Leading Man

Start at either "The End". From now to then. From then to now.

LEADING MAN Non-fiction by Haline Gegory

Rewind 1989. The End.

He sold his house. But wouldn’t leave. He had no place to go. He and his old dog. He couldn’t get out of the La-Z-Boy where he sat all day, a bottle of wine on the terrazzo floor beside him. The last time I saw him, he sat there, carefully rolling a cigarette. He asked me about “the advertising game.” He thought he could be a freelance writer. I tried not to let the wasted man before me intimidate my memory of him. When I left, I was in full retreat. He died later that year in a South Miami nursing home. My one-time love. My dear old friend.

Rewind 1985. “A miscommunication.”

I’m giving a party. One of the guests is a younger man I am seeing. My old friend arrives, drunk. He circles the young man and makes witty, vulgar remarks. Disgusted, I throw him out. He calls me hours later, contrite. I hear him fumbling with a glass and a bottle. He mumbles, “You know, love, we’ve always had this problem. Missss-communication.” I hang up.

Rewind. In the 80’s. Shortcuts.

The film department at the University of Miami lets him go. No tenure. He needs work. He once wrote a script for a fading movie actress. He directed TV commercials. But no one returns his calls now.

He can’t hold his food down. Claims it’s a rare enzyme deficiency. He’s drinking a lot because he can hold that down. I beg him to go to the VA for a checkup.

He misses his students terribly.

A friend gets him a semester teaching at a night school. He refuses a second term. It’s too compromising. “Don’t be so damned obstinate,” I tell him. He ignores my advice. I’m, too pragmatic.

Rewind, 1980. Mental intercourse.

Our relationship has turned full circle. We’re “just friends” again. Much of our time is now spent on the phone. His calls are brilliant mind games. He drags me through intricate mazes of thought, careering off in tangents, pretending he has forgotten why he called. Hours later, he gets to the point, laying before me the brilliance of his meandering discourse. He means to dazzle, but he exhausts. One night, I fall asleep while he goes on and on. Two hours later I wake up, and he’s still talking.

Rewind. 1977. “Hello again.”

My marriage is over. I’m back in Miami. My friend has been married and divorced twice. Now he teaches at the University. It’s inevitable for us to get together. He has been best buddies with my ex-husband and me since college. One night he invites me to his office to view his experimental film. For an hour a chicken scratches around in a pile of dirt. Chicken, dirt, scratch, scratch. Bored, I keep nodding off. He keeps waking me. “What do you think?”

“It’s…uh…interesting.”

He snaps the projector off and we sit in the dark, acutely aware of each other.

“Isn’t it about time?”

“Yes,” I whisper. It has taken 24 years to get here.

Rewind, mid-1960’s. Lawrence of Arabia.

The three of us fly out of the movie theater…feverish with excitement over “Lawrence of Arabia”, the spectacular film we’ve just seen. They swagger around each other grasping at invisible knives, flinging back imaginary desert turbans. He throws me over his shoulder and runs down the street past startled strollers shouting, “No prisoners.”

My husband runs after us. “No prisoners.” I laugh. I love them both

Rewind a long time. 1955. The Way We Were.

New York. Our first apartment. My new husband and I invite him to sleep on our floor. We have no furniture. We’re here to take New York for all it’s worth. He says he won’t “sell out” and be in any plays he doesn’t consider artistically valid. “Then what?” we ask. “If you won’t take the off-Broadway small-time resume-building parts, how will you ever get to the good stuff?” He shrugs his shoulders.

Rewind 1954. UM Ring Theatre.

A Renaissance play. Velvet gowns. Swords and rapiers. I’m the ingénue; he’s the rakish romantic lead. He’s wooing another student actress on stage and off. He delights in their not-so-secret liaisons. In one scene he leans toward me and strokes my face. Each night I shiver with anticipation. And each night I look up into the rafters where the young man I love…who will be my husband one day…straddles the catwalk, focusing the lights down on our scene.

Rewind, 1953. Scene One.

I’m a freshman at the University of Miami. I work in the drama department office, and that’s where I see him for the first time. He’s old. He must be 25. He shuffles in like James Dean, head cocked low, hands thrust in the pockets of his jeans. He hands me his transcript. I’m startled by the blue of his eyes. He stares through me. I’m just a kid. I fumble with his forms. He slouches in a chair and takes out a pouch from his shirt pocket and slowly shakes tobacco into a paper. He rolls it, then balances the cigarette between his lips. The papers quiver in my hand. Who is this? And God, I hope we can be in a play together one day.

He snaps a match and cups the flame. He inhales deeply. I feel him watching me watch him.

Everything is beginning right now.

The End

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