Читать книгу Contenders - Erika Krouse - Страница 12

In Japan, they have a river monster named Kappa. He has scaly skin and a turtle shell on his back. The top of his head is a small dish that holds water, so he can breathe on land. His face looks like a monkey’s, but with a beak instead of lips.

Deadly sumo wrestlers, Kappa monsters are very polite. If a Kappa challenges you to a fight, just bow to him. He will bow back, spill all his breathing water, and be forced to return to the river. This is a good trick to know, because Kappa is ferocious. He thinks it’s funny to pull people’s intestines out through their anuses. He also eats children.

While children taste good to Kappa, his favorite food is cucumbers. To ensure that the Kappa won’t eat their children, Japanese parents write the children’s names on cucumbers and throw them into ponds and rivers. They watch the cucumbers float on the water, perhaps feeling a little silly. Regardless, their children don’t get eaten. It still works.

~

I’m baloney, Isaac thought. Baloney.

“Harder, baloney,” the director barked into his wholly unnecessary megaphone. “Shake it harder!”

“It” was Isaac’s costume, a codpiece made out of real baloney. They called it a loincloth, but nobody was fooled. Isaac jangled his hips until the thing jerked and bobbed in front of him, grease smearing all over his junk, while he belted the chorus of “My Way.” Jailbait girls sang backup in string bikinis with baloney breasts and cheese slices flapping at their hips like fringe.

“Cut,” the director said.

The cheese slices had unwrapped themselves again in the heat from the lights on the set. The costume director rushed on set again with fresh slices and a stapler. They were now on Take Thirteen. Chaz, the director, shouted at her, “Try superglue,” waved at Isaac, and pointed at the ground in front of him.

Isaac approached Chaz, teeth-first. “Hold this,” Chaz said and handed him a half-empty water bottle. Isaac took the bottle and Chaz made another note on his clipboard, muttering without looking up, “Frankly, I’m not feeling your commitment.” Chaz winced at his watch. “This is an important commercial. It revolves around this damn dream sequence. I need you to really”—he formed little Italian circles with both hands and shook them lightly—“embody the product.”

“Got it.” Isaac stood straighter. “I am the baloney.”

“That’s why we hired you, and not any of those other assholes.”

“I’m just wondering…why we’re wearing the actual product. On our bodies.”

“The client wants authenticity, Eraserface. Don’t you want to be authentic?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.” Isaac cleared his throat. “Just…still wondering who might want to buy baloney if I’m wearing it on my crotch, you see.”

“They’re marketing to women,” Chaz said and walked away, leaving Isaac with his water bottle.

In one swift pivot, Isaac hurled the bottle against a wall.

The bottle just made a popping noise as it bounced off the wall and rolled all the way back to Isaac’s feet. None of the people circulating around the studio even noticed.

“Why did you do that?” Kate was standing behind him with her doll. The two of them gave Isaac the same stare with different colored eyes.

“I thought you were waiting in the viewing area,” Isaac said. “Kids aren’t supposed to be on the set.”

“I got bored. And hungry.”

Isaac fetched her a sandwich from the catering table. He slumped into a chair next to her, making sure the codpiece covered everything. “Sorry this is taking so long. Your dad probably never made you wait around like this. I’m guessing this isn’t exactly fun for an eight-year-old.”

“Almost nine,” Kate said. Then, “You smell.”

“Yeah. I hope they don’t repackage this costume after I’m done with it.”

Kate clutched the doll he had given her when she was little, one of those bald plastic ones that you can put in the bathtub with you. She had named it “No-Hair,” and still translated for it frequently. “No-Hair wants to see a Rated-R movie,” she said. “No-Hair hates salad.” After her father got sick, No-Hair stopped asking for anything, but rarely left Kate’s arms.

“Why did that man call you that name?” Kate asked.

“Eraserface? It’s just a nickname, honey.”

“It sounds mean.”

“Is No-Hair a mean name?”

“No. She really doesn’t have any hair. But you have a face.”

“Is Kate a mean name?” He tried to tickle her. She squirmed away, but didn’t laugh.

Truth was, Isaac was grateful for his nickname, grateful for the work it brought him, especially now. Grateful that he was the only talent in the business who had a nickname. It seemed like every actor in the world was jostling to get in front of the same Vaseline-smeared lens to sell sleep medication, or jock itch cream, or food in a can. His therapist said that gratitude created serotonin, so he was awash in gratitude for a starring role in a commercial for an up-and-coming lunch meat manufacturer, right here in LA.

Half his work was here, but he traveled constantly for acting gigs—commercials, trade shows, bit parts in direct-to-video movies. His agent croaked, “New York,” or “Chicago,” or “Houston,” and off he flew, renting an economy car, staying at a discount hotel, ordering pizza, and halfheartedly watching cable porn.

It was a life, his. After graduating from Northwestern University armed with his MFA, his sincerity, and his acting credits (Wasn’t he Hamlet in the Northwestern production? Wasn’t he Willy Loman?), Isaac had moved to LA to break into film via commercials. Film faded, but the commercials endured. It seemed that there was an endless supply of crap that Americans had to buy, and Isaac had built himself a reputation—good looking, reliable, and willing to do almost anything, no matter how demeaning. He got corporate gigs, commercials and infomercials, training films and TV-order products. Then the jobs got more upscale—credit cards, fashion designers, car manufacturers. Soon, Isaac found that he had sunk to the top of his field.

In fact, he was on his way to becoming a world record holder for the most TV commercials in a single career. The frenzy had begun when a casting director dubbed him “The Man with the Erasable Face,” and TV Guide did a short article on him. It was all about how Isaac could appear in multiple commercials for multiple products, but nobody ever recognized him. For every product he sold, he looked like a different person, and directors cast him over and over without exhausting his range.

Bookings increased even more after that article came out. Isaac’s agent hired an assistant, bought a condo near the beach. Everyone was requesting “Eraserface” for airline commercials, insurance commercials, luxury vehicle commercials. Proctor & Gamble executives dialed him direct, on his cell phone. They called him “son.” Sometimes, though, when extolling the benefits of a new weight loss pill, or dressed up as a giant tube of toothpaste, Isaac wondered what it was all for—if he was doing any good in the world, or just annoying people.

Isaac scratched some dried egg from Kate's upper lip and she batted his hand away. Kate could never act, or even lie. Her pale face and squinting eyes would betray her. She could do some kind of public service commercial about neglected kids, maybe. She glanced at him, looking just like her dad for a terrifying moment before it passed. Unexpectedly, she plugged her hand into Isaac’s damp one, as they watched the costume designer scuttle around with duct tape and cheese. At that second, Isaac missed Kate’s father with a new ferocity, undaunted by the sorrow of the day before.

He cleared his throat. “I booked us a flight to Denver next Monday.”

“I’m scared to fly,” she mumbled and started kicking his metal chair leg.

“You’re too young to be afraid of flying. Please stop that.”

Kate swung her foot in the empty air.

“What are you afraid of?”

“Dying.”

Isaac pulled a pencil and scratch pad from the coffee table. He drew a plane that looked like a flying hot dog. He pointed with the pencil. “An airplane’s wings are tilted like this, see? When it moves forward, more air goes underneath the plane than the amount that goes on top.” He drew a bunch of arrows pointing under the wings. When Kate’s face didn’t unscrunch, he drew darker arrows. “The air sucks the plane into the air. So it doesn’t fall down.”

“I’ve fallen off monkey bars before,” Kate said. “The air didn’t suck me up. And a plane is much bigger than I am.”

“It’s aerodynamics. Size doesn’t matter.”

From Kate’s scowl, Isaac saw that no woman, no matter how young, seemed to buy that argument. “The wings don’t flap.” Kate ate like she was feeding a meter.

“I fly every week for work. If we’re going to be living together, even in the short term, you have to fly. Don’t you want to try to find your aunt?”

Kate’s cheeks bulged, food stashed in them. “I guess so.” She chewed and chewed, swallowing several times. “She’s my only relative.”

Isaac glanced at her and away. That was the issue, wasn’t it? In his will, Chris hadn’t given custody of Kate to Isaac, his best friend of twenty-three years. Instead, he had given custody to his renegade sister Nina, wherever the hell she was.

Despite a measure of relief (Isaac had never even changed a diaper, and wasn’t exactly ready to father a child who wasn’t his—not that he’d have to change Kate’s diaper, she was almost nine, but even so), he was somewhat baffled by Chris’s choice, and he burned with low-grade resentment. Nina was lost. How would Isaac find her to dump Kate on? Which he wasn’t even sure he felt comfortable doing. I mean, who knows what the situation was there. Why did Chris choose to give Kate to the Ghost of Sister Past, when it was Isaac who was there the whole time, in the flesh?

Except he hadn’t been around much, either.

He had only disappeared at the end. Until then, Isaac had been around plenty when he wasn’t working, and on weekends after Chris got sick. He had helped Chris through his wife’s death, through Chris’s own medications and their failures. He had helped them move to that Section Eight place once Chris got too weak to work at the service station. Isaac had downgraded his own apartment to pay for Chris’s. He had handled Chris’s mail for him, paid his bills with his own money.

It wasn’t easy taking care of an indigent widower with drug-resistant AIDS. Chris had thrown up all the time. He had lost his hair in clumps on the carpet. He had constant diarrhea. Isaac went south every day and cleaned up. He deodorized. He had power of attorney. He was the point person, right up until Chris went into the hospital for his last weeks on earth.

Then Isaac never visited him.

Instead, he went to nine auditions. He had sex with eleven women, once each. He cried on his sofa fifteen times, and six times in bed. He went to a grief counselor seven times. He picked Kate up from the school bus, took her to the hospital for visiting hours, and cried into his hands outside the door until Kate came out. He stopped when she emerged, and drove her to his Hollywood Hills apartment. He fed her dinner every night and tucked her into bed on a mattress made of air, and while she pretended to sleep, he cried some more.

Chris died two days before his own twenty-eighth birthday. Kate was in the hospital room with him when he died, alone. Isaac heard her howling and grabbed a nurse, who found Kate wild-eyed, pulling on Chris’s dead finger, shrieking, “Wake up! Wake up!” Kate kept screaming until they left, and afterward for a time, too.

Now, Isaac tore at his manicure until something broke through the sound barrier and into his head. It was Kate’s voice. “What?” he asked.

“I said, is she like me?”

“Who?” He willed his eyes to focus on the girl. Her hair stuck to the side of her dried-out face.

“Aunt Nina.”

Isaac’s memory flashed on Nina, silent and vicious as a treed raccoon. She and Kate were different species. “I haven’t seen her since high school. I don’t even know where she is.”

“I thought she was in Denver.” Kate stopped chewing. “Did you call her?”

“I only have an address. There was a postcard from her old teacher among Chris’s things, so we’ll try his house. It’s a place to start, anyway.” Isaac cleared his throat. “Kate, even if we don’t find her right away, you can always stay with me. Actually, your father, he said…” he trailed off when Kate stopped eating entirely and looked at her lap.

“Isaac,” the assistant director said. “We’re up.”

“As soon as I nail this, we’ll go home to pack,” Isaac said. Kate stared at the crusts of the sandwich crumbling in her hands.

Isaac walked to his spot under the lights. He stood with his legs apart, ready to emote. The day before, they had watched Chris get buried. Chris had chosen a cheap cemetery in South Los Angeles, away from their neighborhoods. Neither Isaac nor Kate would pass it on the way to something else. They’d have to go there specially. Chris was one hundred and nine pounds when he died; his wife, Bethany, had been only seventy-five. A nearby grave was decorated with used hypodermic needles stuck into the ground in the shape of a heart. Isaac kept an eye out during the funeral. The cemetery was in a dangerous area of town, and he thought Kate probably wouldn’t go back there until she was old enough to buy herself a gun.

~

Grand Junction, twelve years ago:

Isaac pulled over at the Black house on 28½ Road. Chris and Nina climbed into the Jeep. “Take us high above this shit,” Chris said. Their mother had left them two weeks before, and Chris and Nina looked like they hadn’t slept since. Their father being what he was, Nina probably hadn’t dared to.

Isaac drove away from the shacky houses and trailer parks until he hit dirt, curling the Jeep up the Book Cliffs. Under a greenish-blue sky, they crawled along the high desert until they found a herd of wild horses grazing in a shallow canyon crusted with random ridges of snow.

“Just like the Stones song,” Chris said. He leaned back and whispered something to his sister, and she ducked her head. It occurred to Isaac for the first time that Chris might tell things to Nina and not him, and he felt briefly jealous of both of them. Even though Chris and Nina were the twins, Isaac was convinced that his and Chris’s futures lay in a twisted double helix, an appropriated DNA that comes with the kind of friends you don’t know how to live without.

They were planning to go west on the last day of school. Isaac had found his parents’ cash stash in a piece of tinfoil they kept in the freezer, and Chris had some money from his job at the gas station. They had almost enough money for the two of them to get to Nevada, or California if they got good gas mileage. Isaac glanced at Nina. Chris was planning to send for Nina once they had enough money. Probably.

“You tell her yet?” he mouthed to Chris through the rear view mirror.

“Shut up,” Chris mouthed back and looked at the dirty horizon.

Isaac didn’t have siblings of his own, didn’t know those social rules. He barely knew his own. He always felt like a guest in his parents’ house, like he had to apologize for his existence, his laundry, his need for peanut butter and toilet paper. He wanted to be a given, not a guest star. Chris always took him for granted, which made him feel more real.

He didn’t know how Nina thought of him, since she never talked. He had even turned it into a game, asking her random questions: “Hey, Nina. If a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?” or “Hey, Nina. Why can a person be discombobulated but not combobulated?” Every day, he expended valuable daydreaming time thinking of ways to provoke a reaction: “Hey, Nina. Rats can’t throw up,” or “Hey, Nina. Two roads diverged in a wood. I took the one more traveled by. It made no difference whatsoever.” She never responded, except for one time at lunch: “Hey, Nina. What’s the sound of one hand clapping?” Nina thought for a second, reached across the table, and slapped him loudly in the face.

Now, Nina was the first one out of the Jeep the second it stopped. Isaac jumped out behind her. He had heard about these horses years ago, and had been searching for them ever since he got his driver’s license. A cloud of dirt from the Jeep’s wheels still hung round and low in the air, like a filthy sun. “You coming?,” Isaac asked Chris. Chris, never much into nature, climbed into the back seat for a nap. He pulled his baseball cap lower, and slumped down.

Isaac and Nina crunched across the cracked earth together. The air smelled like pine sap. Furry horses in every color quivered a little in the chilly air, although the sun was strong. Their coats were brushed askew by the wind. They grazed on the tough desert grass, heads slung low.

The only one not eating was a black horse set apart from the herd, his mane ruffled up. Isaac and Nina walked over the mud and brush until something in his dark eyes said, Stop.

“See that one, that black one?” Isaac pointed from his shoulder, as if sighting a gun. “Herds always have a sentry. If you scare that guy, they all run.”

Nina’s thin jean jacket was shiny at the seams, and the cold blurred her lips. “You chilly?” Isaac asked. He took off his coat and held it in her direction, looking away as if he didn’t want it. The cold air instantly blanketed his sides, but he was wearing a wool sweater and Nina only had a thin T-shirt under her jacket. He shook it at her, and his hand became light as she lifted it. When he glanced at her again, it was already on her shoulders, flapping almost to her ankles. He sank his hands into his jean pockets, and the cold from his fingers soaked through to his legs.

They watched the horses eat. “What are you going to do after graduation?” he asked.

Nina shrugged. Her black hair rustled against the shoulders of his coat.

“It’s only three months away. You really should have a plan.” Isaac liked the way his voice sounded, deep and assertive like that. He wiped his cold nose with the back of his hand. “I have a plan. A few plans, actually. My old man wants me go into mining, like him.” It sounded as bad outside his head as it did on the inside. He kicked a rock, watched it scurry across the dirt. “There are some jobs in California and Nevada. But I’m not all that interested in it. Dirt and rocks.”

Nina pursed her lips, her gaze fixed on the black horse.

“What I wish I could do is something cool, like be an actor. Like Shakespeare. The great tragedies and comedies. Life and death. Something real.” Isaac had recently played Stanley Kowalski in their school play, and he had scared himself with his passion for acting out this made-up story in front of people sitting in the dark. Now, he was surprised to be saying this stuff out loud to Nina when he hadn’t even talked about it with Chris. She wasn’t listening, so he kept talking.

“You can just disappear into someone else,” he said. “Someone surprising, except not surprising, because you know the lines. No matter how fucked up they are, the characters, it’s not as bad as how fucked up I am. Because, you know, their fucked-upness is art, and mine is just…here.”

A horse tossed his head and nickered. Nina clicked her tongue at him.

“Of course, it’s not like I really could do that for a living. Become some great actor or something. Only one percent of one percent of one percent of actors get acting jobs.” Isaac didn’t know if that was true. It sounded true. He kicked the cold dust and watched it scuttle across the ground toward the hazy horizon. “Maybe even less than that.”

The wind gusted, and if he hadn’t been so surprised by her speaking at all, he might not have heard Nina say, “Someone has to do it, though.”

“What?”

She raised her voice. “Someone has to get those jobs. Or there wouldn’t be any Shakespeare. Or plays, or movies. Right?” The wind whipped her hair over her face.

“Sure,” he said. “Someone gets those jobs.”

She asked, tilting her head, “So why not you?”

When she didn’t laugh, Isaac blushed, baffled and angry. He wanted to tell her, Because I’m nothing. I’m from the Land of Nothing. I can’t. It’s impossible for people like us, from the sticks, broke, and stupid.

She waited in his coat.

He wanted to shake her, push her down, kiss her. Instead, he just cleared his throat and said, low, “You have no idea how hard acting is.”

A smile hit one corner of her mouth, lingering like a smudge. Nina turned and began walking away from him, her feet swishing through the frozen grass.

The sentry horse turned to face her, his front legs twitching a little. Nina didn’t break her stride. Isaac said, “Nina, these horses are feral,” but she ignored him and walked closer and closer. The sentry snorted at her, his tail flipping. She paused, as if taking his opinion into account. Then she continued her forward march.

“Nina, what are you doing?” Isaac hissed, but she couldn’t hear him anymore. He took a few steps toward her retreating, fragile back.

Now, she stood right in front of the horse. Its black mane stood up like a Mohawk. She leaned forward into the stiff wind until they stared face to face, not an arm’s length apart. Isaac was afraid that the horse would bash her, knock her out. He was afraid of a stampede. He was afraid of…he didn’t know.

With a whoosh, Nina grabbed the sides of Isaac's coat and yanked them high above her head, like a bat.

The black horse reared onto its hind legs above the girl. She didn’t move, her black wings flapping in the wind. The horse’s crumbly front hooves pawed the air above Nina’s tiny head, and he whinnied hard. Isaac imagined Nina’s head smashing to pieces as the horse landed on her, her body crumpling to the ground under his hooves, irreversibly lifeless. He shouted and ran.

The horse twisted at the last minute. His hooves landed next to Nina’s worn shoes. He pushed off, launching his body away from her as she stood motionless, still angled forward.

By now, the entire herd was galloping toward the ridge, moving as one beast, the black horse holding the rear. The ground vibrated under Isaac’s feet, and the dry air filled with dust and the thumping of their rough, worn hooves. Their backs rippled as their muscles stretched and contracted under their hides, over and over in perfect action.

Isaac knew he should be watching them. He’d never see anything like this again. But he couldn’t stop looking at Nina, transformed. Nina, with her smudgy smile, Nina with her black wings.

He caught up to her, panting. She let her scrawny arms drop to her sides. Suddenly small again in his coat, she grinned up at him through the din and dust.

“Acting,” she said.