“What do ya say?” Hinton called to Alec and Raul.
“How ya doin’, mah man?” Raul said, giving Hinton five.
Davis shook hands with Raul and then with Alec. “This is humiliating,” he said.
Alec lost his smile. “Well, you gotta face it.”
Raul sat down with the grace any actor has when he is center stage. He put his glasses in his jacket pocket and, smiling benignly, spoke in asides to Alec, while exchanging nods with others about the stage.
Alec sat with his arms folded, frowning at anyone who met his eyes, seeming bemused at Raul’s whispered quips.
“Here comes The Sussbaum,” Raul hissed.
“Number one Jew,” Alec said, moments before Mike extended his hand. Alec shook it silently. Mike’s smile looked as if it had been frozen into place.
“How have you been, Raul?” he asked, offering a hand.
Raul glanced haughtily at the extended organ. “Ah, alas, how have I been, Mike? How, indeed?”
Mike awkwardly put his hand back at his side.
“Are you a doctor, Mike, that you would ask after Raul’s health?” Alec asked.
“It’s concern for me, Alec. No, on second thought, it isn’t. You see, Alec, Mike wouldn’t want to have to fill in for me.”
Mike’s smile was still fixed, but his eyes wavered.
“We’re only kidding you, Mike,” Alec said slowly, “just joshin’ ya.”
The scene seemed in danger of stopping dead when Mr. Miller asked everyone to sit down. “Well, good luck,” Mike said significantly. He moved away toward the tail end of the semicircle, downstage left.
“Go fuck yourself,” Alec murmured.
“Oh, violent, Alec, very violent.”
Miller asked everyone to quiet down. “This pisses me off no end,” Alec mumbled.
Davis leaned forward to face them. “I won’t wish you good luck. I’m sorry we all have to go through this petty jealousy.”
The auditorium fell silent, all attention trained on Mr. Miller.
Miller spoke of the honor it was for Cabot to be allowed to present the world premiere of Paul I. (“The world premiere,” Alec said, “that asshole.”) There were hopes, Miller continued, that the play might reach Broadway. Not, of course, he said humorously, his yellow teeth briefly exposed, with Cabot’s cast. (“Oh, you’re a funny man, Miller, ya kill me.”) Miller criticized the rumors that tryouts were redundant, saying that, indeed, he had not yet picked the cast, that tryouts were for that purpose. (“In that notebook, see that notebook, is written Paul, dash, Black.”) Miller then introduced John Goldby. Goldby spoke of his regret at not being able to be at rehearsals, assuring all that he would, however, be at a few. He said that he would help Mr. Miller with casting but that the final decisions would, of course, lie with Mr. Miller. (“He has to hurry up,” Raul said, “or I’m gonna scream. I can’t stand this tension and listen to rhetoric.”) Goldby went on to speak of Eric Hoffer, team effort in plays, and the fact that he and Mr. Miller had decided to do a great deal of the play as a pageant. He went on and on, while Raul sweated and Alec cursed, until Miller got up and explained that he would begin on the right-hand side of the semicircle. The last fifteen people on that side simultaneously shifted and tensed up. And it began. Miller selected speeches randomly, occasionally asking people to read complementary parts; but, so far, he tested them again with more substantial ones.
The center and the left-hand side of the semicircle were lulled into calm, not only by the removal of testing but by the general mediocrity of the candidates. Yet it swung its slow way toward Raul and Alec, and Raul periodically shot apprehensive glances at the approaching tide of speakers. Alec stared off into the lights, his lips moving occasionally.
Raul fell to studying Miller’s face. Never had he seen him so inscrutable, so sinister that he became threatening. Raul was nudged by Alec, the exhausted face nodding toward Hinton, who, Raul realized in a spasm of fear, was being called on by Miller.
“Page fifty-two, read Paul’s speech. Raul, read Count Grigory.”
Raul fumbled with the script. Grigory had three lines between two long speeches of Paul’s.
Raul wiped his palms, tried to quell the nervous tremors of his stomach, and studied the three lines. He used all his superficial reading tricks: a devastating pause there, let his voice crack here, and end with a pleading, humanitarian tone. Then, as quickly as he could, he memorized the lines. Hinton reached his cue, and Raul admired his own voice discoursing most eloquent music. Hinton continued, but Miller, after a few lines, said that it was enough. A new wave of fear rose up in Raul. He held his script, prepared to open it when Miller called the page out to him.
“Davis, page forty-six, the Jew’s part. Alec, will you read his wife.” The audience broke out in laughter. Raul’s script began to slide off his knees, but he caught it absently.
6.
When tryouts ended, the hopefuls had gone over to Miller, some to hint at roles, others to be blunt enough to name them openly. Alec and Raul, however, had hurried silently off the stage, out of the theater, into the subway and home. Alec lived a block away from Raul, so they were together on the subway and for two more blocks to Alec’s apartment.
In all that time together they consistently predicted doom. Alec had never been favored by Miller, so the slight given him in tryouts could be viewed only as a death sentence. Raul was confused — there was every reason to believe Miller would favor him, but on the slight evidence of tryouts, Raul could see no hope. And not having a good role had a greater implication for him than a mere slight to his ego.
They egged each other on into greater depths of tragedy. They wouldn’t even get supporting roles, perhaps not even speaking parts. Raul suggested that; he then suggested that Alec would get a speaking part, indeed all along he had thought Alec would be favored, but he, Raul, would be a guard or something. Alec frowned. No, they would both get decent parts, but forget about anything important. “That fuckin’ Miller,” Raul said, “doesn’t know what he could be doing to me.”
The weekend was interminably long. Raul called Alec once. It was Saturday night; he asked him where the parts would be listed. Alec said on the main bulletin board in Porshe Hall. Ten minutes later Raul called back, asking where the main bulletin board was. Alec said outside Henderson’s secretary’s office.
Sunday night Alec drugged himself to sleep with television. Raul was up all night, practicing a graceful acceptance of a major role, and angrily, nobly refusing a degrading demotion.
In the morning Raul hurried to the theater, finding an unusually large crowd there. He asked Miller when casting would be listed. After lunch, he was told. Raul called Alec, as they had agreed, and arranged to meet him at Mike & Gino’s. They would eat lunch and together read their glory or doom. “You know, of course,” Raul said to him, “it’s going to be embarrassing if one of us gets a good role and the other doesn’t.”
At eleven-thirty, when Raul was let out of history class, he crossed over to an acre of land that Cabot kept as a memorial to a student who had died in World War II, slid down the rocks that bordered one side of the acre, ran down a street that was exposed to Porshe Hall, and therefore dangerous, down a flight of steps to a long driveway that, farther down, led to another flight of steps and finally to the bottom of the long hill leading to Cabot. This way he avoided walking down the hill in full view of the school.
He waited ten minutes for Alec, who came at eleven- fifty; they had lunch and went up to the school, following, in reverse, the route Raul had taken.
They walked up to the office floor of Porshe Hall silently; they were solemn, heads bowed. Students and a few faculty who passed them smiled knowingly. Raul, who saw this, took it, illogically, as an evil omen.