“They’ll do terrible things to you there,” Stanley’s father said. “You’ll get in touch with your emotions and your inner eye and worse. I won’t recognize you this time next year. You’ll just be this big pink ball of feeling.”
“Look at all the famous people who’ve come through,” said Stanley, taking the brochure off his father and pointing to the list inside the back cover, where all the television and film stars were asterisked in red. The pages of the brochure were already soft from being turned and turned.
“I look forward to seeing you on daytime television,” said Stanley’s father. “That’s my son, I’ll say out loud, to nobody. There on screen with the airbrushing and the toupee. That’s my son.”
“Did you see the photos of the grounds?” Stanley said, flipping back through the brochure until he found them. “It’s in the old museum building. It’s all stone and mosaic floors and stuff, and big high windows.”
“I see that.”
“Three hundred people audition.”
“That’s great, Stanley.”
“And only twenty get in.”
“That’s great.”
“I know it’s just a beginning,” Stanley said.
A waiter arrived and Stanley’s father ordered wine. Stanley leaned back and looked around. The restaurant was starched and shadowy, full of murmuring and quiet laughter and cologne. The ceiling was strung with little red lanterns glinting back and forth above them.
The waiter bowed and moved off. Stanley’s father shook out his cuffs and smiled his therapy smile. He pushed the glossy brochure back across the tablecloth.
“I’m proud of you,” he said. “It’s going to be great. But you know, we’re working for opposing teams now.”
“What do you mean?” Stanley said.
“Theater is all about the unknown, right? Theater has its roots in magic and ritual and sacrifice, and magic and ritual and sacrifice depend on some element of mystery. Psychology is all about getting rid of mystery, turning superstitions and fears into things that we can understand.” He winked and speared an olive with a toothpick. “We’re practically at war.”
Stanley felt stumped, as he often did when his father said something clever. Each year after this meal was over Stanley lay in bed and thought for hours about what he could have said back that would have been cleverer. He chased the oily bubbles of vinegar around his dish with his finger.
“Do you disagree?” his father asked, looking at him sharply as he chewed.
“Sort of,” Stanley said. “I guess I thought… I guess for me acting seems like a way of finding out about a person, or getting into a person. I mean, you have to understand sadness to be able to act it. I don’t know. That seems kind of similar to what you do.”
“Ah-ha!” said Stanley’s father with the unpleasant greedy quickness of someone who likes to triumph in an argument. “So do you think actors know more about ordinary people than ordinary people know about themselves?”
“No,” Stanley said, “but I’m not sure that psychologists know more about ordinary people than they know about themselves either.”
His father burst out laughing and slapped the table.
“Aren’t you supposed to be giving me life advice and passing on a torch or something?” Stanley asked, to change the subject.
“Shit,” said his father. “I would have come prepared. How about you just tell me all the new cuss words, and we can swap dirty jokes. I’ve never been to drama school. Don’t ask me about my feelings.”
“I don’t know any new cuss words,” said Stanley. “I think all the old ones are still current.”
There was a small pause.
“I’ve got a joke for you,” said Stanley’s father. “How do you give a priest a vasectomy?”
“I don’t know,” said Stanley.
“Kick the choirboy in the back of the head.”
Stanley laughed and felt disgusted that his own father was more outrageous than he was. He started flicking through the brochure again just in case he’d missed something.
The wine arrived. Stanley’s father made a great performance of tasting it, rolling it around in the bottom of his glass and inspecting the label on the bottle. “That’s fine,” he said to the waiter at last, nodding briefly at their glasses, and then switching his smile back to Stanley. “So, you want some life advice,” he said.
“Not really,” said Stanley. “I just thought you were going to do the big ‘now you’re all grown up’ thing.”
“You want psychobabble?”
“No.”
“Kid, you got good blood and a fine pair of shoes.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Did I tell you about my client who set herself on fire?”
“I heard you telling Roger.”
“Life advice,” said Stanley’s father, holding up his glass for a toast. “Right. I’ve got something good and nasty. Stanley, to mark your rite of passage I am going to tell you a secret.”
They touched glasses and sipped.
“Okay,” said Stanley reluctantly.
His father stroked his lapel with his fingertips, his glass poised and careless in his other hand. He looked rich and camp and deadly. “I am going to tell you how to make a million dollars,” he said.
Stanley had the hot frustrated feeling again, but all he said was Okay. He even smiled.
His father said, “Okay. I want you to think of your time at high school. Five years, right? During those five years, same as during anyone’s five years at any high school, there was one kid in your year who died. Yes?”
“I guess so.”
“Maybe he drove too fast, drank too much, played with guns, whatever—there is always one kid who dies. Did you know, Stanley,” he said, “that you can take out life insurance on a person without them knowing?”
Stanley just looked at him.
“And the premiums on school kids,” his father continued, “are really, really low. Provided they don’t have any reasons to think these kids are going to die. You can take out a million-dollar life insurance policy on a kid for something like two hundred a year.”
“Dad,” said Stanley disbelievingly.
“All you’d need to do is pick it. All you’d need to do is to get in there and do some research and get some information that would give you the edge.”
“Dad,” Stanley said again.
His father put his hands up like an innocent man, and laughed.
“Hey, I’m giving you gold here,” he said. “Think of your kid. The one who died at your school. Could you have picked it beforehand? If you could have predicted it, then you could have got in there and made something good of it. Here’s your life advice, Stanley: that is how people get rich. That’s the only secret. They see things are going to happen before they happen, and they pounce.”
Stanley’s father was smiling his therapy smile.
“I couldn’t have picked it,” Stanley said at last. “The boy at my school. He was hit on his skateboard coming home from the shop. Out of all of them, I’d never have picked him.”
“Shame,” his father said. He didn’t say anything further. He toyed with his fork and reached for his wine and watched Stanley over the frail rim of the glass as he drank.
Stanley fingered the drama school brochure unhappily. He was hot and uncomfortable in his suit jacket, like a chicken trussed up to roast. “What about me?” he said. “Can you see what’s going to happen before it happens?”
His father leaned forward and stabbed the tablecloth with a bony white finger.
“I can see,” he said, “you are going to have a great year. You’re going to be great.”
“Acting is not a form of imitation,” the Head of Improvisation said briskly, after the hopefuls had assembled in a ragged cross-legged ellipsis on the rehearsal-room floor. Near the door the Head of Acting was hovering with his clipboard, watching with a studied indifference and pinching his pen in his fingers as he measured the worth and quality of each student against the next.