Chapter Sixteen
Chapter
Sixteen
The ringing phone certainly wasn’t helping Danny’s hangover.
He’d never truly understood the phrase getting hammered until he awoke that morning—God, he hoped it was the morning—to the ear-splitting sound of a telephone and his entire body feeling like a bruise.
Danny tried squinting open an eyelid, but immediately regretted it, smashing the pillow back over his face.
It was also not until that moment that he became thankful for his windowless room.
The very presence of the sun would have sizzled his body like a vampire.
After what felt like a thousand years, the phone mercifully stopped ringing and Danny was able to slink back into his slumber, where his mind tried to erase the events of the previous evening.
But it was a short-lived respite—the second he began dreaming, the phone cut in again like a tornado siren.
What was in those Staten Island iced teas? Roach repellent?
The third time the phone rang, it was interrupted by the headset being lifted off the receiver and the sound of his mother’s voice.
“Hello?”
Danny shot up in bed, panicked, as his brain began piecing together who was likely on the other end of the phone call.
“No, there is no Danny here,” Ma said in a hardened voice. “You must have the wrong number. Please stop calling.”
She smashed the earpiece back into its cradle and shuffled back to her bedroom, locking the door behind her. Ma had a point. There was no Danny here, just the husk of his former self, cracked and brittle like a cicada shell clinging to the bark of a tree.
Danny hid away in his room all weekend, dodging his mom and losing himself in the Pippin script. Now as he stood on the windswept deck of the Staten Island Ferry, watching the Manhattan skyline growing closer, he dreaded what was surely waiting on the shore.
Passing by Lincoln Center, Danny heard the comforting baritone voice of the homeless man without eyes.
Danny’s first period was homeroom, which meant having to see Christian, which meant having to explain that everything that had happened at the Limelight was a misunderstanding.
He changed course, making a detour up the stairs and taking a seat on the cold marble perimeter while the sounds of rushing water from the fountain accompanied his favorite baritone voice.
Only make believe I love you.
Only make believe that you love me.
Danny sat with his elbow resting on his backpack as streams of Upper West Siders passed by, ignoring the sidewalk concert.
Danny wondered if the man had always wanted to perform at a place like Lincoln Center and just maybe should have been more specific when he blew out his birthday candles.
But even without the orchestra, or the plush seats of the Metropolitan Opera House, there was no one Danny would rather listen to at that moment.
When the man finished, Danny clapped his hands, now slightly numb from the cold.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” the man said, raising his chin in Danny’s direction.
“Um,” Danny mumbled. “…Maybe?”
“Why yes.” The man smiled, apparently recognizing the voice and flashing a set of surprisingly white and straight teeth in Danny’s direction. “Any requests, young man?”
“Oh,” Danny said, staring down at his palms. “I…I guess something that’s not a love song?”
“Not a love song,” the man repeated. “Someone suffering from a broken heart?”
“No.” Danny shook his head, embarrassed. “Just not in the mood, I guess.”
“Well, I know the feeling,” the man said, laughing to himself. “But it’s nothing that a little Gershwin can’t help.”
The man cleared his throat and raised his face to the cloudy sky, taking in a breath and crooning a song Danny had never heard before.
They’re writing songs of love, but not for me.
Danny closed his eyes and listened to the words of the song, surprised at how empty he felt in that moment.
He wanted to cry, or laugh, or jump up on the lip of the fountain and kick his sneakers in the cold water to feel the icy sting.
But his whole body felt hollow, like a boy without feelings, like a boy without bones.
It was a true feat of science that he could even sit upright.
Although I can’t dismiss the memory of
his kiss,
I guess he’s not for me.
When his calculator watch flashed nine, Danny knew it was safe to make his way to school, dropping his lunch money in the homeless man’s cup on the way out—the man had certainly earned it more than he had that morning.
Danny set off for the concrete building on Sixty-Fifth Street, the Gershwin tune humming in his head, uncertain if he’d heard the man right—had he really said “he” instead of “she”?
Danny successfully managed to avoid his friends during morning classes.
He hugged the walls in between periods, keeping his head down and avoiding the usual corners.
Lunch was eaten (or not eaten) in a bathroom stall, his Pippin script open on his lap, attempting to focus on anything other than the fact that he had kissed a boy.
Not just any boy—his best friend. When the lunch bell rang, Danny toddled downstairs to the black box, bracing himself for the inevitable encounter with Nina at Song Performance class.
Surely Christian had let it slip that something had happened.
“Oh. My. God!” Nina exclaimed as Danny stepped into the room, eagerly patting the cube next to her, ready to dish. “We have to talk.”
Oh boy, Danny thought, steeling every muscle in his body against what was sure to be a firing squad of questions and accusations.
“How crazy was that raid on Friday? I was, no joke, sitting on a toilet when a drag queen burst through the door and was like, ‘Everybody out, bitches!’”
“Aw man,” Danny said, biting the inside of his cheek.
“It was so wild,” she said. “But more importantly, how excited are you for your first Pippin rehearsal?!”
Danny saw his opening to change the subject and burst through it like a finish line ribbon.
“SO excited!” he practically shouted. “I just hope I’m off book.”
Since the day he’d discovered his uncle’s cassette tower, Danny had fantasized about walking into his first rehearsal—his shirt perfectly ironed, his script freshly highlighted, his pencil sharpened to a point, ready to scribble acting notes in the margins.
Walking into the auditorium for his first Pippin rehearsal, it was clear reality had other plans.
Castmates stretched confidently in the aisles or vocalized by the piano into climactic heights, while others rehearsed choreography onstage with precision, undoubtedly taught weeks earlier and worked into painstaking perfection.
Danny made his way to the front of the auditorium and sank into a red velvet chair.
He opened his script and scanned his lines, pretending not to notice the sideways glances from his castmates sizing him up.
“All right, folks,” Ms. Mellon’s voice called from the back of the theater. “Today’s a very important rehearsal. I’m gonna need your undivided attention.”
She charged down the aisle, brushing past Danny and hiking up the stairs to the stage.
“As you know, today is our ‘put-in’ rehearsal for Danny Victorio. He’ll be stepping into the Lewis track, and I want you to all be helpful and supportive as we teach him the show.
Danny?” she said, peering out into the audience, shielding her face from the spotlight glow.
“Do you want to introduce yourself to the folks who may not know you?”
Danny felt the sting of a hundred critical eyes as he stood up and faced the group, sweat gathering at the back of his neck.
“Hiya,” he said, raising his hand meekly. “Yeah, I’m Danny. I’m new this year, and, uh, I guess, thanks in advance for bearin’ with me.”
Looking at his cast, the expressions ranged from eagerly supportive to skeptical to over it.
“Now, we only have a couple of weeks,” Ms. Mellon said, clapping her hands in front of her, drawing the room back in. “And I won’t lie, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover, so let’s start at the top. If everyone can get into their places for ‘Magic to Do.’ ”
Danny watched as the cast strutted to the wings, retrieving flashlights from the folding table assembled by the fly rail and taking their places onstage, bending into voguish shapes and illuminating different parts of their bodies with their flashlights so they appeared like floating objects to the audience.
Flashlight acting, Danny thought, remembering back to the park where Nina had tried to describe this theatrical device.
“So, Danny,” Ms. Mellon said, motioning for him to join her onstage.
“We’re gonna work through all of your Act One blocking today.
Try to jot down as much as you can. Tomorrow, you’ll have music with Jerry and then we’ll take you through your Act Two.
By all means, stop me if you have any questions, or if I’m going too fast. Remember, this is for you. ”
“Will do,” Danny said, nodding, pulling a less-than-sharpened pencil from the pocket of his binder.
Danny’s first rehearsal zipped by like a videotape with a finger jammed on the Fast Forward button.
He’d barely finished scribbling notes for “War Is a Science” when Ms. Mellon began hustling him through his blocking for “Glory.” He drew stick-figure choreography in the margins of his script pages and tried to come up with mnemonics for remembering the names of his castmates—Charlemagne was played by Matteo, who had a big “-magne” of curly hair.
The battle sequence was like a game of bumper cars, ducking punches and barely avoiding collisions as he clumsily balanced his script in one hand and his sword in the other.
Props were plucked from his arms almost as soon as they’d been placed there by mysterious crew members, and dance moves were taught faster than a pit crew changing a tire.