“I want to make them solid.”
“Why?”
“It would be nice.”
“Do you, by any chance, want them to carry things?”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
“You want them to carry you, don’t you! You’ve been too influenced by children’s books, where people float on clouds. You’re crazy. How could you think it’s possible? Clouds are less dense than water.”
“Why do you have to be negative? I’m not negative about your dream of becoming an actress. Why would you be negative about my chances of finding the right way to whip water?”
“Have you tried anything other than changing the way the water is whipped?”
“Of course. I’ve tried everything I could possibly think of. I’ve tried mixing the clouds with various chemicals. I even tried mixing them with things like blood, spit, pus, sweat, tears … hair. I’ve spent entire days just thinking, trying to figure out what I must do to the clouds to make them solid. I went to a health food specialist and asked him what vitamins I should take and what foods I should eat to make myself more scientifically imaginative and intelligent. I think I must have a nutritional deficiency of some sort, or be lacking in a vitamin, that is preventing me from coming up with the solution. Or maybe I have a chemical imbalance.”
“Because you can’t make clouds solid.”
“Yes.” He sat on the floor, facing me and the bars. “You can stop pedaling, by the way; I see you’ve just about done the eight hundred calories. I even tried talking to my clouds, to convince them to get more solid, that it’s a better life being solid, it’s more fun to have substance.”
I stared. He looked vulnerable sitting on the floor, his legs spread open into a perfect split. He was stretching.
He went on: “There were times I felt my sanity slipping, like when I tried mixing them with smoke, darkness, and smells.” He looked uneasy, and added: “When my sanity slipped even more, I tried mixing clouds with boredom, envy, tendency, and the notion of extremes. But I’m not giving up. I will make it. I must.”
“Why must you?”
“Because I want to. No special reason other than great desire.”
What followed was an unpleasant stretching session for an hour. He kept repeating, “Flexibility is freedom.” He kneaded his chewing gum between his fingers, saying that I should try to be as flexible as the gum. When I didn’t stretch far enough, he spurred me on by shooting ice needles at me or sometimes only ice threads that were so thin they felt like what I imagined acupuncture was like. Toward the end of the session he made a little sculpture out of his gum, and presented it to me on the palm of his hand. It was a face, which vaguely resembled mine, but more attractive; a young Elizabeth Taylor without the slight squashing. When we had finished gazing at it, Damon threw the face in his mouth and said, “Flexibility is not only freedom. It is beauty.”
He allowed me to rest while he went out and bought a dinky trampoline.
During lunch we had an argument that began when I said, “You are wasting your time and mine by keeping me here. You’ll never be able to improve my acting. I’m either meant to succeed or fail as an actress, but you won’t make any difference as to the outcome.”
“Let me tell you that you sure seemed to be heading for failure when I met you. And you knew it. If I hadn’t come along, ten years from now you’d still be struggling.”
“First of all, let me remind you that you did not come along: I came along. And if I hadn’t come along, you might be dead! Which is what I now wish with all my heart had happened.”
“Perhaps I would be dead. But what is more important — not just to you but also to me — is that you would be a failure, and unhappy.”
I was enraged. And I couldn’t think of a good comeback. So finally, I just passionately, childishly, repeated, “Well you would be dead!”
“Honey, you know who that was that just walked by?”
For a second I thought he was delirious. But then he pointed his gun at me, and it jogged my memory: he was reciting the first line of the scene he had given me to learn the night before.
I snorted at his timing. He was shamelessly taking advantage of the situation, of his position of power, by choosing this moment to do the scene. I told him I thought his scene was stupid, and he said there was no talking about scenes beforehand. He threatened to shoot me if I did.
“Honey,” he repeated, “do you know who that was that just walked by?”
“Who?” I recited.
“Anna Graham.”
“The actress? Are you sure?”
“Yes. She looked straight at me.”
“Was she pretty?”
“Yes.”
“More than me?” I asked, feeling like a moron.
“I really couldn’t say. Why would you ask such a thing?”
“Answer me.”
“Maybe slightly. But it’s not her looks that make her so appealing as an actress. She has an amazing personality.”
“Better than mine?”
“Better than ninety-nine percent of the population’s.”
“Does that mean it’s better than mine or not?”
“Well, it’s better than almost anyone’s.”
“But better than mine or not?”
“If your personality is better than ninety-nine percent of the population’s, then no, hers is not better than yours.”
“Is my personality better than ninety-nine percent of the population’s?”
“Who can say.”
“You can. You just said hers was, so you can tell me if mine is.”
“Listen. She’s an actress, a frequent indicator of charm and charisma; you run a copy shop, a frequent indicator of … probably many qualities, but not specifically charm and charisma. Draw your own conclusion.”
“Would you sleep with her if you could?”
“Probably not.”
“What do you mean probably not? That means maybe?”
“I don’t know. It would depend on how you felt about it.”
“That means if I said okay, you would do it? You would want to? You would want to sleep with someone else?”
“She’s not just someone else. She’s a great movie actress. That makes it more okay, more excusable, if not acceptable, don’t you think? I mean, you could then feel proud to have a boyfriend who had slept with Anna Graham. You’d think to yourself: he was good enough for her, so he must be pretty damn good; you know, a pretty good catch. Don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t think. And I don’t think things are working out between us.”
He clapped. “I’d say that was a good beginning. And you learned your lines perfectly. I’m very pleased. We should celebrate.”
“That was the most stupid scene I’ve ever heard. Even pornographic movies don’t have lines as bad as yours. But then again, you are the weatherman passing off as someone who knows anything about acting, so why am I surprised?”
“Your passion and earnestness are funny. I could listen to them all day, but we should move on to other things.”
“That’s it? Aren’t you going to teach me now, and critique my performance? Isn’t that what this is supposed to be about?”
He shrugged. “I thought you were fine.”
“You’re keeping me prisoner for this? Boy, that’s really useful for me to know, that I was fine. I can feel the Oscar getting closer, you pathetic fraud.”
“I like your mood right now. It’s an extraordinarily ripe mood. Ripe for a contrast. I can feel the creation of the new mood simmering within me. It’s almost ready. I’ve got it! Your new mood is happiness. Pure and basic. I want you to do happiness. Now … do it …” He said this like a fashion designer who visualized red as being the color for the next season.