King of the Worlds. M. Thomas Gammarino

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      “They all sleep in the same big round bed,” Josh said, “and it’s pitch-dark.”

      Dylan nodded. “Congratulations, Josh. With a single blow, you’ve just overturned the entire Western romantic tradition.”

      “Sorry.”

      “Don’t be. You’re a free thinker. I applaud that.” Indeed, Dylan himself might have been a little like Josh at one time, before an orthodox lifestyle snared him the way it eventually snares anyone who hasn’t made a firm conviction to avoid it.

      “Okay, so let’s pick up where we left off. Where are our Lysander and Helena?”

      Daniel Young stood up, looking dorky and afraid as ever.

      “And Helena?”

      “Marie’s not here,” Julia informed him.

      “Oh right. Why then, Julia, you can be her understudy. No good deed goes unpunished.”

      Dylan expected some rolled eyes, but Julia leapt to her feet; for every three kids who didn’t want to act out Shakespeare, you got one like this who secretly did. Dylan had been that kid once too. In fact, he often wondered if there wasn’t that kid deep in all these kids, if only he could break through all their fear, chop through the already-frozen seas inside of them.

      “Okay, Daniel, picking up at line 124.”

      “Act 3, scene 2?”

      “Right.”

      Daniel began:

      “Why should you think that I should woo in scorn?

      Scorn and derision never come in tears.

      Look, when I vow, I weep. And vows so born,

      In their nativity all truth appears.

      How can these things in me seem scorn to you,

      Bearing the badge of faith to prove them true?”

      He read with all the passion and nuance of some twentieth-century AI. (To be sure, he wasn’t one—at least not as far as Dylan knew.)

      “Okay, Daniel,” Dylan said. “Not bad, not bad, but remember: you love this girl. She doesn’t believe you, but you know that your future happiness depends utterly on convincing her of it. Imagine this is your only chance to persuade her, and if you fail, you die. That’s what it has to feel like.”

      “But he doesn’t really love her though, right?”

      “Au contraire, he definitely does love her. He’s crying to prove it, and these are no crocodile tears. That what he’s trying to persuade her of.”

      “What are crocodile tears?” somebody asked.

      “Phony tears. Fake tears.”

      Daniel balked some more: “But he only loves her because Puck put the juice on his eye, right?”

      “That’s true, Daniel. Good point. That’s why he loves her, and we know that, but the key thing here is that he doesn’t know it. He feels himself overwhelmed by love and that’s that. I can see how it might bother you that the reason he’s so powerfully in love is because for all intents and purposes he’s been drugged, but the truth is, Daniel, if you were to ask a biochemist, they’d tell you that love is always a matter of chemicals. It’s always a drug. It comes on strong and then wears off over time. The only difference here is the chain of causality, but whether the love causes the chemicals or the chemicals cause the love, subjectively speaking I don’t suppose it makes much difference, and as an actor your primary concern is always with subjectivity. Subjectivity is your bread and butter. Do you get what I’m saying to you?”

      “Not really,” Daniel admitted.

      “Okay, well just try putting some more passion into it, would you, Daniel? See if you can’t work up some tears for us.”

      “I’ll try,” Daniel said. His hair vibrated.

      “That’s all anyone can reasonably ask of you,” Dylan assured him.

      Daniel was just about to begin when Tiffany spoke up from the curtains, “How come you’re so much nicer today, Mr. G?”

      “Am I nicer today?”

      “About a thousand times.”

      “Well, I got a good night’s sleep for one thing. That may have something to do with it.”

      It was true. Last night he’d made a point of sleeping on the living room sofa so he could follow Dr. Cohen’s advice and omni up some tinnitus-masking white noise without disturbing Erin. Sure enough, he’d slept like the proverbial baby, and it no longer bothered him so much if Daniel Young wasn’t the greatest Shakespearean actor in the universe; indeed, as Daniel proceeded to act out his scene there in the classroom, it was clear that, despite overwhelming odds, he didn’t have a Shakespearian atom in his body.

      Surprises were possible, of course.

      • • •

Back when Dylan was fourteen, no one would have guessed that he’d go on to be a famous actor one day. It wasn’t until his senior year, after all, that his father overheard him belting out Pearl Jam’s “Black” in the shower one evening8 and encouraged him to try out for the spring musical, which was Jesus Christ Superstar that year. Dylan would have been content to be in the chorus, so he was rather terror-stricken when he checked the board the morning after callbacks to find he’d gotten the lead.

      8_____________

      He especially liked to let loose toward the end:

      I know someday you’ll

      have a beautiful life,

      I know you’ll be a star,

      in somebody else’s sky,

      But why, why, why can’t

      it be, can’t it be mine?

      Despite feeling in the secret mind at the back of his ordinary mind that he was meant to play this part, he was so off-the-charts nervous during the next couple months of rehearsal that he felt as if he was always on the verge of puking. Mr. Armstrong, the casting director/geometry teacher, was tough on him, always making sure he hit precisely the right pitch and stood in just the right place on stage when he hit it. Dylan’s worst fear was that he would blank during a live performance and forget the words, so in the interest of being over-prepared, he spent so much time and energy at home listening to cast recordings of Superstar, and recording himself singing it, that his eyes went all raccoonish and his grades tanked in every subject except English, which had always been easy for him.

      But then, come opening night, his efforts paid such high dividends that he didn’t merely sing the songs so much as he became them. And just as in his audition, he didn’t quite realize what he’d done until it was over and he was taking his curtain call. But whereas a couple of dozen kids had clapped СКАЧАТЬ