Christopher Buckley - Wet Work

She asked if he wanted something to drink. The way he said no was all business. He had his leather briefcase with him. Snap, snap. He took out the paper, prefolded to the review, and laid it on the coffee table. Wonderful. You want me to recite it from memory? Then he reached into his pocket and took out a small vial full of white powder, which he set on the table next to the review.

"What," she said, "is that?" though she knew exactly what it was.

"This," he said, "is your authenticity."

It had come up a few times during rehearsals, always to one side so as not to embarrass her in front of Rox and Susie, who, to judge from their authenticity, had hoovered half the Peruvian gross national product up their nostrils. Their authenticity was so for-real it wouldn't get past a dope-sniffing dog.

"Tim," she pleaded. He picked up the review and read the paragraph out loud, as though he agreed with it. Her eyes welled.

"It's complicated for me," she said. She hadn't told him about her alcoholic father or her alcoholic mother. She started to, once, but it sounded stupid and self-pitying. Why not just say she'd tried it once and was allergic. Everyone understood allergies; allergies are so much easier to justify than abstinence.

He read the paragraph out loud again. "Timmy," she said. "Please."

"Natasha, if the role called for you to play the piano, you'd take piano lessons. You don't have to become Alicia de Larrocha, but you'd want to know where your fingers went."

"Uh-huh, and to do Whose Life Is It Anyway? you'd want me to go sever my spinal cord?"

"That's reductionist. We're talking about locating a precise emotion. As it stands, you're improvising." He held up the review. "And it shows."

"Will you stop waving that thing."

"Actor's choice, Natasha. That's what it's about."

"Funny," she said. "I thought it was about whether or not I do snort cocaine."

"Louis Malle once told me, he said, 'You put an extra next to an actor and nine times out of ten the actor ends up looking like an actor and the extra looks like the real thing. Why?' You know how Louis talks-"

"No, Tim. I haven't met Louis Malle."

"You'd like him. And I think he'd like you." Tim did Louis Malle's accent: "'Because the actor is an actor . He isn't real .'"

"Great. So I should aspire to be as good as an extra, is this the moral?"

"I'm not into morals, Natasha." Tim stood up and went to the window. It was just for effect. "I spoke with Bernie and Karen this morning."

"Yes," she said, trying to sound casual, but he'd gotten her attention.

"I think I made it all right."

"Just tell me, Tim."

"They're not happy."

"They were happy Thursday night."

"Time flies. What's happened is they had a call from the Schumpelmann Organization."

"Oh," said Tasha. The show might move uptown? Tim was giving her this look: And you may not be coming.

"Thanks, Tim."

"Don't shoot the messenger." He sat down beside her and stroked her hair. "I just want it to work for you. I think we can get to where Bernie and Karen will be happy again. It's not over till the fat lady sings." The fat lady was Tim's code for the New York Times theater critic. "If we get to where we need to be before she sings I think we're all going to be happy, me, you, Bernie and Karen."

Actor's choice: her life had suddenly boiled down to making Bernie and Karen happy by snorting cocaine. In its own shabby way it was like Noel Coward having to sleep with a rich woman to get backing. What will you do, Noel? Hold my nose and think of England. So how do you hold your nose and snort coke? "All right," she said heavily.

"Do you have a mirror or something?"

Tim chopped it up into three-inch-long lines, perfect replicas of the lines of milk powder they used onstage. He rolled up a fifty-dollar bill, the same they used in the play, a preview-night gift from Bernie and Karen-maybe they'll have it bronzed if the show goes uptown-and handed it to her. Her fingers were shaking.

"It's all right," he said.

"Will you do it with me?"

"I don't do cocaine."

"Jesus, Timmy. I'm nervous."

"You'll be fine. And don't sneeze. This cost a hundred and a quarter."

"Where did you get it?"

"One of the ushers."

"Which one?"

"Whichever. I'm not sure I even know his name."

She stared at the cocaine. "Is it-"

"It's good," he said, "the best. Authenticity, right?"

She did one line, then another. It did not burn, which Tim said was a sign of good cocaine. Her gums went numb until she could tap her front teeth and they felt like pieces of tile. She felt enormous energy and confidence and segued right into her coke soliloquies, Tim nodding, making notes, even smiling here and there, something he never, ever did during rehearsals. She felt happy, as happy as she could ever remember. It was like freeze-dried happiness crystals, just add nose and boom. After a while it didn't even feel chemical. No question about it, Tim was right, authenticity was everything, she couldn't wait to get back up onstage-too bad no show tonight, she was ready, instrument tight as catgut-and mix it up with old Rox and Susie. Tim was chopping up more lines. She did the "coke whore" bit where she pretends to be fascinated, enthralled, mesmerized by the guy doling out the coke. She went into an ad-lib riff about how much she admired Tim's work and how she'd been following his career for so long. It was so authentic it actually seemed to annoy him.

Then came a point where no matter how long the lines were they didn't seem to work as well and suddenly the room began to feel very warm. She went to open the window and Tim said, "Are you kidding? It's freezing in here. Don't you have heat?" He went over and started inspecting the radiator the way men do when they pretend to have mechanical knowledge, getting down on his knees and saying in that male way: No wonder, there's no thromboggletoggle on this thing and I haven't got my tools with me. She would have been amused by this and maybe even incorporated it into the soliloquy she was doing, except she wasn't feeling well, she was feeling hot and it was getting hard to breathe. She felt her forehead. It was like ice. Her hand, she noticed, was shaking almost violently. Was this-was this normal? "Tim?"

The way he looked at her scared her. "Tim?"

"You okay? Tasha?"

She was on the floor now, looking up at the ceiling, which the super had been promising to have painted for the last five months-yeah, right. Someone was piling cinder blocks on her chest, making it very hard to breathe.

"Timmy?" It hurt to speak. Her throat was like a kiln. Tim was holding her forehead and her hand.

"Pops?" she said. "Felix?"

He pulled up her sweater and put his ear to the round of her bosom and listened. There was no sound, only the pounding in his own chest.

Fuck fuck fuck. Shit shit shit. Fuck fuck fuck.

He put his hand to her throat the way he'd seen in the Vietnam movies. Nothing, just his own pulse. His hand was shaking now. Jesus, what was this, transference?

Still on his knees beside her, he thought: Dial 911. He went for the phone and he had the phone in his hand when he thought: Hold on, hold on a second. What is the point of dialing 911 now? There was no emergency. She was dead. Sweet Jesus, this couldn't be happening. Please. Rewind the tape. We're going to shoot this scene over. Rewind, goddamnit, I am not happy with this scene.

The clock on the bookshelf said ten after six. Just move the big hand back five minutes, that's all. Five minutes. Okay, ready? Okay, let's take it from the middle of page 17: "She needs to go on a low-semen diet." There's no "rewind" on the machine, only "play."