CHAPTER SIX

RICK

Kennedy and La Guardia were socked in by fog, so my flight from Boston—a six-engine prop job—was rerouted to Teterboro, a small airport in northeastern New Jersey. We’d been stacked up over Newark for what seemed forever, only to be told, finally, there were no runways available; it was an hour from Boston to New York, another half hour wasted circling Newark, and all the while I sat there with one hand balled into a fist, the other tapping impatiently on the arm of my seat, my anger at the delay steadily reaching flash point. At last, unable to contain it any longer, I got up, stalking down the length of the narrow cabin to confront a stewardess as harried as I was. “Do you have any idea at all,” I said, in typically understated tones, “just when the hell this thing is going to land?” For a moment she looked as though she might reply in kind, but, keeping herself in check much better than I, said flatly, “We’re doing the best we can, sir. A few more minutes. If you’d return to your seat—”

“You said ‘a few more minutes’ half a fucking hour ago,” I snapped. This time she glared at me as though she’d be delighted to introduce me to the airport runway, preferably from a height of ten thousand feet at an airspeed of a hundred kilometers per second.

“Until you get in your seat,” she said, voice sharp as broken glass, “we can’t land. And since I don’t enjoy being up here with you any more than you do with me, I suggest, sir, that you return to your seat.”

I almost escalated the argument—then, thinking better of it, made an ambiguous grunt instead and stalked back up the aisle. As I did, I passed two teenage boys traveling together; returning to my seat, I could hear one of them—softly but clearly, audible even over the drone of the engines—declare: “What an asshole.”

A short laugh, then the other, concurring: “Fuckhead.”

I froze in my seat. My first instinct was to spin round, confront them, paste the little bastards in the face—

And then, quickly ashamed at the pointless violence that sprang so readily to mind, my second instinct was to agree with them.

We banked to descend on the airport, and I marveled at how once again I’d taken a mild inconvenience, a small annoyance, and transformed it into some kind of Gōtterdämmerung. An hour’s delay. So what? Was that really what I was so pissed off about?

No; not really. No more than Paige’s failing to switch off the TV had been. The anger was already there, like a phantom limb. An anger I’d lived with for so long that I took it with me everywhere I went, and had to create things to be angry about, to justify its existence. The life, the frustrations that had created all that rage and hostility were literally a world away; yet here I was, dutifully bringing it with me into my new life.

You fuckhead.

No. I wasn’t going to do it. If there was ever a time to turn my back on that anger, to amputate that phantom limb, it was now. If I brought it with me, it would despoil this new life as surely as it had ruined my old one. I closed my eyes, trying to imagine the anger as a physical thing being left behind as we descended—a bitter cloud, dissipating in the skies above Teterboro. The last violent remnant of Rick Cochrane, failed father, unhappy husband. And the man who would emerge from the plane into the gray March light would not be Rick, but Richard—maybe not a perfect man, but a success, at least, at what he chose to do—what he’d had the courage to choose. Or so I hoped.

The airline provided a shuttle bus for those of us heading into Manhattan, another for points north or south; heading up Route 46, passing through Little Ferry, Ridgefield Park, Palisades Park, I didn’t pay any of it close attention, too intent on what lay ahead of me, until we exited the parkway at Fort Lee. The shuttle swung up an overpass, revealing what we couldn’t see from the highway below: the steel tower of the George Washington Bridge, its high arch looming huge and somehow magical, directly ahead—like a gateway to a city of giants.

The only city I’d ever spent much time in was Boston, but Boston is more a horizontal city than a vertical one. New York I’d visited before, but I’d forgotten the sheer immensity of it all—everything squared, cubed, magnified to sizes that went beyond mere necessity—buildings so high they seemed unreal, like stone leviathans out of Celtic legend. In New Hampshire I’d weathered enough hurricanes to be skeptical of the solidity of anything above five stories; these things were thirty, forty, fifty stories high. And yet I found something both frightening and faintly erotic about being surrounded on all sides by them; something exciting in the very danger I feared, as though these massive reminders of human mortality made you—made me—all the hungrier for life. Even more so when the bus let us off at the Sheraton Center on Seventh Avenue and I stood there trying not to look like a tourist, trying to look like I belonged, despite my growing delight and excitement.

The street, the sidewalks, everything was in motion: pedestrians crossing against the light, cabs cutting across three lanes of traffic to gain some brief advantage, buses exhaling clouds of exhaust as they braked to a stop. The sounds were as big, as brassy, as the environment: car horns blaring every few seconds; the gunning of an engine as one car, then another, ran a red light; a constant background noise of construction work, jackhammers and cement mixers and a deep, low whistle that seemed to sound every other minute. God damn, but it was wonderful. After the maddening quiet of Appleton, the predictability of each sedate, if not serene, day, this was a noisy, bustling heaven; a welcome chaos. The jackhammer, the rumble of cars as they passed, all the low bass noises seemed to reverberate in my stomach, in my groin; I felt something coming alive there as well, and as I made my way through the crowd of pedestrians pushing down the street I felt a thrill at every jostle, every passing contact with someone, male or female. I looked up at the leviathans on either side and I felt again that enticing fear, that taste of mortality that only seemed to whet my appetite for life. After thirty-five years of order and monotony, I was ready for some sweet chaos, some beguiling anarchy.

I flagged a cab, stole a glance at the address on Richard’s driver’s license, and had the cabbie take Broadway to the Upper West Side, thrilling silently as we passed the Palace, the Winter Garden, the Marquis. They were more now than just names glimpsed in a stage review; they had faces, I could close my eyes and I could see their marquees, their facades, the customers in line for matinee tickets. This world was slowly becoming real to me.

The cabbie turned left at 72nd Street, then right onto Riverside Drive. On our left, in Riverside Park, runners jogged up and down the esplanade fronting the Hudson; mothers pushed toddlers in strollers; a middle-aged man waited as his very tiny dog went about its business beside an indifferent oak. On our right, twenty-story brownstones alternated with old limestone mansions-turned-townhouses; to my surprise, the cabbie pulled up in front of one of the fanciest of the townhouse buildings and stopped. “Here you go,” he said. A little dazed, I gave him a ten for a seven-dollar fare—no doubt marking myself as either a tourist or a philanthropist—and got out, a bit wide-eyed, taking in the building. I walked through the revolving doors—flat black panels with brass trim, flanked by elegant green marble—into a posh lobby: gray tiled floor, leather tufted couch along one wall, an expensive etching above the couch, and an elderly doorman standing beside a bank of intercom lights. He looked up, saw me, and smiled. “Mr. Cochrane,” he said. Then, in a softer, more reserved tone: “My sympathies for your mother. Was she very old?”

My mother. Jesus, I’d almost forgotten. She was … dead … in this world; just as Richard had said. I hoped the doorman took my momentary confusion for bereavement. “Sixty … sixty-seven,” I replied, feeling strange as I said it.

“Ah. Still young, then.” At least compared to the doorman, who looked to be pushing seventy himself. He held up a hand, went to a desk near the intercoms, unlocked a drawer, and handed me a sheaf of mail. “I’ll tell the letter carrier you’re back.” I thanked him, nodded when he again offered his sympathies, and as quickly as I could sought the sanctuary of the elevator. Riding up in the car—the walls a soft, tasteful velvet, jet black and lush burgundy—I took a deep breath. Christ, this felt weird. My mother was dead; but she wasn’t really, not my mother. Mine was healthy and safe—a world away, but safe. Still, I’d never see her again, would I? So in a way, she was gone, but not in any way the doorman would ever suspect. Now I did feel a pang of bereavement, of loss, at the thought; but loss for me, not for her—she would never miss me, never even know I had left, because Richard was there in my stead. How strange—to be gone, and not even to be missed by those you loved … I’d never thought of that, never imagined the hurt it could bring.

I got out of the elevator, pushing the ache to the back of my mind as I headed toward Richard’s apartment: 1409. I walked uncertainly down the hall, scanning the raised brass numbers on each door until I finally found the right one. I unlocked it, swung open the door.

I stood in the doorway, a bit taken aback by the spaciousness and style of the place; part of me, I think, had still hoped, irrationally, that Richard had not been as successful as he’d claimed. No such luck. It was gorgeous. No foyer or vestibule; I entered through the dining room—small but not cramped, at the center a glass-topped dining table, a chrome base, and four chairs with plush chocolate-brown cushions—into a step-down living room that sprawled before a breathtaking view of the Hudson River. Beige carpeting, the color of pale sand, was complemented by contemporary furniture in muted pastels: an off-white sectional couch (you could tell he had no children), a crescent open to the floor-to-ceiling windows; comfortable pale blue chairs; equidistant from both, an oval chrome-and-glass coffee table. Dazed, I wandered into the kitchen: small but fully decorated in blond pine, equipped with a stainless steel refrigerator, a cooking island in the middle, and not one but two microwaves.

And that was only the downstairs. On the second level was a library, its bookshelves crammed with novels, nonfiction, and, of course, theatrical books of all kinds. Across the hall, the single bedroom came furnished with another drop-dead view of the Hudson, a blue velour bedspread covering a king-size mattress, and a nightstand and dresser, both the same blond pine as in the kitchen.

Most impressive of all for an actor’s home, there were no more than a few framed show posters and other career memorabilia—most of them tucked away in the library or in the upstairs hallway. I looked closely at one of them: STARRING RICHARD COCHRANE, ABEL GANLEY, JOANNE MCCLOUD. I kept staring at it; it felt oddly disconcerting, like seeing your name on a book you never wrote.

I went back to the living room, gazed out at the view, then back at the apartment. I should have been delighted that this spacious, elegant home was now mine—but I wasn’t. Because it wasn’t mine, not really; I might’ve been in possession of it at the moment, but the spirit, the soul, the invisible center of this home, was Richard’s. It was Richard, not me, whose hard work and talent had bought it; Richard who had gone out there every day, making the salary to be able to wake up each morning and take in this view. No, before I could call this place mine, I would have to earn it. Until I did, I would always feel like a boarder here—a tenant, not an owner.

On the kitchen counter an answering machine’s red message light blinked on and off, so many times I could barely count the number of messages stored. Cautiously I slid a switch from “ANSWER” to “MESSAGES.”

A woman’s voice, fluty and musical in pitch: “Richard, it’s Donna. Just wanted to check in, see if you’re back, see how you’re feeling. I’m so sorry about your mother. Give me a call when you get in. Take care of yourself, all right?”

A man’s voice, a bit gravelly, subdued: “Jesus, man, I just heard about your Mom. Hope you’re okay up there. If you’re checking in with your machine, you need to talk, give me a call, whenever. I’ll be at the Long Island number this weekend if you call then: 516-901-7777.”

Another man, higher-pitched, a fast New York rhythm and accent: “Richard? Gary. Libby just told me about your Mom. Damn. It’s been a lousy couple years for you, hasn’t it? First your Dad, now this. Well, listen, I’ve been there myself, so if there’s anything I can do, just let me know, okay?”

Another woman, pleasant voice, a bit hesitant: “Richard, it’s Libby. I hope you’re all right … I mean, I remember when your Dad died, what you went through then, and this time you have to do it alone, and…” A pause. “I just wanted you to know someone is thinking about you. Give me a call when you get back.”

There were at least half a dozen more calls, all similar; I saved the messages, moved by their sincerity and concern, impressed by the quality and devotion of Richard’s friends. Now fear began to gnaw at me; fear that somehow, these close, loving friends would spot me for a ringer on first glance—that they’d see through me instantly, demand to know where their friend was, what I had done with him. Hell, for that matter, how would I even know them if I ran into them on the street? What if I passed one of them without knowing, without acknowledging him or her? What if they confronted me, demanding, “Tell me my name, you bastard, I dare you, tell me”?

Even as I sank bleakly into a chair, a part of me was saying: Hold on, we’re getting way too melodramatic here; let’s calm down, okay? No one was going to stop me on the street, point a long finger at me and howl aloud like Donald Sutherland at the end of the first remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

I got up, poured myself a glass of wine from the built-in wine racks in the dining room—1978 Nuits St. Georges; shame to waste such a good vintage on mere panic, but what the hell—and after a few swallows, considered my course of action as calmly, as deliberately as I could manage. An idea forming, I searched the kitchen until I found Richard’s address book, then went back to the phone machine, playing back the messages one by one. Donna. I scanned the names and addresses, found only one Donna: Donna Gillespie, 42 Bank St., 978-3267. I played back the message until I knew the tone, the pitch, the rhythm of her speech well enough to recognize it should I hear it on the street or in the event she called again, then went on to the next. This one presented a different problem: no name, just a number. So I worked at it backward, going through the address book until I found the number (one of two: one Manhattan, one Long Island), and immediately to the left of it: Ray Perelli, 83 CPW. I did one or the other with each of the remaining messages, getting the name first, then studying the voice.

There was no last name, though, after the only “Libby” in the book; no address, either, as though both were so familiar he hardly needed a reminder. Of course. That Libby. The one he’d just broken up with. I paid especially close attention to her voice, but as I did I grew sweaty and nervous, my confidence waning again: what if she were to call now, while I was sitting here? What if any of them did? Once word got out that I was back in town, I’d be deluged with calls, maybe even visitors, before I was ready. Suddenly panicky, I set the machine to “ANSWER”; best to let it intercept any calls that might come in while I was still feeling my way through all this—I’d meet them all eventually, but only when I felt secure enough.

I needed time to perfect my impersonation of Richard, time to memorize names, numbers, voices. So that day I settled in to my new life, screening all calls, not returning any, letting them all believe I—Richard—was still in New Hampshire. I didn’t dare even leave the apartment to go shopping; too much chance someone “I” knew might spot me on the street. I ordered my groceries from the D’Agostino’s market a few blocks away and deli from Fine & Schapiro’s on 72nd Street. I locked myself up with Richard’s voluminous acting journals, doing nothing but read and reread them for at least three days—a dozen or more leatherbound, five-by-eight diaries, each one carefully labeled, two or three titles to a volume: American Buffalo/House of Blue Leaves; Hogan’s Goat/All Summer Long/Two Gentlemen of Verona. An eerie feeling, seeing things in your own handwriting that you know you never wrote, reading of events and emotions you’d never experienced; hearing the familiar cadence in the words and thinking, My God, that’s just how I would’ve said that … feeling almost as though you had. It wasn’t exactly déjà vu, I had no memory of having done any of the things he had; it was just the way he talked about them—I couldn’t help but hear my own voice as I read, and after a while I could almost believe I had played Homer Bolton in Morning’s at Seven or Maurice Duclos in Fallen Angels.

But more than just seeing how Richard approached a part—his thought processes, the acting tips which I grudgingly admitted might be helpful—the journals were invaluable because so many of the friends he’d made over the years, friends whose voices even now I listened to silently as the answering machine picked up, he had met through his work. And so I discovered how he’d met Ray, a director, when the latter had directed him in House of Blue Leaves at the Roundabout Stage; how Donna had played Juliet to his Romeo at the Yale Rep; how John and Rhoda and Joanne and he had played repertory together in SoHo, alternating The Barber of Seville with Uncle Vanya, certainly an exhausting double bill. I felt awkward, like a voyeur, as I read about Richard and Joanne’s romance, their first night spent together, how their mutual attraction blossomed over the course of a run into love and a live-in relationship. I thought of Debra and felt a pang of longing and guilt—but the longing, I knew, was for a wife and a life that were years past, and I forced myself to retreat even deeper into the journals.

And along with them, I devoured much of Richard’s library as well: books on acting technique, working guides to the profession, theatrical biographies … most of them read long, long ago in Richard’s own development as an actor, but for a relative newcomer like me, invaluable in both advice and inspiration. It was thirteen years since I’d been on the boards, and then only at a college and local-theater level. I might be able to pass without embarrassment on a stage, but what if I got an offer to do a television show? I didn’t even know how to hit my marks—what the hell would I do? Yet despite this, the more I read, the more impatient I got to get out there and do it—to start living the life I’d come here to live.

After a week’s seclusion the messages were piling up and one caller had even tried calling the Colony Inn back in Appleton only to be told I’d checked out. Regardless of my self-confidence, I was going to have to confront my fears sooner or later … so, screwing up my nerve, I dialed Donna’s number, half hoping no one would pick up. But someone did, and I recognized the fluty, high-pitched voice at once. “Hello?”

I took a breath and plunged in. “Donna? Richard.”

“Richard! You’re back?”

My heart was pounding; my palms sweaty. “Yeah, I just got in.”

“Are you all right?”

“Well as I can be,” I said, “under the circumstances.”

“Were your aunt and uncle there, to help?”

I hesitated a split second—she must have meant Edgar and Charlotte, but had they met Richard in Appleton? Then I realized it didn’t really matter; Ed and Charl were hardly likely to be in direct communication with Donna. “Yeah, they were terrific. I could’ve gotten through it on my own,” I went on, improvising, “but their being there helped a lot.”

Liar. Faking bereavement, faking exhaustion, fake fake bloody fake. The harassing voice inside me threatened to crack my composure; hastily I changed the subject. “So how are you doing?” I said, hoping it wasn’t too abrupt, but she took it, I guess, as someone not wishing to dwell on a grim experience and said, “Oh, well, the usual. I tried out for that new musical comedy, the one Kristen’s in? They liked my delivery, hated my voice. A week before I’d been up for another musical; they liked my voice, hated my delivery. Tomorrow I’m planning on sniping at passersby from the Chrysler Building.”

I laughed, not too heartily, I hoped; I had the feeling Richard would have thought of something witty to say, something to defuse her frustration without dismissing it, but nothing came to mind and the pause stretched out awkwardly. “Well,” Donna finally said, “I’ll let you go. You going to be okay?”

“Sure.”

“Your Mom was a neat lady, you know.”

And suddenly there were tears, real tears, in my eyes, as the realization that I would never see her again hit fully home for the first time. Her, and Debra, and Paige, and Jeffrey, and …

“I know,” I said, my voice trembling with emotion. “Thanks. I’ll … I’ll talk to you later, okay, Donna?”

“Take care of yourself, Richard.”

I hung up … and for the first time since that night in the garage, I cried. I tried to remind myself of the violence and desperation of that night, but it seemed so far away now, its imperatives so remote. I forced myself to conjure again that terrible vision of Debra, bruised and hurt, or myself, lifeless inside the Nissan, the garage clouded with asphyxiating fumes. I knew I’d made the right choice, for them and for me; but that didn’t stop me from grieving. After a while I stopped and went to the window, looking out at the sun setting over the Hudson; and felt, strangely, a bit more deserving of this view and this home. I may not have earned it by right of work, but I realized then that it had, in fact, been purchased at some cost to me: some significant cost. As much as I wanted this new life of mine, it had not come cheap.

*   *   *

The other calls went without major incident, save for a few awkward pauses and confusions on my part; at one point Gary mentioned a play which I mistakenly thought he was trying out for, when in fact it was something he’d done two years ago. “Shit, Gary, I think I’m getting Alzheimer’s,” I told him. “No,” he said, more concerned than suspicious, “you’ve just had a lot on your mind lately.” Later, talking with another actor friend, Susan, I could tell from context that she’d been in a production of Children of a Lesser God, but mistakenly assumed she’d played Sarah instead of Edna; I used the same excuse, and got the same sympathetic reply.

Clearly, though, I couldn’t go on like this forever, so I trooped over to the Drama Book Shop, picked up a set of Theatre World volumes from the last ten years, laboriously went through each volume’s index and drew up a master list of the plays every one of Richard’s friends had appeared in—Broadway, off-Broadway, off-off-Broadway, road companies, resident theater groups ranging from the Iowa Theater Lab to the Mark Taper Forum in L.A. And since every listing came replete with character names, I made copious notes of the various parts each had played, then set about memorizing the whole shebang—good practice, in any event, for the memorization I’d have to do in the future. I was incredibly rusty at first, but not as bad as I’d feared; juggling dozens of active insurance claims in my head turned out to have been pretty good prep.

Cautiously, I began arranging casual lunch dates with Richard’s friends and acquaintances; the first with Gary, then Donna, then Tom and Craig and Ray. I was terrified the first time, had to go to the bathroom three times during the one hour we spent together, but I did it, with less effort than I’d suspected. Part of it was that every time I found the conversation drifting toward uncharted seas, I managed to steer it back to Gary’s (or Donna’s or Ray’s or Leslie’s) current or recent work. There’s that old joke about actors loving to talk about themselves: “But enough about me; let’s talk about me.” But if it’s true of actors, it’s true of writers, directors, choreographers, musicians, all creative people in some degree. Work isn’t just work to them—the kind of numbing tedium that the majority of Americans call their jobs; the kind I used to call a job—it’s what they love to do, what they can’t stop doing. Ask anyone in show business what they’re up to, I discovered, and you’ll get twenty minutes of bitching, moaning, rhapsodizing, recriminations, wishful thinking, passionate debate, worldly cynicism and starry-eyed optimism, the latter two often within the space of the same sentence. I sat there listening raptly most of the time, feeling both blissfully happy that I was among people with the same passions as I and bitterly envious at the experiences—even the bad ones—that I had yet to enjoy.

So the shop talk helped divert questions or conversation away from subjects I’d rather not have gotten into. But there was something else that made the lunches and the dinners and the after-show drinks go so smoothly; something else that allowed my impersonation to go unnoticed. Richard’s friends were good friends—they loved him, cared about him, enjoyed his company, appreciated his friendship. But they weren’t with him twenty-four hours a day as Debra and Paige and I were together; they didn’t know what he ate for breakfast, probably never noticed whether he was left-handed or right, weren’t alarmed when I ordered a Coke instead of a Pepsi, or if I took my scotch neat instead of on the rocks. And if by chance I did do something out of character for Richard—like order my steak medium-rare, where he had preferred them, say, well-done—they didn’t seem worried or suspicious or baffled, as Debra surely would have; they probably just assumed my tastes had changed, and let it go at that. Even Joanne, Richard’s girlfriend of years before, must’ve thought much the same thing; it had been a long time since they’d lived together.

It made things easier for me, but there was something sad about it, too; that a man could have such good, close friends, and be so little known to them, as well—no one who knew or cared about the pet peeves, the odd habits, all the strange and endearing things you learn about someone you see, day in and day out, for years. Part of me missed it; part of me was glad to see it gone.

I still, however, found myself avoiding getting together with Libby; the liaison was too recent, too much chance of me tripping up. I returned her call, acted friendly but a bit remote, and when she suggested getting together I put her off, claiming exhaustion. She may not have believed me, but probably saw my reluctance as plain old emotional distance, the awkward uncertainty between ex-lovers that usually followed a breakup.

But if talking with Libby filled me with apprehension, another call was closer to mortal terror. It was my third or fourth day of seeing people, I’d just come back from lunch with Ray; I felt confident, relieved, upbeat. The phone rang, I answered, and I heard the three words I most dreaded hearing when picking up:

“Hi, it’s me.”

Oh, shit. Me? Me who? What did I say? Should I fake it, pretend to recognize the voice, hope to God he dropped some clue, some context I could puzzle out?

“Hello? Richard? Are you there?”

The long silence I’d let go by gave me a sudden burst of inspiration. I tapped on the mouthpiece and began repeating: “Hello? Hello, is anyone there? Who is it?”

“Richard, it’s Joel, can you hear me?”

Son of a bitch—it worked. (Thereafter I always kept a piece of cellophane next to the phone, crinkling it for some instant static in similar emergencies.)

“Joel … hi. Bad connection.”

“Want to call me back?”

“No, it’s getting better. What’s up?” Joel was Richard’s agent; that much I’d gleaned from the address book. He sounded young—thirty-five, thirty-six?—and energetic. “How are you? How’d things go in New Hampshire?”

I gave him my by-now-standard line, well as can be expected, etc. etc.

“Did you get the flowers the agency sent?”

“Yes,” I lied. “Thank you. They were lovely.”

“Well, you may not be up for talking shop—”

“No, no,” I said innocently, “that’s okay. Takes my mind off things, you know?”

“Sure,” he said. “Well, okay, we got a call for you. Voice-over, spokes, thirty-second spot. Can you audition tomorrow?”

I nearly fell through the floor.

“Spokes?” It was out before I could help myself.

“Yeah, they saw the pitch you did for Longines and think you might be right for this. You up for it?”

I almost begged off, but some wiser, bolder part of me urged me on, told me I had to get my feet wet eventually. I found myself nodding and saying, “I … I guess so. Tomorrow?”

“Three o’clock, Producers Sound Studio. Here, I’ll put Ronni on to give you the address.”

I stared at the paper on which I’d scribbled the address for several minutes before my breathing became regular again. Jesus—I hadn’t been to an audition in thirteen years. And I’d never been to a commercial audition. What the hell was I supposed to do? What was I supposed not to do? How the hell was I going to make it through this thing without looking like a total amateur?

I looked again through Richard’s library; one of the working guides to the profession had a brief, two-page overview of commercials, both performance and voice-overs, but nothing too helpful. So it was down to the Drama Book Shop again, where it turned out there was more than enough research—including an entire book devoted to the subject of voice-overs, titled Your Money Where Your Mouth Is. I was on my way to the cash register when someone stopped me: “Richard? Hi! How are you? What’ve you been up to?”

The man—fifty, bespectacled, thin—might as well have been asking me what the intrinsic characteristics of a neutrino were, for all that I could reply. I was terrified: terrified because I didn’t know him, didn’t recognize the voice, and terrified that he’d see me with this primer on commercials that Richard would clearly be beyond. I turned the book over in my hand, the cover against my thigh, and then tried to do a reasonable impersonation of happy recognition, outstretching my hand as I smiled. “Well, hi, how are you?”

“Fine,” the man said. “I had a new reading at the Common Ground. Went very well. Good group, though not as good as yours.”

Reading: okay, he was a playwright. Group: cast? And I—Richard—had been in a previous reading. “What’s it about?” I asked, following my rule of thumb: when in doubt, ask about their work. He talked for a few minutes about the play—sounded pretty interesting, actually—then asked me what I was doing. I shrugged. “Nothing much. I’ve been out of town. I’ve got a commercial audition tomorrow, that’s about it.”

“Well, it was good seeing you. Give my best to—you still with Joanne?”

I shook my head. This part I knew. “Not for a while.” We shook hands again, and within minutes I was out of there, down the narrow staircase to the unmarked entrance on Seventh Avenue, taking in deep breaths of the crisp April air. Before I had time to consider how many more times I would have to play that same scene, before I could contemplate how I was going to find out who that man upstairs was, I propelled myself away from the bookstore, flagged a cab, and as we rattled uptown through late afternoon gridlock I was already scanning my book, hungrily devouring anything and everything that might help me make it through tomorrow’s session.

*   *   *

I felt sick to my stomach all morning, the nausea finally easing in the afternoon, only to be replaced by a fierce case of nervous colitis. I took five Pepto-Bismol tablets over the course of two hours, praying, as I cabbed it to Producers Sound Studio, that I wouldn’t have to interrupt the audition to rush desperately to the nearest men’s room. I needn’t have worried on that count, although my bladder did become particularly insistent once I’d entered and shaken hands with the director and the ad agency reps. “Pleasure to meet you,” said the director, a friendly Britisher in his mid-forties. “Enjoy your work.” The admen smiled stiffly, as though they’d been doing this all day. Then they all crammed into a small control booth as I took my place in the studio, in front of a microphone. I put the ad copy on the script stand next to the mike; earlier, in the waiting room, I’d marked the copy with the various inflections I thought appropriate, and now I looked it over one last time as the engineer’s voice rasped out of the speaker: “Mr. Cochrane. Can we have a level, please?”

I nodded, read the first few lines of the copy so the engineer could get a proper sound level, and was chagrined when he announced, “Can you angle your script more to the left? You’re reflecting off the paper and into the mike.”

I wanted to die, but no one in the control booth was looking at me like the greenhorn that I was, so I just smiled and adjusted the angle of my script stand. My hands were trembling. I quickly dropped them to my side, hoping no one had noticed.

“All right, Mr. Cochrane,” the Britisher said. “When you’re ready.”

I took a sip of water from a glass and pitcher nearby, then launched into the reading:

“Essence. The dictionary gives it two meanings: the heart, the spirit, the substance of a person, or an idea; and a fragrance; an ex—”

Before I was halfway through, the engineer broke in: “You’re pulling away from the mike. Let’s take that again.”

Damn. I hadn’t even realized it, but I had—I’d shrunk back from the copy, almost imperceptibly, as though it posed some physical danger to me; but that inch or two was enough to screw up his sound levels. “Sorry,” I said. I glanced up; the director was still smiling, but did the admen seem suddenly fidgety?

For Christ’s sake, Cochrane, get it together!

Embarrassed and infuriated at myself, I straightened, studied the lines again, and concentrated on nothing but the task ahead of me. I wasn’t going to end my career before it had even begun, and I was damned if it would be stillborn at a stupid perfume commercial. The engineer nodded when he was ready, the director gave me a smooth and gentle, “When you’re ready,” and I launched into it again:

“Essence. The dictionary gives it two meanings: the heart, the spirit, the substance of a person, or an idea; and a fragrance; an extract.

“Essence, from Estée Lauder, is both. Different things on different women, its fragrance reflects her uniqueness, her spirit.

“Find her Essence—or risk losing her heart.”

This time I didn’t stand too close or too far from the mike; didn’t angle my script the wrong way, didn’t make a single misstep. The director nodded, leaned in. “Very nice. Could you try it a little slower? And a bit more intimate?”

At first I thought I’d read it too fast, but the rational part of me quickly realized that he was simply asking for a different take. I obliged, the director smiled, shook my hand, and saw me to the door. “Perfect,” he said. “Just perfect. Thank you so much for coming.” Well, I wasn’t perfect, that much I knew; but I had been competent, and I hadn’t embarrassed myself. All the admen continued to smile stiffly, but I didn’t care. Just as I didn’t care when, the next day, Joel called to break the news that they’d hired someone else: “An age thing, they wanted someone older, with more authority.” I tried to sound pragmatic but disappointed, but inside I was jumping up and down, screaming with relief that no one had called to tell him, Jesus, who was that guy you sent over, anyway? Is this amateur night in Dixie, or what? I’d been a professional, working with professionals; I’d done a competent if unexceptional job, and hadn’t humiliated myself or my agent. Suddenly I was raring to go out there again, all fired up for the next chance, the next audition. Because next time I didn’t want to be merely competent or professional; the next time, dammit, I wanted to be good.