Chapter 10
Rehearsals are scheduled to begin tonight at seven in the theater. I don't feel like eating, too nervous, perhaps, and I walk down to the stage around six and watch Tony and the others put the final touches on the set. Tony offers me a hit of marijuana to calm my nerves but I decline, afraid that it will disorient me from my carefully worked out image of Lilly. Then Sandra comes in and we sit talking about the night to come.
"Have you seen Bill in the last week?" I ask.
"No, but I hear that he's been working himself to death on his part, sleeping with the script. That's kind of what I wanted to warn you about, honey," Sandra says, and when I look at her she brushes the hair out of her eyes and continues. "I don't know what happened with you and Bill but Bill is going to be laying for you up on that stage. I've seen him do it before and he can be vicious."
I smile to myself, realizing that my little warning to Bill must have had quite an effect. I'm not worried about keeping up with him but I'm thankful for Sandra's warning because it will eliminate the surprise if Bill really wants to make a battle of it for some reason.
"Thanks, Sandra," I say, smiling warmly at her. "I'll keep my eyes open."
"Bill likes to control people," Sandra says.
"Well, he doesn't control me." I look at Sandra quizzically, and it suddenly occurs to me to wonder how she knows what Bill is up to if she hasn't seen him. "One question, Sandra," I ask. "How do you know what Bill is doing if you haven't seen him?"
"Bernie told me. I guess she's been practically living over at his place this last week."
"Bernie, huh? The plot begins to thicken," I say out loud. "She doesn't like me, does she?"
"No, she doesn't."
I know that Bernie would like nothing better than to see me flop in the play, and she isn't above turning Bill against me. I think of her lovely ass and wonder just how much influence that ass might have on Bill. That ass alone makes her someone to watch out for.
"Why would Bill want to give me a hard time?" I ask Sandra. "When he heard I was playing Lilly all he was worried about was whether I'd be good enough to play opposite him. He said he was going to help me as much as he could just because he would look better playing opposite a good actress."
Sandra looks at me as if she's just about to answer me, then she abruptly turns away. "What's wrong?" "Nothing, honey."
"Then why won't you answer my question?"
"Okay, I'll answer it. There's a rumor around that the reason you got the part back from Langstrom after you didn't show all that time is that you slept with him."
"That's ridiculous, Sandra. You don't believe that for a moment, do you?"
"I'm just telling you what the rumor is, that's all."
"But do you believe it?" I ask her again.
"Honey, I don't know and I don't care. What you do and what you do it for is your own business."
I stare in disbelief at Sandra and realize she probably does believe it.
"Then you do believe I slept with Mark Langstrom to get the part back?"
"All I know is that Langstrom has never abruptly changed his mind like that before. Hell, Jenny, I'd like to ball Langstrom myself. He's beautiful."
"But I didn't ball him, Sandra. The whole idea never even came up. I just told him I needed time by myself to work things out and that I could play Lilly well. That's all."
"I was just trying to answer your question, Jenny."
"Besides, do you think Mark Langstrom would actually give a part to me just because I slept with him?"
"I don't know. Jenny, you're a beautiful chick. I imagine men would do a lot to screw you."
I stare at Sandra coldly, aware that she isn't going to change her mind either way, no matter what I say, and I decide to drop that part of the conversation.
"Well, you still haven't answered my question," I say. "How does all this affect Bill?"
"Bill thinks you slept with Langstrom too. He says he misjudged you, that he thought you really were naive and innocent but that you aren't. He thinks you've shrewdly got Langstrom wrapped around your little finger, that you conned Langstrom just like you conned him, that you are ruthless when it comes to getting ahead. After he saw you with Tony he became convinced you would do anything. What he's afraid of is that Langstrom won't even be looking at him during the play, that he'll only be interested in you, and Bill is counting on this play to get ahead himself. So he figures the only way to get Langstrom's attention is to out act you so obviously that Langstrom will have to notice him despite you being up there on stage."
"That's crazy! Bill is absolutely paranoid, and he's projecting himself on me as well. He's the ruthless one. He told me that himself even."
"Well, that answers your question, anyway," Sandra says. "I've got to run. Jenny, the reason I told you all this is because I like you and I'm on your side no matter what you did or do. Okay?"
Sandra smiles sweetly at me, and I thank her for telling me all about what's happening. I watch her as she walks away from me and really do feel a sudden gratitude toward her. After all, she didn't have to say anything. It hurts me, though, that even she doesn't really believe me.
Then the stage area becomes a madhouse of people and sound and lights as the time for rehearsal arrives and people pour into the theater auditorium and converge on the stage. Mark Langstrom walks in with Jack Broten, the student director who is working with Mark on this play. They go up on stage and talk with Tony first, then Jack goes backstage and Mark spots me and walks over to me.
"Hello, Jennifer," he says almost politely, and I think how unlike a lover his greeting is, how concerned yet removed. "How do you feel?"
I look into his alert gray eyes and feel the tension build inside me immediately. What if I did make love with him? What would it be like? The thought of it almost scares me, even as a thought. He must be the most powerful and handsome man I've ever met, and the most difficult to read. His eyes seem to hold the whole theater in them all at once, as if he's aware of everything that is happening around him and still able to focus his whole attention on me while talking to me. He also projects something so purely sexual and male that it is confusing to me; it's not as if he's directing it at me or anyone else either; instead it just emanates from him like an aura.
"You're a Scorpio, aren't you?" I ask him without even thinking what I'm asking.
He looks at me carefully, his eyes perceptively narrowing, and suddenly I become embarrassed by my foolish question and begin to blush. He catches my embarrassment and smiles.
"Triple," he says. "And you're a Pisces."
"Yes," I say, looking amazed.
He smiles quickly, turns, and walks back to where Jack Broten has disappeared behind the curtain at stage left. I stand and watch him walk, wondering what just happened between us. Scorpio and Pisces aren't supposed to get along at all, I know. Yet what just happened was rather unbelievable.
I turn around and begin to climb down off the stage to the first row of seats when I see Bill and Bernie sitting off to the side and several rows back, and by the way they are both watching me I know they've been watching me talking to Mark. It's obvious that they have taken the little scene as further proof that I've become involved with Mark sexually. Neither of them smile or even acknowledge me except with icy stares, and I turn my back to them and sit down with a chill running up and down my spine. I'm more grateful than ever for Sandra's warning now, or I might have walked blindly into a bear trap. It's obvious that Bernie has gotten to Bill.
Mark gathers us together and tells us that we have two weeks before opening night, five full rehearsals including tonight. There is an audible moan running through the company when he says that. Five rehearsals aren't very many. Mark looks down at the company with an amused smile playing around the corners of his lips.
"You wanted to be professionals, didn't you? Well, here's your chance." His eyes twinkle and his smile broadens with the challenge before them all. "Okay, we'll begin at the beginning and go through it tonight if it takes us all night to do it. Roll this curtain down and let's get going!"
I go back behind the curtain with the others and take my place at the end of the bar. The bar is built diagonally across the stage so that sitting where I am I'm at the front of the stage and almost at the left side of the stage. It's a strange feeling sitting there in my own clothes, as if I just walked off the street into a bar. I have the same feeling of insecurity and shyness that I've felt the few times I've lied about my age and gone into bars. I watch the others take their positions along the bar and in the room, and I stare at Bill a moment as he positions himself about halfway down the bar. Mark is watching us and changing the opening positions of some people, but he is satisfied with the positions that both Bill and I have taken.
The curtain lifts and the play begins. Almost immediately Mark stops the action and goes back for a conference with the light technicians. The lights play on and off creating wild patterns across the stage until they finally hold steady in the proper lighting. The lighting uses reds and blues which makes the bar seem eerie and unreal and a strong yellow spotlight bathes the action of the play along the bar, isolating the characters that are carrying the play at the moment. I sit through the first few minutes, truing to figure out what to do with myself. It seems an endless time until my first line. Then when Bill approaches and speaks his line which is my cue to enter vocally into the play I tense and deliver it and feel a rush in my mind as I project myself into the part of Lilly, become Lilly instead of Jennifer. I listen to Lilly's voice as she speaks and it sounds right, the right mixture of little girl defensiveness and husky street woman. Bill is right on with the college kid too; he presses me with each delivery, and as the play progresses and he gets drunker he uses his body at the bar expertly even while I'm talking and I feel him pulling the play away from me with his actions. I realize that I'm too unfamiliar with bars and barrooms, that I don't know how people, especially bar women, sit and move and walk in bars, and I could kick myself for my ignorance. But there is nothing I can do about it now, so I don't try to compete, not yet, not until I've done some studying, and instead I concentrate on getting the fine nuances of Lilly's voice down to where I can handle it without thinking about it. Four hours and countless interruptions later we get entirely through the play and gather around Mark who reads us a list of things that need changing and improvement. He kept writing things down during the whole evening and the list is extensive. Then he says the next rehearsal is in three nights and we all drag ourselves out of the auditorium. Bill doesn't say a word to me, but he seems very confident, and I suspect he feels certain he can bulldoze over me with his body movements alone like he did tonight. I know I've got to end that quickly.
I catch Sandra on the way out of the auditorium and walk out into the midnight street with her.
"You were right about Bill," I tell her. "He's out to get me up there, and unless I learn something about bars I'm done for."
"It takes a while. Bill's been hanging around bars for years, you know."
"Yes, I can tell. But I've got two weeks and I'm going to spend them drinking in bars."
"You're crazy. The bars in New York are dangerous. You'll just get yourself in trouble," she warns.
The idea has taken hold of me, though, and no matter what Sandra says I'm going to do it, beginning tonight. Finally, after two more blocks of objecting, Sandra gives in to my plan.
"Well, good luck," she says as we say good night.
"Thanks," I say, and I walk into the nearest bar.
It is dark inside and the lighting is surprisingly like the stage lighting. Almost immediately I become aware that I'm the only blonde in a sea of black hair. Most of the talk is Spanish, and 1 know that I've blundered into a Puerto Rican bar. I have a moment of panic at the strangeness of the place, a moment when I want to turn and bolt out the door, but I hold myself steady and walk to the nearest corner of the bar and sit on a stool. A wolf whistle comes from the back of the bar, a common denominator in all languages, and the bartender turns to see what caused the whistle, sees me, and comes down to my end of the bar. He asks to see some identification after looking at me closely. He speaks pretty good English but I can tell he is more comfortable speaking Spanish.
He reads my identification, looks back up at me to check the description, and hands it back to me apparently satisfied, then he asks me what I'll have to drink.
"Vodka Collins," I say, because it's the only drink I know.
He mixes the drink and takes the money, then returns to the other end of the bar and begins talking in lightning fast Spanish with some young men sitting back there. I sit sipping my drink and watching the people in the bar. There must be thirty people in the long room in all and my guess is that twenty of them are men, mostly young men. There is one woman that attracts my attention immediately out of the ten or so women. She looks to be in her early twenties with long black hair and a face that is beautiful for its sexuality as well as its hardness. I think she looks exactly like what Lilly would look like if she were Puerto Rican and I decide that I can learn something from watching her. She's sitting at the bar about halfway down the length of the room, sprawled on her stool and on the bar at the same time, yet despite her draped posture there is something erect and regal about her demeanor, as if her slovenly posture is the very thing that sets off her commanding presence. Suddenly as if by some sixth sense, she becomes aware of my stare and returns it sullenly, fixes me with her eyes, looks me over competitively, and I have the crawling feeling along the back of my neck that her stare is not friendly. Then she abruptly turns away from me and gives me the impression that I'm some kind of worm in her eyes that crawled off the sidewalks into her world and that I'm not worthy of further attention. It amazes me that she can project such strong impressions just with a look, and I begin to wonder whether I'm cut out to be an actress at all, whether this creature sitting in this bar isn't perhaps a great actress instead of me. I continue to watch her as she talks to the man beside her, watch her eyes alternately flash at him and turn cold at him. I can't see his face, only his long black hair. Then as I watch he turns languorously around and looks at me from huge black eyes. He stares at me, looking me up and down and the woman stares at me again with him. He is very good-looking, almost too handsome, and the combined attention of their eyes is too much for me to handle and I look down, reach for my drink, and sip at it nervously, hoping that I haven't brought a lot of trouble down on myself by my staring.
I busy myself by looking away from them, studiously not looking at them, and I think I'm doing fine until I feel a soft tap on my shoulder and nearly jump off the bar stool from surprise and jittery nerves.
"Excuse me, I didn't mean to scare you," a soft voice says.
I look into the dark face of the man who was sitting next to the woman, see his soft eyes sparkling close to mine, and feel his masculinity like an aura around him, quiet yet tense like a spring about to snap. His voice is heavy with Spanish accent, yet his English is near perfect. About his lips plays an almost imperceptible smile, so slight and hidden that I'm not sure it's even there until it flickers broader with his next words.
"We thought you might join us for a drink?"
I'm still staring helplessly into the dark, luminous pools of his eyes and I have to struggle to find my voice.
"All right," I answer as casually as I can.
I follow him to where the woman is sitting at the bar, and he motions me onto a stool beside her and sits down on the other side of me. I feel a trapped sensation come over me and have to fight my fear back. He asks what I'm drinking and I say vodka collins. At that the woman spits out a long string of Spanish which I don't understand but which is obviously derisive. He quiets her with a hard look and orders the drink for me. The woman obviously understands English, I note.
"My name is Manolo," he says. "This woman is Lupe."
I look at her and nod, but she simply stares through me as if I don't exist. I turn back to Manolo.
"My name's Jennifer."
"Jennifer," he says, repeating it carefully as if thinking about it, and it sounds foreign even to me when he says it.
He asks me some questions and I ask him some in return, and he orders me another drink then another and another until my head is swimming, whether from the drinks or from nerves I don't know. The woman is mostly silent, but when she speaks she always talks in Spanish and she never directs anything at me but open hostility. I watch her movements as much as I can, and when she gets up and walks down the bar to talk with some people sitting there I stare after her, marveling at the liquid flow of her hips and the bounce of her ass; her ass is pronounced and lovely under her tight skirt, yet it is much more unselfconsciously integrated into her movements than is Bernie's ass. She simply lets all her sex show with no pretense. That is the secret of her movements, and I try to mentally record them to practice later on myself. If I can capture her movements I'll have Lilly down perfectly.
Several young men come up and talk with Manolo, all of them looking me up and down with open lust, and when talking to them, even in English, Manolo lapses into a very different speech pattern. His Spanish becomes short and abrupt, loud and forceful, and his English turns to a street idiom that I have to struggle to understand even though it's English. It's like a third language. I become aware that Manolo is intensely quick witted and intelligent, and I can tell from the way the others talk to him that they have a certain respect for him, that he is some kind of leader among them. And what is most obvious to me is the undercurrent of violence that is so evident among them all, like an underground river that is threatening to explode over the surface of their calm at any moment. I feel a strange tenseness and excitement around them, and I realize that this uncontained, or barely contained, possibility of violence is also a part of Lupe's presence, her whole being.
I don't know how long I've been sitting there with them, but Manolo and Lupe suddenly exchange a barrage of Spanish, and I get the feeling that they're talking about me from the looks that Lupe flashes at me. Then Manolo and Lupe stand up, and Manolo tells me to follow them. Not wanting to stay there any longer by myself I follow them out of the bar into the dark street. Manolo pauses outside the door and looks around cautiously as if expecting some danger from the deserted streets, then we walk up the block to a rundown apartment house and enter. When I hesitate going up the dark, narrow stairs Manolo gives me an impatient look and tells me to come quickly. We walk up three flights and he opens a door into a cluttered apartment. One red light bulb burns nakedly in a lamp giving a soft, eerie glow to the room. Only after a moment do I notice that another young man is sprawled on a mattress on the floor.
"This is Eduardo," Manolo says, and Eduardo gives me a curious, lustful look without moving even an eyelash.
Lupe sits down on the mattress with Eduardo and Manolo motions me to follow him into the next room. I follow and see that it is a bedroom of sorts. Manolo closes the door and turns to me. I feel a sudden flush of panic, but I fight against it and look at him.
"Undress," he says flatly.
I know that this is it, that he means to screw me, and I realize that I've known all along it would come to this. There is no escape even if I wanted t escape, but I also know that I don't want to escape. I take my clothes off slowly and he leans against the closed door and watches me. When I'm naked and standing nervously before him he undresses too. I watch his cock come into view from his pulled down pants, a long dark cock swollen purple at the tip, and before he can pull his pants off I drop to my knees and put my hands around it, feel it pulse between my fingers, and bend my mouth to it. I push my lips over it and suck it inside my mouth, feeling the blood pound into my cunt as it slips deep into my hungry mouth. He takes his shirt off while I suck on him, still not touching me, and then he pushes me roughly back while he bends and pulls his pants off and throws them in the corner. "Stand up," he says.
I stand and he comes to me and presses his hands hard .into my breasts. I feel my tits tighten under his fingers and impulsively I push my stomach forward until I feel his cock jab my belly. Its touch sends new pulsing through my body and I push my naked breasts hard into his hands, feel his fingers pinch at my nipples, and I reach down and circle his penis with my hands, working my fingers back along his shaft and feeling underneath for his balls. Then he pushes me down on my knees and again I take his cock in my mouth and suck on it. I feel suddenly more like Lilly than like Jennifer, and my hands circle around and feel his tight ass while I suck, pulling him deeper into my mouth. I love the taste of him in my mouth, love the feel of his cock against my tongue, and I wash the length of it, teasing the bulb with the tip of my tongue. The whore is coming out in me, the long pent-up, denied whore that is in every woman, the animal lust that fastens onto a man's genitals no matter whether she knows him or not, no matter whether she likes him or not. It isn't Manolo that I want, it's that long lean cock between his legs that I want, want deep inside me, sticking up into my cunt like it's sticking into my mouth. For the first time in my life I'm making no pretenses about it, about my female lust. I'm madly sucking on the genitals of a man I don't know in a world I'm not a part of and I'm crazy about it, intoxicated with desire, like a slut. I am a slut now, a street whore, less than Lilly even, because Lilly would want something back, something besides her own lust fulfilled, some money at least, while all I want is his cock.
He pulls me to my feet and pushes me against the wall. I turn to face him but he spins me back around, facing the wall, and he sticks his hand between my legs from behind and grabs my cunt, squeezing it in his fingers like a wet sponge. Then he pulls my ass out and makes me bend over. I'm panting with pleasure. I stick my ass out and feel his fingers opening the door to my pussy, slicing into my slit and parting the lips of my cunt, then he stuffs his cock into me from behind and I moan and push back onto it, bracing myself with my hands against the wall for support, bending almost in half to get my ass in the air for him to screw, and I feel him slide deep into my cunt and begin to fuck wildly at me, pawing the roundness of my buttocks as he bangs it into me. Faster and harder he whacks into me, and I push back at his every stroke until I'm coming wildly. Then I reach between my leg and up between his, and I stretch my fingers out and clasp his balls from underneath as he bangs away. I feel them churning and sweaty, hot and squishy in my fingers, and as I squeeze them hard he comes in a rush of hot jabs, squirting his semen into me and moaning like a stallion. I think I'm going to faint with the pleasure of being screwed like that, up against the wall; my legs grow weak and I collapse to my knees, feeling him slip out of me. Then he pulls me around and with an oath in Spanish and a muted "whore" in English he kicks me in the crotch. I feel his toe jab into my cunt and I cry out in surprised pain, but he is already at the door, opening it and closing it behind him without another word or even a look. I know that I've been used, and a sudden welling of anger rises with the pain in my pussy, and anger at the uncalled for viciousness and at being treated like a whore. And Lilly floats into my mind, disjointed, like an apparition from a lighted stage, and I feel her anger and mistrust as my own.