The Talent
Chapter 2
The flight back to Des Moines without the seven day advance purchase cost as much as one month’s alimony payment but Leo was appearing back at the high school, guest of honor at a dinner for some local charity, ‘Save the Homeless Cats’ or some other such thing. Leo’s mother answered the phone when Jessup called.
“Jessup! I haven’t heard your voice since graduation.”
“Yeah, I kind of lost touch with a lot of the class. I heard Leo was coming in. Can you ask him if he could make some time to see the old man we swore we’d never become? Jessup was only 45 years old, but when he was 17, 45 seemed a step away from the grave.
“I’m sure Leo would be glad to see you after the show. I can get you tickets; he’d so love to see you again. He’s so different than he was in those days.” Leo’s mother found out what Leo had tried to do and but Jessup had never told her that he had been the one who found him, the one who had saved him.
“That’s not necessary. I just want to talk to him.”
“I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him to look for you. I know he’d just die if he didn’t see you.”
* * *
If Leo were a woman, he would have been belle of the ball as he presenced himself in the lobby of the high school auditorium. The double glass doors swung open to admit a tsunami wave of local reporters and fantasy-dream-date debutantes shouldered against the older, failed women that fawned in a swarming, supplicating harem. Leo moved easily and gently through the throngs, answering expose-aimed questions while signing black and white glossy headshots and magazine pullouts. Every now and then, when some of the women elbowed in close enough to drop a telephone number or hotel key in his pocket, he’d turn in grateful acknowledgement and whisper that he would be gone by morning and didn’t want to play with someone he couldn’t lavish his total attention upon beyond just one single night of sexual insanity. The women would gasp and faint and giggle and later tell their children that Leonard, the famous actor, had once and nearly captivated them with his charm and persuasive powers.
There was that something Leo had that wasn’t there in those high school days. Jessup noticed it right away, that presence that all actors chased after in their acting classes and theater arts conservatories but only a few actually owned the star quality to move easily and naturally around a room or across a stage or upon the screen. Leo, as Jessup mentally tracked him to the stage door, connected with all those around him, made them feel good even if, in reality, he had brushed them off like crumbs off his jacket because he had someone more important’s company to keep. Leo made people feel important and women most important of all. Leo looked out over the heads of lip-gloss and big hair and saw Jessup standing in the shadows and held up a piece of white paper.
“Ladies!” Leo roared, “I need you to get this note to my old friend over in the doorway, there. Please don’t let me down!”
The note passed from painted fingertip to fingertip and lightly touched down in his palm. “Be seeing you in all the old, familiar places… 10 pm? L,” was all the note said. Jessup raised up his right thumb and shook it back and forth twice, Leo winked and was gone, off to talk the harem out of their money, for charity’s sake, for the sake of the fantasies that kept mid-Western women feeling alive in their movie theaters down on Main Street.
‘The Old Familiar Place’ was a dive next to the Ramada on the outskirts of town. It was clean in an off the beaten path kind of way but it had passed its recent health inspection and that was all traveling men needed to get by. Jessup and Leo wouldn’t be caught dead inside a similar drinking joint anywhere else in the world but this was the place where Leo had his first drink when he turned eighteen and where Jessup had his first blowjob, behind the dumpster, also when he was barely eighteen.
“You know,” Leo said to Jessup as he looked out towards where that dumpster still waited to hide the ecstatic secrets of underage boys. “I should have made you wear a wig or something. The last thing I want is one of these tabloids saying is that I was seen interviewed by the famous pedophile chaser.”
“I’m not exactly famous. Infamous.” Jessup stared at the foam floating above amber fluid within its thick glass container.
“Google doesn’t lie. You had over fifty hits. They call you the ‘predator of predators’. It sounds very high concept.”
“See, you could say you were researching a part. Imagine, you playing me.”
“I can’t think of any part more depressing.”
“Tell me about it.”
Leo looked up from his own glass. “But Jessup, you’re not depressed.”
“No.”
Leo reached in even deeper, his eyes growing in a kind of fascinated horror. “You’re, my God, you’re nothing!”
Jessup looked back and frowned and finally sipped beneath the foam. The beer was bitter, cold.
Leo hadn’t pulled back, still searching. “You are an actor’s worst nightmare!”
“Only if they’re baby-bangers.”
“No! You are just one big tabula rasa. I’ve had a couple of T.R.’s when I was taking workshop and they couldn’t pull an emotion out of their ass, never mind their soul. You’re almost a vacuum, a fucking emotional black hole. Watch, here goes my amazement, old friend…” Leo made a sucking sound with his lips and spiraled his fingers between his chest and Jessup’s until the finger disappeared down an imaginary singularity or toilet drain.
Jessup stared after the finger without amusement or anger, feeling the deadness weigh down to his toes, the spiral going down past Leo’s finger, past the floor, down deep into the Earth beneath their feet. “Don’t you have days when you just can’t do that thing that it is you do?”
“You mean, act?”
Leo sat back, finger back to the table to play in the circles of wetness drained off the beer mugs. “In the early days, I’d have bad days where I had to read bad scenes with even worse actors. Thank God I don’t have to audition, anymore. Auditions are hell on earth.”
“I know what Hell on Earth is.”
“Me, too. What was it you wanted to ask me? Does my top hat match my tails?”
Jessup stared back at Leo, no anger, not even confusion.
“I want you to teach me what it is you do to act like you do with people.”
Leo fiddled with his ear for a moment, saying nothing. He swirled the foam still de-gassing on top of his beer until the bubbles began to orbit around a small funnel descending to the bottom of the mug.
Jessup judged Leo’s silence; his contemplation of beer mug bubbles and suddenly felt outside of himself, watching a farce between two men who had once been friends. “I’m sorry.” Jessup began digging in his pocket for tip money and keys. “This was a mistake.”
Leo shot his hand out as Jessup put a couple of bills on the bar, grabbing Jessup as if he were about to punch him with his free hand. Jessup braced and caught Leo’s eyes, those eyes that had caused women and a few young men to send their underwear to his agent’s address, with love.
“Jess,” Leo was intent, asking the question as if his life depended on the answer, “are you sorry?”
“No. I’m not anything.”
“I see something there.” Leo’s eyes scanned across the bigger man’s face. “It is there, very faint, something off in the distance. Maybe you’re not a total T.r.”
“I just thought that you actors, you know, you have techniques. You know, like when you give a speech, you imagine everyone naked or taking a dump on the john. You have methods for getting through a performance.”
“You don’t need Stanislavsky to fake an orgasm!” Leo started laughing until Jessup looked back to his beer, now empty.
Leo stopped laughing. “This is serious for you, my friend, I know it. You’re feeling… disconnected.”
Jessup stared at his car keys. “Yeah.”
“Tell me how I’m feeling.”
“I don’t know. I guess you’re feeling pretty proud of yourself.”
“That’s just my ego. Sorry, I thought I left it home with my Globe. I want you to tell me what emotion I’m feeling.”
“How do I know what you’re feeling? I’m not a fucking mind reader.”
“Then guess. Come on, you asked for this. Tell me what I’m feeling.”
Jessup looked at Leo, sitting beside him, arms held out in earnest, or at least what felt like an earnest attempt to open a channel of, well, something. “Well, you’re pissed off.”
“Yes. I’m pissed. And you’re… perplexed.”
“Yeah, I guess I am. I mean…”
“No.” Leo interrupted. “Don’t analyze. Not yet. Tell me what I’m feeling now.”
“I said you’re pissed.”
“No, I’m not pissed now. I’m challenged.”
“Challenged? What is this? Some kind of game?” Jessup never liked playing games.
“You wanted a method. This is my method. It’s a secret acting exercise and if you tell anyone where you learned it, I’ll have to kill you.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Yes, I’m kidding. You’re surprised.”
“No, I’m not surprised.”
Leo looked at Jessup, and then began circling his arms, indicating that he was waiting for more input. “If you’re not surprised, you have to be honest and tell me what you are. That’s how you connect. Who cares what you have to say? Nobody. Words are meaningless sounds we make to hear ourselves think. What’s important for you, in this moment, is to follow the emotional conversation.” Leo shifted on the bar stool and considered Jessup, considered saying something condescending and then pushed on, just a little further into the game. “I tell you how I’m feeling, I confirm or correct, I tell you how you’re feeling which then you confirm or correct. Got it? That’s all there is to it. No imagining people naked or taking a shit, no scripts, nothing but what you’ve got in you and what I’ve got in me. Got it?”
Jessup’s eyes moved around, looking at something just above the inside of his eyebrows. He took a deep breath and let out a heavy sigh.
“Ah!” Leo brightened. “A sigh is a sign of venting frustration.”
“I am frustrated.”
“Frustration isn’t an emotion. Frustration is anger combined with some other emotion.”
“Okay. I’m angry. I thought you could give me something I could use. I’m not angry at you.”
“Oh, you’ll use this.” Leo laughed that embracing laugh he’d used to get an extra million added to his newest contract. “Besides, be happy. You’re angry. No more tabula rasa, right?”
Jessup blinked.
“I’m surprised.”
This time, Leo smiled and slapped Jessup on the back. “You’re still a long way from faking a good orgasm but it’ll help you to figure out if your wife is faking hers. Once you figure out that acting with real people is just an on-going game of these moments connected together, you’ll get by.”
Jessup considered the lesson as he thought of his wife. Leo just smiled, a Pan-smile of mischievous involvement as he called the bartender over for a refill.
“Just remember, Jess. Don’t tell anyone. I kill enough people on the back lot, I’d hate to have to kill you.”