DANTE THE PILGRIM isn’t sure whether to head stage left, back to the vestibule of hell, or stage right, into the circle of the gluttonous. Seth,
the director of this fiasco, isn’t faring well. His round Norwegian face blossoms heat-stroke red. Dante isn’t supposed to be going left or right; he’s
supposed to fall straight down, the way our production seems to be headed.
“Do you have extra cash we can hand out at the door?” Seth asks me. “Because that’s the only way this show is going to get a decent review.” He
looks at the stage where Dante heads stage left.
“No, no, no…” Seth says to Dante. “Faint out of pity for Francesca’s story. When you regain consciousness in the third circle of hell, you’ll meet
Cerberus, the three-headed dog. Cerberus won’t step onstage until you faint and recover.”
Dante nods and smiles revealing a row of perfect white teeth. Three months of work on this production have taught him – like Pavlov’s dog—that
this is the best response. Dante nods, but it doesn’t mean he comprehends. He continues nodding, fingers hooked in his belt loops.
Dante’s real name is Chuck and by day he’s a plumber. At the audition twelve weeks ago, Seth immediately fell in love with Chuck’s thick black hair,
chiseled biceps, and movie-star good looks. Even though Chuck couldn’t pronounce the Italian names of the sinners he encountered in Hell—which
I thought was a big red flag—Seth cast him anyway, promising to give him “private lessons” if necessary.
Seth doesn’t look sure of his decision now. He tugs on his bleached hair and rubs his eyes as though he wishes he could remove them from his
head. “Dante, goddamn it, faint.”
Chuck remains ramrod straight. He looks at Virgil.
“Faint, Chuck, goddamn it. Faint.”
Chuck sinks to his knees and slowly slumps over. His faint is about as convincing as a kid feigning sleep on Christmas Eve. Seth sighs. He looks at
me. I look at him.
“I suppose it’s no use having Virgil cue him.”
Seth snorts. We chose Horace Henderson for Virgil. His silver hair fell in large curls just beneath his ears and we imagined Virgil’s robe would hang
well on his lanky frame. His hazel eyes were almond shaped and his nose was strong, forming the classic Greek profile. His voice was deep and
steady. Who better to lead Dante the Pilgrim through the underworld? We chose Horace because he seemed wise; later we discovered he was a
drunk.
“Oh, the humanity,” Seth says to me. “How do you go down from community theater? Prison enrichment programs?” He looks sweaty. “Send them
home, Goose. I can’t face them. I need a cocktail and a hot bath.” He reaches for his coat, presses a cigarette between his lips, and heads for the
door.
Once the door slams behind him, I face the group. Cerberus the Three-Headed Dog’s six ears poke out from behind the stage right curtain.
Francesca adjusts the straps of her black lingerie and begins to pick at her fingernails. Chuck smiles. Virgil picks at his ear. From the balcony,
Kermit plays a few ominous notes of the funeral march on the keyboard.
“Let me remind you that we’re not even out of Upper Hell yet. This is circle three; we’ve got to get through circle nine.”
The cast stares blankly at me.
“Run lines with your scene partners.”
The cast heads toward the dressing rooms. Once everyone has left, I turn off the lights, lock the door, and meet Kermit at the car.
KERMIT IS LEANING on the hood of his Honda. Our car is the only vehicle left in the community center’s parking lot. I slide into the driver’s
side as he settles into the passenger side. He fusses with sheet music as I let his car warm up before beginning our trek back to the city. He’s
composing an original score for Dante’s Inferno. Kermit wanted a full-sized organ hauled into the balcony; Seth’s budget allowed for a Casio
keyboard with an organ sound-effect. Kermit wanted something to do, and Seth was an old friend, so he compromised. Twice a week, we drive to
the suburbs together for full-cast rehearsals.
Kermit turns up the heater. “You can tell me, Goose. How bad is it really?”
“Dante’s lost in hell.”
“Too bad we’re not going for black comedy.”
“It’ll get better. It has to.”
Once we’re headed toward home, Kermit cracks the window and lights a cigarette.
“You’re not supposed to do that,” I say.
“Maybe I don’t want to live long enough to see the curtain go up. And besides, fuck the doctors. What good is a ‘few more months’ if you can’t enjoy
them? I’ll take forty-five years and cigarettes, thank you very much.”
There’s no use trying to talk him out of it. He’ll do what he wants because he’s stubborn. I’ve been his tenant and by proxy his friend for two years.
When he’s worried I’m short on cash, he rips up my rent checks as fast as I can write them; when he wants alone time, I could knock on his door until
my knuckles bleed. Try telling him that his disappearing acts worry you, and he’ll remind you he has a mother.
When he finishes his smoke, he tosses the butt out the window. “Ah, Goose, how did we end up here?” He stares out the window at the other cars,
the dark outlines of leafless trees, and the white blanket of snow periodically interrupted by rest-stop islands. I don’t answer what I know is a
rhetorical question. His head rests against the window, and soon enough, he is asleep.
I drive toward the city, waiting for the transformation from the dark woods along the highway to the glow of urban life in the distance, signaling our
arrival home. When the lights appear in the distance, the city looks like a million stars. The first lines of the Inferno run through my head – Midway
along the journey of our life/I woke to find myself in a dark wood,/ for I had wandered off from the straight path.
Kermit snores in the seat next to mine. He was originally the assistant director, but he is getting weaker now. He couldn’t commit to the stress of the
final weeks, right before Easter when the show opens. He has no way of knowing how he will feel. Better that he take a lesser role – music director.
He convinced me to be the assistant director in his place: this would be a great way to use my art degree – a small production in the suburbs.
Not that Seth hadn’t dreamed bigger. He lobbied every theater in Boston. However, no one was interested in producing Dante’s Inferno.
“Too bleak,” said one house manager.
“Too ridiculous,” said another.
“Too wrong. Who wants to go to hell? Don’t we have that around us daily?” The denials took various shapes and forms.
I agreed to do this not because I wanted to revive my affiliation with the arts or because I thought dramatizing the first volume of Dante’s Commedia
was a good idea. I did this so Kermit would have a ride.
ONCE I PARK THE CAR, I wake Kermit and help him up the stairs. He’s grumpy, like a teenager reluctant to go to school, but eventually we
climb to the third floor where he kisses me on the cheek and tells me he’ll see me tomorrow.
I return to my apartment. I slip into my pajamas, start water for tea, and prepare to go over my notes. Once I settle at the kitchen table with my work,
there’s a knock at the door.
Boris stands in my doorway. “You still up? I need someone to talk to,” he says. He follows me back to the kitchen.
According to Boris, the common cold is the arch-villain of the modern world and one day he will be the Superman of science. He tells me this again
as he sits at my kitchen table barefoot and wearing silky nylon shorts that ride too high on his thighs. His chest is as white and smooth as the snow
which piles up on the fire escape and windowsill.
“Two hundred viruses can cause colds,” Boris says as I take the kettle off the stove. “Rhinovirus, coronavirus, Coxsackie virus, respiratory syncytial
virus. That’s only the beginning.” He sighs and reluctantly accepts the cup of tea I’ve poured for him. His long fingers hold the mug as he inhales the
steam. “I’m in a funk,” he announces.
I remember last June when Boris moved into the first floor apartment. He sulked around the hallway, stopping to press his nose against the screen
door, as Kermit and I sat on the porch drinking whiskey and iced tea. “He’s depressed,” Kermit informed me as he squeezed another lemon slice in
his mason jar. “Sunburn is the number one illness during the summer. Boris feels like he’s spinning his wheels.”
“Maybe it’s really as simple as bed rest, plenty of fluids, and chicken soup,” I tell Boris now.
“The Institute won’t give me more funding if I submit that as my proposal.”
Boris takes his work at the Institute seriously. Other researchers have gone on to tackle more threatening diseases and taken their funding with
them. Although symptoms like congestion and achiness are an inconvenience, no one in recent history has died from the common cold.
“It doesn’t matter which virus causes the cold,” Boris tells me in the voice he uses for the non-scientifically inclined. “The body reacts the same way.
But with nearly two hundred different viruses, it’s impossible to create a vaccine.” He rubs his fingers up and down the goose bumps on his arms
and I can hear his teeth chattering.
“Want a sweatshirt?”
Boris frowns at me. “Don’t interfere with my research. I may need to use myself as a guinea pig.” If it were up to Boris, he’d work in his shorts, but the
Institute has a policy against half-naked scientists in its labs. I sometimes pass him in the basement halls that connect his lab to the Alumni Records
Office where I work. He seems like a caricature of the mad scientist: his wheat colored hair stands in a tuft off the top of his head, the lab coat flaps
behind him as he anxiously races back to his experiment from the soda machine, his legs hang like two broomsticks on a scarecrow. When Boris first
started coming up to my apartment bare-chested and in tight shorts, I thought he had romance on his mind. Now, I realize it’s all in the name of
science. He’s trying to catch a cold.
Upstairs, Kermit begins playing warm-up scales on his organ.
“How the hell did he get that upstairs anyway?”
I shrug. “He was here when I moved in. I have no idea.”
“It makes me crazy.”
By listening to the music, I can tell what kind of day Kermit has had. If he’s happy, he plays Take Me Out to the Ball Park or When the Saints Come
Marching In. If he’s not so good, he plays the church music he learned as a child, before he abandoned organized religion. He ends every evening
with Every Time We Say Good-Bye, which loses some of its quiet grace on the organ, but I know Kermit plays it and thinks of Kenny.
“How do you live with this?” Boris asks. “I have to sleep with cotton in my ears or I dream I’m in a cathedral.”
“It’s Saturday night, and it makes him happy.”
AT THIS POINT, Dante’s Inferno isn’t making anyone happy. Seth calls on Sunday shortly after noon.
As soon as I pick up the phone, Seth asks me, “Which circle of hell are directors who cast because of tight buns and sweet smiles relegated to?”
“The circle of opening night ulcers?”
“I’m working with Chuck this afternoon. We’re going to dumb it all down and remove the poetry.”
“Good luck.”
“He’ll either learn this script or I’ll drink enough to make a pass at him. Either way, he wins.” Seth chuckles. His coughing rattles through the phone
line. “You know, if he’s straight, the duty transfers to the Assistant Director.”
“I don’t need your casting couch left-overs.”
The truth is, Chuck is strikingly handsome, but I don’t think he’s capable of a conversation. While I can imagine indulging in a night of steamy
lovemaking with Chuck, the notion of having breakfast with him makes my skin crawl. This, I’ve learned, does not a strong relationship make.
“The good old days of casting couches,” Seth says, “the days when things were simple…when we weren’t afraid of things. I sound like a tired old
queen. If you get bored later, you should ask Kermit to tell you stories. Kermit was a striking leading man. He made good use of the couch. I
remember a time back in 1989… oh, well, I digress. But let me tell you this, if there were a way, I’d have him play Dante. Is he a little old? Sure. But
he’s talented. There’s just no way with his… well, you know.”
Seth quickly changes the direction of the conversation. “Have you heard him working on the music?”
“I have not. Casting couch? Did you and Kermit…”
“Child, look at the time…”
“I see how it is…”
“True ladies don’t kiss and tell.”
“I’ll check his progress on the score. Ha. Ha. No pun intended.”
I hang up the phone and realize how much I don’t know about Kermit. I hear bits and pieces, selected stories, the edited-versions of things. I see the
final production, each line in place, each actor made-up and polished. He never breaks character in his real life.
KERMIT AND I AGREE that Boris is lousy to watch television with. On Sunday nights, I make microwave popcorn with extra butter and Kermit
brings down a twelve pack or a bottle of red wine. Sometimes, if Kermit has an appetite, we order pizza. Boris stops by when he’s finished at the lab.
He works weekends and holidays. He’s the only person I know who looks forward to going to work when he’s sick, as if the answer he’s devoted the
last three years to may show up if he catches one of his sneezes on a slide and examines it beneath a microscope.
“That’s not really how it works,” Boris says. He points at the television. “They only give a partial medical explanation.”
“Oh, who cares?” Kermit asks. He doesn’t move over on the couch to make room for Boris because he’s hoping he won’t stay. “It’s television, Boris.
Have you heard of this thing called escapism?”
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” Boris answers and leans against the doorframe.
Kermit ignores Boris when he’s in this kind of mood. He’s looking to pick a fight, usually because he’s run into another dead end in the lab. Kermit
picks a kernel or two out of the popcorn bowl.
“Really,” Boris continues. “When they come back from commercial the medical expert has results from the lab which prove their theories. What a
load of crap. Science isn’t that fast or that easy.”
Kermit and I shove over on the couch as Boris squeezes in next to me. Even though he’ll complain for the next hour, he’s not going to leave. Kermit
rolls his eyes and rests his feet in front of him on the coffee table. He wears fuzzy pink slippers that don’t match his navy silk pajamas.
“Kenny had such a crush on that guy,” Kermit announces and points at the show’s lead actor.
Boris stares intently at the screen, ignoring Kermit. “If you don’t shut up, you’re going to miss valuable information.”
“Have you ever been in love, Boris?” Kermit asks during the next commercial break.
Boris hesitates a moment, unsure if Kermit is baiting him. “No,” he says.
Kermit leans back into the couch. His face is pale and although I never knew him before he was sick, I imagine he was thick and muscular. He used
to do landscaping. I’ve heard stories about him carrying Kenny into the bedroom, doctor’s offices, and warm baths. It’s hard to see it now.
Kermit sighs. “I’m not sure if meeting Kenny was the luckiest or unluckiest thing that ever happened to me,” he says.
As he leans back into the sofa, he rubs his hand on my knee. “I wish you could have met my Kenny, Goose,” he says. “He would have loved you.”
THAT NIGHT in bed, I listen to Kermit pace in his apartment. Since Kenny died, he has trouble sleeping. He walks so much I’m afraid he’ll wear a
path through the floor. Sometimes I hear a muffled voice. I don’t know who he is talking to. Kermit’s phone rarely rings, and if it does, he seldom
answers. His mother invites him back to Jesus. The doctors demand that he come in for check-ups. His former friends remind him of Kenny. Seth is
the only person he still talks to.
Meanwhile, Boris sleeps downstairs. Boris may never have loved a woman or a man, but he has known a different connection, to his work. Boris is a
humanitarian who can’t deal with the particulars of human beings. He does not notice freckles or memorize laughs. The person who loves Boris will
have to understand that he loves with his intellect rather than with his heart.
Like Boris, I used to have a job I loved. I spent three years running a small theater. The grant money ran out and the doors closed. During the final
year of trying to keep the theater afloat, I rarely slept.
My mother had goaded me for years with comparisons to my more “successful” siblings. It was a shame, my mother said of me, for someone so
smart to constantly be on the brink of financial disaster, for a twenty-eight year old woman to be unable to make rent or sustain a meaningful
relationship.
I took her advice and moved to Boston where I took a job as a software consultant. There, I learned the real meaning of heartbreak. The theater
was filled with drama and divas, but at least their heartbreak made a noise. In corporate America, I found myself surrounded by hollow blue suits.
They scoured the internet for chances at love and climbed Stairmasters in pursuit of calves. Living in the right neighborhood, driving an expensive
car, and vacationing on the choicest beaches, promised illusory happiness. I quit. My mother was disappointed.
Now I believe a job should be like a reliable friend. I spend my days cataloguing: address changes, marriages, deaths, and donations to the Institute.
I oversee eighty thousand people in my database without meeting one.
the director of this fiasco, isn’t faring well. His round Norwegian face blossoms heat-stroke red. Dante isn’t supposed to be going left or right; he’s
supposed to fall straight down, the way our production seems to be headed.
“Do you have extra cash we can hand out at the door?” Seth asks me. “Because that’s the only way this show is going to get a decent review.” He
looks at the stage where Dante heads stage left.
“No, no, no…” Seth says to Dante. “Faint out of pity for Francesca’s story. When you regain consciousness in the third circle of hell, you’ll meet
Cerberus, the three-headed dog. Cerberus won’t step onstage until you faint and recover.”
Dante nods and smiles revealing a row of perfect white teeth. Three months of work on this production have taught him – like Pavlov’s dog—that
this is the best response. Dante nods, but it doesn’t mean he comprehends. He continues nodding, fingers hooked in his belt loops.
Dante’s real name is Chuck and by day he’s a plumber. At the audition twelve weeks ago, Seth immediately fell in love with Chuck’s thick black hair,
chiseled biceps, and movie-star good looks. Even though Chuck couldn’t pronounce the Italian names of the sinners he encountered in Hell—which
I thought was a big red flag—Seth cast him anyway, promising to give him “private lessons” if necessary.
Seth doesn’t look sure of his decision now. He tugs on his bleached hair and rubs his eyes as though he wishes he could remove them from his
head. “Dante, goddamn it, faint.”
Chuck remains ramrod straight. He looks at Virgil.
“Faint, Chuck, goddamn it. Faint.”
Chuck sinks to his knees and slowly slumps over. His faint is about as convincing as a kid feigning sleep on Christmas Eve. Seth sighs. He looks at
me. I look at him.
“I suppose it’s no use having Virgil cue him.”
Seth snorts. We chose Horace Henderson for Virgil. His silver hair fell in large curls just beneath his ears and we imagined Virgil’s robe would hang
well on his lanky frame. His hazel eyes were almond shaped and his nose was strong, forming the classic Greek profile. His voice was deep and
steady. Who better to lead Dante the Pilgrim through the underworld? We chose Horace because he seemed wise; later we discovered he was a
drunk.
“Oh, the humanity,” Seth says to me. “How do you go down from community theater? Prison enrichment programs?” He looks sweaty. “Send them
home, Goose. I can’t face them. I need a cocktail and a hot bath.” He reaches for his coat, presses a cigarette between his lips, and heads for the
door.
Once the door slams behind him, I face the group. Cerberus the Three-Headed Dog’s six ears poke out from behind the stage right curtain.
Francesca adjusts the straps of her black lingerie and begins to pick at her fingernails. Chuck smiles. Virgil picks at his ear. From the balcony,
Kermit plays a few ominous notes of the funeral march on the keyboard.
“Let me remind you that we’re not even out of Upper Hell yet. This is circle three; we’ve got to get through circle nine.”
The cast stares blankly at me.
“Run lines with your scene partners.”
The cast heads toward the dressing rooms. Once everyone has left, I turn off the lights, lock the door, and meet Kermit at the car.
KERMIT IS LEANING on the hood of his Honda. Our car is the only vehicle left in the community center’s parking lot. I slide into the driver’s
side as he settles into the passenger side. He fusses with sheet music as I let his car warm up before beginning our trek back to the city. He’s
composing an original score for Dante’s Inferno. Kermit wanted a full-sized organ hauled into the balcony; Seth’s budget allowed for a Casio
keyboard with an organ sound-effect. Kermit wanted something to do, and Seth was an old friend, so he compromised. Twice a week, we drive to
the suburbs together for full-cast rehearsals.
Kermit turns up the heater. “You can tell me, Goose. How bad is it really?”
“Dante’s lost in hell.”
“Too bad we’re not going for black comedy.”
“It’ll get better. It has to.”
Once we’re headed toward home, Kermit cracks the window and lights a cigarette.
“You’re not supposed to do that,” I say.
“Maybe I don’t want to live long enough to see the curtain go up. And besides, fuck the doctors. What good is a ‘few more months’ if you can’t enjoy
them? I’ll take forty-five years and cigarettes, thank you very much.”
There’s no use trying to talk him out of it. He’ll do what he wants because he’s stubborn. I’ve been his tenant and by proxy his friend for two years.
When he’s worried I’m short on cash, he rips up my rent checks as fast as I can write them; when he wants alone time, I could knock on his door until
my knuckles bleed. Try telling him that his disappearing acts worry you, and he’ll remind you he has a mother.
When he finishes his smoke, he tosses the butt out the window. “Ah, Goose, how did we end up here?” He stares out the window at the other cars,
the dark outlines of leafless trees, and the white blanket of snow periodically interrupted by rest-stop islands. I don’t answer what I know is a
rhetorical question. His head rests against the window, and soon enough, he is asleep.
I drive toward the city, waiting for the transformation from the dark woods along the highway to the glow of urban life in the distance, signaling our
arrival home. When the lights appear in the distance, the city looks like a million stars. The first lines of the Inferno run through my head – Midway
along the journey of our life/I woke to find myself in a dark wood,/ for I had wandered off from the straight path.
Kermit snores in the seat next to mine. He was originally the assistant director, but he is getting weaker now. He couldn’t commit to the stress of the
final weeks, right before Easter when the show opens. He has no way of knowing how he will feel. Better that he take a lesser role – music director.
He convinced me to be the assistant director in his place: this would be a great way to use my art degree – a small production in the suburbs.
Not that Seth hadn’t dreamed bigger. He lobbied every theater in Boston. However, no one was interested in producing Dante’s Inferno.
“Too bleak,” said one house manager.
“Too ridiculous,” said another.
“Too wrong. Who wants to go to hell? Don’t we have that around us daily?” The denials took various shapes and forms.
I agreed to do this not because I wanted to revive my affiliation with the arts or because I thought dramatizing the first volume of Dante’s Commedia
was a good idea. I did this so Kermit would have a ride.
ONCE I PARK THE CAR, I wake Kermit and help him up the stairs. He’s grumpy, like a teenager reluctant to go to school, but eventually we
climb to the third floor where he kisses me on the cheek and tells me he’ll see me tomorrow.
I return to my apartment. I slip into my pajamas, start water for tea, and prepare to go over my notes. Once I settle at the kitchen table with my work,
there’s a knock at the door.
Boris stands in my doorway. “You still up? I need someone to talk to,” he says. He follows me back to the kitchen.
According to Boris, the common cold is the arch-villain of the modern world and one day he will be the Superman of science. He tells me this again
as he sits at my kitchen table barefoot and wearing silky nylon shorts that ride too high on his thighs. His chest is as white and smooth as the snow
which piles up on the fire escape and windowsill.
“Two hundred viruses can cause colds,” Boris says as I take the kettle off the stove. “Rhinovirus, coronavirus, Coxsackie virus, respiratory syncytial
virus. That’s only the beginning.” He sighs and reluctantly accepts the cup of tea I’ve poured for him. His long fingers hold the mug as he inhales the
steam. “I’m in a funk,” he announces.
I remember last June when Boris moved into the first floor apartment. He sulked around the hallway, stopping to press his nose against the screen
door, as Kermit and I sat on the porch drinking whiskey and iced tea. “He’s depressed,” Kermit informed me as he squeezed another lemon slice in
his mason jar. “Sunburn is the number one illness during the summer. Boris feels like he’s spinning his wheels.”
“Maybe it’s really as simple as bed rest, plenty of fluids, and chicken soup,” I tell Boris now.
“The Institute won’t give me more funding if I submit that as my proposal.”
Boris takes his work at the Institute seriously. Other researchers have gone on to tackle more threatening diseases and taken their funding with
them. Although symptoms like congestion and achiness are an inconvenience, no one in recent history has died from the common cold.
“It doesn’t matter which virus causes the cold,” Boris tells me in the voice he uses for the non-scientifically inclined. “The body reacts the same way.
But with nearly two hundred different viruses, it’s impossible to create a vaccine.” He rubs his fingers up and down the goose bumps on his arms
and I can hear his teeth chattering.
“Want a sweatshirt?”
Boris frowns at me. “Don’t interfere with my research. I may need to use myself as a guinea pig.” If it were up to Boris, he’d work in his shorts, but the
Institute has a policy against half-naked scientists in its labs. I sometimes pass him in the basement halls that connect his lab to the Alumni Records
Office where I work. He seems like a caricature of the mad scientist: his wheat colored hair stands in a tuft off the top of his head, the lab coat flaps
behind him as he anxiously races back to his experiment from the soda machine, his legs hang like two broomsticks on a scarecrow. When Boris first
started coming up to my apartment bare-chested and in tight shorts, I thought he had romance on his mind. Now, I realize it’s all in the name of
science. He’s trying to catch a cold.
Upstairs, Kermit begins playing warm-up scales on his organ.
“How the hell did he get that upstairs anyway?”
I shrug. “He was here when I moved in. I have no idea.”
“It makes me crazy.”
By listening to the music, I can tell what kind of day Kermit has had. If he’s happy, he plays Take Me Out to the Ball Park or When the Saints Come
Marching In. If he’s not so good, he plays the church music he learned as a child, before he abandoned organized religion. He ends every evening
with Every Time We Say Good-Bye, which loses some of its quiet grace on the organ, but I know Kermit plays it and thinks of Kenny.
“How do you live with this?” Boris asks. “I have to sleep with cotton in my ears or I dream I’m in a cathedral.”
“It’s Saturday night, and it makes him happy.”
AT THIS POINT, Dante’s Inferno isn’t making anyone happy. Seth calls on Sunday shortly after noon.
As soon as I pick up the phone, Seth asks me, “Which circle of hell are directors who cast because of tight buns and sweet smiles relegated to?”
“The circle of opening night ulcers?”
“I’m working with Chuck this afternoon. We’re going to dumb it all down and remove the poetry.”
“Good luck.”
“He’ll either learn this script or I’ll drink enough to make a pass at him. Either way, he wins.” Seth chuckles. His coughing rattles through the phone
line. “You know, if he’s straight, the duty transfers to the Assistant Director.”
“I don’t need your casting couch left-overs.”
The truth is, Chuck is strikingly handsome, but I don’t think he’s capable of a conversation. While I can imagine indulging in a night of steamy
lovemaking with Chuck, the notion of having breakfast with him makes my skin crawl. This, I’ve learned, does not a strong relationship make.
“The good old days of casting couches,” Seth says, “the days when things were simple…when we weren’t afraid of things. I sound like a tired old
queen. If you get bored later, you should ask Kermit to tell you stories. Kermit was a striking leading man. He made good use of the couch. I
remember a time back in 1989… oh, well, I digress. But let me tell you this, if there were a way, I’d have him play Dante. Is he a little old? Sure. But
he’s talented. There’s just no way with his… well, you know.”
Seth quickly changes the direction of the conversation. “Have you heard him working on the music?”
“I have not. Casting couch? Did you and Kermit…”
“Child, look at the time…”
“I see how it is…”
“True ladies don’t kiss and tell.”
“I’ll check his progress on the score. Ha. Ha. No pun intended.”
I hang up the phone and realize how much I don’t know about Kermit. I hear bits and pieces, selected stories, the edited-versions of things. I see the
final production, each line in place, each actor made-up and polished. He never breaks character in his real life.
KERMIT AND I AGREE that Boris is lousy to watch television with. On Sunday nights, I make microwave popcorn with extra butter and Kermit
brings down a twelve pack or a bottle of red wine. Sometimes, if Kermit has an appetite, we order pizza. Boris stops by when he’s finished at the lab.
He works weekends and holidays. He’s the only person I know who looks forward to going to work when he’s sick, as if the answer he’s devoted the
last three years to may show up if he catches one of his sneezes on a slide and examines it beneath a microscope.
“That’s not really how it works,” Boris says. He points at the television. “They only give a partial medical explanation.”
“Oh, who cares?” Kermit asks. He doesn’t move over on the couch to make room for Boris because he’s hoping he won’t stay. “It’s television, Boris.
Have you heard of this thing called escapism?”
“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” Boris answers and leans against the doorframe.
Kermit ignores Boris when he’s in this kind of mood. He’s looking to pick a fight, usually because he’s run into another dead end in the lab. Kermit
picks a kernel or two out of the popcorn bowl.
“Really,” Boris continues. “When they come back from commercial the medical expert has results from the lab which prove their theories. What a
load of crap. Science isn’t that fast or that easy.”
Kermit and I shove over on the couch as Boris squeezes in next to me. Even though he’ll complain for the next hour, he’s not going to leave. Kermit
rolls his eyes and rests his feet in front of him on the coffee table. He wears fuzzy pink slippers that don’t match his navy silk pajamas.
“Kenny had such a crush on that guy,” Kermit announces and points at the show’s lead actor.
Boris stares intently at the screen, ignoring Kermit. “If you don’t shut up, you’re going to miss valuable information.”
“Have you ever been in love, Boris?” Kermit asks during the next commercial break.
Boris hesitates a moment, unsure if Kermit is baiting him. “No,” he says.
Kermit leans back into the couch. His face is pale and although I never knew him before he was sick, I imagine he was thick and muscular. He used
to do landscaping. I’ve heard stories about him carrying Kenny into the bedroom, doctor’s offices, and warm baths. It’s hard to see it now.
Kermit sighs. “I’m not sure if meeting Kenny was the luckiest or unluckiest thing that ever happened to me,” he says.
As he leans back into the sofa, he rubs his hand on my knee. “I wish you could have met my Kenny, Goose,” he says. “He would have loved you.”
THAT NIGHT in bed, I listen to Kermit pace in his apartment. Since Kenny died, he has trouble sleeping. He walks so much I’m afraid he’ll wear a
path through the floor. Sometimes I hear a muffled voice. I don’t know who he is talking to. Kermit’s phone rarely rings, and if it does, he seldom
answers. His mother invites him back to Jesus. The doctors demand that he come in for check-ups. His former friends remind him of Kenny. Seth is
the only person he still talks to.
Meanwhile, Boris sleeps downstairs. Boris may never have loved a woman or a man, but he has known a different connection, to his work. Boris is a
humanitarian who can’t deal with the particulars of human beings. He does not notice freckles or memorize laughs. The person who loves Boris will
have to understand that he loves with his intellect rather than with his heart.
Like Boris, I used to have a job I loved. I spent three years running a small theater. The grant money ran out and the doors closed. During the final
year of trying to keep the theater afloat, I rarely slept.
My mother had goaded me for years with comparisons to my more “successful” siblings. It was a shame, my mother said of me, for someone so
smart to constantly be on the brink of financial disaster, for a twenty-eight year old woman to be unable to make rent or sustain a meaningful
relationship.
I took her advice and moved to Boston where I took a job as a software consultant. There, I learned the real meaning of heartbreak. The theater
was filled with drama and divas, but at least their heartbreak made a noise. In corporate America, I found myself surrounded by hollow blue suits.
They scoured the internet for chances at love and climbed Stairmasters in pursuit of calves. Living in the right neighborhood, driving an expensive
car, and vacationing on the choicest beaches, promised illusory happiness. I quit. My mother was disappointed.
Now I believe a job should be like a reliable friend. I spend my days cataloguing: address changes, marriages, deaths, and donations to the Institute.
I oversee eighty thousand people in my database without meeting one.
r-kv-r-y fall '06 fiction
In the End, the Beginning by Stephanie Johnson
In the End, the Beginning by Stephanie Johnson