Dream Sequence Page 2

  *

  The hunger was beginning to hurt. Three days of grinding emptiness, of heat and sudden flutterings in the left side of his body. The relief of small meals in the evenings, monkish bowls of rice and green vegetables that he perceived so sharply, his senses attuned to the rising steam, the warmth and aroma. And afterwards the velvety sensation of being fed that allowed him to fall asleep. In the morning he was hungry again. It was working. It was worth doing. He was becoming what he needed to be, to convince García who, finally, was in London to see him. But it would be a mistake to fast today. He needed energy. He went to his kitchen and ate a banana and two large handfuls of nuts, enough food to relax and feel well but not enough to dull his sharpness. He ate and hummed to himself.

  He dressed. He ran his hands down the smoothness of his abdomen. His body was tight. His trousers hung from his hipbones. He chose a khaki linen shirt with button-down pockets that he thought had the right sort of feel: serious, adaptable, with connotations of the military and the desert. Henry checked how he looked in the mirror.

  Henry’s face was something everybody had to deal with, to assimilate and get over, even Henry. When Henry caught sight of his face he often felt as though he were arriving late at something already happening. His face looked so finished and authoritative. He had the approved lines, the symmetry; he looked how a man should look. His handsomeness could be a shock, as much for him as for others who sometimes also had to process their recognition of him, their sensation of an untethered and inexplicable intimacy. Occasionally Henry thought that it would be nice, warm and relaxed and human, to be a little ugly, to have a face that showed personality in pouches under the eyes or a large, soft mouth, the face of a character actor, expressing suffering and humour. His own good looks were bland, Henry thought, mainstream, televisual. Hunger seemed to be improving it, its calm masculinity now fretted with sharpness and shadows. Henry had observed long ago that cinematic faces were not normally attractive, not attractive in a normal way. They did not belong on Sunday evening television or in clothing catalogues or any realm of the conventional ideals. The truly cinematic actors, that is. Look at Joaquin Phoenix with his dark stare and scarred mouth or Meryl Streep’s long thin nose and subtle, not quite sensual mouth, her large and frightening eyes, her affronting vulnerability. All of them, when you thought about it: Christopher Walken, Jack Nicholson. Bogart and Hoffman and Day-Lewis. Of course the actresses tended to be more straightforwardly beautiful but then overwhelmingly so. Think of the wide landscape of Julia Roberts’s smile, an American landscape, honest, expansive, full of hope. No, up until now, Henry’s face had been of the reassuring kind that made for success on TV. It had lacked the strangeness and astringency that made for cinema. But now, perhaps, it was coming, with age, with hunger. He observed himself in the mirror. He said, “Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa. Red lorry. Yellow lorry. Red lorry. Yellow lorry. How are you today? I’m fine, sir. How are you today?”

  He checked his phone to see if his taxi had arrived. It hadn’t. He stepped out onto his balcony to smoke a cigarette, cupping the lighter flame from the blustery river air. A whirring sound: straight and fast, a cormorant flew low over the water. He should be looking at his pages again. He threw the cigarette away and went in.

  He picked up the pages and glanced at them, reminding himself. He bounced up and down on the balls of his feet, swinging his arms. “Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba,” he said. “Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa. You can’t just walk in here whenever you like. You just can’t.”

  His phone chimed. The taxi was outside. According to the text, Omar was driving. Henry had booked a taxi because he wanted safety between his flat and Soho, a protected preparatory calm. The bike ride was too long, too raw, too sweaty, and he almost never used public transport now. You never knew what might happen. He put the pages in his satchel. He paused in the centre of the room to practise a facial expression, the animation of a friendly and relaxed greeting.

  He dropped the expression from his face. He bounced again on his feet then walked on. Locking the front door behind him, he immediately missed the safety of his flat. It would be there to receive him again, to hide him, after whatever it was that happened later in the day.

  On the shelf by the exit door he had post. Two letters. He put them into his satchel and stepped outside.

  The taxi was a large black people carrier with tinted windows. Inside, he said to the neck in front of him, to the bejewelled hand on the gear stick, “Hi, Omar. You know where we’re going?”

  “Got the address here. Greek Street.”

  “That’s the one.”

  Not wishing to talk anymore, Henry pushed his headphones into his ears and put on his pre-meeting music. Years ago at university, as a music scholar, a member of his college choir, he had sung Renaissance polyphony. A sense of competence and self-confidence suffused him when he heard it now. The plainchant of the opening statement, low and horizontal, was followed by the higher voices joining one after the other, merging, ascending, passing one another, opening a great fan of sound. Calm and ethereal, a translucent grid laid over his view of Docklands, of Limehouse and east London passing outside his window. He hummed along with Palestrina’s tenor line. In the comfortable hollow of his leather seat, he watched the people outside, the Muslims with waistcoats and hennaed beards, the young mothers, the hipsters of Whitechapel over time giving way to the suited office types of Gray’s Inn and Holborn: London’s surplus of faces, of human versions, every permutation, all preoccupied, unconscious, milling towards something. At traffic lights the taxi slowed for him to observe a man on a corner holding a phone to his ear and eating an apple, delicately picking with his teeth at the remaining edible flesh by the core. A cyclist shuttled past his window. All these people, blind to his presence behind darkened glass. They would be interested in him, most of them. Their expressions would change. The taxi progressed in halts and short surges into Soho. Henry checked his watch. Good, he wasn’t too early. He plucked the flowing harmonies from his ears, paid Omar and stepped briefly into the movement of the street. Keeping his head low, hunched forwards, he walked to a discreet glass door with gold lettering and pressed the buzzer. There was no voice but the door buzzed. Henry pushed it open. He was met by a young man of the assistant type descending the stairs, what Henry’s friend Lucas had once referred to as “one of those little shits with the hair.” On his t-shirt, much more striking than his actual face, was a very realistic drawing of a gorilla wearing large headphones. He had a pen in his mouth which he removed to say, “Hi, it’s Henry, isn’t it?” as if he didn’t know. “Come on up,” as if he owned the place. The guy put the pen back in his mouth and headed up the stairs. Henry followed. At the top, Henry was met by Sally, the casting director, a quiet, tightly organized woman, a great encyclopedist of talent, and one of the most important people in the business. Often it was those people who seemed the least artistic, like they could work happily in any other business. They spoke in the universal language of professionalism, not one that Henry had been obliged particularly to learn. Sally Lindholm could just as easily have run a government department.

  “Henry, how nice to see you. Thank you for coming in. How are you?”

  Thank you for coming in. The pretense that this was an equal relationship was something that Henry was used to ignoring. The answer to the question how are you was always to be kept brief. Genuine as her friendliness may be, Henry knew not to talk with any unnecessary personal detail. The space accorded for his response was like a box on a form to be filled out. It could only contain so much. “I’m good, I’m good,” he answered.

  “You’re looking well,” Sally said. Her friendliness was real enough. It was other people’s—actors’—responses to her that couldn’t be trusted. They were always straining, eager, beaming, and Sally was like royalty, accepting this as normal, possibly at this point unable to tell the difference between the acting and the real thing, or not caring. “We�
�re ready to go, I think,” she said.

  “Oh, really? No waiting area? No fellow actors I have to pretend I’m happy to see?”

  She laughed. “Not today. You’re spared. Shall we go in?”

  “Sure. I’m excited to meet the man himself.”

  “Of course. Do you need anything? Water?”

  “Just some water would be great.”

  “Okay. Seb, could you bring some water for Henry?”

  The assistant swept the upper mass of his hair from one side of his head to the other. “I’m on it,” he said.

  Henry animated his face with warm greeting as he entered the room but he had to wait. García was watching some footage on a laptop. A large man, his folded arms rested on his gut. Sitting low in his chair, his face was sunk down into his beard. He held up one hand to stay Henry and Sally, then decisively slapped the space bar.

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “Please.” He gestured at the seat in the middle of the room facing a camera. “You are Henry.”

  “I am.”

  “So, I’ve seen your work. I’ve seen you on tape. All very nice.”

  Henry dropped his satchel by the door and sat down, leaning forward towards García, his forearms on his knees. “And I’ve seen yours, of course. Sueños Locos. The Path to Destruction. The Violet Hour. Bricks. I mean, those are … They mean a lot to me, those films. It’s an honour to meet you.”

  “Okay, okay,” García exhaled through wide nostrils and shunted his glasses back up his nose.

  Seb swooped down at Henry’s feet then backed away. Henry glanced down and saw a bottle of mineral water. Seb settled himself in a seat beside the camera. García said, “So, Mike. You like this character?”

  “I don’t know about ‘like.’ I think I understand him. I feel him.”

  “You think you are like him?”

  “Sure. I know where he’s coming from, that commitment, that anger. We all are to some extent. That’s the genius of it.”

  García didn’t smile or respond. He hit the centre of his glasses again. “So we will read a little bit.”

  Sally said, “You’ve got the pages, haven’t you?”

  “Yep.” Henry raised an arm to indicate his bag. “But I shouldn’t need them. I’m off book.”

  “Excellent. Seb, ready to go?”

  “Just one …” He pressed a couple of buttons. A small staring red light appeared on the camera. He gave a thumbs-up.

  Henry dropped his head down onto his chest, disconnecting, becoming the other thing. He lifted his face. It was tighter, slightly stricken, his gaze significant.

  “Julia?” he said.

  García, an unlikely Julia, gruff and heavily accented, said, “Hey, Mike.”

  “Julia, you can’t just walk in here like this.”

  “The door was open.”

  “What does that mean? You walk through every open door you see?”

  “Jesus, Mike. I was just passing and I came in to see.”

  “You can’t do that, Julia. You can’t. You can’t. I’m just getting things, you know, clear here.”

  “Okay,” García interrupted. “Leave it there.”

  “Sure.” Henry drained back into himself. Uncomfortable, he reached down for the water bottle and twisted the top but didn’t yet drink.

  “That first ‘Julia,’” García said. “It can be softer.”

  “Okay.”

  “And you know he is saying the opposite of what he wants. He isn’t sleeping. He isn’t eating. The war is in his head all the time. He knows he’s in trouble. He wants Julia to come in. You have to say, ‘You can’t just walk in.’ Underneath it’s, ‘You have to come in. Please.’”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “And ‘What does that mean?’ That line, he’s thinking about meaning, he’s thinking in a different way, very fast, very conceptual.”

  “He’s like on a whole other level. He’s like, yes, but what does that mean? She walks through every open door she sees? It’s a description of her, of her freedom. It’s, like, the total contrast to him.”

  “Exactly, exactly. Also, a bit angry. ‘What does that mean?’ It’s too much for him. We do again.”

  Henry sighed and shook his shoulders, looking down then up. “Julia,” he said.

  “Hey, Mike.”

  “Julia, you can’t just walk in here like this.”

  “The door was open.”

  “What does that mean? You walk through every open door you see?”

  “Jesus, Mike. I was just passing and I came in to see.”

  “You can’t do that, Julia. You can’t. You can’t. I’m just getting things, you know, clear here. I’m getting set. I’m making improvements. It’s delicate. People need their privacy.”

  “Okay, that’s good.”

  “Really? You don’t want to get more of the scene?”

  “No. Enough words. I want to see Mike alone in his apartment.”

  “Okay, sure.” Henry took a drink. The bottle was full to the brim. Water toppled into his mouth. He swallowed. “Sure,” he said. “Just …”

  “Just be alone in the apartment.”

  “Sure. Cool.” He closed his eyes and willed himself there. The apartment, as far as he was concerned, had yellowing wallpaper. There was a fridge, old, large, American, with rounded edges. Windows down onto the street. He stood up and paced, quickly, as though his body was a racing thought. He did that for a while then stopped still as though halted by some new idea. He sat down in the chair and stared into the distance, one hand picking at the fabric of his trousers. After a while he swigged from his water bottle with an overhand grip that made it beer. García said, “Okay, okay. Enough.”

  Henry groaned and rubbed his face with his hands. He felt a drop of sweat, cold, appear at his waist on the right-hand side, rolling down from his armpit.

  “You can do it again,” García said. “But you have to stop acting like somebody who is acting.”

  “You mean …”

  “Stop acting. Forget us. You’re alone in private.”

  “Okay. Sure.” He stared past the blurred mass of García. He hardened his facial expression. Disconnected, he wanted to go to sleep. He thought about going with that impulse and letting his eyes close, but it wouldn’t be enough. He got up and paced again. He stopped. He sat down and fidgeted.

  “Okay, okay. That’s good.”

  “All right.”

  “Good. That’s enough.”

  “It’s enough? You don’t want?”

  “No, it’s good. We have it.”

  Sally stood up, holding her notebook to her waist. “Great. So.”

  “Well, like I said,” Henry advanced while he had the chance, hand outstretched, “it’s an honour. I’m pleased you called me back again.”

  García did not stand up. He held out a surprisingly soft and heavy hand for Henry to grasp.

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “So,” Sally said again, smiling by the door.

  When they were the other side of that door, desperate to get a sense of what had happened, Henry said, “Wow, that was quick. For a fourth meeting.”

  “He’s like that,” Sally said. “Quick and decisive. It’s fine. We’ll be in touch.”

  “Okay. Cool. Okay.” Henry resisted the urge to grip her shoulders and say, “Just tell me now.” He smiled at her and said, “Amazing. That was Miguel García. Okay. Well. I’ll see you next time. I guess I can let myself out.”

  In the street, he wanted to shout and punch something, to free all of the crushed energy inside him. Instead, he walked quickly for a few yards then turned around and walked in the opposite direction with a destination in mind. Don’t act like a person acting. Such drama-school-level bullshit. García had a reputation for brilliance, f
or spontaneity, for breaking down his actors until, defenceless, they gave him what he wanted. But that couldn’t come from stuff like that. Henry wouldn’t believe it. Henry didn’t need manipulation anyway. He was ready to give García whatever he asked for.

  Henry hurried off Old Compton Street with its many obstructing pedestrians into Dean Street and through the door of the Groucho Club. He was furiously hungry and the Groucho cheeseburger was what he wanted right now. The garish, pretentious homeliness of the Groucho was also appealing, certainly more than the watchful grey restraint of Soho House. He signed the register and pushed through the inner door.

  A bristle of inspection from those at the bar, carefully dissembled. He could feel a few of them recognizing him: that momentarily prolonged glance before looking away. Their non-reaction was an important facet of their self-respect, a self-respect that Henry knew was nonetheless enhanced by his being there. He walked through the bar, past the piano and down the corridor to a table in the back. He opened his satchel, pulled out his phone and the post he’d forgotten he’d picked up and tossed them onto the table. He raised one hand to attract a waiter and picked up his phone with the other. A waitress appeared, blonde, attractive in her black waistcoat and tie, her long apron, her shining hair tied cleanly back. They hired them for a reason.

  “Mr. Banks, what can I get you?”

  “Oh. Can I get a cheeseburger and a Diet Coke?”

  “Of course. Anything with that?”

  “No.”

  “Great. Sorry, to remind you, if you want to make a call you’ll have to take that outside.”

  “No worries. I know the rules.”

  He waited for her to go away and put his phone back on the table. He wasn’t quite ready to phone Carol, his agent. Instead, he sat back in his seat, tired, molested with afterthoughts, with the image of García waiting for him to leave the room, with the memory of his own performance. That came back to him now in horrifying flashes of clumsy effort that went on who knew how long. Audition room time seems to distend to great length while it is happening and collapse into one catastrophic moment when it is over.