The Rehearsal

Stanley a curious feeling of privacy in himself. The inner thoughts and processings of his character, visible only as he chose to make them visible, across his face and in the lie of his hands and through the curve of his posture, enclosed his own thoughts like an atmosphere, parceling the real Stanley up beneath a double-layered film, the inner and the outer Joe Pitt. He felt snug, as if tightly curled within a nut, safe in the knowledge that nobody could truly see him beneath the double fog of his disguise.
    “Hello,” said a small voice, and suddenly there was the girl from the wings, the music-lesson girl, coming toward him with her saxophone case slung over her shoulder like a quiver. She grinned, the first properly uncensored grin he had seen on her face, and said, “Are you following me?”
    “If I was following you, wouldn’t I be walking behind you?” Stanley said.
    “I meant stalking.” The girl was still grinning, now flicking her gaze up and down Stanley’s overcoat, which was a little too large for him, the sleeves hanging over his fingertips as if he was a child dressing up in the clothes of his father.
    “Oh. I’m doing an acting exercise for drama school,” Stanley said without thinking. As soon as he’d said it, he awaited a sinking feeling in his stomach: he’d failed the exercise; someone would surely have seen and noted it. “If you tell anyone that you are doing an exercise, or describe the Institute or your profession in any way,” the Head of Acting had said, “it goes without saying that you will automatically fail.”
    “I have to stay in character all morning,” Stanley said, rushing on. “Those are the rules.” The sinking feeling didn’t come. He felt curiously lighter, standing here in the park with this pretty upturned girl, and he flapped his oversized coat around him and laughed.
    “Do you want to get a coffee later?” he asked. “When I’m done being Joe Pitt.”
    “Okay,” Isolde said shyly. “Who’s Joe Pitt?”
    “Well, he dresses like this,” Stanley said. “And beyond that, I couldn’t really say.”
    “You’re not doing a very good job of being him then,” Isolde said.
    “I guess not.”
    Stanley located the feeling of lightness: he felt real , more real than he had felt in months.
    “How do I know you’re not acting now?” Isolde said, which was almost a cliché but he forgave her because of his feeling of lightness and because of how pretty she looked, with her pink ears and her woollen coat and her mittens clapped together against the cold.
    “How do I know that you’re not?” Stanley said.
    Isolde smiled and made a funny gesture, turning out her hands and lifting herself up onto her tiptoes to show that her whole body didn’t know. Stanley felt a rush of happiness surge over him like a tide.
    “I guess that’s a risk we’re going to have to take, then,” he said.
    Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Head of Improvisation approaching.
    “I have to go and finish my walk now,” he said. “But I’ll wait for you under the ginkgo tree.”
    “I finish at five,” Isolde said.
    “I know,” Stanley said. “I’ve been watching.”
    July
    “You have to follow through with the action to the very end,” the Head of Movement called out crossly. His tired hand was smoothing the hair on his crown, over and over. “Right now it’s obvious that you both know the scene is about to end, and you relax before the lights go down. It’s only a split-second thing, but it matters. You have to give the illusion that the scene is going to keep going on, behind the curtain. You have to follow through with the action to the very end. Again.”
    Stanley and the girl again assumed their position, Stanley standing with his palm cupped against the girl’s cheek and his index finger slipped inside the tight little bud of her ear. They said their lines again, and tried not to loosen or slacken their bodies as the scene came to its invisible end.
    “It is what I want. This is what I want,” was Stanley’s last line, and he gave her jaw a tight little shake with the clutch of his hand, for emphasis. The girl looked up at him. The scene ended.
    Stanley’s face was close to hers and her cheek was in his hand. He followed the action through: he leaned down and kissed her like he meant it.
    “Oh, for God’s sake!” the Head of Movement exploded, and the two of them jumped hastily apart. “When did I say kiss her? I said, Follow through with