Benjamin Hale - The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore

“Good evening, Mrs. Goyette,” said Leon in a voice as officious-sounding as the attaché case looked, offering a moist pudgy paw for a handshake.

“Hello?” the woman said, opening the door slightly wider. Her voice had a slight rasp. We could tell by the change in her face that we’d gotten the name right. Mrs. Goyette was in her late forties. She was short and considerably fat. Her clothes were clean and fashionable. A fleshy neck supported a roundish head with dark-dyed hair and a broad face with a sharp nose and a wide mouth that inclined toward elastic shifts in expression.

“I am Leon Smoler, and this is my associate, Mr. Bruno Littlemore.” I nodded in assent. “We have come on a very important and exciting matter of business concerning your daughter, Emily.”

The woman’s hand flew to her mouth and her eyes bugged as she gasped: “Oh my God — is something wrong?”

Leon summoned a belly roar of dismissive laughter.

“Of course not! Quite to the contrary. We represent the Shakespeare Underground, an experimental theatrical production company.”

The look of alarm on the woman’s face was replaced with a look of hesitant distrust.

“We are extremely interested in your daughter’s considerable acting talent.”

“Are you talent scouts?”

I shook my head no and was about to speak.

“Yes,” said Leon, “in a manner of speaking.”

She invited us in. Leon and I seated ourselves on a couch by a fireplace, and she asked us if we wanted coffee.

“Yes, please,” Leon called. She was in the kitchen. Leon and I waited on the couch in silence, looking around at the various bric-a-brac in the house and listening to the ticking of a grandfather clock and the chains jangling against its pendulum. The room was partially lit by the frenetically flickering bluish glow of a TV, but the sound was muted. Bill Clinton, who was the president of the United States at the time, was fidgeting on the TV. Mrs. Goyette returned with cups of coffee, which she placed on the coffee table, and took a seat in an armchair directly across from us.

“We are preparing to stage a production of The Tempest ,” Leon began. “The Bard’s swan song, in which he breaks his staff and frees his magic to the four winds.”

The woman pensively sipped her coffee.

“Upon having the pleasure to see little Emily’s purely genius—”

“Dazzling,” I said.

“Yes, dazzling, genius, dazzling performance in Little Orphan Annie , we have determined that no other actress would be as well suited for our female lead.”

“Why were you watching a high school musical?” said Mrs. Goyette. “How did you find us? Why did you come in person instead of calling? I don’t know how I feel about—”

Leon raised a judicious hand to silence her, which gesture was accompanied by a friendly smile to indicate that all would soon be explained.

“Excuse me,” I said, “may I use your bathroom?”

“It’s down the hall, second door on your right,” and she pointed.

I rose and left the room, and behind me I heard Leon hoisting the sails of his rhetoric in preparation for a long and possibly stormy voyage. The request to use her bathroom was, of course, a ruse. I stole down the hallway and crept up the stairs to little Emily’s bedroom, and softly knocked on her door.

“What!” she said, much, much too loudly. I quickly opened the door.

“You can’t come in unless I SAY so, you stupid bitch!” she began to scream, as she wheeled around in her chair, away from the pile of homework spread before her on her desk, before she saw who it was who stood at the threshold of her bedroom. I put a finger to my pursed lips to beg her silence. It is remarkable how quickly a person in the throes of adolescence can change. It had been, I think, about seven months since I had last seen little Emily — and lo, she had very nearly become a woman in that time. I wondered if she remembered that evening we had spent together, and if so, if she remembered it fondly. Her bedroom had now been mostly cleansed of its childish affects: the dollhouse, the rubber women, etc., were gone. The stuffed animals, however, were still present, and all else looked the same as it had when last I saw it. The stuffed animals — among the few remnants of little Emily’s childhood that steadfastly remained — seemed to have shifted meanings: they had fallen totally from innocence into experience, and they no longer represented childhood but now represented a consciously ironic retrograde sexualization of the childlike.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” she hissed.

Briefly, I explained the situation to her.

“That’s so stupid,” she said, when I had brought her up to speed. “It won’t work.”

“Please help us!” I blubbered. “Think of the glory of starring, at such a tender age, in a major stage production of Shakespeare! Just come downstairs and play along.”

Then I fled the room to rejoin Leon and little Emily’s mother downstairs. When I found them, they had switched from the living room to the kitchen and from coffee to white wine, and little Emily’s mother was laughing buoyantly and feeding Leon squishy pastries with her fingers. Leon’s coat was off and his tie was loosened.

“Why hello, Bruno,” said Leon, with a touch of derision in his voice. “We thought you’d fallen in!”

I cleared my throat.

“I’m just charming Mrs. Goyette into submission,” said Leon, and opened his mouth to accept a cube of chocolate that the woman had been trying to push past his lips. Her arm was around Leon’s gargantuan waist. She lit up the room with a spell of half-drunken laughter. “Vivian has invited us to stay for dinner!”

“Well,” I muttered, testing the waters. “We wouldn’t want to inconvenience you—”

“Please stay!” she squealed to Leon.

“But of course,” said Leon.

We stayed. Dinner was Cornish game hen. Mr. Goyette, little Emily’s father and Mrs. Goyette’s husband, was out of town on business.

“As usual,” added Vivian — little Emily’s mother — with the rolled eyes of bitterness. The chicken was indeed delicious. We ate at an ovular dining table — Leon, Vivian Goyette, little Emily Goyette, and myself. I sat across from Emily and Leon sat across from Vivian. Little Emily and I were both a little nervous and out of sorts. Our eyes kept darting to the other two and then back to each other to trade looks of uncertainty. Over dinner, at first we all talked about the upcoming production of The Tempest . We toasted to the production. We toasted to our success. We toasted to little Emily’s preordained fate as a celebrated actress of stage and screen. Then talk became general. Much wine was drunk and all pretenses of table manners were soon discarded. Leon and Mrs. Goyette planted their elbows on the table and slurped the chicken from the bones with noisy, lustful abandon. Leon ate with his hands, smacked his jaws, licked his fingers, gulped his wine and roared between bites with thunderous eructation, and the more grotesque his table manners became, the more directly they were mirrored across the table in the behavior of little Emily’s mother. Leon and Vivian Goyette locked eyes as they slurped the juicy meat from the slick slender chicken bones, frequently knocking their glasses together to toast (often forgetting entirely to include little Emily and me), refilling one another’s wineglasses with increasing frequency throughout the meal, uncorking one bottle of wine after another, often uncorking another bottle even before the previous had been depleted of its contents. Leon grew flushed, unbuttoned his collar, whipped off his necktie and threw it over his shoulder. Vivian unpinned her hair and undid the first two buttons of her blouse. Both of them ate and drank to bubbling crapulous excess. Vivian grew as pink as a carnation and sticky with perspiration. Leon’s rosaceous face beneath his beard grew deeply enflamed, and his shirt became glued to his torso with sweat. Both of them were exploding and melting at the same time with laughter, sweat, and glee. More wine was opened and drunk. Little Emily and I were ordered to the kitchen to wash up while Leon and Vivian ate chocolate cake.