Debra Dean - Confessions Of A Falling Woman And Other Stories

"What the hell happened?" I blurt this out with such passion that I look around to see if anyone else has taken note. It has gotten dark while we were talking and the game has ended. I suspect I am drunk.

"Things change, Danny boy."

"The thing is…" I pause here because I can't quite place what the thing is. "The thing is, I'm starting to think like this is it, one way or the other. This is my last shot. If I get this part at Tribeca, then that's a pretty clear sign, don't you think?"

Stuart is listening, nodding slowly, but he's not convinced.

"If I don't get it" – the possibility fills me with such anticipatory grief that I have to wait for my throat to open again before I can speak – "if I don't get it, well, I guess that's a pretty clear sign, too."

"What's it say?" Stuart asks.

"Hmm?"

"The sign. What's it say?"

"You're a failure, pal. Pick up your marbles and go home. Move to Santa Fe and get a job and make your wife a happy woman."

There's nothing to say to this. He can't tell me to buck up, that if not this job, then something else will come along. We know better, old soldiers that we are. And he certainly can't tell me that it's time to call it a day, even if it is. We sit with the silence, mulling it all over.

There's an old joke, goes like this: two actors sitting in a bar – maybe not a bar, but for symmetry's sake, let's say a bar – and they're lamenting the sad state of the theater. One says to the other, "You know, I haven't worked in almost two years." The other one says, "Yeah, I haven't had a job in three years." And the first one takes another swig of his beer and says, "Man, I wish we could get out of this fucking business."

So, it's three in the morning, and I'm lying in bed, trying to recall if my hamster, Buffy, scratched his ear with his back paw or his front paw. I'm thinking it was his back paw, like a dog, in which case I'm going to have to sacrifice reality because I can't get my own leg anywhere near my head.

Zak called this morning. Tomorrow, I report bright and early to the old Astoria Studios in Queens for the Dobbins Copier commercial. "What'd I tell you, Zak," I blurted out. "The old dog still has a few tricks left in him." Turns out, these tricks do not include scratching my ear with my foot. Not that it actually matters.

They messengered the copy to me this afternoon. I hadn't seen the storyboards for this thing, so I really wasn't clear on what the commercial was about, except that it somehow figured a rodent and a copy machine. It turns out to be a crosscut kind of thing, back and forth between me, affectionately referred to as Lab Rat, whose copier jams and shreds paper, and another guy, Office Worker, the one dressed in a stylish-looking business suit, the one who bought a Dobbins. In the first shot, Lab Rat is sniffing curiously around a copier, lifting levers, pulling open doors. This is where I'm thinking an ear scratch would be a nice piece of business. Then cut to Office Worker casually loading a stack of documents into the feeder. Then Lab Rat, and he's running on one of those hamster wheels. Then a couple of shots of the copier and all its features. Then back to Lab Rat on the wheel again. Next shot is Office Worker chatting on the phone, feet up on his desk. Finally, Lab Rat lying belly up on the wheel, hysterical and exhausted. And then some artwork with the Dobbins logo.

All the dialogue is in voice-over, so I don't have any lines to worry about. Nothing to worry about, I keep telling myself. A couple of squeaks, a couple of turns on the ol' hamster wheel, and I'm out of there. Piece of cake.

Puck is pawing at the side of the mattress, letting me know that he needs to go out. I roll away from him but then feel guilty, imagining his sorrowful eyes watching my back and waiting. He's developed the patience of Buddha, this dog. When he was younger, he'd get half his exercise before we even got out the door. An elaborate dance of solicitation, prancing toward the door and then circling back until I put on my shoes and followed him. When the leash came out of the closet, his eagerness would crest into a volley of frenzied yelps and leaps, and he'd spin in skidding circles on the parquet. Now he waits quietly, trusting me to do the right thing.

Robin and I are playing phone tag. When I got in last night, there were two hang-ups on the machine, a message from Hal – sorry he missed me, out for a run, but, yeah, let's get together some time – another hang-up, then a message from Robin.

"Dan?" There was a pause, while she waited for me to pick up. When I didn't, she announced the time, one-thirty in the morning, in what I'm guessing is the exact same tone of exasperation that her mother used with her however many years ago. And then another pause before her tone shifted to brisk. "Okay. I'm just returning your call. I'll be around in the morning if you want to talk, but then we're heading out. Okay, then."

I tried to calculate how early was too early to call, but I misjudged on one side or the other because at eight this morning, I got their answering machine again. "Hi, it's Dan again," I began, and suddenly I was imagining a scene on the receiving end of my phone call. With the clarity of a psychic, I could see Robin and Jack and Mina, all of them pink with sunburn and still in their pajamas, and they're eating their granola and sipping their coffee while my voice rattles over the machine. "Sorry about last night. I was out with Stuart. Haven't heard on the commercial yet. But I was thinking, hey, maybe I could rent a car and drive up there Saturday. Let me know what you think. Hey Jack, Mina. Catching any fish, Jack? So give me a call when you get a chance, sweetie. We're doing great down here. Puck misses you." Even before I hung up, I was wishing there was some way to erase the tape and start over. This time, try to sound a little less like a used car salesman. And lose the pathetic line about Puck. What was that supposed to mean? The dog misses you, but I'm doing fine?

The dog.

I lurch upright and search the floor for my shoes. Puck's tail thumps twice in gratitude. He follows me down the hall and, when I hook the leash onto his collar, makes a sort of stiff-legged curtsy, a substitute for sitting and then having to clamber all the way up again. I find the keys on the hall table, stuff a couple of plastic bags into the pocket of my shorts, and we head out to the elevator.

Our building is old and slightly shabby, but if one can look past the naked bulb on the landing and the gouged and whitewashed walls, there are still hints of its grander beginnings. The worn marble landing is the size of a spacious studio apartment, and the scrolled plaster ceilings are twelve feet, echoing a time when space was not at such a premium. The building is rent-controlled, so nothing has changed in years, not the tenants, not the paint.

While we're waiting for the elevator, I hear what sounds like movement behind Mrs. Doherty's door. There's no light coming from under the doorsill, but I wouldn't be surprised if, even at this hour, she is eyeballing me through her peephole, alerted by the groans and squeaks of the elevator as it heaves its way up from the ground floor. She leaves her apartment only every few days for groceries, pushing her wire cart in front of her like a walker and glaring at me suspiciously whenever I greet her. When we first moved in, I tried to win her over with friendliness, but six years later, she persists in regarding me warily, as though I might one day force her back into her dusty foyer and rob her of all the china figurines and crocheted doilies that can be seen crowding the dim interior of her rooms. Robin has gradually gained her confidence, however, at least enough to discover that her first name is Mary, that she raised three children here, and that she can recite the dates and apartment numbers of every burglary, every change of tenants through death or divorce, every mishap that has occurred in this building over the last several decades. Until our break-in, the fourth floor held the record for the fewest burglaries. "And none of them came in through an open window." Robin thought she heard accusation in Mary's voice, as though our carelessness has spoiled it for everybody.