The Understudy

The hand of most fate is shot through with the dull color. I hate to say it so plainly, but I have lived too many meaty days gone the way of the young ecstatic. He used the old podiatrist excuse, but between you and me, the guy didn't even have feet. When I said work, then, I meant work like this: shaving stars for scenery, or better yet, dressing up as scenery and trying not to shake unless you were a tree in a certain kind of scene. Supposed to be one. "If you wanted to dance, go to a disco" is what they told me. They were from Iowa, but they played the part of lusty Europeans. Heat farms. That's what I called them under my breath. I've never seen sweat like that. Or the way the veins in their temples bulged and pulsed like snails with smokers' coughs watching an elegant and very, very dirty comedian. They had the whole passion thing down to a science, but as soon as the work day was over, they called out blindly, "sandweech! sandweech!" I usually had one ready for each of them. The director kept promising me that one day I would step into the play, that a role would emerge for me in the spate of endless interpretation. That someone would turn to each actor on the stage and say, "where's Charlie, he said that he would be here, and I need him." And then I would be born, and this ain't no time for diapers. Maybe it's true what they say, that people are like this everywhere, waiting their turn while the others pretend. But that seems entirely too logical for a man with dreams like mine. I hit 400 in the little league. I can cook six kinds of omelettes, fix the plumbing, raid the pantry. When that guy shows up, I'm the yellow moon on the rise. I'm the shadow slipping the next hill. Let him see, let him know, how it feels . . . each gesture an only gesture, each word the one that teaches them about all you're worth. Let him live without a better self out in front.