Encore

“Dude, I’ll be right back. I forgot my phone.” Derrick sprinted through the side door, wedged open illegally because the crew sometimes stepped out for a quick smoke, as evidenced by the mandala-like design of butts scattered around the step. He was always forgetting something. Tangible things. Not his lines. On stage, he was the epitome of professionalism. In his life, he was bits and pieces, dangling, out of control, some might say. The gossip columnists definitely did.

He heard, oddly, a voice on the stage, and he paused. The theater should have been nearly empty by now. The cast had all left an hour earlier. He’d only been hanging out with the seamstress to fix an inseam, ahem, and he’d realized as he left that his phone was somewhere in the dressing room. Or possible under the sofa.

The only people who should have been in the building were the cleaning crew. So why was he hearing his soliloquy?

Derrick stood in the back of the theater and watched a slim young man wearing janitor coveralls and a navy baseball cap deliver his final speech with the type of casual confidence most actors take years to hone. He wasn’t in the intricate costume of the role—this particular fanciful show was done entirely shrouded, in a nod to the style of French pantomimes and kabuki, but with actual masks rather than face paint.

After a moment, Derrick quietly left the building and caught up with his pot dealer. He said, “I can’t hang tonight. Let’s reschedule.” Then he went back to the theater. The stage was bare, but he knew the guy had to be somewhere backstage. He found the janitor in his dressing room. The kid started, and Derrick said, “Don’t worry about it. You were great. How’d you know the lines?”

The guy had been just looking at the detritus on Derrick’s vanity. The miscellaneous flotsam that had accumulated and was difficult to dust around. Derrick said, “I’m Derrick—” and put out a hand, and the kid said, “I know who you are,” and very carefully shook it.

“This is where you tell me your name.”

“So you’ll get me fired?”

Derrick kicked back on his sofa and lit a joint. “No, man, so I can know who I’m talking to.”

“Eddy,” the kid said. “I know your speech—well, I know your whole part—because I’m here a lot. Like, for all the rehearsals. And I come in early before I have to clean for the night so I can catch the end.”

Derrick blew smoke rings. He said, “So you want to be an actor?”

Eddy shook his head. “I’m fine being a janitor.”

“Then what are you doing in here?” Derrick indicated the messy dressing room, the masks dangling on the wall, his clothes strewn about. He had made it dangerously clear that nobody was supposed to tidy his stuff. He liked the look and scent of the lair. It still smelled of the perfume the seamstress favored.

Eddy shrugged. “I just come in here sometimes. There’s sort of a… magic.”

Derrick nodded. He understood that. “But why aren’t you auditioning? Why aren’t you on stage somewhere?”

Eddy said, “Fright.”

“Really? You were belting out that closing monologue.”

“Nobody in the audience. Makes it easier. Give me an empty theater every night. I’d kill.”

Derrick offered the joint, and that’s how they got to the next level. Eddy sat on the corner of the gold velvet sofa, leaning back. He told Derrick how he was the guy in high school who always won the lead and got the girl. His success had parlayed into a scholarship. He’d been to college, studied acting, had gotten pretty darn good, the teachers only had the highest hopes. The whole time, he’d done amateur theater, and then when he was cast in his first real play, it hit him.

The fear.

He was there on the stage, and nothing worked. Not his brain. Not his mouth. He'd had what he later learned was a panic attack, but what had felt like dying. He’d tried again the next night, and the anxiety was worse. He’d been canned, cut, joined the club of misfits, had wound up with a broom because he still wanted to be close to the stage, even if he were only sweeping up dust.

Derrick didn’t know what to say. “That’s rough,” he tried, but the words weren’t enough, and he knew it.

Eddy said he had to get back to work, and Derrick trailed after him. Derrick had never had stage fright. He had, he thought, life fright. He watched as Eddy emptied the last of the trash cans, and checked that all the doors were locked.

They thought about going to a bar after, but it was too late. Instead, Eddy asked him back to his place, “It’s small,” he said. “It’s not much. But I have some whiskey.”

It was small. It was not much. Derrick had a high-rise apartment with a view. He was working steadily, not only on stage, but in movies, too, an ad here, a featured guest there. The theater gig was because he’d lost his way, he felt. He had fallen into the trap of going for the money rather than the love, and he had been trying to find his soul again.

On Eddy’s small futon, which was clearly also his bed, Derrick asked about the stage fright. “It was shocking,” Eddy said. “I was up there. And then I couldn’t speak. The lights were on me. I knew it was my moment, and my knees felt like they were going to give out. I was in the middle of the most important part, and Cheryl, my co-star, she sort of carried me. And when the curtain came down she looked at me with this wash of pity and disgust, and I said I was ill, but when I couldn’t face the audience the next night, they brought in my understudy, and I never came back. The show must go on, you know. You could be literally bleeding out up there, you could be dying, and the show has to go on.”

Derrick leaned back on the sofa and stared up at the ceiling and thought, “I’m dying up there.” And then he said the words. He said, “I don’t feel anything anymore. I thought I would. I thought when I was starting out I’d get to a place and think: I have made it. And then I’d stay at that place for a while.”

“But you have made it.”

Eddy handed Derrick the bottle.

“I haven’t. It’s all a fake.”

“That’s what acting is, man.”

“No, it’s not.” Derrick thought for a minute, “And you know it’s not… When it’s good, it’s like what you were doing up there. You were feeling the words and nothing else. When it’s good, you become the role. You can’t tell the musician from the instrument, you know? But right now, I am like this shadow self. I can perform, but I feel it as a performance. Not as if I am the character anymore. I don't know how to fall in.”

“You can’t tell that. Not from the audience’s perspective.”

“Yeah. You can. The reviews were all sort of glossy. But that’s what this is. High gloss. I can’t get to the grit. I used to become the part. Now, I’m no longer the role. I’m Derrick, who almost won an Oscar, playing the role. Derrick, who was seen kissing that supermodel at Starbucks, playing the role.”

They passed the bottle back and forth. The level lowering. Derrick realizing he hadn’t felt this comfortable in a long time, and wondered whether it was the booze or the fact that they weren’t at some chi-chi wine bar where he had to pretend to look either impressed for some douchebag producer with money or interested in whatever the starlet du jour was telling him.

He realized it was the first time in a long time he wasn’t wearing a mask. And that’s what gave him the idea.

The next night, they made the switch in the dressing room. Derrick donned the janitor coveralls. He wore a baseball cap pulled low. He thought he’d have to do more to blend into the role, but it turned out that nobody paid him any attention whatsoever. Eddy had it more difficult. It was lucky their builds were similar. But he had to make sure not to take off the mask when he was walking off stage. He had to keep it on all the way to the dressing room, and change the masks there. At the end of the performance, Derrick was pretending to sweep right outside the door with the star on it, and when Eddy walked into the dressing room, Derrick followed.

“That was…” Eddy started.

“Incredible, right? You were incredible.”

“I just wasn’t afraid.”

“You know what?” Derrick asked. “I wasn’t either.” Derrick had a joint somewhere on the table, but he didn’t want it. He felt elated and free in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time.

“What do you have to be afraid of, man?” Eddy was already getting into the coveralls, in case someone walked in.

“I don’t know. It’s like I can’t sleep if I’m not stoned, I can’t relax without a bottle, I don’t want to go places where they put me in the front so everyone can see I’m there, and I don’t want to go places I have to leave out the back.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that,” Eddy said.

“That’s what you think,” Derrick said. “I don’t mean that’s what YOU think. I mean, that’s what everyone thinks. People believe they want the fame and the lights and everything that goes with those glittering sequins and red carpets. But you can’t go to the fricking grocery store. And you can’t go out in your favorite sweats after a night of carousing without someone taking your picture. Without becoming a front-page headline. I don’t trust anyone.”

“Why are you telling me this? What if I was going to sell…”

“Your not. I can tell.” He settled back. “I don’t know how. But I can.”

“I’m not,” Eddy agreed.

“Obviously some people love it. The limelight. The spotlight. The fawning.”

“Can’t you sort of wear a different kind of mask?”

Derrick grinned at him. “Man, that’s what I have been doing.” He sat there on the sofa, and he made a decision. He was friendly with people. He could get Eddy in as the understudy once the understudy took his place. And maybe if Eddy went on a few more times with the masks, he would remember how to do this without.

He told this as best as he could to Eddy, who leaned against the wall and said, “Are you sure? Are you really sure? You’d be giving up a lot.”

Derrick wished he could explain. He had been so focused on getting there, making it, reaching a place where he could kick back and breathe for a minute, and when he’d reached it, he’d realized there was no joy waiting for him there. The air was too thin.

The thrill had been the climb.

Maybe he was ready to climb something else.