King of Shadows (2 page)

“Trust,” Arby said softly, into the startled silence of the room. “Remember it. Someone else in the center, now. Keep going.”

He pushed small Eric gently into the center of our
group, in spite of his size, and Eric gulped, closed his eyes and stiffened his back. The game went on.

There were twenty-four of us in the company altogether, if you counted Arby, his partner Julia, Maisie the stage manager, and Rachel the voice coach. The rest were all boys. The Company of Boys, chosen by Arby and his committee from schools and youth theaters all over the United States. We were all shapes and sizes and ages, up to eighteen. The only thing we had in common was that by accident or experience or both, we all knew how to act. Supposedly we were the best young stage actors in the country.

We had one other thing in common, too. Most of us were pretty weird. When you think about it, a normal kid wants to watch TV or movies, videos or computer games: there's something odd about him if instead he's more interested in the stage. And we were all crazy about it; crazy, and confident that we had talent. Arby had made sure of that when he first interviewed each of us, last winter.

Now it was summer. By bus or train or airplane, we'd all been brought to this school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to rehearse two plays by Shakespeare together. Some rich theater nut had left money in his will to have Shakespeare's plays performed the way they were four hundred years ago, when he first wrote them. There were no actresses in the theater in those days; the women's parts were all played by boys whose voices hadn't broken yet. Some of the theater companies were made up of men and boys, some just of boys. Like ours.

And when we'd rehearsed for three weeks, the rich man's money was going to fly us across the Atlantic to
London, to perform at the new Globe, a theater that was an exact copy of the one the plays were first acted in, four centuries ago. We were going into a kind of time warp. My dad would have thought that was really cool: he was a big
Star Trek
fan. But I try not to think about my dad.

Arby called a break for lunch. That meant going down to the cafeteria of the school where we were working. Ferdie walked with me—not that he ever really walked, off-stage; it was more a sort of spastic bouncing jive. He draped one arm briefly over my shoulders.

“That was
severe,
man. If he chops guys for little things like that, he's gonna have my ass in a week.”

“I feel bad about it.” I was remembering the horror on the pudgy boy's face, as Arby banished him.

“He could've hurt you,” said little Eric self-righteously, shadowing me. “Could've broken your back, if you'd hit the ground.”

“But he didn't let me hit the ground, he caught me. Just a bit late.”

“Late is too late,” said Gil Warmun, behind us. He towered over our heads as we all went down the stairs. “The old man was right—nobody can mess with trusting. You kids remember that.”

“Okay, Dad,” said Ferdie cheerfully.

“I mean it. You feel bad about that guy, Nat? That's dumb. He's history and he deserved it. Grow up.”

“Grow up yourself,” I said, stung.

Arby's big voice rang down the stairwell from above. The man was everywhere, like God.

“Read-through of the
Dream
in forty-five minutes,
gentlemen,” the voice said. “And just bear in mind—this is going to be the most sublime six weeks of your lives, and the shittiest. In the theater, they go together.”

The first weeks were certainly that kind of mixture. Even that first day. It wasn't literally the first day, because we'd had a rather muddled week of “orientation,” but it was the beginning of serious rehearsal.

For the reading, Arby went on with his game pattern. He had us all sit cross-legged on the floor in a big circle, with our scripts, and he sat in the middle with a soccer ball in his hands. He threw his ball at each of us in turn, and when you caught it you had to say in a loud clear voice the name of the characters you were playing, then your own name and where you came from. Then everyone said hi to you. Then you threw the ball back. We'd been through this whole exercise once already, on the day we arrived, but I have to admit it was helpful to do it again.

The ball came at me, stinging my hand as I caught it.

“I'm Puck in
A Midsummer Night's Dream,
Pindarus in
Julius Caesar.
Nat Field, from Greenville, South Carolina.”

It was Eric's turn.

“Eric Sawyer. From Camden, Maine. I'm Mustardseed in
A Midsummer Night's Dream,
and Cinna the Poet in
Julius Caesar.”

We chorused,
“Hi, Eric!”

“Character names first,” Arby said. “They're more important than you are.” Little Eric flushed. Arby threw the
ball at the next boy, a tall, brawny character in a black tank top and black jeans.

“Duke Theseus in
A Midsummer Night's Dream,
Brutus in
Julius Caesar.”
He had a voice as strong as Arby's. “I'm Ray Danza from Chicago.”

“Hi, Ray!”

The boy next to him was tall too, but chubbier, with a mop of curly black hair like a floppy Afro.

“Starveling in the
Dream,
Caesar in
Julius Caesar.
Hy Schwartz from Los Angeles.”

“Hi,
Hy
—” and we all broke up, it sounded so silly. Everyone laughed except Arby.

“Get a haircut, Hy,” he said, and he went on throwing the ball.

I was having a good time all afternoon until the middle of the read-through, when Arby lit into me for going too fast. He'd already told me twice to slow down, and I'd tried, but I guess I was nervous. We all were, of course. Everyone had a crystal-clear memory of the sudden end of Pudding-face's career.

It was in Act Three, when Puck has a long speech telling Oberon how his queen, Titania, has fallen in love with a donkey. Oberon is pissed at Titania because she's refused to let him have one of her servants, so while she's sleeping in a wood, he squeezes the juice of a magic plant on her eyes that'll make her totally obsessed with whatever person or creature she sees when she wakes up. (Oberon and Titania aren't human, they're the king and queen of the fairies—and if that makes you go “Haw-haw-haw,” you might as well stop reading my story right now.)

I started out:

 

“My mistress with a monster is in love!

Near to her close and consecrated bower,

While she was in her dull and sleeping hour,

A crew of patches, rude mechanicals—”

 

“Puck!” Arby boomed from across the circle. “I keep telling you, will you slow down! We're acting this play in
England!
It's their language, it's called English—you can't help sounding like an American, but at least you can be
in-tel-li-gi-ble!

“Sorry,” I said.

“A southern drawl has a certain charm,” Arby said. Everyone was looking at him now. He smiled his famous warm smile at me, crinkling his eyes—and then suddenly the smile dropped away and his face was sour. It was as if a light had gone out. “But a southern gabble is hideous. Vile. You sound like a cross between a monkey and a duck.”

There were some muffled sniggers around the circle. I wanted to disappear through the floor. From behind me a girl's calm voice said, “It's okay, Arby—we'll work on it, Nat and I. Hey—you chose these guys for their talent, not their accents.”

It was Rachel Levin, and I could have hugged her. She was a student at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and she was attached to the company as Arby's assistant and our voice coach; I guess they felt we'd be able to relate to her because she was so young. They were right. I glanced around at her and she shook her long hair back over her shoulders and winked at me. The light glinted on the tiny diamond stud in the side of her nose.

Arby looked at her expressionlessly for a moment; I
was waiting for him to yell at her. Rachel looked calmly back. Suddenly he grabbed up his soccer ball, which was still beside him on the floor, and threw it violently right at her.

Rachel caught it, smooth as silk, though it rocked her backward. She smiled. “Voice coach and dragon's assistant,” she said. “Rachel Levin, from Cambridge, Mass.” She tossed the ball back to Arby, gently, and the rehearsal went on.

“He's so mean,” Eric said. “He's mean to everyone. Is he always like that?”

Rachel was rummaging in her backpack. She laughed. “I don't think so. He lives with Julia, and she's quite the liberated lady.” She produced a glossy green apple from the backpack, took a big noisy bite, and passed it on to Gil Warmun.

“Don't take it personally, Eric,” Gil said. “Or you, Nat. He just wants everyone to know who's the boss.” He bit into Rachel's apple and held it out to Eric. We were all sitting on the tired grass of the riverbank, beside the Charles River that flows slow and brown through Cambridge and Boston to the sea. Rachel had been hearing Gil and me do one of our Puck-Oberon scenes, and Eric was there because, well, because he was always there. It was a hot day, with only a whisper of breeze, and the air felt thick as a blanket. Joggers pounded by on the path a few yards away, glistening with sweat, and sometimes bicyclists whirred past them, perilously close. On the river, long slender boats zipped up and down, rowed by one oarsman or two,
four or even eight; they were amazingly quiet, and you heard only the small smack of oars against water as the boats rushed by. Cambridge seemed to be a very competitive place.

I said, pointing, “Arby is like
that!”
A single oarsman was sculling furiously upriver, very close to our bank. As he came by you could see the intensity tight on his face, and hear the rhythmic gasps for breath.

“Obsessed,” Gil said.

“Yeah.”

“Nothing wrong with that, though. If he hadn't been obsessed with getting a boys' company to London, he wouldn't have got the money from that millionaire, and we wouldn't be going.”

“It's not obsession,” Rachel said. She reached out and took the apple back from Eric, who was already into his second bite. “Not like crew. I know people who row—if you want to be really good at
that,
it has to be like a religion. But theater? It's not a sport, it's not about winning, it's about people.”

“And applause,” Gil said, needling. “All those lovely hands clapping. That's what we all like most.”

“Not true,” Rachel said.

He grinned at her. “An actor's not much use without an audience.”

“There you go then,” said Rachel. “It's about people.”

This wasn't a real argument though, it was cheerful bickering. We all knew Gil was as obsessed as anyone could be—in his case, with Shakespeare. He'd read every single one of the plays, and knew huge chunks of them by heart.

“What I like best is the
smell,
backstage,” I said. I was thinking of the little theater back at home, where I'd played an evil little boy in a grown-up play last summer. It had been our space, my space, a kind of home. “Theater smell. Dusty. Safe.”

“Good word,” Gil said, sounding surprised. He reached out and gave me a quick pat on the shoulder.

“Safe,” Rachel said thoughtfully. On the brown water, a pair of mallard ducks paddled slowly past us, and she threw one of them a piece of apple. The duck looked at her scornfully, and paddled on.

Eric said, “My mom thinks theater's
dangerous.
My dad had to talk her into letting me come.”

Gil fingered his beard, looking at him deadpan. “She thought her beautiful little boy'd get attacked by nasty molesters? Not with that hair, kid.”

Eric looked uncomfortable. “She's . . . religious.”

“Arby had to do some convincing, with the younger boys' parents,” Rachel said. “They couldn't understand why they couldn't go to London too.”

“Why couldn't they?”

“This company is a family!” said Gil, in a perfect imitation of Arby's booming voice. “Families only have one set of parents!”

Eric looked at me. “Did yours care?”

“My what?”

“Your parents, did they get on your case?”

Oh please. I came here to get away from this. I thought I could get away from this.

I said, “I don't have any parents.”

They all stared at me. Those faces stunned out of
movement for an instant, they always look the same. An eight slid past us on the river; I could hear the rhythmic creaking of the oarlocks, and the small splash of the oars.

“Oh, Nat, I'm sorry,” Rachel said.

“I live with my aunt. She didn't mind me coming, she thought it was a great idea.”

Don't ask me, please don't ask me.

Eric asked, direct, young, a hundred years younger than me: “Are they dead?”

“Yeah.” I got to my feet, quicker than any of them could say anything else. “I gotta go pee—I'll see you back at the school.”

And I was off, escaping, the way you always have to escape sooner or later if you don't want to be clucked over and sympathized with and have to listen to all that mush, or, worse, have to answer the next question and the next and the next. If you have to answer questions every time, how are you ever going to learn to forget?

It would be better in London, it would be better in the company; I wouldn't be Nat there, I would be Puck.

I loved London. It wasn't like any of the American cities I'd seen: Atlanta, New York, Boston, Cambridge. Looking down from the airplane, you saw a sprawling city of red roofs and grey stone, scattered with green trees, with the River Thames winding through the middle crisscrossed by bridge after bridge. When the bus first drove us in from the airport, everything seemed smaller than in the United States: the houses, so many of them joined together in long rows; the cars; the highways. There were tall office buildings, but not gigantic; there were supermarkets, but not the same greedy sprawl. An English taxi-cab wasn't a regular yellow cab with a light glowing on the roof; it was a boxy black car whose shape dated back, Arby told us, to the days when it had to have enough room for a sitting-down passenger wearing a top hat.