Fed Lines

He’s an older actor who hasn’t had a part in over a decade. His name isn’t mentioned in the industry anymore, but he still has an agent. The actor sends an email to his agent every few months that goes something like: Any roles coming up? Keep me in mind. 

The replies are longer than necessary, overly apologetic. The answer, reduced to its simplest form, is the same: not happening.

Why the doomed repeated action? Fear. Not fear that he’s become irrelevant. Fear that if he doesn’t send the email, he will have given up entirely. That is what he can’t live with.

There is such a thing as aging out of an industry. But his problem is he used to drink. He doesn’t remember the specifics, but the gist is that he bathed his body in booze and it started breaking down. And there was brain damage from falling and hitting his head. The upside? Whatever mechanism wound up his compulsive drinking and ran smoothly for over thirty years snapped after the injury. He hasn’t had a drink since. The biggest loss? An inability to memorize lines.

***

He’s sitting in his easy chair, staring at his cello that hangs on the wall to the right of the TV. The screen is playing a montage of funny animal videos. The phone rings. It’s his agent.  

“Good news. I got contacted about a part they want you for. It’s an indie. And I know you’re used to doing bigger roles, back in the day, but I really think this could be a great opportunity.”

Her voice is bright with sympathetic undertones which seep through the line and wash over him. It could drown a man, this kind of care. What can he do but say, Okay what’s next?, and try not to sound too eager?

***

It’s a low—budget film shot outside of Taos. Beyond the concrete parking lot of the bowling alley where they’re to shoot, he sees long stretches of land with skeletal vegetation. A single piece of paper contains his scene. It’s short, gives valuable screen time to an insignificant character, and does nothing to advance the plot or themes of the film. But the director/writer/lead flew him down for a day to give it a go.

The director is in his mid—thirties and has a face that might have been handsome if his eyes weren’t so shadowed and his mouth didn’t look one twitch away from a snarl, but the director doesn’t bite, just gives a solemn nod when he enters the bowling alley. There is a young woman sitting on one of the swivel chairs attached to the table for Lane 8. Her face is perfectly round and brings all the stereotypes of youth: softness, naivete. She glances at him before her eyes slide back to the script on the table and her mouth resumes shaping the lines.

If their real—life interactions were scripted, he knew his signifier would be “Washed—out Actor,” but there’s a fizz underneath his skin that doesn’t fit that character, a nervousness he must have felt when he was just starting out. The mind can forget things that the body remembers. The bowling alley is empty except for the three actors and a skeleton crew. The director’s voice is the only noise to hold onto as it echoes and distorts in the cavernous space. A crew guy approaches and hands him black jeans and a vertically striped shirt. In the men’s, he strips to his underwear and examines the concave spot between the bulge of his belly and his sagging pectorals, close to where his heart is supposed to be, but he’s never seen it so who can say? It’s not so large, that dip, just the size of a child’s fist. He doesn’t recall that after the brain injury and years of not talking, his daughter contacted him, asking why.

Why?

“Tell me why you get to be the one to forget.”

The one? What was she talking about?

“Even before your injury.”

Before his injury. Why did she bother digging? Digging, digging for something that didn’t exist. People were always assigning meaning and sense to things, but, if there was reasoning behind anything, it was so well hidden you might as well not even try. He explained this to her.

“You’re talking gibberish,” she’d said just before he’d hung up.

There’s a hole in his boxers right beneath the band and something about the pale flesh of his hip makes him feel utterly ridiculous. He pulls the jeans on and yanks the shirt over his head. Now he’s only exposed from the neck up. His face is still good—looking at least, and his hair has been recently dyed back to the sandy blond locks he was known for. But there’s a slowness in his eyes and a dumb look to his face that wasn’t there before. Someone knocks on the door and says it’s time.

***

There will only be one take and he will inevitably forget the words. The director will cue him to create a dialogue. 

           You remember me?
           I remember you.
           It’s been a long time.
           Long time. Long time.
           But I’m back now.
           You’re back.
           Maybe for good.
           Good.
           Want to know why?

The cut came; his answer was lost to him. 

***

The film editor will tell the director to go straight into the most iconic scene where the young girl tap dances under a spotlight in her gauzy blue dress. She’ll say the scene with the bowling alley attendant does nothing to advance the story, that it doesn’t make sense. She’ll say there’s something about the old actor, something strange about his eyes and his face, some hollowness that shouldn’t be there. But the man with the slow expressions will remain.