, a sense of independence from the horrible way she was raised. In the end, this would benefit her, he was sure.

Anyway, he deserved a break. He couldn't hunt heartbreak out of desperation forever and then sleep alone anyway. He was too old. It just hurt too much and that was a fact. If some nice guy found
him
, well he was open to that, certainly. But he couldn't get in the kind of trouble anymore that had come to define his life. And besides, there was the family money. Why shouldn't he have a piece of that? He just couldn't cut up animals all the rest of his days. The thought was unbearable. He could not do it. He could not. He'd seen white people with money before. The families hold it over their heads, but in the end they get a taste. Usually, Earl had observed, it worked out that way. It just required patience, and perhaps he could find some of that. If there was something waiting at the end of it.
Even if it was only a brief rest. That would be better than nothing. Okay, Hortense didn't know how to
do
things. She couldn't cook, she couldn't shop, but at least she tried. He didn't care what was for dinner as long as it was there. How she fucked up the Thirteenth Street apartment was beyond him. But, no matter. It didn't matter. He wasn't counting on her, and he didn't expect much. Whatever it was, that's what it would be. Besides, Earl was feeling quite jaunty this day because he'd gotten the morning off from the Lazios' to go to an audition. It had been a long, long time since he'd been seen for anything or been in anything. Not since the last African walk-on for
Antony and Cleopatra
. He'd been snooping around uptown to see if there were any real parts to be had, but it was a strange in-between time. The American Negro Theater had been gone for some years now, and everyone was waiting, waiting for the next thing. What was it going to be? Some kind of new Negro ensemble starting up in 1958? Sure, that would be great. But couldn't there be more of a breakthrough than that? The movies were letting folks in bit by bit. Poitier, that lucky sucker. But there was more mixing in real life, so when was that going to show up on stage? Either more plays with better roles for black men, or more mixed plays, or more black plays being seen by everyone, or black people creating their own audience big enough to support the artists financially, or something. But it wasn't his arena, solving things that big. His job was to take the page and bring it to life. That's it. The work of writing that page, pulling together the cash, getting the house lit and tickets sold, all of that was not his job. His job was to make it worth
their while. The audience. The truth was that, now that he was older, he worked so rarely he sometimes forgot he was an actor. Forgot to think like one. Hortense was bringing that back to him, he had to give her credit. And it had made him a bit more enthusiastic for the whole endeavor. She had no talent, poor thing. But she loved it. And you have to love the theater cause it sure as hell doesn't love you.

Anyway, there he was, 111 East Houston Street. The Rooftop Theater. This house was unfamiliar to him, but more and more crazy theaters were popping up everywhere he walked. Looked like they were in rehearsal for something. Actors hanging out, smoking, reading their scripts. He loved that.
Wait a minute
. Earl knew that girl, what was her name? He'd talked to her once in an audition room.
Anne?
Young girl. Sassy, smart-ass Irish girl.

“Anne?”

“Yeah?” She looked up. “Oh yeah, Earl, hey, how are you doing?”

“Anne Meara, right?”

“Yeah, right?” She had a big smile, young girl just at the beginning of it all.

“I'm here for an audition, what's going on?”

“It's
Ulysses in Nighttown
. Burgess Meredith is directing it.”

“
Playboy of the Western World
? I saw that, on Broadway. What's he doing down here?”

Anne looked over her shoulder. “Blacklist,” she mouthed. “Finally back to work.”

“That's one talented fellow. Whoa, that's lucky for you. Congratulations.”

“Yeah,” she said, very pleased. “Yeah, his problem
is my break, crazy how that goes. Maybe that's on its way out, who knows?” She rolled her eyes and laughed. “You looking for auditions?”

“Yeah,” Earl said.

“Upstairs, in the back.”

“Okay, thanks. Hey, congratulations.”

“Yeah, you too. In advance.”

Earl climbed the stairs, coming upon a long hallway filled with actors waiting to be seen, nervous, hungover, confident, nihilistic. Studying the scripts or taking a nap. He signed in and sat down, waited his turn among the kids filled with energy, the old-timers still holding on, the theater rats—those are the lucky ones, working so much they live in theaters or hotel rooms or smelly, dirty basements, no time to cook a meal, they're on some stage, somewhere, every night. No clean laundry.
Ah, them's the good-old days
. Earl wondered what it would be like to be in a play again, hanging out with a gang. Bonding in dressing rooms, going out for drinks, confiding. The intimacy on stage when the actors connect and the audience connects and they're all living in front of each other at the same time, together. Then, the day the final show comes down it all disappears like it was nothing. A few years later he'd run into some guy he'd poured his heart out to every night, and it would be, “Hey, how are you?” Friendly and whatever, but kind of cold. That's the way it was.

“Earl Coleman.”

“Right here.”

He stepped into the room, the typical set-up. Three white guys behind a folding table. Glasses, smoking, blasé, blasé, blasé. One had his sleeves rolled up, that
meant he was in charge. The director. One was sweating in a suit. Producer. One had thick glasses, that had to be the playwright. A white girl to the side taking notes.

“Morning all,” Earl said, smiling. Showing his best self. That he is the one they would want to spend all that time with. All that hanging out and then
doing it
. Make an impression but not too much.

“Hi Earl,” the director said, in a repetitive drone. He'd been giving the same speech for hours and knew it wasn't his job to impress. He had the power, after all. The power of selection. “Okay, page 34. Please read the part of Joe.”

“Okay.”

Director took a puff off his smoke, and, without bothering to put it out, looked down at the script on his table and, in the same careless monotone, read the role of the bright young white boy, Bobby, the hero of this play, which was called
No Heaven Like Earth
. According to the script, Bobby was twenty-two and trying to break out of his working-class Irish family in a small town in Massachusetts. He wanted to become something. But the girl he loved was a neighborhood girl, and she wanted a home, children, and the safety of the block. In this scene, Bobby was working in his parents' store. The train for New York would leave in three hours and he had already bought the one-way ticket.

Enter
JOE,
the Negro worker, 50, carrying boxes and loading the shelves
.

BOBBY: What do you think, Joe?

JOE: 'Bout what?

BOBBY: 'Bout leaving behind everything you've ever known. Can it ever pay off?

JOE: Never know God's plan.

BOBBY: But is there a chance?

JOE: Always a chance. As long as you alive. Once you dead, ain't no more chance.

BOBBY: So, you think I should just . . . go for it?

JOE: Not for me to say.

BOBBY: Well, what will happen if I don't?

JOE: You tell me.

BOBBY: We'll be having this same conversation twenty years from now, with me behind the counter and you stocking the shelves, and I'd better be okay with that or it's not going to be a pretty picture.

JOE: Only the Lord knows what's best. It's our job to follow.

“Thank you, Earl,” Director stopped him for a moment. “Let's try it one more time. Can you try to make it a little more engaged? Joe has worked for this family for years. He's a religious man, wants Bobby to do what's best. Invest a bit more. Okay, let's take it again.”

The window was open, and suddenly the world was filled by a school of manic fire trucks storming the city, sirens hurling through everyone's consciousness, intruding with the news of
emergency, emergency
.

“Excuse me, I was just thinking . . .”

“Yes?”

Some spirit seized Earl—a bold, brash, angel-devil truth-telling machine when no such impulse should be indulged.
Emergency, emergency
.

“Well, I was thinking that some very bad luck has
brought Joe to this one-horse white town and this boring, demeaning job. The script doesn't say how long he's been there, and I prefer to think that it's just a few months. You see, to
me
, Joe is an actor, a Shakespearean actor. And he came up to Massachusetts with a road company production of
Othello
that went belly up when they got to Springfield. He's just doing whatever he can to get the scratch back to NYC, enough to get a new place and start all over. He couldn't care less what this honky-ass does with his life, but Joe doesn't want any trouble. So, he puts on this shuffling, this pretending he has no grammar, this
sho 'nuf
'cause he knows the kid is on his way out, and Joe's just hoping that's going to mean more hours for him at the store so he can get home sooner rather than later. You know?”

There was a stunned silence. The producer was tapping his feet and shaking his leg, like a cocker spaniel waiting for his Alpo. Waiting for slop.

“No,” the writer said.

“Thank you, Earl. Next.”

Some mysterious force had come over Earl between sitting in the waiting room and seeing those fools behind the table. What was it? Almost like an alien possession or a dramatic hit of scarlet fever. A force simply larger than his own intentions, thoughts, needs, and plans had taken control of his mind. He didn't regret it, of course. But what was he doing? If he didn't want the part, he shouldn't have agreed to come to the audition. It was like he had outgrown reality. Just surpassed it. He was so ready to live in another time that he had just future hopped, like in those science-fiction stories. Only it's never black guys who travel to the future. They just carry the luggage. Yet that's what had
happened in some strange way, Earl had transported through time to a moment yet to come, when things would actually make sense. When a black character in a play would be a real man with a real reason, with a real story, and a real heart.
It could happen
. Sooner or later. He knew it really could.