By early April, a warmer sun shone through thin scudding clouds, the wind still stung with some of winter’s lingering sharpness, but opening day at Yankee Stadium touched the low seventies. Eyewitness News weatherman Storm Field said the unseasonable temperatures would continue, and when it did rain, dead earthworms appeared in the concrete’s cracks and the flowers planted on the crossing islands bloomed. It was a Friday, and my audition that afternoon was at a movie set, on location, at an East Side town house, on Ninety-Second Street between Fifth and Madison—a reading, Brent had explained, for the director himself, “for Alan Hornbeam,” he said to me over the phone, after Miss Abbasi brought me the note in American government to call my agent. My parents went to see all his movies as soon as they came out. Mom was an especially big fan. “He specifically asked for you,” Brent said. I’d never heard him sound so excited. He explained that Hornbeam had a stable of actors he worked with in movie after movie. “You could grow up with him, Griff. You would be made.” Apparently, at the very beginning of production, the teen actor in the featured role had a family emergency that forced him to suddenly quit the production. There was a scramble to replace him. It was a tremendous opportunity, Brent said. “It’s a two-week shoot,” he added. “Maybe three. Knock his socks off.” Normally, I’d have given this opportunity little thought, but ever since Oren had mentioned that my best way out of show business was through success, I thought I might bring just a tad more intentionality to this audition than usual. Plus I’d just seen Jodie Foster interviewed at Yale about her relationship with John Hinckley Jr., about the love letters he’d written her, especially the one before going to shoot Reagan: “I am doing all of this for your sake! By sacrificing my freedom and possibly my life, I hope to change your mind about me.” She had no idea who he was, but I was struck that she had a normal life now, that she was a regular college freshman. Ignoring the fact, of course, that her stalker had tried to kill the president to impress her.
There was a pair of trailers outside the town house where they were shooting the film, the windows of which were covered with blue density gels. Pedestrians slowed or joined the onlookers at the shoot’s blocked-off perimeter, straining behind the sawhorses that read Police Line Do Not Cross. The location crew behind these stood with the indifference of zoo animals, accustomed as they were to being watched. I made my way through the crowd to the gofer, who greeted me and checked my name off a clipboard. People eyed me like I was someone important, and it took all my self-control not to turn to look at them like my father might and nod as I was welcomed into the empyrean. The gofer pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt and said, “I’ve got Griffin Hurt here to see Alan.” He got clearance and bid me to follow him. A pair of thick black cables ran up the building’s steps, into the entryway, and through the foyer, whose diamond-checkered black-and-white marble floor was covered with plastic, up the stairs to a second-story living room. As on every movie set, this room was suffused with the same combination of bustle and idleness as an operating theater; a muffled quiet, library-like but hectic; the stuffiness of bodies and equipment and tech crammed into the space: the low hum of power draw and the heat coming off the soundboard and the monitors, and the klieg lights, whose glare was unforgiving, set up for a shot framing the sofa and love seat. The two cables ran toward this tableau and behind a wingback chair, in which Hornbeam was seated, so that by an accidental trick of perspective, and because of his diminutive size, it was as if they were the impossibly long feeding tentacles of a giant squid.
Hornbeam stood to greet me, although when he did, he was still shorter than I was. There were people all around us, camera crew and soundmen, the gaffer and the boom operator, and while they were not entirely unaware of our presence, they were at the same time quietly busy and preoccupied. They spoke in low tones, and their inattention conferred upon Hornbeam and me a sort of invisibility that helped tamp down any self-consciousness I might feel or nerves I might have otherwise suffered. Only the makeup gave away the fact that Hornbeam was in costume: he wore a pair of worn-out sneakers, khaki pants, and a patterned button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His tortoiseshell glasses were so large they seemed more prop than corrective. He bid me sit, and when he sat, he placed his elbows on the armrests and folded his hands together. Hornbeam’s nose was steeply humped at its bridge, his thinning hair was hippieish in length but wisped at the temples and had mostly fallen out up top. His wrists and forearms were slight; his palm, when I shook it, was slightly damp. He was an actor too, known for his antic persona; he starred in most of his pictures, but in what seemed to me an intentional contrast to this—as if Hornbeam the comedian were impersonating Hornbeam the director. He spoke so softly and seriously, even after we moved past formalities, that I had to lean forward to hear him.
“I very much liked your work in The Talon Effect,” Hornbeam said. “Especially that scene at the dinner table, with the entire family, where your father is telling you and your older sister how the Senate will be in session through most of the spring and he’ll be stuck up in Washington for a long time. Do you remember this?”
I said I did.
“And your sister just blows up at him,” Hornbeam continued. “She lays into him about how he never comes to anything of hers—not her performances or sports, that he’s never around. And your mother tries to referee. To explain to your sister how busy he is. And to your father how much you both miss him. Though it’s clear when she’s saying all this that she misses him and resents him too. And you watch all of this just”—Hornbeam raised his hand and made a C with his fingers—“clutching your glass of milk. It’s making you that upset. And then your sister storms off, and you and your mother and father watch her go. And when your parents’ eyes are on you, you’re framed in close-up and you take this big drink of milk. You chug the whole thing and then put down your glass. And your line is something throwaway, like ‘May I be excused?’ But the milk’s left this thick mustache on your lips. Because you’re still just a boy. You don’t understand all this pain. You love these people. And I was wondering: Were you given direction to do that?”
I had never analyzed the scene so carefully, had never thought about it this way, though I did recall attending the premiere with my family and how Dad leaned toward me after the scene concluded to whisper, “Now that, my son, is acting.” In response to Hornbeam’s question, I told the truth. “It felt right to give myself the mustache on the first take. After that, Mr. Schatzberg told me to do it every time.”
A smile flickered across Hornbeam’s mouth, and then he indicated the several pages we’d be reading on the coffee table. “I’ll give you some background for this scene,” he said. “The film’s about an actor-director named Konig. Your father. Me. You’re Bernie, his only child. Your mother has recently divorced Konig after discovering he had an affair with the star of his previous picture. We’re talking big New York scandal here, Page Six, the works. Meanwhile, you and your father have never really gotten to know each other. He does a film almost every year and as often as not only sees you on a set like this. In fact, this scene you’re about to read takes place in this living room, which isn’t your family’s living room but a living room on one of Konig’s movie sets. Capisce?”
“Capisce.”
After I scanned the pages a couple of times, Hornbeam asked, “Ready?” I nodded, and speaking his lines from memory, he became his famous, high-strung self.
Konig
It’s not that I feel like I should apologize to you about how I treated your mother. Although she’s the only woman in human history who after asking me to—I don’t know—pass her the salt, made me want to say I was sorry for withholding affection.
Bernie
Dad—
Konig
Even the night I impregnated her with you I apologized. Which if you’re wondering how I know the date of your conception, it’s because that was the only time we’d made whoopee all year. Which is another thing I probably shouldn’t be sharing.
Bernie
Mom doesn’t—
Konig
You know my therapist says that if I shared less with the people I loved, my relationships with them would be healthier. Which is a paradox, when you think about it.
Bernie
She doesn’t blame you for what you did. She says you’re a serial monogamist who suffers from a Madonna-whore complex and the signs were in your films even before you met. She just ignored them because she loved you.
Konig
Well, tell her I’m sorry for that too.
I paused before saying my last line and reached out to squeeze Hornbeam’s shoulder, I don’t know why, I just did things like this sometimes during scenes—gestures that came out of nowhere.
Bernie
Maybe tell her that yourself.
Hornbeam tensed ever so slightly when I touched him, but then, with something between suspicion and surprise, he looked at my hand and then at me. And then he uncoiled, his expression melted into deep affection, into something between gratitude and pride, as if I were his son. We took a long beat, and then he broke character and, satisfied, sank back in his chair. The script supervisor, who’d been watching, stood clutching her binder to her chest and smiled. The cinematographer sat on the jib’s seat, chin in hand behind the camera, and approvingly nodded. And I had that feeling—one I’d experienced during casting readings before—that was practically telepathic. There had occurred between Hornbeam and me that conjuring of a connection, that making of a true moment—one in which the lie is like life—which is a performance’s own sort of magic. In short, I knew I had nailed it. I have come to trust this gut reaction, and while it never guaranteed I got a part, it was a thing between the other person and me that could neither be taken away nor forgotten. After a beat, Hornbeam said, “Excellent.” Then he stood and reached out to shake my hand once more and held it for an extra beat. “We’re about to shoot a scene if you’d like to stay and watch.”
Hornbeam’s grip was firmer this time. I took this pressure less as an invitation and more as a bid. I realized, I mean, that to say no would be to neglect a necessary demonstration of interest. I was also, I confess, strangely intrigued; I’d been moved by our exchange. I thought of all the onlookers at the barricades, and here I was, inside. It was a privilege to stay, after all. And what else did I have to do? I thanked him and went to stand by the windows facing Ninety-Second Street, next to one of the grips while he adjusted a diffusion panel. There was a bit of a delay waiting for Jill Clayburgh to take her place along with Shelley Duvall. The makeup lady appeared and touched up both women’s faces. Like nearly all film actors I’d ever met, there was something outsized about the features of each woman. Clayburgh’s mouth was disproportionately wide. While Duvall, thin as a needlefish, was as tall-necked as Alice after eating the caterpillar’s mushroom.
“Quiet on the set, please.”
“Quiet on the set.”
“Roll sound.”
“Speed.”
The AD held the clapboard in front of the lens. “Seventy-two Apple, take one.”
After the clack, Hornbeam said, “And…action.”
But there came a great commotion outside.
The audio engineer, irritated, shucked his earphones. “I’ve got pickup,” he said, and nodded in my direction. Hornbeam checked his watch, muttered, “Cut,” and, along with the entire crew, turned toward the windows. The grip I stood next to was already watching outside. “This,” he said to me, and pointed, “is just the best part of my day.”
Across the street, the Nightingale-Bamford School was letting out. Because it was so bright and balmy, all its students were congregating out front. More girls gathered in one place than I’d ever seen in my life, filling the block, their blue kilts and white blouses adding to this thronged effect: girls talking to girls, girls milling about, girls calling out to one another. A girl, here and there, standing alone. The noise they made was something louder than recess, a sound between laughter and slaughter, as if the school itself were shouting. I stared at them and, before I knew what I was doing, before I made the conscious decision to leave, I walked out of the room, down the stairs, out of the town house, and then onto the sidewalk. I crossed the street toward the school. Six stories tall, Nightingale’s brick facade blazed orange in the afternoon sun, while still more girls poured from the entrance’s bright blue doors to mass below the second floor’s giant bay windows. These faced out from what appeared to be a theater or an assembly hall, high-ceilinged as it was, and were raised to welcome these breezes, carrying on them the park’s scent of mud and grass and stiffening Nightingale’s two flags: America’s and the school’s blue pennant. The auditorium’s tall windows opened onto a wrought-iron balcony running their length. Girls sat along this too, tightly bunched, their backs pressed to the short railing, chatting shoulder to shoulder with their neighbors. Others called between the grate on which they sat to classmates on the street below. There was some strict rule against standing on it, I gathered, for they awkwardly peered over their shoulders or between its diamond-shaped pickets and ornamental fittings but would not lean out. I was in the midst of them now, surrounded at both eye level and above; I turned a full circle once and then gazed up at this terrace, marveling at being so swarmed, until the girl sitting on the balcony’s corner turned to look at me.
She had blond hair, thick and curly, that she’d pinned back almost brutally, and a very high forehead. Thin lips. A lightly blued darkness beneath her eyes. Through the thin pickets’ iron, she smiled at me. And a great silence fell, followed by a blurring of everything beyond her distinct figure: a deep focus that was closer to calm. She sat clasping her knees and resting her cheek upon them, and she held my gaze tranquilly, contemplatively, as a cat might, stretched in a store window, confident and undisturbed behind the glass. It was her vividness, coupled with this quieting of all background, that was so unique and novel I was afraid to move. Twice in my life, perhaps, would I subsequently recall being so captivated by the sight of someone, would time itself feel so arrested. But this was the first. Its effect was at once clarifying and total. Any feelings I’d had for Deb or Bridget or even Naomi paled and were then erased. And then she glanced at something behind me. This released me from whatever eddy in which I’d drifted, in which we’d been stuck; the whole hubbub suddenly resumed, and, shaken, I turned to see a trio of boys shambling up the block.
They were from another private school—Dwight or Collegiate, I could not say. Their shirttails had sprung from their belts; like mine, their collars were unbuttoned. They carried their blazers over their shoulders and shouldered their backpacks. Wading into this crowd, they seemed unfazed by Nightingale’s horde. They said hi to several girls who in turn said hi back, then made straight for the school’s entrance. At the blue door, they were greeted by a student with a clipboard, who checked off their names and ushered them inside. When I turned again to look toward the terrace, the girl had disappeared. I hurried toward the entrance after the trio, certain, somehow, that they’d lead me straight to her.
The greeter dragged a finger down her list, unable to find my name. She asked me to repeat it and then squinted at me as if I were lying. “Follow me,” she said, and led me inside. Girls were still racing past us and out of the school. Girls came running down the stairs we climbed, elementary-age girls in pairs and trios jumping the final steps. A couple of times the greeter looked over her shoulder at me, dubiously, as if I were playing some sort of joke on her. After passing through another set of double doors, we arrived at a stage’s wing. “Shhhh,” she said to me before I could speak. The three boys were waiting here, along with several others milling about. It reminded me of weigh-ins before a wrestling match. They were watching a boy onstage as he performed his monologue. When he finished, he cupped his hand to his ear and then spoke to someone I couldn’t see. He said thank you and exited the stage toward us. Before directing the next boy to take the stage, the greeter took his picture with a Polaroid camera and wrote his name on its white border. I waited, watched, listened. The breezes gusting through the windows mostly drowned out his voice when he began to speak, and then the boy after him. How much time passed? Everything seemed to take forever and happen in a blink. Until finally the third boy took the stage, leaving the greeter and me alone, and she leaned toward my ear. She was taller than I was, broad-faced and big-boned. She wore mascara and heavy makeup, like a mom.
“You’re Peter Proton,” she whispered. “My little brother was you for Halloween.”
The boy’s monologue had just concluded.
“He’s your biggest fan,” she said.
“I saw this girl,” I said to her.
“I’d ask for your autograph, but he wouldn’t believe me—”
“She was sitting on the terrace,” I said. “Blond hair.” And I pulled mine back so hard it made my eyes slant. “Like this.”
The greeter frowned and crossed her arms. “Oh,” she said. “I know exactly who you’re talking about.” She held out a clenched hand to inspect her fingernails. “I can introduce you if you’d like.”
“Really?”
“Maybe if I took your Polaroid and you signed it,” she said.
I nodded, and she aimed the camera at me and took the picture. She handed me a Sharpie and, after I signed the photo, said, “Follow me,” and led me to the edge of the wing and then stepped aside and pushed me onstage.
Beneath me, standing in the center aisle, was the teacher holding tryouts. She apologized for running so long. She had draped a sweater over her shoulders and bowed its arms across her chest. She introduced herself, and her name was obliterated from my mind, because the girl from the balcony was seated on the floor behind her, with her palms pressed to the floor and her legs outstretched, one crossed over the other. She had a friend with her, just as pretty, who had a shock of strawberry-blond hair. The friend scrunched her nose at my appearance, but the girl recognized me from earlier. She seemed pleased I’d found my way here, and her readiness to be entertained I took as both an invitation and a challenge.
“Do you have something prepared?” the teacher asked. “Or would you prefer to read from the play?”
“Yes,” I said.
The girls giggled. The teacher turned to shush them.
“I have something prepared,” I said.
“Whenever you’re ready then,” the woman said, and sat.
I began my Shakespeare monologue from Miss Sullens’s class last semester. I had needed to memorize only ten lines for the assignment, but for extra credit, and to impress Miss Sullens, I’d learned it all. I spoke the lines of both characters to set the scene, shuffling to the left for one and to the right for the other. “ ‘I dreamt a dream tonight,’ ” I said. “ ‘And so did I.’ ‘Well, what was yours?’ ‘That dreamers often lie.’ ‘In bed asleep, while they do dream things true.’ ‘O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
“ ‘She is the fairies’ midwife,’ ” I continued, and to indicate Queen Mab’s size, “no bigger than an agate-stone / On the forefinger of an alderman,” I stuck out mine and then closed one eye to consider its pad, which allowed me to stare at the girl’s face down my sight line and consider her for a moment unabashed. As I painted the picture of Mab’s carriage, “drawn with a team of little atomies,” I made my hand gallop from the top of my head and then “over men’s noses as they lie asleep.” I closed my eyes and snored; my snoring startled me awake. I described Mab’s wondrous vehicle, its “waggon-spokes made of long spinners’ legs, / The cover of the wings of grasshoppers, / Her traces of the smallest spider’s web, / The collars of the moonshine’s watery beams.” And while I lashed this team with my cricket’s bone whip, which I pinched as if it were a toothpick, I turned to Mab’s wagoner, “a small grey-coated gnat,” who was suddenly bounced from the car. I watched him buzz about my head and land on my cheek. And bitten there, I slapped myself, so hard that the crack, which knocked me sideways, caused my audience to cover their mouths and laugh while I regained my balance. “ ‘Her chariot,’ ” I continued, “ ‘is an empty hazel-nut,’ ” and I held out its shell in my open palm toward the girl, so that she might look at it more closely. “ ‘And in this state she gallops night by night / Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love.’ ”
Applause followed. The teacher stood and clapped vigorously. As with my Hornbeam audition, I knew I’d killed it. She mentioned the character I’d be playing, which, like her name, was instantly erased from my memory. She also handed me the rehearsal schedule, said we’d be starting next week, and asked if I had any conflicts. “No conflicts,” I said, distracted, trying to hurry things along, since the girl and her friend had gotten up and left the auditorium. The teacher confirmed the school I attended, and then took my phone number. I thanked her and jumped off the stage, straight into the auditorium, and then bashed through the doors. I looked in both directions and ran through the now deserted hallways and then down the stairs and out of the building.
I spotted the girls on Fifth Avenue, walking uptown. Once I’d caught up, I kept a good half block between us. I was in a state of high alert. It was unclear what I should do next, although the girl occasionally turned around to walk backward, just a couple of steps, thumbs tucked beneath her pack’s straps, to confirm that I was still there and, with a slight nod, indicated I follow, until her friend grabbed her elbow and turned her around. They stopped at the Ninety-Seventh Street corner and waited for the crosstown bus. I joined them but remained at the edge of the crowd of passengers gathered there. I checked my watch. How had it gotten so late? I occasionally looked in the girl’s direction, and each time I did it seemed she’d just glanced in mine. Her friend cleared the heaped mass of hair from her eyes and glared at me. Her disgust blew my chin east, like a weathervane. But here was the bus, finally, which stopped and growled, its engine giving off a hot diesel stink, its doors’ pistons popping and hissing when they opened. The girl kissed her friend goodbye; her friend frowned at me as I boarded. I resisted the temptation to wave to her, ta-ta. The tokens, as the driver pressed the plunger, jangled like maracas filled with pirates’ gold. The doors folded closed and the light changed, we entered the Central Park transverse, and soon we were at speed.
The bus was crowded, but somehow the girl had managed to secure a seat in the rear corner. I swung gently back and forth on the straps, catching glimpses of her as we raced crosstown: she was watching out the window, which she’d slid open; she was staring directly at me; she’d closed her eyes and was smelling the early-evening air. The setting sun’s light and the trees’ lengthened shadows streaked across her face. The park’s high stone walls ripped by. We stopped at Central Park West, then at Columbus. She did not get off at Amsterdam but stood as we approached Broadway and pulled the bell’s wire. The bus creaked to a stop, and she followed the passengers off, past me, and made her way down the rear exit’s steps. Before the doors closed, I pushed them open and followed her again. She walked halfway up the block; I walked behind her half as slow. Then she turned around, waiting until I stood before her. She adjusted her book bag on her shoulder before she spoke.
“That whole ride you could’ve talked to me,” she said.
I realized I was smiling.
“Do you have a name?”
When I told her, she said, “I’m Amanda West.”
“Amanda West,” I repeated back to her.
“You’re not much of a conversationalist,” she finally said. As if to confirm her observation, I offered no reply. “I liked your performance,” she said. She had gray eyes—a color I’d never seen before. “I couldn’t have done that,” she continued. “Get up onstage and just…be someone else.” I decided not to disagree. “Okay,” she said, “since the cat’s got your tongue…” Then she reached out, took my wrist, and turned my hand palm up. From her jacket pocket, she produced a ballpoint pen and bit off the sea-blue cap. Its end, I noticed, had been chewed off. She wrote her phone number on my skin and, when she finished, closed my fingers over the digits.
“When you get up the nerve to speak, why don’t you give me a call?”
It was the diorama hour, when evening is just beginning to descend and everything is brilliant and discrete. When the city seems scrimshawed on a lit bulb. The lights in stores have just begun to shine through their windows, their interiors part of the exterior. The spring air, now that the sun had fallen behind New Jersey’s towers, had a touch of coastal chilliness. Beneath us, the 1 Train rumbled into the station and groaned to a stop. Amanda looked over my shoulder and then let go of my hand. From the south, just cresting the hill, a bus appeared. Its roof lights were as bright as ladybugs; its corrugated siding seemed made from a thimble’s steel. In its emerald interior, a shade as vibrant as a horsefly’s eye, the passengers swayed. And in that cicada quiet, since the city is always in a state of ambient noise, Amanda waved goodbye and then boarded. The doors closed, and I watched her ease toward the back, the vehicle gargling as it departed, which conferred the illusion of her standing still before me, for just a moment longer, before being ripped from my sight.
Headed above Ninety-Sixth Street.
That borderland.
Where no one else I knew lived.
I got the part in the Hornbeam film.
I was still in a daze when my parents greeted me at the apartment with the news. They met me at the door as if they’d thrown me a surprise birthday party. I had committed Amanda’s number to memory on my walk home; I’d walked the entire distance in a state that felt much bigger than happiness. Borne aloft and weighed down, the way swimming underwater can feel like flying. Dad said, “I’m proud of you, boychik,” and cupped my cheek in one palm and kissed the other. Mom said, “Way to go, kiddo!” and when she hugged me, she slapped my back several times. Oren, standing behind them, tapped his index finger to his temple as if to congratulate me for taking his advice. All of them mistook my bemused expression for a sense of accomplishment, although I cannot say I was displeased.
“They’re messengering over the script,” Dad said. “Brent’s coming by in a few minutes with your contract.”
Oren said, “Do you want me to help you with your lines?”
To everyone, Dad said, “My son, landing a starring role, just like his father.”
Mom said, “I’ll call your teachers Monday and get your homework together for the rest of the week.”
Dad said, “Maybe drink some coffee tonight and read the script through.”
When the fact that we were all crowded in the foyer finally dawned on us, Mom said, “Let’s eat dinner and properly celebrate.”
The script arrived later that evening. One of the gofers brought it over along with my call sheet. My shoot lasted just over two weeks and began on Monday. Sprinkled throughout were several days when I’d be free to attend school. The script had a blue cover, its pages held fast with gold binder clips. In embossed letters were the movie’s title, Take Two, and below that, Written by Alan Hornbeam.
“I’m gonna take a bath,” I said. I deposited the script on my bed, then went to the bathroom and locked the door. I undressed, lit two of Mom’s candles, and turned off the overhead light. I made the water as hot as I could handle. I gingerly sank into the tub while it filled and let my body acclimate. It was the first time I ever recalled being grateful for acting. Oren was right. It was my all-access pass across police lines. It was my secret password through those blue doors. It had introduced me to Amanda. In the tub, I pinched my nose and then slowly submerged my head. I did this a few times, trying to recall the entire experience of meeting Amanda. Her delight when I took the stage, which was partly surprise, I was certain, that I’d found my way to her audience. How I could feel my pulse’s small fillips when she took my wrist in her hand. And that moment, perhaps above all, on Broadway, just before her northbound bus appeared, when the place on my palm where she’d written on it was still wet and to be gently clasped, as if I held a guppy. These images bobbed before me and then disappeared, like the Hudson’s wavelets. I bobbed along with them. I blew a long stream of bubbles until I’d emptied my lungs; I believed that if I drowned now, I’d die happy. I’d absorbed most of the water’s heat, so I got out of the tub and turned on the light. In the mirror’s reflection I saw my skin was bright pink.
Mom had written my call schedule on the inside cover of the script and marked each of my scenes with their corresponding shoot date on Post-it notes. I filmed two this upcoming Monday, both with Hornbeam. Only in the first did I have any lines (“She’s my math tutor” and “I don’t know. Fifteen? Why?”). There, memorized. I lay on my bunk with my fingers laced behind my head. The only sound in our room was the hiss from Oren’s headphones and the distant murmur of the television coming from my parents’ room. At some point Oren turned off the light and said, “Good night.” At some point I climbed down from my bed to look at him. He lay facing the wall and I said his name.
“What?” he replied.
“I met a girl,” I said.
“When?” he asked.
“Today,” I answered.
He asked, “Can I retake the test tomorrow?”
I sighed and then wandered into my parents’ room. In the television’s blue light, which was lambent and flickered, I stared at them sleeping. Dad, facing me, had a fist bunched at his temple; Mom, lying on her back, had her forearm draped over her eyes. They both slept with their mouths open. They reminded me of the plaster casts of the victims of Pompeii, held fast in the moment just as they’d cried out. I turned the TV’s knob, and the screen dissolved from Johnny Carson wearing his Carnac the Magnificent costume into a single dot.
I put on my sneakers and left the apartment. At the elevator bank I pressed Up. While I waited, the three shafts howled with the drafts. The car arrived. I stepped on and pressed thirty. The smell of curry, as I rose past eight, coming from the Sinais’ apartment. Arrived, I entered the stairwell and walked up the single flight. At its landing the steel door had a metal stile that read Push to Exit—Alarm Will Sound, but the door was already ajar. I shouldered it open and walked onto the roof’s great yawning space. Against the black sky, the nightscape glowed all around me; like a crossword, the buildings’ faces were gridded with diagonals of lights and shaded squares. The Empire State Building’s antenna shined white in the distance. High-altitude gusts, frosty as an opened freezer, mingled with the warmer updrafts. The roof offered a compass-rose view of the city: south toward the harbor, east toward Lincoln Center, north toward the George Washington Bridge, and, from its Jersey-facing side, where I took a seat on the ledge, the Hudson, black as tar. The occasional car horn rose up to sound near my ear. There’d been an accident on the West Side Highway; the north- and southbound lanes slowed. The traffic’s red-and-white counterflow lengthened and contracted like an earthworm. Was it safe to say that on the entire island of Manhattan I was the only person seated this high outside? What I was certain of was that for the first time in my life, I wanted to get to know someone. Just the fact that I knew nothing about Amanda seemed a terrible deficit—one that I had to remedy as soon as possible. That I might address this lack organized my horizon, oriented me in every direction, like this view, and comforted me. Because I could now name this feeling I’d been suffering, one that had dogged me of late, during our vacation and afterward, but that I recognized from all the way back to the fire. It had been so omnipresent it was more like an atmosphere—one that, having been made aware of it, I could neither unsee nor unfeel, and its name was loneliness.