“No, I’m not,” he says immediately.
She’s almost gleeful. “I can’t believe it. Timothy Fleming is nervous. I didn’t think yougotnervous.”
“Of course I get nervous. Especially when I’m directing. Don’t you get nervous?”
“Certainly. Terrified, every single time I have to do anything, step on a new set, meet a new acting partner,anything. Most people do. But I thought you were immune.” She smells very, very good. He tries to inch away but accidentally inches closer.
“Well, Gertrude, I guess I’m not immune.”
“Don’tcall me Gertrude. Don’t you dare.” She punches him lightly on the arm. He doesn’t want to admit it, but she looks darn good in the cowboy hat.
“Gertrude,” he says again, releasing a smile.
After a bunch of seconds, during which Gertie appears to be deciding how to react, she smiles back. “One of my Juilliard professors used to quote Jack Lemmon: ‘The day you stop being nervous is the day you should leave the business.’”
“Hmm,” he says noncommittally. It always irks him just a little when Gertie references her Juilliard years. It reminds him of the wide gulf that exists between her résumé and his, of the fact that she is classically trained while he’s always made it up as he goes along.
After high school Timothy attended the University of RhodeIsland for a year, rooming in Fayerweather with a kid from Warwick named Alan, wearing his hair long, smoking too much. He studied for that one year in the theater department under the illustrious James Flannery, landing the part of Emil in Mamet’sThe Duck Variations.Unheard-of for a freshman! One of the two leads. Flannery took a lot of heat for that. Timothy took a lot of heat too—so much heat that he knew a role like that wasn’t going to come his way again until at least junior year. By then he’d be twenty, practically over the hill. So before the first boats of the season appeared in Great Salt Pond that May, he’d made his decision. No more hierarchy bullshit. No more waiting. No more college. He was taking the twelve hundred dollars he’d saved from his various bellhop gigs, he was buying an old Datsun from a guy in Pawtucket, and he was heading west to seek his fortune. Or at least to find an agent.
He found Barry! Back then Barry the Bastard was Barry the New Kid on the Block, cutting his hyper-ambitious teeth on the marrow bone that was Hollywood in the early eighties, signing everyone he thought might have a shot, releasing them once it became clear that they didn’t. Barry was only four years older than Timothy, but the difference felt like a decade or more. He was so polished—so sure of himself. He had so many pairs of loafers.
“I’ll work hard for you, sir,” Timothy heard himself saying, the day they made their partnership official.
“Christ on a hamburger bun,” said Barry. “Don’t call mesir. We’re pretty much the same age.” He consulted his notes. “You’re going out tomorrow on an audition for a commercial for cold tablets. I’ll have Shirley write down the address for you. Be there at ten-thirty.”
“Cold tablets?”
“Don’t screw it up, kid. I’m taking a chance on you.”
Why, Timothy wondered, did Barry balk at Timothy’s use ofsirand yet felt no compunction about calling Timothykid? Timothydidn’t point out this inconsistency; he simply said, “I won’t screw it up.”
And he hadn’t. He booked the commercial. Then he booked two more commercials, a walk-on part in a long-forgotten TV pilot, never picked up, and then the career-making role inThe Devil in Here,where he mixed (so the papers told him) Pacino’s bravado with Christopher Reeve’s approachability and the resonance of a young Donald Sutherland. Eighteen months later, Timothy Fleming was a star.
By the time Gertie Sanger was taking her Scene Study 1 class at Juilliard, Timothy had amassed a lengthy filmography, done two separate stints on Broadway, and had just taken on his first film directing role, inDays of Old.The rest, of course, was history. Is history. He’s been very, very lucky. There is no denying the fact of it.
And yet! And yet. After all these years, that long string of credits, the Oscars and the Tony, there’s still, when he’s around Gertie, a voice that pokes at him, prods at him, says, Pssst. Hey you. You’re a fraud. A huckster. Gertie studied from the masters, but you didn’t. She’s the real deal. You’re not.
“Last chance!” says the real deal, rising from the couch. “If you come with me I’ll buy you a Popsicle.”
“I don’t eat Popsicles,” he says.
She tips her hat at him and glides away. “Everybody eats Popsicles on the Fourth of July. To say you don’t is practically anti-American.”
“Haul me up before the committee,” he grumbles. But it’s too late; she’s already gone, and his clever retort is wasted.
Sam
The house rules are on a whiteboard in the improbably high-ceilinged kitchen. (Tink explains that the owners, art collectors from China, bought the apartment above this one and demolished it so they could have the ceiling space.) Rise by 10a.m., no matter what. Keep a running list of potential video ideas on the right side of the whiteboard at all times. No drinking Sunday through Wednesday. Content, content, content, all the time. When you’re in public, remember who you represent. You represent yourselves, Tink writes on the whiteboard.But you also represent me. Don’t forget it. She underlines the last two sentences.
By October they’ve settled into a rhythm. They rise as close to ten as possible. Breakfast at home. Kylie and Nathan both know how to cook. Hangover cures on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings. Back to business on Monday.
Tink comes in and out, with offers and admonishments and an eagle eye that spots the hot sauce splattered on the lowest part of the wall in the formal dining room.
Scooter gets a brand endorsement from a company that makes skate shoes. He shoots a video at the Pier 62 Skatepark, and at least a hundred people gather to watch. It all goes viral: not just the video but the videos of the video, and probably the videos of the videos of the video. Cece signs on with an eyelash conditioner brand, even though her lashes are naturally perfect. Nathan: an organic flour company. His scones go viral.
They are, as a group, attractive and fun-loving; they look good in their going-out-clubbing clothes, yes, but they also look good in the slouchy Morning After sweats they wear to breakfast or sitting around the living room on the gigantic throw pillows and artfully placed beanbag chairs, discussing the adventures and misadventures of the previous night.
What a relief it is to Sam to just be! After years of schools and bells and classes, after the unconventional but nevertheless tightly scheduled Broadway months, then the shooting ofMy Three Daughters,then back home for more school and bells and schedules. Now all Sam has to do is have fun. Or look like she is having fun. Which is mostly the same thing. (Isn’t it? Is it?)
