The Understudy: A Novel (19 page)

“Not before next week, though.”

“No, no, probably not.” Back to the papers, digging into the substrata now—“Nope…nope…nope…Here we are—
Raisin in the Sun,
Dundee Rep?”

“No.”

“Why not? If you’re not prepared to travel, Steve…”

“It’s not that, it’s just, well, I’d need to be black.”

It was the
Vagina Monologues
farrago all over again. Frank read the casting breakdown, his lips moving, then looked back up at Stephen just to check that black definitely lay outside his range, sighed, as if this were in some indefinable way Stephen’s fault, then went back to his papers.

“ ‘Actor/Singer/Dancers required for
Fear!
A musical version of Bertolt Brecht’s
Fears and Misery in the Third Reich
.’ No actual wages, as such—”

“I really need to be earning, Frank.”

“Okay, how about this then: ‘Theater Folk! An exciting new educational theater company, kids’ show about dental hygiene, touring schools in the Fens, starts January.
Nothing But the Tooth
.’ Pun, you see? Money’s not great, but the per diems are sensational. You’d be playing someone called, let me see—Tommy Tartar. Don’t fancy it?”

“ ‘Tommy Tartar’?”

“Right, we can forget
that
then,” said Frank, irritated now. He tossed the papers back on his desk, blew a long plume of smoke through his thin nose, leaned back in his chair till it squeaked dangerously. “You know the best thing you could do for your career, Steve?”

“Go on.”

Frank glanced over his shoulder and beneath his desk for eavesdroppers or surveillance equipment, and, in a very serious voice, intoned, “Kill Josh Harper.”

Stephen laughed.

“I’m serious. What you have to remember, Stephen, is that it’s a very, very thin line between huge success and utter failure. You know, even to this day, I remember you in that production of
Godspell
. Your performance is burned on my retina.” Stephen winced, unable to think of anything worse to have burned on a retina. “You’ve got talent to burn, all you need is exposure. You take over from Josh, even if it’s just for a couple of shows, and I’ll get the best people in—casting directors, TV people—and you, my friend, you will be flying. Like a”—he searched the smoky air of the small office—“…like an eagle.”

“Well, it’s funny you should say that, Frank,” said Stephen, in a low voice.

“What?”

Stephen also glanced over his shoulder, checked beneath his desk, and in a low voice intoned, “Well…what are you doing round about the eighteenth of December?”

The F-Word

“C
an I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“We’re friends, aren’t we? I mean, I know we haven’t known each other too long, but I like to think we’re sort of friends…”

“I think so.”

“And you’d tell me the truth? If I asked you something personal?”

“Absolutely.”

“So I can trust you?”

“You can trust me.”

“Is Josh having an affair?” asked Nora.

T
he conversation took place one afternoon, a week after the deal had been agreed. Stephen and Nora were walking back over Waterloo Bridge late in the afternoon, away from the National Film Theatre, where they’d just been to see a revival of
Double Indemnity
. Stephen had seen it maybe ten times before, but it wasn’t until he’d sat and watched it with Nora at his side, their elbows touching, both wrist-deep in the same immense bag of Revels, that he’d become fully aware of the film’s clammy sexual tension, and found himself idly wondering how comprehensively insured Josh was. In case, you know, he had an accident or something…

Afterward, walking across the bridge, they talked about their favorite actors.

“Cary Grant, of course…” said Nora.

“And Jimmy Stewart.”

“Cary’s better.”

“Burton, Olivier?”

“A little heavy for my taste. I haven’t really seen that much.”

“How about Hepburn?”

“Not Audrey. Katharine’s great, but Audrey’s too skinny and sweet.”

“I admire Katharine, but I don’t think I’d want to actually, you know,
go out
with her.”

“With Audrey you’d stand a chance.”

“But what would I tell Julie Christie?”

“I loved Jane Fonda. That’s who I wanted to be. Jane Fonda in
Cat Ballou,
or
Walk on the Wild Side
. Jane Fonda in a lumberjack shirt.”

“You know who I think my all-time favorite is?” said Stephen. “John Cazale.”

“Don’t know him.”

“Yes, you do—John Cazale. He played Fredo, the weak brother, in
The Godfather I
and
II.
That bit—‘I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart.’ He was engaged to Meryl Streep and died of cancer, really young, forty or something, and he only ever made five films, that’s all, just five,
all
of them nominated for Best Film, every film he was in, a Best Film, and he’s brilliant in all of them. Even when he’s not saying anything, even when he’s in a scene with Pacino or De Niro or whoever, he’s the only one you watch. When he dies in
Godfather II
you can’t even see his face, and he’s still heartbreaking.”

“Exactly like you as Ghostly Figure.”

“
Exactly
like that. Anyway, that’s why you do it. Not to be famous, just to be
good
. To do good work. Find the thing you really love doing, and do it to the best of your ability.”

“And is there some kind of time limit on this? A deadline.”

“There would be if I could do something else.”

“That’s bullshit, Steve—everyone can do something else.” Nora said this with perhaps a little too much venom, and they both walked in silence for a while.

Stephen, a little stung, spoke first. “Actually, my agent just gave me some good news.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“I just got a new acting job.”

“That’s great! A play?”

“A film. Just a low-budget, indie thing. I’m filming next week, actually.” In order to lend conviction to his story, he was thinking of
Sammy the Squirrel 2—If You’re Happy and You Know It,
and while this was perhaps stretching the definition of “movie,” at least it wasn’t an out-and-out lie. He had decided that he was doing far too much lying these days. He really ought to try to stop lying.

“What’s it called, this movie?”

“
Dark Obsession
. It’s a sort of a crime-drama thing. I play this jaded, cynical, police-marksman guy. Called Sammy. Nothing special, just the usual macho bullshit. It’ll probably never even get a cinema release,” he said, confident that, in this instance at least, he had truth on his side.

They crossed the Strand and found a dark, deserted backstreet pub in Covent Garden, away from the main tourist traps, and squeezed in next to each other on a red velvet bench, drinking double gin and tonics.

“D’you mind me asking you something?”

“Go on.”

“You won’t be offended?”

“I might be.”

“Okay, well—wasn’t it a little…mean of your parents?”

“What?”

“To call you…?”

“Ah.”

“You see, you do mind.”

“No, no, it’s fine. It wasn’t meant maliciously, it was just my maternal grandfather was called Stephen, and he died shortly before I was born, so it was a sort of tribute. And I suppose it wouldn’t have been such a problem if I’d gone into computers, like I was meant to. It wouldn’t have seemed quite so…”

“Ironic.”

“Ironic.”

They were silent a moment.

“Steve McQueen was amazing,” said Nora.

“I always preferred Newman.”

“But you know who I really loved? Walter Matthau. Now
he
was sexy. And for years I had a weird thing about Dick Van Dyke too, but only ever as a chimney sweep. I had this recurring fantasy about him climbing into my room late at night, all sooty, leaning his, you know, chimney-sweeping equipment in the corner. And, God, Danny Kaye too. Me and Danny Kaye in a big apartment on the Upper East Side, hanging out, practicing tongue-twisters. Talk about barking up the wrong tree.”

“And now here you are—married to a real-life film star,” said Stephen.

“I know. How the hell did
that
happen? Sometimes I wonder if I might have been better off with Danny Kaye.” She laughed, and glanced at Stephen, then leaned forward and sipped her drink. There was a brief silence, the kind that invites a question.

“Everything okay?” asked Stephen.

“I suppose so.” Nora sighed, then sat back in her seat. “I shouldn’t complain. I mean he’s a really sweet guy and incredibly generous and everything, even if he does call me ‘Nozza.’ He makes me laugh, and he supports this whole writing thing, and puts up with me when I’m in one of my moods. And the sex is still pretty sensational, of course.”

“Yes, you said.”

“Did I? Sorry. Still, he’s definitely changed since he became, you know…the
f-word
.”

“In what way?”

“You sure you don’t mind talking about this?”

“Not at all.”

“Okay, well, for one thing, he’s suddenly become unbelievably vain. At home, I’ve had to cover the reflective surfaces, otherwise he’d never leave the apartment. Ever since he was named Twelfth Sexiest Man in the World, it’s been out of control.”

“That’s what we call him at work—Number Twelve.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

Best not mention Maxine.

“Maxine and I.”

“Maxine?”

Hold your nerve, hold steady…

“The girl in the play.”

“The slutty one?”

“Well—”

“Number Twelve—he loves that! He pretends not to, but sometimes I think he’s going to buy himself a rifle and a ski mask, track down the other eleven and Take. Them. Out. And he’s started to buy these crazy kitsch clothes, you know the kind of thing—big collars, crazy colors, this dark blue velour suit. Velour beyond the call of duty, I call it. Then there’s his black
leather
shirt, and these…these”—she swallowed hard—“…
suede
underpants,” and gave a little stage shudder. “Just think, Steve—cows
died
. I swear, sometimes we go out to a premiere or something, and I feel like this librarian who’s somehow married a pimp. And—this one sends me
crazy
—if he sees someone wearing something he likes, he doesn’t say, ‘Where’s that from?,’ he says, ‘Who’s that by?’ ‘Who’s that
by
?’—like it’s some work of art or something. ‘Well, it’s
by
Marks and Spencer, you dope.’ The other day I caught him trying to get something for
free
for this premiere. Can you imagine? He starts earning all this money and all of a sudden he thinks that entitles him to
free
clothes. What kind of crazy logic is that? Or crazy morality, come to that. Hey, you have to promise not to tell him I told you any of this.”

“Of course not.”

“And you don’t think I’m being bitchy?”

“Well, yeah, a little, but I don’t mind.”

“All right, then, what else?” She clapped her hands together. “Okay—he wears these annoying aviator sunglasses all the time, even around the apartment. God knows why—presumably so
I
won’t hassle him for his autograph. Oh, and he won’t go on public transport anymore.”

“Which is fair enough, I suppose.”

“Except it’s hard to feel too sorry for someone who’s constantly
Googling
himself on the computer,
and
printing out the results. And he keeps logging onto his own Web sites too, sneaking into the chat rooms, just to check out what the fans think—www.egomaniac.com. Oh, and he’s almost constantly working out. Pretty much every time I see him he’s dangling from a doorway in his suede underpants. Why he can’t exercise with a few clothes on is beyond me. It’s like I’m living with this buff orangutan. No offense to your fellow professionals, Stephen, but you tell a guy that he’s a gay icon before a certain age, and there’s a very real possibility that he’ll turn into a complete
ass-
hole.”

They both smiled, picked up their drinks simultaneously, and Stephen found himself looking sideways at Nora’s face, noting the lines that formed at the corners of her dark eyes when she laughed, and as he watched, the lines faded, her face straightened. “I’ve never known a guy spend so much time texting, or reading texts, and his cell phone’s always ringing late at night too. He won’t talk in the same room as me, he just puts on this weird ‘professional’ voice and skips out, and stands and whispers in the hall.”

“Well—that doesn’t mean anything, I’m sure.”

“So who is he texting, then?”

“Well, do you ask him?”

“I try not to. Or he says it’s ‘the Coast.’ ”

“Well, it probably is the Coast.”

“Yeah, well, you’re probably right.” There was a pause, and they sat and listened to the tinny jingle of the fruit machine. “ ‘The
Coast
!’ Can you believe that? It’s like when he says ‘Stateside.’ I’m American, and even I don’t call it ‘the Coast.’ ”

“Maybe he means Margate,” said Stephen, hoping to lighten the mood.

“Where’s Margate?”

“It’s an English town. You know—on the coast.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, maybe.” Nora puffed sharply at the cigarette, wiped something invisible from her lip, thought for a moment, and then said it.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“We’re friends, aren’t we? I mean, I know we haven’t known each other too long, but I like to think we’re sort of friends…”

“I think so.”

“And you’d tell me the truth? If I asked you something personal?”

“Absolutely.”

“So I can trust you?”

“You can trust me.”

“Is Josh having an affair?” asked Nora.

Of course, he could just tell her. She had a right to know, after all; Stephen didn’t owe Josh anything.

Except for the deal, of course. It seemed unlikely that, if he said something now, Josh would still be inclined to go along with the deal.

“No-ho-ho,” said Stephen, shaking his head incredulously.

Nora narrowed her eyes. “You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“And you’d tell me? If you knew something?”

“Nora, nothing’s going on.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

“Thank you. I feel much, much better now.”