8

 

Simon

 

IT HAD BEEN two days since I’d picked up Mrs. Landry’s spilled groceries and ushered her back to her apartment. In that time, I’d started showering in the middle of the night. I didn’t know what time, exactly, only that it was dark outside. When I showered and slept didn’t seem to matter under the weight of my unshakeable anxiety that, spending all this time alone, with no voiceover scripts to rehearse and no Sunday readings to prepare, my vocal folds were beginning to atrophy again.

How could I know, I asked myself, more than eighteen years later, how many days or weeks into my silence it had ceased to be a matter of choice? So I started talking, just to talk, saying whatever was on my mind. And some of what I heard myself saying—one-sided conversations with my departed mother, for example—scared the hell out of me.

I decided I needed to speak face to face—and soon—with someone I know. And the only person in Chicago I really knew was Connor.

Even if there had been no Larry Sellers and no Skyline Talent, I’d have moved to Chicago because Connor was there. I needed to be around him because his success was the stick by which I measured my own. I was pulling for him to succeed in comedy. At the same time, I hated the thought that he’d realize his dream more fully than I would mine. Success could only be a good thing if each of us enjoyed his own version, and in equal measure.

When we were kids, I’d fight Connor to a stalemate of my own making. Without warning, I’d tackle him to the ground, straddle him, and punch his upper arms while he bucked and scratched and clawed at me. I was two years older than him and bigger than he was. I could have stayed astride him for as long as I liked. But at some point in every fight, I allowed him to flip me onto my back, sit on my chest, and punch my shoulders. I resisted a little, to make him believe he was in a real fight. And when I’d taken the same pounding I had doled out—when we were even—I’d throw him off of me, get to my feet, and walk away. Fair and square, I’d think.

When I was fifteen and he was thirteen, Connor flipped me without my help, and when I tried to heave him off and end the fight, I couldn’t. He did what I’d taught him to do: punched me until we were even. Then he stood up and walked away, without apology, just as I’d always done. Even as I lay there, on my back, stung by the sudden loss of my dominance, I was proud of him.

After that, I stopped tackling Connor and, to his credit, he never started one of those fights. But my wish to be even with him didn’t stop with the fights. It kept up throughout our teenage years, throughout my silence. Knowingly or not, our mother perpetuated it. If she kissed one of us on the head, she tracked down the other in his bedroom or the side yard and kissed him, too. She would spend the same amount of time, to the minute, helping Connor with his homework that she’d spent talking me through mine. Until the year she left my father, she made the same dinner—hot dogs and homemade macaroni and cheese—on Connor’s birthday and mine, and once, she even showed us receipts to prove she’d spent the same amount of money on our gifts. I don’t know whether my mother created these rules or just played by them. But even after she died, I still wanted nothing more than for Connor to have the same share of what he wanted that I had of what I wanted—not one bit more, or less.

It was July 15th. I’d been living in Chicago for six weeks, and Connor still had not returned my call. In the midst of my long wait for voiceover work, I wasn’t looking forward to measuring my success against my brother’s because I knew I’d come up short again. And it was hard for me to admit that I was totally dependent on Connor for the company I sorely needed, while he didn’t seem to need me for anything. But I knew I’d get no greater share of what I wanted in the world if I kept spending every day in my apartment, talking to myself.

So I typed out a text message: I’d like 2 c u soon. Let me know when u r free.

I sent the message and watched the pixilated animation of an envelope fly over the horizon line on my phone’s tiny screen, mindful that I’d fixed nothing of what ailed me. I’d only given myself something else to wait for.

 

•••

 

I WAS LYING awake in bed that same Thursday, a couple of hours later, when I heard what I thought was the motor of my window-unit air conditioner rattling at a different speed. Only when the sound stopped and started again did I look to my bedside table and notice my phone vibrating slowly toward my radio. I picked it up, expecting to see Connor’s name on the display. I saw Elaine’s name instead.

The adrenaline hit was my first in days. My heart pounded and my windpipe tightened up—I took five waggles to loosen it as I hurried into the living room. I assumed she was calling to recommend changes to my demo or confirm some contractual detail. That she was calling me at all contradicted my suspicion, which had been growing over the past few days, that I’d never hear from Elaine Vasner again.

Standing in front of my desk in a t-shirt and boxer shorts, I flipped open my phone and said, “This is Simon.”

“How are you, Simon?”

“I’m good, Elaine.” I took another waggle. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Did I wake you up?”

It sounded less like a question than an accusation.

“No,” I said.

“You have morning voice, Simon,” Elaine said. “I can hear it. But you answered when I called. That’s all that matters to me, assuming you weren’t screaming yourself hoarse at some bar last night.”

I waggled again. “I wasn’t.”

“Good. You’ve been booked for a job.”

“What?”

Elaine pushed past my shock, which she must have been expecting.

“A creative director I’ve worked with for years called me looking for a new voice, a young man who doesn’t sound like a kid. I think the words she used were ‘credible’ and ‘precise.’ Anyway, I sent her a copy of your demo, and she called back the next day to say that now, when she reads the part, she can only hear it in your voice.”

I needed two waggles to say, “Wow.”

“Wow is right,” Elaine said. “It’s a radio spot for Red Bull and it’ll run in seven markets—New York, L.A., Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Las Vegas.”

My gut tightened with pleasure. I had assumed my first job, if I ever got one, would be a local commercial. This was a national spot.

“The agency is Burnett. They’re recording on Monday at 1 p.m. I’m assuming you can do it.”

“I can do it.”

“Good,” Elaine said. “You’re booked for an hour and a half, but they think it’ll only take an hour. Have you ever been in a recording studio before?”

I hesitated, trying to decide whether or not the truth was the wrong answer. Then I told the truth. “No.”

“I didn’t think so,” Elaine said. “Let’s go over a few things. The moment you walk into that sound booth, put your headphones on. Without them, you can’t hear the director, and you can’t hear yourself the way you need to.”

“Okay.”

“If the script is multiple pages, spread the first few across your stand. Don’t spoil any takes moving paper.”

“Okay.”

“There’ll be a circular screen in front of the mic. It’s there to keep your Ps from popping. Start with your mouth about four inches away from the screen. If they want you closer to it, or further away, they’ll tell you. And make sure you’re not leaning forward. Stand up straight and get comfortable. You’ll be on your feet for at least an hour.”

I waggled. “Right.” I thought about reaching for a pen and paper on the desk a few feet away, but I didn’t move. I was afraid I would miss something.

“Some newbies see a microphone and start babbling,” Elaine said. “Don’t speak until somebody tells you to. They’ll ask you to do a run-through so they can adjust the levels. And when you do the run-through, do it the way you’d do a take that counts. That’s the only way to get the levels right for the keepers. Are you following?”

“Yes.”

“When they have their levels,” Elaine said, “the director will ask you how your foldback is. You don’t know what foldback is.”

“No.” By then, I was admitting my ignorance greedily. I’d never been so certain I was getting good advice.

“Foldback is the sound of your own voice in your headphones,” Elaine said. “It might be too loud. It might not be loud enough. They’ll work with you to find a level comfortable for you. You need to hear yourself, but too loud is no good. You need to protect your hearing. Your ears are more important in this business than you might think.”

“Okay.”

“When your foldback is set, it’ll be time for the first take,” she said. “From there, you do what you do. And give the director what she wants, even if you think it sounds wrong, even if you think it’s a bad idea. When you’re in studio on somebody else’s dime, it isn’t your opinion that matters. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“All right,” Elaine said. “The session is at Kinzie Street Studios. That’s on Kinzie Street.”

“Okay.”

“That was a joke, Simon.”

I hadn’t realized. “I know.”

Elaine made a noise, something between a snort and a sigh. “The agency sent me the script,” she said. “I’ll e-mail it over to you. I’ll send the address of the studio, too.”

“Thank you.”

“This is a good job, Simon,” Elaine said.

I waggled. “Yes.”

“It’s the kind of job that can pay some bills and get you another job. Make sure you nail it.”

Something cold in Elaine’s voice made me blink. “I will.”

“Good. Look for my e-mail.”

“I will.”

“Have a nice day,” Elaine said, taking—as another joke, maybe—the falsely polite tone of a customer-service representative.

“Thanks again, Elaine.”

I flipped my phone shut and leapt into the air, pulling my knees up as high as I could, and pogoed up again as soon as I landed.

My wait for work was over.

I fell onto the couch, breathing out low moans of happiness through the broad smile on my face, exhausted by the adrenaline and by my private show of exuberance. I may have let myself enjoy the moment for a couple of minutes before my compulsion to prepare got the better of me. I walked to my desk, opened my laptop, and pressed the Send and Receive button above my e-mail inbox. There were no new messages.

Then my phone, still in my hand, pulsed twice, and the display indicated the delivery of a text message. I opened the phone. The message was from Connor.

“Free tuesday,” it read. “Meet u at the lakefront if u want.”

In the time it had taken him to respond to my desperate request, my ambivalence about seeing Connor had evaporated. I wanted to see him. I wanted to measure myself against him. I wanted Connor to know that, in a race in which a tie was a victory for me and a devastating loss for him, I was gaining ground.

 

•••

 

I STILL REMEMBER the incident that convinced me—for what seemed, at the time, to be once and for all—that I would never wring from my life even a fraction of what Connor would achieve in his.

I was sitting on a tree stump outside Leyton High on a warm, windy September afternoon, waiting for the short, pencil-yellow bus that would pick up Connor and me. Maybe ten feet away, Ken Hyde and Miro Kowalski—freshmen, like Connor—were sitting on the grass in front of my brother, giving him the audience he needed to burn off the energy and ideas he’d pent up during the school day.

“You guys have Mr. Remacher?” Connor asked them.

“For science,” Ken said.

“Me, too,” Miro added.

Connor hiked up the waist of his jeans to his bottom ribs, curved into a slouch, and took long, loping steps across the grass, recreating with high fidelity Mr. Remacher’s strange carriage.

Ken and Miro laughed hard.

“That’s perfect,” Ken said.

“What about Ms. Gorski?” Connor asked.

“The gym teacher?” Miro asked Ken.

Ken nodded without taking his eyes off of Connor.

Connor pressed his palms flat against his lower back, over his kidneys, with his fingers spread wide and their tips pointing straight down his legs. Then he hung his head forward and flattened his lips. “Ladies,” Connor said, voicing the “l” from the back of his mouth, “if you do not get moving, you will have no time to shower and the boys will smell your stinky feets.” He clapped twice. “Let’s go!”

As Ken and Miro laughed, I smiled to myself. Just a couple of weeks into the school year, Connor had Ms. Gorski’s Polish accent, in all its thickness, down pat.

“Do Mr. Lucas!”

Connor shot Ken a look. In a decision that coincided roughly with his starting high school, my brother had begun denying all requests, at home and in public, for routines and impressions he had once done the moment he was asked.

“I’m not a trained monkey,” he’d say. And when he was feeling particularly justified in his refusal, he’d add, “I’m not doing any of this for you, anyway. I do it for me.”

Ken and Miro knew Connor’s stance on command performances—Connor had turned them down before. But, perhaps having already decided to imitate Mr. Lucas, Connor glanced in all directions for any sign of the loud, little man who taught my history class, and then became him.

“We’re running out of time,” Connor’s Mr. Lucas said, “so I’m going to go Pentangelo here. Mr. Pentangelo, which president made the call to drop the first atomic bomb on Japan?”

“Roosevelt,” said Connor’s Pentangelo.

“No!” answered Connor’s Mr. Lucas. “No! No! Pentangelo! I went to you because we were short on time! We needed the right answer, Pentangelo! Now the period is almost over and your classmates are under the impression that Franklin Delano Roosevelt green-lit the first atomic bomb! The man was rotting in his grave, Pentangelo! Truman, Pentangelo! Truman dropped the bomb!”

Midway through the routine, Ken and Miro had fallen onto their backs, laughing with the abandon of much younger boys, but Connor saw it through to the finish, showing no mercy as his still new friends gasped for air between paroxysms of delight.

I was more awed than amused. I had witnessed Mr. Lucas’ memorable dressing down of Giuseppe Pentangelo, one of the best students in my junior class, and knew for a fact that Connor hadn’t been there to see it. I guessed he had heard it through the open door of his own history class, which met in the classroom across from Mr. Lucas’ during the same period, but that didn’t explain how Connor had so completely captured the physical reality of the exchange. He had even stood over Ken and Miro in the same way Mr. Lucas had loomed over the sheepish Pentangelo. Somehow, my television-obsessed little brother had mastered a radio listener’s trick: He had seen Mr. Lucas with his ears.

Ken and Miro lay on their backs for a minute or so after Connor relented. As they caught their breath, the boys spouted laughs that deteriorated into sighs of exhaustion. Miro was the first to sit up again.

“Who is that?” he asked.

Ken propped himself up on his locked arms, and each one of us followed the path of Miro’s gaze with his own.

“That’s Candace Andersen,” Ken said.

That a freshman such as Ken Hyde knew the name and face of a junior after only a few weeks at school would have been surprising if the junior had been anyone other than Candace Andersen.

Candace was an academic star who didn’t flaunt her intelligence—she did her homework at home and rarely discussed grades. She was kind and well liked. And beautiful. That afternoon, she was sitting on the concrete base of the school’s flagpole with an open paperback in hand, her brown hair moussed into a thick bouquet of curls flecked with golden blond.

By coincidences of class schedule, classroom layout, and alphabetical order, my assigned seat in Mr. Lucas’ history class was next to Candace’s, and I had occupied the desk behind hers in Mrs. Vallort’s English class the year before. We didn’t know each other well—I couldn’t speak, so no one knew me well—but when we passed in the hallway or arrived at class, Candace would say hello. I’d respond with a polite, close-lipped smile intended to hide the following truths: that Candace Andersen enthralled me, that whenever I imagined speaking again, I imagined my first words would be “Hi” and “Candace,” and that once, in a moment of the hopeful delirium that was an occasional symptom of my solitude, I’d envisioned Candace inviting me on a walk after school. I imagined her telling me that she knew how I felt about her, that she felt the same way about me, and that I could hide all I wanted from everyone else but didn’t have to hide myself from her anymore. And we would kiss long enough for me to forget that I didn’t know how to kiss, long enough for me to learn how, maybe. Then Candace would pull her lips from mine, smile, and kiss me again.

“Dude,” Miro said to Connor, keeping his vocal volume low, “you should do those impressions for her.”

As she waited for her ride home, Candace crossed her long legs beneath her pleated skirt, keeping her eyes locked on her book. Connor squinted at Candace, seeming to contemplate Miro’s challenge. Then Connor started out across the small, green patch of lawn between himself and Candace.

Over his shoulder, he said, “Don’t let the bus leave without me.”

I think he was talking to me.

Miro and Ken looked at each other, their eyes open wide with anticipation.

“Oh shit!” Ken whispered to Miro, smiling.

The boys were surely imagining themselves, as I was imagining myself, in Connor’s shoes. From a short but safe distance, and from the far side of a wide gulf of charm and talent, the three of us experienced the nervous thrill of recklessly approaching an uncommonly pretty girl.

As he neared her, Connor circled in front of Candace and waved. Candace hadn’t met Connor, so far as I knew, but she smiled and said hello. The afternoon wind was gusting, and the rush of it in my ears had the effect of static in a weak radio signal, clipping some words and drowning others. But I did hear Connor say our last name.

And I heard the gorgeous ring of Candace’s voice when she said, “Simon’s brother?”

Connor claimed me minimally, with a nod, hedging his bet as to whether his being my brother was a good or bad thing in Candace’s eyes. Then, as the wind kicked up again, Candace must have said her own name, because Connor stepped up to her and shook her hand. Something in the way he did that made her laugh.

That Connor could make Candace laugh with a handshake threatened me so deeply that I couldn’t help but look away. For a few moments, I watched the wind thrash the slender branches of a hulking willow. Then I heard Candace laugh again, and my eyes followed the sound. Candace had closed her book, and Connor was doing Mr. Remacher’s walk. When he finished, Candace tucked her book between her thigh and the concrete, freeing her hands to applaud Connor with false formality. Connor took a profound bow. And Candace laughed again.

Then Connor became Ms. Gorski. Over the gusts, I made out “stinky feets” and “let’s go!” Candace threw her head back, raising her smiling face to the sky.

“She’s loving it,” Miro said.

Connor skipped his bow and went straight into his Mr. Lucas. He paced and pointed to the invisible Pentangelo, then became him just long enough to give the damning wrong answer.

“No!” Connor shouted. “No, Pentangelo!”

As Connor gesticulated above the invisible Pentangelo, Candace, who’d had a ringside seat for the original Lucas-Pentangelo exchange, watched my brother with her smiling mouth agape.

When the scene was finished, she didn’t laugh, and she didn’t applaud. Staring at Connor and shaking her head, Candace Andersen said, “Unbelievable!”

She went on praising Connor in lilting words I couldn’t make out. Like me, Candace had found my brother’s performance even more amazing than it was amusing.

Connor kept his eyes on Candace, guzzling from the fire hose of her admiration without spilling a drop. When she was finished speaking, he held up his index finger, as if to say, I’ve got one more. And he just stood there. He slouched, but he didn’t move a muscle and he didn’t say a word. He stared off toward the state highway that marked the eastern border of the campus. He dropped his eyes to his feet, put his hands in his pockets, and swayed back and forth, slowly.

I strained to hear over the weakening breeze, waiting for Connor to speak in one of his thousand voices, but he said nothing.

“I give up,” Candace said, shaking her head. “Who is it?”

Connor shrugged and lifted his palms. I recognized that gesture. It was one of mine. He was asking her, pretty please, to guess.

Candace sat rigidly on the concrete block. “I really don’t know.”

“Seriously?” Connor shouted, himself again. He sounded annoyed, even hurt.

“Who was it?”

“You couldn’t tell that was Simon?”

Candace stared at Connor for a moment. Then she turned her face and squinted into the afternoon sun. It was at least a second before I realized she was looking at me. My face went red, and I stared into the distance, just as Connor had done in his impression of me.

“I’m only kidding,” I heard Connor say.

Candace said something I didn’t hear.

“Really,” Connor insisted, “it was a joke.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw that Candace had picked up her book again. Then, with her customary kindness, Candace said, “I’ll see you around, Connor.”

Connor held up his hands in protest for a moment before dropping them. “All right,” he said. “See you around.”

She hadn’t stuck up for me, really—not with the same fervor with which she’d praised Connor the moment before. But Candace hadn’t enjoyed—hadn’t allowed herself to enjoy—a laugh at my expense. Now, more than ten years after the incident, I know that Candace’s refusal to laugh had more to do with her bedrock decency than anything else. But that day, wallowing neck deep in my silent self-loathing, I could only understand her non-laugh and the squinting glance that followed it to mean that Candace Andersen, the girl of my daydreams, pitied me.

Having sent their champion into the arena, Miro and Ken absorbed some of the embarrassment Connor had suffered and the humiliation he had doled out. Ken repeatedly zipped and unzipped the small pocket of his backpack while Miro uprooted individual blades of grass and tore them apart between his finger and thumbnails. For my part, as Connor made his way back across the lawn with his head down, I envisioned sprinting at him, pouncing on him like a predator, and beating him bloody, but I did no such thing. I knew that Connor was probably obsessing over the one laugh he’d gone for and failed to get, that he would replay his impression of me for days, dissecting it for flaws in character and timing, discounting the praise he’d received for his Mr. Lucas impression. The punishment Connor would inflict on himself was sure to be worse than any beating I could have meted out. So I left him untouched. That was my revenge.

I’ve since wondered if any of Connor’s suffering over the next few days was rooted in some feeling that having done that impression of me, for Candace and right before my eyes, was wrong. My guess is that comedy, except insofar as doing it well was a kind of moral imperative, was not a matter of conscience for Connor, but I can’t be sure. The fact that he didn’t apologize to me doesn’t settle things one way or another. Except for the meaningless apologies our mother had forced us to make, Connor and I had never apologized to one another. Every fight, every petty tattle, every humiliation that one of us perpetrated against the other was flung without comment onto the smoldering pile of wrongs we had done one another over the years. This was how it was between my brother and me: we went on with things, to the next right or the next wrong. I never thought to ask Connor why the men in our family didn’t apologize to each other. I assumed he’d learned this unspoken maxim the same way I had: by watching our father.

The bus arrived as the sun began to sink beneath the leafy tops of the tall oaks west of campus. As Connor and I were driven home, sitting as far apart from one another as was possible, I found myself admiring him even before my shame had cooled. Someone just out for laughs, or to impress a pretty girl, might have been satisfied with Candace’s astonished response to the impression of Mr. Lucas and quit while he was ahead. But for Connor, even the big stage that an audience with Candace Andersen provided was little more than a workshop. In his own mind, Connor wasn’t performing. He was preparing for bigger performances to come. And in his ruthless determination to understand, by the time his golden opportunity arrived, what was funny and what wasn’t and why, Connor was willing to make his mute older brother the butt of a joke, even as I watched. Slouched against the vinyl backrest of a bus bench, lost in my silence, I imagined what seemed impossible—a world in which I had a voice like the voices on the radio—and understood that, even if the impossible came true, I stood no chance of pulling even with someone as ambitious and cutthroat as my brother.

 

•••

 

FIFTEEN MINUTES AFTER Elaine and I hung up, a new message appeared in my e-mail inbox. The subject line read, “FW: Red Bull Comedy Tour Radio – The Pitch Man.”

The embedded chain of correspondence between Elaine and someone from the ad agency consisted mainly of logistic and administrative information—the date, time and location of the session, my hourly rate, and my union status. At the end of one of her notes, the ad-agency representative, who did not seem to be the creative director Elaine had known for years, wrote, “PLEASE make sure your client arrives at the session ON TIME, which is to say a few minutes BEFORE the session’s official start time.”

Elaine seemed to take exception to this request.

“Thank you for the lesson in punctuality and professionalism,” she wrote in reply. “My client will be at the session on time. While we’re on the topic of punctuality, let me remind you that I expect my client to be paid on time. If I don’t have a check IN HAND by the agreed upon date, your boss will get at least one phone call from me the first day payment is overdue, and every day after, until payment is received in full. Which is to say I’ll have MY FOOT UP YOUR ASS if the check is late. Understood?”

I made mental notes to get to the session a half-hour early and never cross Elaine.

I double-clicked the attached file—my first real script! And from the moment I began to scan page one, I realized it was not at all what I had been expecting.

The script called for three different voice actors to engage in a kind of conversation. In my role as the Pitch Man, I was to relate the following details: This fall, comedians David Cross and Patton Oswalt would co-headline the Red Bull No Bull Comedy Tour—seven shows in seven cities. Tickets in each city would go on sale Tuesday, September 4th, at 10 a.m. Tickets were limited, so listeners were advised to act quickly.

Delivered without interruption, my lines would not have taken twenty seconds of airtime. But the script called for Cross and Oswalt—playing versions of themselves—to interrupt the Pitch Man with derision of the corporate sponsor and direction about the Pitch Man’s “energy.”

“Only Red Bull,” the Pitch Man would say, “could bring two comedians of this caliber to the same stage on the same night in seven American cities.”

“Yeah,” Oswalt would interject. “I think democracy in Iran is next on Red Bull’s list.”

“Tickets are limited, so act fast!” the Pitch Man would say. Then, addressing Oswalt and Cross, he would ask, “How was that?”

Cross and Oswalt were to deliver a simple answer—“Great!”—in unison.

And the bracketed direction beside their answer read, “[EVERYONE BUT THE PITCH MAN CAN HEAR THAT CROSS AND OSWALT ARE BEING SARCASTIC.]”

This script was a parody of the straight-announcement voiceover work I’d admired and studied all my life. And the Pitch Man, a square and hapless stereotype of my heroes, wasn’t in on the joke.

My disappointment didn’t stop there. That the script featured famous professional comedians made it seem like a piece of Connor’s New York dream misdelivered to me in Chicago. But this was not the only way that this job seemed better suited to Connor than it was to me: the Pitch Man wasn’t just a voice, and he wasn’t some version of myself. If he were any part of me, the Pitch Man would never have asked the comedians’ opinion of his work—he understood radio commercials better than they did. No, the Pitch Man was someone else entirely. He was a character, which made him more Connor’s than mine.

Despite myself, I entertained a scenario in which Connor went to the recording session in my place. He would introduce himself as Simon Davies to people who had never seen my face. He’d enter the sound booth and bring the Pitch Man to life as a character in a voice that was imperceptibly different from my own. And for his trouble, Connor would get the chance to work—in the same commercial if not the same studio—with two big-time comedians. The creative director and the client would be pleased, Elaine would be pleased, and so long as Connor went in my place for any future sessions run by that creative director, no one would be the wiser.

But these were merely the public aspects of the scenario. Its horrors would play out in private. I saw myself sitting on my couch, alone during the session’s appointed hour, writhing in the knowledge that I’d handed Connor a job he had neither chased nor earned and given up my first chance—maybe my only chance—to be a voiceover artist.

Then I imagined hearing Connor’s voice, in place of mine, on the radio.

At this thought, I made the only decision I could live with. I’d play the Pitch Man myself, and do it the only way I could: the way that Connor would have done it. From the blind of my silence, I’d watched my brother become thousands of people who were not himself. I knew what he would make of this Pitch Man, and that was all I needed to know. If the creative director was already hearing the Pitch Man’s voice as mine, I could gamble that my own pale rendition of the flesh-and-blood character Connor would’ve created would be good enough for her.

Over the next few days, between rehearsals, I was hounded by the thought that my living some part of Connor’s dream, and appropriating his talent, sullied not only this job, but the year of spasm-inducing work I’d put into rebuilding my voice. Each time the thought nipped at my heels, I answered it with the lesson my brother taught me on the front lawn of our high school: Don’t let anyone, not even your brother, keep you from getting what you want.

I, too, could be cutthroat.

To run neck-and-neck with Connor after a lifetime spent so far behind him, I’d take anything of his that I needed.