Jacob Rubin - The Poser

A hundred hands must’ve cluttered the dark that night, but we had time only for ten. All of their threads, thank God, curled out of their person. I gave a tug, and that was that. A paunchy lawyer. Two transparent teens.

Our last volunteer that night was a schoolteacher. She liked to nod four times after saying something true. Max asked her: “You teach which grades?” And she said, “Second and first graders. That’s right,” and nodded four times. After the imitation, I’d returned to my default position, staring at my feet when she all but tackled me. She pecked me on the cheek and then rushed back to her spot beside Max, eyeing me like a bashful fawn. The crowd ooohed with delight, and, without thinking about it, I scampered over to her, pecked her on the cheek, and hurried back to my mark — the spotlight running with me — batting my eyelashes. The crowd ate it up. I bowed, they hurrahed more. Giovanni the Thief bowing! I was delighted, it’s true, and yet I could not shake the feeling that I was tricking these people, or they were tricking me, that together we were collaborating in some vital deception.

Despite these strange notions, I said, “Mmm-course” to Max, because I had been confined to that spotlight all night, and it was such an odd, pleasing feeling to be hugged.

“Just the beginning!” he said, walking to the corner where he crouched down, and from behind a wooden scenery of pink clouds, dragged what appeared to be a bucket. It contained, I saw as it came closer, two bottles of champagne. He removed one. “I got these in case tonight went as swimmy as it did,” he said and then turned to face the wall as if for the privacy of a urination. There was a pop and he tilted his head and the bell of the bottle rose into view over his considerable hair-scape. He turned, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Ah!” he added viciously, then handed me the bottle.

Not wanting to disappoint him, I poured too much down my throat, bent over, and managed to swallow before hacking hard. Max slapped my back. “That’s it, boy. Drink.”

Before long we were on the second bottle. I was telling Max things. My predicament with Lucy, for one. “You can just imagine how I felt with her coming to the stage.” I was making severe shapes with my hands. Only later did I realize I was imitating him.

“You were her.” He stood with one foot against the wall, a sleepy smile on his face.

“No, my great friend, not in the slightest!” Like that, I began a drunken excursus on the thread. It was the first time I’d discussed the concept with anybody but Mama, and the words, existing aloud, sounded both miraculous and thin.

“You got it, man,” Max said, the two of us carrying on interlocking monologues. “That shining star in the belly. It’s not something you get if you’re lucky or you try real hard, you know that? You’re born with that seed inside you — you either are or you ain’t —and if you’ve got it and the world waters that seed, then you become fame-us .” He pronounced the word like a spell, and a shiver went through me. “I’m gonna find Apache,” he said, pushing himself off the wall. “See what kind of green he’s got.”

We pawed our way around dark corridors to a side door and parted there, agreeing to meet backstage later. Given the fifty or so ounces of champagne sloshing around our guts, it’s unsurprising, perhaps, that ours was a dramatic goodbye, rife with sustained hugs and hardy pats of the back. We were like two diplomats hamming it up before an international press corps.

When I rejoined the world of the hall, big band swing was blaring out of the house speakers. The balcony bar was alive with heady, flushed people, all eager to establish an intimacy. They patted my shoulders; one pinched my cheek. I was like a lucky stone that had to be rubbed, and yet it was as if the spotlight still separated me, so that no matter how much they jostled and mussed me, I could not be touched. When they offered me a drink, I said, “Oh, thank you, but I can have no more.” When they inquired about the act — how long I’d been at it — I said, “All my life.” Nothing I said was impolite, which made them all the more curious, I think, to see the buried genius inside me emerge and yawp. I was drunk, that was clear, and at times grabbed the banister and leaned over it to peer down at the carnival of heads below. I tripped around for some time before making my way back to the stage door. With some work, I opened it, the heavy thing closing behind me with a shotgun’s report. “Max!” I tried. My hand thinned to a sliver of white.

I hugged the wall, followed it, drifting deeper into the interior of the stage. I stopped only when the glass shattered. A ringing pain in my knee and hand. “Fuck!” I screamed. Yellow light unpeeled the shadow on the far wall. A toppled glass table sat before me.

In the opened door appeared a silhouette. “Who’s there?”

“Who’s there, too?” I asked.

“Giovaaanni?”

“Oh, God.” It was her.

“What are you doooing here?”

“I could ask you the same.” I stood. “There are a number of things we ought to discuss posthaste. Like, what the hell you trying to do to me, huh? That’s first off.” Whose voice was this?

“God, you’re weird.” She was backlit, shadowed in the doorway. All the clues and tics, the theater I depended on — those weaknesses in her face were hidden from me.

“Always in the shadows, isn’t that convenient.”

“Are you druuuunk?”

I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry?”

“Drunk,” she said. “For the first time?”

“Fine, change the subject.”

“I didn’t know we had one to change.”

“Who gets to tell when you’re pretending?”

“I could ask you the same,” she said — a quick rejoinder — but my question had reached her. She stepped back from the door. I walked in. It was a greenroom of sorts, outfitted with a vanity mirror next to which were piled wigs and brushes. There was a cot in the corner, and a wardrobe packed with dresses.

She stood closer to me than most people would. “Look at you,” she said, smiling. “You play it sooo innocent. Fumbling around like a little boy, then you get onstage and trick everyone.” She bit her lip and batted her eyelashes. A gesture of flirtation or sardonic commentary on such a gesture?

“Why’d you come onstage?”

“Seemed like you could use the help. Besides, I wanted to see if you could dooo it.”

“Could I?”

She frowned, as though distracted, and took my hand from where it rested at my side, raising it above the waterline of shadow. “You’re bleeding.”

It was true. A mess of glass in my palm.

“A boo-boo,” she said, and with her other hand gently plucked the glass from my palm. “You have to be really caaareful.” She blew on it, and the cold rippled up my hand and arm. “If this gets infected, it could travel down the arm—”

“It’s all right, really—”

“It’s called celluuulitis.”

“Biology’s really not my—”

“Untreated it can be quite severe and spread to—”

“I think it’ll be all right. Really, I—”

“God, you must be some klutz if—”

“It’s my hand not yours!” I hadn’t meant to sound so shrill.

She seemed to scowl. She returned her hands to her hips, tapping her foot.

“I, I’m sorry,” I said. “I, I didn’t mean…”

The twinkling in her eye seemed to condense and sharpen, and I was sure she would either slap me or yell for help when she dropped to her knees, unbuckled my belt and unbuttoned my jeans, tugged them to my knees — underwear, too — and put her mouth around me.