David Gates - A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me

“That makes you special right there,” I said. “You’re our Olivia, yes? I’m your corrupter of words.”

“I know, I’ve been so looking forward to working with you. I don’t really know this play, though.”

“I’m just trusting Kenny,” I said.

“Me too, but—Can I say something? I don’t think he really gets women.”

“Well, I could refer you to any number of women who might call my own understanding into question.”

“Oh yes, he told me you had a history.”

“Bless his heart,” I said. “And he said you have a future. Then again, he used to say that about me.”

“So is this how you charm them all? Pretending like you’re old?”

“It’s called getting into character.”

“I can’t decide if I like you or not,” she said.

“And does that work for you?” I said. “Frankness, straight up?”

“If I might interrupt?” Kenny called from the stage. I realized we’d been the only people talking. “We need to get things rolling here. Where’s our Viola?”

“In the ladies’,” Barbara said.

“Mother of Mercy,” Kenny said. “Does anybody else have to go?”

I thought Kenny was a little hard on the schoolteacher who played Viola, a not especially boyish looking lady named Louise. He corrected her lines—“Not ‘for what you are.’ ‘I see you what you are’ ”—and shot down her idea of giving a sickly smile after her line about patience on a monument smiling at grief. Bad idea, granted, but of course her real offense was not being Rick Calloway. It seemed to me that Julia would probably be okay. At least somebody had taught her to project, and looking at how she carried herself you could see she must have done some dance as well. She played Olivia as bored, spoiled and flirty—enough like Helena Bonham Carter to make me think she’d rented the video, too. In our first scene, where Feste says, “The lady bade take away the fool; therefore, I say again, take her away,” and Olivia says, “Sir, I bade them take away you ,” she poked my nose, and Kenny yelled out, “No, no, no—you’re still pissed at him. Again, please?” She looked at me and mouthed, You see? But then she did it over, with just the right pout.

Back at the house, Kenny brought gin, tonic, limes and a sweating ice bucket out to the screened porch. “A word in your ear?” he said. “I have to live in this town. Not that she’s not a lovely girl, but surely you can find other amusements.” He dropped a wedge of lime on top of the ice cubes in my glass. “Her parents are good friends.”

“I should certainly hope so.”

“Please,” he said, “leave the badinage to those of us who know how to do it.” He picked up the gin. “I would warn you that she drugs a bit, but I know that wouldn’t discourage you .”

“You’re thinking of me back in my glory days.” He began pouring. “Whoa, easy—when. Exactly what did you tell this young lady about me?”

“Only that you had an eye for the young ladies. And that she might consider resisting your autumnal charms.” He topped off my glass with tonic. “Just between you and me and the wall, there’s been a little trouble in that quarter.”

“Then she needs to rein in her…What’s the opposite of autumnal? Vernal?”

“Oh, you’re good. She is very gifted.”

“So what’s this trouble?”

“Well, since you insist on dragging it out of me. One of her professors—I believe he lost his job over it. And her father got all involved. Not a chappie I’d want to cross. In fact, I think he ended up here because of some—well, there I go. He’s a friend, what can I say?”

“Just so we’re clear,” I said, “are you forbidding this or promoting it? Sounds like you’ve gone out of your way to plant the seed. On both sides.”

“Am I that much of a devil?” He began putting ice in his glass. “Not that I mind watching a good train wreck now and again. Just not here.” He poured gin, no tonic, and clinked his glass against mine. “Pretty please?”

—

The next day, I turned down Julia’s invitation to go swimming after rehearsal, at some locally legendary swimming hole, but that night most of the cast ended up at the bar in the town’s Mexican restaurant, owned by the guy Kenny chose to play Sir Toby, who’d had some stage experience, God help us, in a road-company Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat . On Fridays he provided the entertainment, with mic, stool and plug-in acoustic guitar, singing what he called “sixties and seventies”—blessedly, this was a Wednesday. I saw our Sir Andrew, a slender college boy with black-framed glasses, sitting at the end of the bar and beset by Julia, who was touching his upper arm with her fingertips, then her palm, then running the back of her hand down his cheek, then twirling his long hair around her index finger. She saw me watching and gave me her Olivia pout. I took a seat at a table, between Barbara Antonelli and the Viola woman—I’ve lost her name again—with her supposedly look-alike brother. Louise.

Barbara looked over at the bar. “I’d fight you for her,” she said, “but she’ll be forty before she knows she’s gay. By which time I’ll be dead.” I looked to see if Louise had heard, but she was talking with the brother. “How did he drag you up here?”

“I wasn’t doing much else,” I said. “It’s good to see you.”

“Don’t waste it on me,” she said. “He put me up in this dreadful bed-and-breakfast. Who are these people? Could you get me another one? No salt this time. Will we even get through this?”

“One way or another.” I looked around for a waitress.

“Aren’t you the trouper. Oh, well. A year from now, we’ll all be even older. How are you doing? You don’t look that much the worse for wear.”

“All on the inside,” I said.

“And do you hear from that lovely ex-wife of yours?”

“Good Christ,” I said. “Why don’t you just reach over and slap me like a human being?”

Louise turned away from talking with her brother. “How do you think I’m doing so far?” she said to Barbara. “Honestly. I’m afraid I’m in over my head.”

“Shakespeare,” she said. “We’re all in over our heads, dear.”

“Not you,” Louise said. “Or you.”

The waitress was standing over us. “You’re going to be fine,” I said. “Another one of these? No salt? And I’ll have a Bud. What can I get you guys?”

“We’re good,” Louise said. “Have you met Billy?”

“Not officially,” Billy said. “You were great this afternoon.”

“We’ll see when I start having to remember my lines,” I said.

“And what is it that you do in real life?” Barbara said to him.

“I was managing a Curves, in St. Johnsbury. We had to close a couple months ago.”

“Curves. Now, is that a bar?”

“No, you know—Curves. It’s like a women’s fitness?”

“Oh. Of course. We have those. I was thinking it was one of those gentlemen’s clubs.” She turned to me. “When we get back to civilization, let’s you and me make an expedition to this place in Midtown—aspiring actresses out the wazoo.” She looked over at the bar again; Julia and her young man were gone.

The waitress set down my Bud and Barbara’s margarita. “Can I get you folks anything to eat? Marty told me half price on everything.”

“Isn’t he a dear,” Barbara said. “Can we drink now, think later?”

“Perfect. Kitchen doesn’t close till ten.”

“And on a weekday night,” Barbara said. “I think we should all move up here.”

“It’s really not such a bad place,” Louise said. “The winters can be a challenge. But I spent a winter in New York once, and that was a challenge.”