Samuel Holt: The Fourth Dimension is Death

There are two real differences between Brett and me. First, I got the part, the one that launched me and established me and made me rich, while he’s still struggling along with small movie roles and brief uncertain stints off-Broadway. And second, while I just drifted into this profession, not even knowing it was a profession for quite a long time, Brett has been an actor, solid and talented and devoted, all his life. I know there are times when he wishes our positions were reversed, that he was the one with the fame and fortune, but mostly he realizes he’s happier where he is, at work almost anonymously in the career he loves.

The silly thing is, I too have moments of feeling the grass must be greener on the other side. If I’d never been Packard, I could, like Brett, be working at something in the acting profession today. On the other hand, I wouldn’t have the house in Bel Air, nor the house on West 10th Street. So Brett and I, in an odd way, embody each other’s daydreams, and we like to stay in touch, see each other from time to time, get caught up on our fantasies of might-have-been.

I’d been back in the city four days when Brett and I had lunch. That morning he was auditioning in the Lucille Lortel theater on Christopher Street in the Village, so we arranged that I’d meet him there around twelve-thirty and then we’d stroll together up to Abingdon Square for lunch at Vitto Impero, the restaurant owned by my friend Anita Imperato. The weather was fine — New York in the fall can be absolutely beautiful — and I had time on my hands, so I walked across from home. Although I’m six foot six and have a rather well-known face, I’ve learned that if I wear a cap and keep my eyes front and walk as though I have a purpose in mind, I very rarely get bothered on the street. At least in New York.

I made my way without interruption over to the theater, arrived a few minutes early, and went in to find about twenty actors, all of the same outdoorsy leading man type, lounging in the rear seats, and one more of the same on stage with an earnest plain young woman, both holding red-bound scripts. The four people doing the casting were distributed in the front two rows. I saw Brett in the rear row on the other side and started toward him when a narrow balding young man with a goatee and a clipboard stopped me with a harshly whispered, “You’re late! What’s your name?”

“I’m not auditioning,” I whispered back. Up on stage, the auditioning actor and the earnest girl were reading a scene together, full of artificial gaiety. I pointed toward Brett. “I’m here to meet my—”

“No one’s permitted in here ,” he whispered, fiercely self-important, “except—” Then he stopped, and squinted up at me, under the brim of my cap. I saw recognition change his face from disapproval to surprised delight. “Aren’t you—?”

“Yes,” I whispered, happy once again to accept this fringe benefit of celebrity; everybody thinks they already know you and already like you.

“Are you sure you don’t want to audition?” He almost simpered when he said that, looking at me sidelong, virtually flirting with me.

And I considered it, by God, for one millisecond. All of the pros, all of the cons. I didn’t even know if it was the lead; not that that mattered, since the idea was ridiculous anyway.

And what if I were to waltz in and take Brett’s part away from him?

“Thanks, but no,” I whispered, smiling back at my seducer with the clipboard. “All right if I sit over there?”

“Yes, of course.” Rapping the backs of his fingers against the papers on his clipboard, he whispered, “Which one’s your friend?”

“Brett Burgess.”

“I’ll call him next.”

“Thank you,” I said, pleased and surprised. “We both thank you.”

I went on across the rear of the theater and slid into the seat next to Brett, nodding a silent greeting. He nodded back, then spread his hands to display helplessness. Leaning toward me, he whispered, “They’re running late. As usual.”

“You’re next at bat.”

That made his craggy face smile. (Not only does he look like the Marlboro Man, he’s been the Marlboro Man, in a magazine ad.) “Used your influence, did you?”

“Yes. But from here on, you’re on your own.”

“I’m not sure I want this anyway,” he whispered. “It’s Alan Alda as a lumberjack.”

“Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?”

He grinned, but then looked toward the stage and gestured for me to wait. The actor who’d been reading was now coming down into the small auditorium, leaving the plain girl with both scripts. The goateed man with the clipboard gestured to him, then called, “Brett Burgess,” and Brett squeezed my knee as he got to his feet and headed down the aisle, moving more heavily than usual; not a limp, exactly, but a stiffness in the knees as though he had arthritis there, or an old war wound. I suspected that meant he was already getting into the part.

While the previous contender and the goateed man murmured together briefly to one side, a stout man with a wheezy voice called questions up to Brett on stage from the second row; stage experience, parts played, theaters where he’d worked in different parts of the country, things like that. The information, I knew, wasn’t so much wanted for its own sake as to give Brett a minute to get comfortable on stage and to give the people below a chance to see him separate from the part they wanted him to read. Then the previous man left, the goateed man faded into the darkness, the plain girl handed one of the scripts to Brett, and an angry voice near me yelled, “And what the fuck are you doing here?”

I looked over, astonished, and it was him again, one row down and over to the right. And of course he would be here; he was an actor. A part that Brett might be right for, that I might be right for, was naturally something he’d also take a run at. I shook my head at him, scrunching down as low as possible in my seat, hoping he’d understand there was no need to make a fuss, but one thing I already knew about Dale Wormley was that he was an emotional type. A fuss, unfortunately, was about to be made.

While everyone else in the theater craned around to see what was going on, and while poor Brett stood helpless and ignored on stage with the script in his hand, Dale Wormley came half-trotting sideways — a ludicrous comic crablike movement that could only make him madder — hurrying along the row toward me, yelling, “Come down to sneer? Come down to laugh at the losers? ”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, don’t be stupid,” I muttered, but probably too low, still trying hopelessly not to attract unnecessary attention.

“I don’t like your goddam face , you know that?” he demanded, almost parallel with me now; and that was another stupid thing to say, though I didn’t point it out, since it was his presumed similarity to this face that was getting him whatever gainful employment he had these days. But then, his double-time sidle having brought him over directly in front of me, he backed up the stupid remark by taking a swing at the face he didn’t like.

Sitting there, I parried that wild right, saying, “Cut it out.” Meantime, people all over the theater were on their feet, moving this way, yelling at us to stop whatever we were doing, yelling that they wanted to know what was going on.

Wormley didn’t cut it out. He swung again, the left now, and I blocked that one, too, saying, “Goddamit, grow up .”

No. Teeth clenched, eyes glaring, he swung the right again.

Oh, enough. Still sitting there, I leaned forward and decked him.

“Thanks a lot,” Brett said.