Actor: A Novel in Three Acts

I tried calling Edie the second I left the theatre. The ringing from the phone in my ear merged with the wood-and-metal rumbling of the L train as the summer's sunlight reminded me I was in the real world again. It had been so dark inside Steppenwolf; another place, out of time—a layered reality. From Lake Michigan, a gush of wind pushed me backward, forcing me off balance.

No answer. I tried Dean. Nothing. They were always right there when I didn't need them and nowhere to be found when I did. I tried Tim. Nothing again.

Behind me, the theatre's doors opened and then slammed against the wall. I turned around not from the sound, but from a sense of danger. Overhead, the sky was still baby blue—no clouds or wind; quiet, like an audience before the curtains opened. Someone was approaching me. As they got closer, I saw from their face who it was: the actor from before, the one with the beer. The guy's eyes were squished together and bulging, yet melancholic in a mixture of hopeless rage.

I was paralyzed in the middle of the sidewalk with nowhere to run. And go where? I barely knew where I was.

He stalked towards me as if he was going to tackle me, or hug me...muttering the whole time. I couldn't hear what he was saying from the phone ringing in my ears as I tried to get a hold of Edie. Reminiscent of Lee, he stuck his meaty finger in my face.

"Momma's boy!" he screamed. "Kiss ass silver-spoon having hack."

I said nothing to defend myself. What could I say? He wasn't wrong. Edie, the one thing I tried to get away from and hide from, had followed me.

He dropped his finger and drew even closer. I tried to tell him I was in the middle of a call even though the phone was only ringing. He ignored my excuse.

"With who?" he asked. "Your momma to tell her how good you did in there? That she did everything right? That you stole a role from a local in only three months of being here?"

I lied and told the beer guy I was calling a cab.

"Did you not hear me?" he asked. "Lisa is gonna' cast you. She cut half of us just now. Doesn't take a genius to know what that means."

"Wait," I said, "Wait, wait, wait. Did she tell you that?"

"Fuck off."

He spat at me and raged off.

A slew of other actors leaving the theatre looked at us. They seemed to accept they hadn't been right for the role. That or they didn't see who I was. Lucky for me. They could have all come over and curb-stomped me as an ensemble.

"Tough break," I murmured, looking down the long road to the end of one block, and then to the left.

Survivor's guilt crept over me. I learned to let that go. Everyone had to.

The phone kept ringing and ringing with no answer. The digital drone of it was drowning me out. The line went to voicemail.

"What the fuck?"

That guy back there, I started to tell myself. He wasn't mad at me. He was mad at Lisa. He was mad about how she recognized me as an object, a utility for her systems. Lisa had all the control, and she used it like strings to a puppet—me, which I allowed. Rather than his collaborator, his confidant, his artist-in-arms, I became his symbol, his totem…a value placed on something he lost...something stolen...something he feared they maybe never had. I told myself that was it.

I tried Tim. He would pick up. He would tell me Edie was OK. He would tell me Lisa didn't do all that because he told her to. He would tell me the truth.

"Pick up, pick up, pick up."

An ambulance rushed by, its sirens screaming, its red and blue lights clashing with the peace of the street. The driver's face was a blurred snapshot. The person next to them was a shadow of a shadow of a soon-to-be memory as it wheeled down the street, turned a corner, and was out of sight. I saw Edie in the back of the ambulance, alone on one of those stationary gurneys, reaching out. Her red fingernails were cracked and chipped as she tried to hold onto anything that would let her stay. No one around her knew of her work, the art she had shared, and the realities she had spun on stage for thousands, maybe millions.

Had they been changed as much as her?

The soft rumble of the L-train echoed in the distance. I slid my phone back into my pocket and ran for it after Tim didn't pick up. For a moment, with only my body, my breath, my legs, my eyes, all that was real before became imaginary, and I was only someone running.

The train was nearly empty. A drunk lay out across one of the two-seaters, both legs tucked against their chest. Clothes and other things were everywhere: a few blankets, and food wrappers, some open, some not. They smelled of stale vodka and urine. Wrapped around both of their feet were what looked like red spray-painted Converse with the bottoms ripped off.