the actor (chapter 21, part 3)

(image by Hiroshi Sugimoto)

Wayne has a strict protocol for seeing a movie in the theater:

First, you must go on Monday or Tuesday night to avoid a crowd. Maybe Wednesday but never, ever on the weekend. Weekends are for amateurs.

Second, arrive exactly when the film is scheduled to begin so you don’t miss the previews.

Before finding your seat you must procure the third, fourth and fifth requirements: popcorn without butter, a medium diet coke, and a box of black licorice. If they only have red licorice then you lodge a complaint and get Junior Mints instead.

It is best to sit in the middle of the theater, halfway down the aisle; if there’s only room in the front or back ten rows then get your money back instead.

Wayne’s cell phone has never rung during a film—if it did, he would probably crush it under his heel like a cockroach.

When the house lights darken, Wayne asserts his possession of the armrests and leans back in his chair. This is the magical moment when everything fades away and the ceiling overhead can only be sensed distantly like a soft, loose mantle. His mind must open and stretch to fill the space around him; his imagination yearns to be consumed, hijacked, occupied by someone else’s reality.

Victor turns to Wayne and whispers, “What’s up with the glasses?

“What do you mean?” Wayne has just removed his glasses and put them in his breast pocket.

“I mean, what are they for? Seeing things far away or close up? Because sometimes I think I might need some for doing stuff like reading.”

You’re never, ever supposed to talk after the lights dim but Wayne pulls the glasses out again- square tortoiseshell frames he had filled with nonprescription lenses because his vision is fine. The glasses are the only thing he owns that once belonged to his father. Drew says they make him look like a genius and Wayne is convinced they got him through grad school. They’re the ideal prop for buying time (they might become suddenly smudged) and making dramatic gestures (like peering over the top or lifting them up to pinch the bridge between your eyes). He hands them over to Victor. “Well, I’m not sure these will help you.”

Victor puts them on. “Hey. Everything looks sharper.” Even in the darkness, Wayne experiences an eerie jolt seeing his own glasses glinting back at him. “How do I look?”

“Like a genius.”

*

*

Wayne is wide awake, sitting on the edge of his bed and listening to the soft snoring in the living room. It’s been two weeks, two wonderful weeks, and the kid is still here.

But it has to end. It always ends. There’s no possible way for anything except an ending to occur. The ending is an inexorable, fated fact, and Wayne feels it coming the way one feels the impending plummet of a roller coaster. In this little story, every detail, every bit of dialogue, everything has been aimed toward this and it lurks on the horizon like the inescapable sun.

The killing sun, the harsh reality: the boy will die of exposure out there, that is certain. AIDS, hepatitis, tuberculosis, schizophrenia, the delayed onset of some ghastly, fatal genetic malfunction. His car will topple off its jacks and crush him. He’ll smash into a cement wall at high speed. He’ll choke on his food, he’ll fall out the window. Some twisted murderous pedophile will slip him a rufie and have his way.

Wayne’s curtains are drawn tight against the night. The DVD player casts a cold blue glow over his bed and the clock blinks 3:24. He goes to the door and peeks out into the living room. Just look at him lying there on the sofa with his mouth ajar. He’s a baby bird, a bottomless pit. He’ll start using heroin or meth or something doomed and dirty and they’ll find him in a pool of his own vomit. He looks the type, doesn’t he; hungry, deprived and stupid. No, not stupid, just stunted, stunted by circumstance and there’s nothing Wayne can do to change that. The kid needs too much. It’s too late and the damage was done long ago.

Wayne hasn’t written a word for weeks. He snaps on his desk lamp, picks up the fountain pen, and quickly fills the back of an envelope with words. He turns it over and continues. It will be a screenplay about an orphan whose parents both died of cancer (cancer? No. A car crash, maybe) who comes to Los Angeles to get famous. He’s looking for someone to take him under their wing. Sort of a cross between Holden from Catcher in the Rye and Plato from Rebel Without A Cause, only different. More real.

Wayne writes desperately, as if it’s the only thing that will help. He fishes another scrap of paper from the trash can. It’s a coming-of-age story. Yes. The orphan comes to Los Angeles and looks up all the actors he admires, big stars who can play themselves in cameo appearances. He pretends to be an actor (ha ha, that’s good, acting like an actor) and they each give him a piece of advice which, of course, he follows diligently, religiously towards the next plot point. They are like gurus and he is the apostle. It will be called The Actor. Yeah, that’s good.

Wayne grabs a piece of paper from the printer and continues his frantic scribble. The orphan will play a different character with each person he meets, building his repertoire, so you know he has serious talent, you know this kid is going places. But we don’t know who he really is or which face reflects his true self. (Maybe we don’t know where he came from, we don’t know anything about his past. We never see inside his head but he can cry on cue, he knows just how to play to the audience.)

Wayne is starting to feel queasy. His thoughts are sick and the only way to purge is through his pen. How can it end? It can’t end well. The orphan will mistake a criminal for an actor. Yes. He’ll meet someone who looks just like Brando but is a gangster for real and the guy will get a big kick out of it, how this kid thinks he’s a movie star. The gangster will tell the kid to do something like jump off a bridge or shoot himself in the head and the kid will do it.

As Wayne writes, an awareness opens its eyes deep inside him, a realization stirs. He is the orphan, of course he is. And he is the actor and the writer, the guru and the neophyte, the kid and the antagonist. He’s every character conflated into one and he is doomed, doomed, but as he writes, a little thing inside him believes that maybe, just maybe, if this orphan kid dies, then Victor won’t have to, then Wayne won’t have to. Maybe this character can do the dying for them all. Maybe if Wayne puts this story on paper, then it won’t have to come true.

But still, still his gold nib pauses in the air, because it’s not possible to kill something so warm and real, something does a little dance when he’s happy and eats like he’s never been fed before, someone who sleeps with his mouth open. How can you end it mercifully? How could you kill the orphan?

Wayne can’t just let him die. But it has to end. Only idiots believe in happy endings. No, no, cross it all out, the story will end with the orphan jumping off a bridge but he’ll do it with such style and panache, such believability, that we won’t know for sure what happened, if it was for real or just an act.

Maybe that’s how to do it, maybe that’s the twist. An ending that could be read either way. An ambiguous conclusion. Let them see what they want to see. Because some people need a happy ending, right? People want to sleep soundly at night, they don’t want to wake up in darkness with the image of dead bodies, tumors, brains splattered on the wall. Nobody wants that. That’s just too much reality.

Besides, he’s the writer and he’s in charge. He can pick any ending he wants. He’ll take care of it. He’ll take care of everything.