Leading Man

LEADING MAN for Reedsy

By Haline Gregory

Note to reader: Start at either: "The End” ( First paragraph) Or Rewind 1992 Scene One” (At the bottom.)

Rewind 2024. The End.

He sold his house. But wouldn’t leave. He had no place to go. He and his old dog. He couldn’t get out of the La-Z-Boy where he sat all day, a bottle of wine on the terrazzo floor beside him. The last time I saw him, he sat there, carefully rolling a cigarette. He asked me about “the advertising game.” He thought he could be a freelance writer. But those days were long gone. His hands shook when he tried to pour the wine. The glass slipped and crashed to the floor, splinters flying everywhere.

I tried not to let the wasted man before me intimidate my memory of him. When I left, I was in full retreat. He died later that year in a South Miami nursing home. My one-time love. My dear old friend.

Rewind 2018. “A miscommunication.”

I’m giving a Christmas party. One of the guests is a younger man I’ve been seeing for a while. My old friend arrives, very drunk. He stumbles in circles around the young man and makes witty, vulgar remarks. Disgusted, I throw him out. He calls me hours later, contrite. I hear him fumbling with a glass and a bottle. After a couple of whispered “shits” and “damns”, he mumbles, “You know, love, we’ve always had this problem. Missss-communication.” I hang up.

Rewind 2013. Shortcuts.

The film department at the University of Miami lets him go after teaching script writing for a few months. He’s been drinking, and it’s no secret. He misses his students terribly. He needs work. He once wrote a script for a fading movie actress. He wrote and directed TV commercials. But no one returns his calls now. He can’t hold his food down. Claims it’s a rare enzyme deficiency. He’s drinking a lot because he can hold that down. I beg him to go to the VA for a checkup. He refuses.

A friend gets him a semester teaching at a night school. He won’t repeat a second term. It’s too compromising.

“Don’t be so damned obstinate,” I tell him. He ignores my advice. I’m too pragmatic.

Rewind 2010. Mental intercourse.

Our relationship has turned full circle. We’re “just friends” again. Much of our time is now spent on the phone. His calls are brilliant mind games. He drags me through intricate mazes of thought, careering off in tangents, pretending he has forgotten why he called. Hours later, he gets to the point, laying before me the brilliance of his meandering discourse. He means to dazzle, but he exhausts. One night, I fall asleep while he goes on and on. Two hours later I wake up, and he’s still talking.

Rewind. 2006 “Hello again.”

My marriage is over. I’m back in Miami. And so is my uncompromising friend. He’s been married and divorced twice. He’s now teaching film and script writing at the University. It’s inevitable for us to get together. He has been best buddies with my ex-husband and me since college. One night he invites me to his office to view his new experimental film. For an hour, in the darkened room, a chicken scratches around in a pile of dirt. Chicken, dirt, scratch; chicken, dirt, scratch. Bored, I keep nodding off. He keeps waking me. “What do you think?”

“It’s…uh…interesting.”

He snaps the projector off and we sit in the dark, acutely aware of each other.

“Isn’t it about time?”

“Yes,” I whisper. It has taken 14 years to get here

Rewind, mid-1960’s. Lawrence of Arabia.

One night, the three of us fly out of the movie theater…feverish with excitement over “Lawrence of Arabia”, the spectacular film we’ve just seen. They swagger around each other grasping at invisible knives, flinging back imaginary desert turbans. He throws me over his shoulder and runs down the street past startled strollers shouting, “No prisoners.”

My husband runs after us, “No prisoners.” I laugh. I love them both

Rewind a long time. 1955. The Way We Were.

New York. Our first apartment. We’re here to take New York for all it’s worth. He’s lost his apartment and is living in a room at the YMCA. My new husband and I invite him to sleep on the sofa. We talk about theater constantly. He says he won’t sellout and be in any plays he doesn’t consider artistically valid.

“Then what?” we ask. “If you won’t take the off-Broadway small-time resume-building parts, how will you ever get to the good stuff?” He shrugs his shoulders.

Rewind 1993. UM Ring Theatre.

A Renaissance play. Velvet gowns. Swords and rapiers. I’m the ingénue; he’s the rakish romantic lead, having a not-so-secret affair with the married leading lady. In one scene he leans toward me and strokes my face. Each night I close my eyes and I shiver with anticipation. And each night I look up into the rafters where the young man I love…who will be my husband one day…straddles the catwalk, focusing the lights down on our scene.

Rewind 1992. Scene One.

I’m a freshman at the University of Miami. I work in the drama department office, and that’s where I see him for the first time. He’s old. He must be 25. He hands me his transcript. Our hands touch briefly. It’s like a sudden electric shock. What is this? I’m startled by the blue of his eyes. He stares through me. I’m just a kid. I fumble with his forms. He slouches in a chair and takes out a pouch from his shirt pocket and slowly shakes tobacco into a paper. He rolls it, then balances the cigarette between his lips. The papers quiver in my hand. Who is this? And God, I hope we can be in a play together one day.

He snaps a match and cups the flame. He inhales deeply. I feel him watching me watch him.

Everything is beginning right now.

The End

(word count 1,001)