Jacob Rubin - The Poser

“It is my great pleasure,” Max tried again, sucking in a deep breath, “to present to you Giovanni Bernini, the World’s Greatest Impression — AEENENEEEENENNE.” Groans and gasps and what you had to assume were cross expressions emanated from the dark. The heat of the spotlight was unbearable. My collar clamped around my throat, and I was feeling very embarrassed to occupy a stage in such a costume with so many strangers expecting me to do something. It seemed absurd that I, of all people, should stand in front of others as an example of what a person is.

“This goddamn…” His mutterings amplified, Max grappled with the stand, trying to rest the microphone in its perch without causing further disturbance. Once he had, he lifted up the stand and walked it to the edge of the stage. Sweat coating the sides of his face, he returned to center stage, smacking his hands. “My plain voice will do!” he declared from his spotlight, his baritone carrying without problem across the hall. I lowered my head again. Out of the dark came purposeful coughs. They disliked us now.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, without further ado, I present… GIOVANNI BERNINI, THE WORLD’S GREATEST IMPRESSIONIST!” Without looking up, I knew Maximilian was sweeping his arm toward me, folding his legs in an exaggerated curtsy. I was doing the same. This was supposed to be comical — the oddly matched pair bowing in unison — but there quivered only that tightrope of silence. I thought I heard a boo.

“I know I’ve always distrusted performers who require volunteers. If I were down there among you, I would most certainly not volunteer myself. But! I would hope someone else had the guts, the temerity, the courage to step across this stage, to join us in this bath of light, so I, safe in the darkness, could see what all this nonsense was about!”

A raggedy gust of coughs. Snickers.

“One brave soul,” Maximilian said again. His tone remained jocular. It was as if, since stepping onstage, we’d somehow exchanged moods. “Who will be brave enough to grace this stage, to make this night a memorable one for all of us?”

“Okaaay, I’ll do it,” a voice shot out from the dark.

“Excellent!” Maximilian was saying. “No one will be disappoint—” He managed to feign composure, to not suffer some baroque seizure, as I was sure I would, when recognizing the bewitching figure cutting a path through the tables. Who knows how white my face became, how taut my mouth, when I made out that shape in that kelly green dress excusing herself from between the backs of chairs.

As soon as Lucy Starlight mounted the stage, a spotlight cocooned her, too. I was supposed to be firmly in my wound position, but I watched — gawked, more like — as this was my first real chance to study her. She ranged over to Max, the rim of their spotlights touching, feet away from me. Her shiny calves, her wriggling hips, the whole female affront she aspired to — where was it? Her thread?

“What’s your name, sweetheart?” Max asked as she sidled next to him.

“Lucy.”

“Lucy what, dear?”

“Starlight.”

“And what do you do, Lucy Starlight?”

“I’m a singer,” she said in a mock baritone.

“And what do you sing about?”

“Horrible tales of heartbreak and love,” she said in that same deep voice, drawing some laughs. I wondered if it was supposed to be an imitation of Max.

“Now, Ms. Starlight, have you ever been impersonated before?” In the absence of microphones they were both consciously projecting. It gave their dialogue a scripted, ironic tinge. Nothing I could use.

She shook her head and hid her cheek behind her shoulder, like a shy child.

“Are you ready then, Ms. Starlight, for the amazing transformation, the incomparable experience, the thrilling adventure, the delicious delirium of being mimicked by the World’s Greatest Impressionist ?” Max asked, swinging his left arm toward the crowd as if opening a cape.

She nodded hard.

“Giovanni, take it away!” His spotlight went out. It was just Lucy and me, floating. The light encased her like glass, the motes dancing above her like snowflakes. Given her posture, it seemed that her hands should have rested on her hips, but she instead held them limp and expectant at her sides as if, despite the jeering tilt of her head, she awaited a kiss.

The rim of my spotlight inched toward her, ahead of me.

Any connoisseurs in the audience would have gnashed their teeth at what followed, would’ve mistaken me for a noisy, foot-stomping poseur for at that moment, before a large audience, Giovanni the Fraud commenced a rank parody of his art. He copied as best he could her vowel-happy voice, her tilted head. He stumbled around in that rangy gait, despite not having her thread, the seam that when pulled would unravel her whole. I was no better, really, than a younger sibling who echoes what his older brother has said immediately after he’s said it, to grab on to his coattails, as it were, and leach some of his person. I faced the audience and said, “Horrible tales of heartbreak and love.” I said, “Oh, I’m a singer, I sing, and please, I sing.” I leaned my head forward, lunged in a circle. That’s when they started booing.

They threw boos at me like bottles. Those boos whizzed by my ears. Boos smashed against the stage, echoed through the rafters, and I, believe it or not, was thankful, for it’s what I expected all along. To be thrown on my ear, railroaded back to Sea View, for Giovanni the Monster to be tarred and feathered and cackled out of town. Those boos purified me. I closed my eyes and stood still, washed as in a cleansing rain. And just then, with my eyes closed, my arms outstretched, I realized they weren’t booing at all — they were chortling, hooting, applauding . What I heard was the sound of mob laughter. I was terrified.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you, Giovanni Bernini!” Max shouted, and the hall filled with applause. “Giovanni Bernini!” It was a misunderstanding. I was going to be caught, I was sure. They would pelt me with ashtrays and glasses when they realized I’d tricked them, that I hadn’t really done it. “The World’s Greatest Impressionist!”

With protesting hands and a modest smile, I accepted the applause, though my heart was pounding. I stole a glance at Lucy, who, confined to her spotlight, leered at me like an angry sibling. Her look indicated that we shared a secret, but whether that secret was my failure or success I couldn’t know.

Max said, “A round of applause for Lucy Starlight,” and Lucy batted her eyes and curtsied with that theatrical irony, though something about the act, you could tell, had rattled or satisfied her. Before that first wave of clapping subsided, she had already disappeared down the stairs, through the maze of tables — ignoring hands offered to congratulate her — her green dress eaten up by the dark. I nearly sprinted after her, began to, actually, and then remembered I was onstage and, wind-up toy that I was, wound down.

“Giovanni Bernini, the World’s Greatest Impressionist!” Max declared, the vindication like wine in his voice. At this there was no applause, just the quiet of anticipation. He was right. Everyone wanted a nibble of magic, the duet of spotlights.

“Who would like to be next?” he asked now. “Who next will be impersonated by the incomparable, the inexplicable, the indefatigable Giovanni Bernini?” Immediately, fifty hands went up.

• • •

“You demented genius!” said a jubilant Maximilian after we’d exited through the wing to a shadowed nook backstage. “This is just the fetus of the whole thing, boy — just the goddamn slimy-headed fetus!” He hugged me. “I know you sensed it, my boy. I know you did ’cause I did!”