Famous Read online

  Her gaze grew frigid as she said, “Harry, this is Galen, Galen, Harry,” then continued with, “in our class too. You probably recognize him. Did a short piece from Lear.”

  Harry caught the friction swirling like pressurized steam around the two classmates, and caught as well a sneer on Galen’s mustachioed upper lip. This dude was, no question about it, classically handsome, a Gable-like leading man, suave, visibly self-absorbed, clearly edgy about finding Juliet here with him.

  Of all the students in the class, Harry thought, this Galen fellow’s reading was the least convincing, hammy and insincere.

  Juliet’s cool reaction to the man’s interruption was encouraging, yet Harry, in his massive self-doubt, at once began to manufacture a scenario of familiarity, a history, though perhaps stormy, of intimacy between them. It scared the hell out of him. He knew, absolutely knew, he would now clam up, become inept. He had no capacity for courtship competition.

  “A post mortem or a gala celebration?” Galen said. “I wondered where you’d gotten to.”

  Was she accountable to him, restricted in her movements, a grown woman expected to obtain his permission to have coffee with a classmate, unable to create friendships of her own? Harry felt deflated by the switch in energy, a reversal of the sweet ambience he was beginning to feel with Juliet.

  “I’d gotten to right here, Galen. Didn’t realize you were looking for me. Wasn’t aware we had any plans to hang out.”

  “No plans, simply an expectation.”

  Harry remembered the phrase: ‘expectation breeds disappointment,’ but, since the clear agenda was between Juliet and Galen, kept silent.

  “Your problem,” Juliet said in a dismissive tone.

  Galen turned to Harry, arched his brows and peered down from his standing perch, as if over bifocals, and said, “Good buddy I don’t imagine you would mind moving on. Juliet and I have some vital issues to discuss.”

  It seemed pompous, presumptuous, but before Harry could even think of how to respond, Juliet leaped in with, “We sure as hell do not, and no I don’t want Harry to move on. You’re the intruder, Galen. Make like a top and spin away.”

  Harry caught a narrowing of Galen’s eyes, hardening around his mouth, and, though he said nothing, he nodded ever so slowly, turned, and sidled off.

  “He can be a real ass sometimes,” Juliet apologized.

  Taking another risk—he seemed to be in a rare, venturesome mood this evening, in this campus coffee house, with this oh-so-appealing young woman—Harry said, “Not sure he’s appropriate for this profession. I mean he seems bored by acting, like he’s been in an ongoing play, doing the same part, for so long he’s become disinterested in it. His reading was simply, well, dull, that’s all I can call it.”

  Pulled in two directions, compelled to agree with Harry yet disposed to some semblance of protection for Galen, Juliet replied, “He might do better as a male model. He has a great bod.” As soon as she said this, she blanched, aware that she had presented more information about herself than she had intended.

  The implication was not lost on Harry. He took a moment to glance around the Exchange, the small eatery where students could pick up bland, packaged sandwiches, pizza, fast Mexican food, Doritos, Tostitos, Fritos, and all combinations of coffee and tea. It was anything but a pretty place, could, in fact, if a student came in already dispirited, further depress and overwhelm.

  “Yeah,” he said pensively, “he’s a real looker. I would bet the women all go nutty about him.” Better, he thought, to generalize than to get into Juliet’s experiences with the dude.

  “I’ve only known him for a couple of months,” Juliet said, intent on placing a proper perspective on her situation with Galen.

  Harry smiled, “And the more you know about him?”

  She laughed. “The more I tend to agree with your assessment.”

  As they left the small café, Harry breathed deeply of the moist evening air curling in silently from the Pacific, was aware of the long shadows of towering mulberry trees, relieved to be out of that cheerless environment, though sensing that while there, despite the depressing décor, something elemental had happened. He and Juliet seemed in an up-beat humor, each, perhaps, for different reasons, Juliet delighted with the amiable connection she had made with this skillful fellow student, Harry flushed with the triumph of his first real hour spent with a desirable woman.

  FOUR

  H e dreamt of Juliet several nights in a row. Their class together only met once a week, and it was as if his subconscious mind, if there is such a thing, wanted to ensure that his conscious mind would not forget the essential parts of this never-before-experienced encounter. Oh, yes, on occasion, in a role he was playing, he had kissed a woman, but trained as he had been by mentors and parents to separate real life from theater, it meant no more to him than kissing a mannequin. Even then, if the woman smiled at him afterwards, or complimented him on his work, he would retreat shyly into his protective shell, as if the topic she was introducing was corruptible and off limits.

  With Juliet it was, in an odd and refreshing way, wonderfully different. He found himself, at this moment in his evolution—out of his teens, relatively independent—ready for a run at connecting with someone he experienced as sensual and appealing; as the fates would have it, here was such a woman, bold and clever and beautiful, who just might be a prospect.

  In his art appreciation class, the professor lectured about the artist, Raphael, who kept painting portraits of the woman he loved, as if each reproduction, different in pose and mood, would help him to keep fresh the eidetic image. When Raphael died, she draped herself over his coffin and had to be pulled away by order of the Pope, since the soon-to-be-beatified Raphael ought not to be seen as having lustful weaknesses of the flesh.

  In the same vein, in his mind, Harry struggled to re-create every aspect of Juliet: her voice, youthful yet refined, though in no way affected as he found Galen’s to be, delicate blond hair on her forearms, fingers that seemed to have talent of their own, her bosom—ah, that mystery, the forbidden part that no one is permitted to see—which was, he recalled, not bolstered by support of any kind, bulged, erect and pointed, the way it does with younger women, and the eyes, those cerulean orbs that caught so much and revealed so little. Or was he mistaken? Was she an open script and he simply too self-absorbed to read her clearly?

  He realized, with a sense of shame, that in real life—since on stage he was fully capable of assuming another persona—he had never tried to get into the mind-set of someone else. There is an “otherness” out there, he almost said aloud, who has her private perspective, a unique view of life, a refreshing, different way of seeing the world. Remarkable!

  At one point, he berated himself for his newfound obsession, a product, he told himself, of long frustration and a schoolboy crush on the first woman he found appealing, who also showed interest in him.

  In his unsettled view of this new adventure, he constructed two distinct scenarios for the next time they would be together. In the first, she would enter the class, come up to him, smile radiantly, and choose to sit next to him. In the second, she would approach him with a friendly nod, ignore his response, and sit beside Galen Thurston, the out-of-place pseudo-thespian. Which would it be?

  It was probably the sharpest disappointment in his life. She didn’t show. Juliet didn’t make it to class. Galen was there, arrogant, flirting with coeds in the group, playing out his self-promoted role as the group aristocrat, a tad more polished than the rest of you students. Odd how Harry could see it so clearly this night, when he noticed nothing the week before.

  After class, he approached Mr. Benjamin with some timidity, but with an almost desperate determination to learn about the absent Juliet.

  “Excuse me, sir, but I wonder if you know what happened to Ms. Marsh tonight. You know, the woman who read Maggie.”

  Garth Benjamin smiled an inscrutable smile, as if he were in on some heavy secret, and said, “Mr
. Schiff, isn’t it? Well, young man, there was some kind of tragedy in her family. She called to say she would miss this evening’s class. She, herself, is all right, but as I got the message, something happened to one of her parents.” He hesitated, and added softly, “You and she are two of the brightest stars in this group. I can see you working together, creating memorable theater roles. What do you say to that?”

  Harry struggled with the conflicting information, one part troubling, about which he would want to know more, another part challenging and, if he was hearing correctly, complimentary. The two messages seemed incongruous, surprisingly insensitive, set, as they were, side by side.

  “Oh, thanks. That would be super. Sorry to hear about her family. Hope she comes back next week.” He stopped, his chronic uncertainty when it concerned protocol freezing him. But instantly he revved up his nerve and asked, “Would it be okay to let me know how to reach her so I can offer help?”

  Again the sly, professorial smile, the awareness that there was more to Mr. Schiff’s request than friendly support. “Not supposed to do that, give out contact information about other students. However, since she is need of some bolstering, and you could be a helpful classmate, I’ll give you her cell phone number, the one she left when she called.”

  Harry thanked his teacher, scribbled the number on his note pad—the same pad he used when he was researching a part and wanted to remember an insight or emotion—and hurried away to an outdoor phone.

  Her voice was heavy and terse. “Yes.”

  “It’s Harry from class.”

  “Yes.”

  “Benjamin let me have your number. I’d…like to come over. I mean if I can help.”

  She paused, and said in a more welcoming tone, “Oh. Well thanks. It’s like an Elizabethan drama. Not sure what you can do. But…” she hesitated, as if about to make an earth-shaking choice, and said, “sure, I’d like it if you came over. I’ll give you my address.”

  Harry was suddenly aware of his breathing, quick and shallow, aware that he felt light-headed; never, in his entire young life, had he been invited to a woman’s home by himself, and in this instance, to elevate her gesture to breakthrough status, a woman he found alluring.

  “Be there in twenty minutes,” he said.

  Her apartment was immediately southeast of Santa Monica, in an area called Palms. She let him in without touching him, without a smile, and said at once, “I’ve made tea, but I also have beer.”

  It was a neat and tidy space, Juliet’s digs, and Harry wondered if she did the cleaning and housekeeping by herself or hired someone to come in. The furniture was spare, practical, no oversized anything, a blue plaid, two-seater couch, three different-colored soft chairs, dark blue, dark green, and a muted red. Her coffee table in front of the couch was natural oak and looked hand-made. The kitchen, which was open to the front room, was uncluttered, as if Juliet had recently done the dishes, stacked them back in cupboards, scrubbed the sink clean, stashed away all food except for three oranges and two bananas in a hanging wire basket. The lighting was subdued, in keeping, Harry concluded, with whatever tragedy had occurred.

  That thought triggered his first words, “I…don’t actually know what happened.”

  “When I tell you, you may wish I hadn’t.”

  Her words confused him so he remained silent.

  “It is,” she resumed, “an affront to human understanding. I’m just nineteen and shouldn’t have to deal with such sick things. Don’t even know if I have the proper words to describe it to you.” She caught herself and said, “But I want you to know that I appreciate you coming here, and your offer of support.”

  In what was a huge risk for him, Harry said, “I like you. I wanted to see if you needed anything.”

  She allowed a bitter smile and said, “Sure, I need a new childhood, a starting-over script, different parents, a way to re-write history.”

  He looked dismayed, helpless.

  “I’m sorry, Harry, I’m being sarcastic. It has nothing to do with you. If Tennessee Williams were still around and got hold of my family, he would be able to create his piece de resistance, uglier than Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, more pathogenic than Streetcar Named Desire. He’d surely win a third Pulitzer Prize for my blood-line’s dysfunctional story.”

  “Sounds so negative. I’m sorry you went through all that.”

  “Hey, that’s back-story. Are you ready for the current events?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, you volunteered to be here, so ready-or-not, here I come.”

  He had chosen beer, and took a long swig off the dark brown bottle, having declined her gestured offer of a mug, and sat back in the green soft chair, prepared for what he presumed would be a heavy saga.

  “A little more history first. I was nine when my parents divorced. My father was a musician, on the road a lot doing his gigs, sometimes gone for three weeks at a time. My mother, who was a country girl, beautiful and naïve, finally decided she had enough and told him to stay away. He bristled and warned her that she’d be sorry, that he wouldn’t take losing his home and his daughter lightly. For the next five years, he kind of forgot about me—I think I saw him on an average of once every four or five months. Not that he was so affectionate with me when he was around—or rather, affectionate in a proper way, if you know what I mean.”

  “Not sure I want to. Sounds ominous.”

  “Ironically, my mother went nuts, going from a prim little farm girl who had been swept off her feet by this worldly entertainer, to a wounded single parent who couldn’t manage her own life, let alone a little girl’s. By the time I was fourteen, I was pretty much on my own, emotionally if not financially. There was an uncle, my mother’s uncle, who stepped up and gave us a few hundred dollars each month. We barely scraped by. At fifteen I took a job as a receptionist at a restaurant—lied about my age so I could earn a few bucks. Hell, my mother, who had no technical skills, earned less than I did, working at a nursery, watering and trimming their inventory. When I was eighteen, I received a scholarship for our university. Otherwise, I never would have been able to go on to college.

  “As for my parents, they never spoke to each other. When I would see my father, he would growl like a cornered dog about how pitiful she was, and of course, living with her, I’d get the constant barrage of vitriol about that man and his irresponsible ways. Often they would try to use me, a little girl, as a football; you know, those pedantic sentences that start out, ‘Tell your father,’ or ‘Tell your mother.’ I tried to explain to them that I didn’t want their horror stories, that I refused to keep secrets, and I wouldn’t be a messenger.”

  Her narrative was building like a tropical storm, swirling to a grand, menacing climax. Harry indeed understood her Elizabethan allusion, a many-fingered tragedy that could bode no good.

  “Okay, coming up to the present. A month ago, right before our new semester was to start, my father showed up here at my apartment—oh, I have a job now working as a bartender at the Four Seasons Hotel three nights a week and make pretty good money. They think I’m twenty-one, and that’s how I can afford this place. Anyway, he appeared late one night, almost midnight, and asked if he could crash with me. I couldn’t say no, but I made it clear that he was not going to live here, and of course, I locked my bedroom door. Next morning, when he was about to leave, he asked me about my mother, not with curiosity but very businesslike, as if he wanted to consult with her concerning some important enterprise. I told him she still lived in the same little house, and that he knew very well how to reach her. He seemed satisfied but, when he said goodbye, I caught an eerie twist around his mouth, a look that shook some cobwebs loose from my childhood years, and stirred up old memories about similar looks, which almost always led to hurtful actions.”

  “He was abusive, your father? He beat on you and your mother?” Harry’s reference for parental mistreatment was misty and confusing, never physical, but consistently judgmental.

  “H
e wasn’t an out-and-out abuser, never enough to leave bruises or marks, but he very effectively punished with disdain and humiliation. I can remember several times when I rushed to my room, devastated by his insensitive criticism spoken in front of a girlfriend or neighbor. That was part of why my mother booted him out: his cruelty and sarcasm.

  “Neat story, huh? One parent totally incompetent, the other an emotionally twisted bully.”

  She paused long enough for Harry to say, “Kind of remarkable how you turned out, given all that craziness.” He was impressed by her narrative ability—a not-yet-twenty year old, with sophisticated descriptive talents. He knew she was smart and well read, and now could see that her vocabulary was stylishly mature.

  “Yeah, look how I turned out. So here’s the final act about to unfold, though unravel would be a more appropriate term. I got a phone message from my mother a week ago saying that my ‘miserable’ father was harassing her, that his musical career had fallen on bad times and a friend, who was a lawyer, told him he still owned half of the house his ex lived in. Dear, persecuted Mother said that dear, avaricious Father wanted her to buy him out of his half, and he wanted the money now. Never mind that when he was with her the house was worth eighty grand and now it’s worth three-hundred grand. Well, Mother doesn’t have any cash, so she tells me that all she has is the house, it is her ‘nest egg,’ and she can’t borrow any more on it because she doesn’t earn enough income to qualify for a loan.

  “Bottom line: they did more than verbally spar. Two days ago he went over there and literally pushed her around. Then yesterday…”

  She broke off and Harry could read the anguish, her whole body discomposed as she began to shake with sobs. For the moment it was no longer attractive woman clumsily pursued by inexperienced man; it was a human in emotional pain. He went to her and revved up the courage to put his arms around her, as her lament rose to a peak, then slowly faded to a whimper.