What You See in the Dark Read online

  “No, no. Practice first. Practice as much as you want. In here, if you like. In the afternoons when I do the cleaning, so you won’t feel nervous.”

  He made his way to the front door, picking up his keys from the top of the bar. “Unless you’re going to help me sweep up, maybe I should take you home right now before the drunks come in.”

  “I can walk,” Teresa said. The old feeling came back: she wasn’t just worried about Cheno seeing her in Dan’s truck, but about the people in town, how a ride through the afternoon streets with the windows rolled down was far different from Cheno’s careful, tiptoeing courtship.

  “It’s not a problem,” Dan said. “Come on.”

  Seven years ago, when her mother had announced that money was too hard and that they would both board a Greyhound to Texas, where Teresa’s father lived, Teresa had said, I’m not going with you. Saying that had been like singing a song: opening her mouth and letting the sound crack through. She knew, even then, that Texas was not for her, that her mother wanted to go to the place where the records took her, the violet dark where Teresa’s father lived. She had said no, the static of the record turntable going round and round, and she couldn’t see her mother’s face when she said it.

  Dan locked Las Cuatro Copas and made his way to the black Ford pickup truck, opening the door and holding it for her. Teresa looked across the street at the other bar, hoping to catch a glimpse of Ed or even Cheno, some opportunity to stop herself from her own falling, but the building only yawned back with its open door, Dan standing, waiting, his tall, wide-shouldered posture.

  “Come on,” said Dan. “What are you waiting for?”

  It’s your life, her mother’s silhouette had said, after a long silence between them, in the violet dark of their little room. You do what you want.

  Five

  She had known, since it was Bakersfield, not to expect anything fancy, but as the driver took them through the center of the city, it became clear to the Actress that all she was getting was a room, plain and simple. She didn’t need anything more, really, though she imagined there were people in the industry who begrudged everything. The driver stopped the car at a building that wasn’t more than four stories or so, flat at the top and made of brick, and they got out. She opened the door on her own, the driver rushing to her side, but she let him know implicitly that he needn’t be at her beck and call. They walked together through the plain glass doors of the lobby—no bellhops, no concierge, but more important, no Director. She had somewhat expected him to be waiting in the hallway lined with striped wallpaper that served as the lobby, sitting at one of the two tidy love seats and examining the fresh flowers set on a long table: the hotel was small, but the effort of small-town pride came through. It was only nine thirty in the morning, and the meeting wasn’t set until ten. She asked at the front desk if anyone from Los Angeles had checked in, but the clerk told her no.

  “Are you expecting someone?” the clerk asked.

  “A fellow traveler,” she answered, aware that the Director might try to shield himself from scrutiny.

  Her room was ready, and the driver accompanied her to the top floor in the tiny elevator, her overnight bag in his hand. At her door, he scurried inside her room and placed the bag on her bed so quickly that she barely had time to open her purse for a tip. “No bother, ma’am,” he told her. “The studio asks that I not take tips. I’ll be with you the entire trip anyway.” He gave her a slight nod and made to exit. “I’ll be waiting in the car after you freshen up. I’ll have the front desk ring you if the Director shows up.”

  He closed the door behind him, leaving her alone in the room. Nothing fancy, as she had suspected: a tidy double bed, a nightstand with a lamp and a radio, and a desk tucked in the corner. Enough space for the Los Angeles and San Francisco oilmen to come to town, make their deals, and get some rest. The air felt a little trapped and still, as if no one had actually been in the room, not even to turn down the sheets and check the towels. But this didn’t surprise her—if it had been her job to go from unused room to unused room, she wouldn’t bother with these tasks either; she would kick off her shoes instead and listen to the radio, the minutes of each work morning slowly passing by.

  That’s what she was thinking of—what it would be like to be a cleaning woman in a small hotel in an inconsequential city, the daily humdrum of that kind of life. Her mind circled around that scenario as she unzipped her overnight bag and set aside her belongings, giving tomorrow’s blouse a quick snap before putting it on a hanger. She imagined the uniform and the soft shoes, pushing a cart along the narrow corridor she’d just walked along, the quiet red carpet, and the discreet closet at the end where the cart would be hidden away overnight. There was more, she knew, as she emptied her toiletries and set them around the bathroom sink, confident no one would come in to clean: say, for example, the awkward moment when a hotel maid politely knocked on the door and, hearing no one, came in even though the guest was sleeping. Or the curiosity around a stranger’s suitcase sitting like a diary in the corner of a room, the temptation to unzip it and rummage around. Or the toiletries kit left in the bathroom, the inside pocket holding a vial of pills that spoke of nerves, of insomnia, of depression, of a lingering sexual disease.

  In her movie script, she had read the description of her character: secretary. She had read the setting: Phoenix. At a leisurely lunch, the Director had told her how he’d already sent a set crew to Arizona to find young women working as secretaries, interviewing them to see how much they made a year, how they dressed, what they ate for lunch, where they ate it, if they had husbands or lived alone or with girlfriends, what their apartments looked like, how they furnished them.

  For what? she had asked, because the scenes that took place in the office and the woman’s apartment were brief.

  To get it right, the Director had told her, taking a long sip of wine. I want it to look like a girl’s apartment, you see. Right down to the cheap dresser.

  It was a pity, she had thought as she looked over her salad, that she hadn’t been invited along, if only to witness how the set decorators found these young women and how they engaged them in conversations that, frankly, could slip into the nakedly personal without much effort. She didn’t let on to the Director that she’d been disappointed about missing such a trip. That wasn’t the purpose, she knew. Listening to him explain the purpose of a set—the information conveyed by the atmosphere of the walls, the correct wallpaper, the furniture just so—made her feel that her own concerns about who a secretary might really be had no place at their lunch table.

  The Actress knew the answer even now, staring at the clock in her hotel room, five minutes to ten. Smoothing her dress and looking at herself one more time in the mirror, she saw her own incomparable face, the size of her head, her eyes set apart, her breasts, her hair. A singularity. There was no one else like her, for better or worse, and she had been picked for the part for the sum of these attributes, and maybe nothing more. The Actress gathered her pocketbook and headed down to the lobby. She knew the answer, and it would take only a hotel maid to appear in the hallway to confirm it, two women passing silently by each other without knowing a single bit of the other’s history: it was a costume, she realized, not a complexity, a job for the character to have, not a way to explore how she’d come to that point, a single woman in Arizona, of all places.

  Down at the lobby, the Director was still not there. “Has there been a call?” she asked the clerk. “We were expecting another party from Los Angeles.”

  The clerk shook his head. “Early morning traffic from Los Angeles can be very heavy some days,” he said in a voice that was meant, she thought, to allay some concern. She turned to sit on one of the love seats and looked out through the plain glass doors at the street’s light traffic. She waited as patiently as she could for twenty minutes, at which point she rose and walked to the glass doors, not exiting but peering out of them as if the Director were only moments down the sidewalk.r />
  Inside the sedan, her driver sat engrossed in a newspaper, its pages folded compact and neat so that he could hold it in one hand, flipping it when the column ran out of text. With no traffic and not enough people on the sidewalks to disturb his reading, he carried on without once glancing at her. The paper was thick, probably the Los Angeles Times and not the local, and she wondered what he might be reading—an article about the troubling political changes in Cuba, the sports section, the satellites being sent up into space one after the other. She didn’t want to interrupt him, but there was nothing else to do, and across the way was a café with large plate-glass windows through which she could see if a car that looked like it belonged in Los Angeles came along the avenue.

  As soon as she opened the hotel door, the driver glimpsed the bit of motion, set his paper down, and rushed to her side of the car. “Oh, I’ve got nowhere to go,” she told him. “I was just going to go across the street for a bite to eat.”

  “I suppose you don’t need to be driven there,” he said, laughing. “I’ll be here if you need me.”

  “Actually,” she said, this time looking away from him and over at the café, “why not come along and keep me company?”

  He hesitated, as if contemplating what it might look like if he left his post, but the Actress waited through his caution, letting her face go blank, no anticipation, no hint of persuasion, though she knew it wouldn’t be a prudent thing for him to do, the way the studio frowned upon anything beyond the call of obligation and service. But it was her invitation, her decision to bring him along, and she wanted to open her mouth and assure him, It’s okay, but instead she stood and waited for his inevitable yes, wondering how she looked to him, her face impossible to read.

  They did not enter arm in arm, but the two men seated at the front counter didn’t seem to notice. The hostess locked eyes with them for just enough time that the Actress wondered if she’d been recognized, but the driver quickly snapped the hostess to attention, asking to be seated. The hostess gave them a booth, the Actress with her back to the sidewalk because she knew the driver would be more attentive to the car they were expecting. The café smelled thick of disinfectant, a moist, greasy feel to the air, but not unpleasant once she recognized it—it was the smell of any diner in Los Angeles, and soon enough, she knew, would come the smell of coffee and eggs and frying bacon and their masking familiarity. She studied the menu, feeling eyes on her. She should have worn dark glasses, but she’d long dismissed the idea, a pair of shades feeling, to her, like a prop inviting attention. Perhaps the eyes were taking in the driver, in his crisp white shirt and slacks unlike any of the other men in the place, with their scuffed boots and jeans.

  When the hostess took their order, the Actress tensed at her scrutiny and did her best to divert the attention to the driver, the man at the table, as if she deferred to him in everything. He may not have understood the role she had imposed on him, but the way he cheerfully ordered a full breakfast plate did the trick. The driver looked over at her sheepishly when he placed his order. She’d had an orange juice and a croissant to tide her over, but she realized that he had had nothing, and even after arriving at the hotel, he was still at the call of duty, waiting in case she came out to be driven somewhere. A break was some time off, perhaps when he knew the Director would be taking up a good chunk of her afternoon.

  “I should have realized you hadn’t any time for a decent breakfast,” she told him. “We should have come down here as soon as I’d checked into the room.”

  “Ma’am, my responsibility isn’t over until your Director takes you away. And even then, it would be the professional thing to stay around in case you need something. A bite to eat if you don’t like what’s on set. Or some aspirin from the drugstore.” He spoke with a light, cheerful clip in his voice, but it was still deep and masculine, his face lined here and there on the forehead, someone who raised his eyes a lot and smiled handsomely.

  “You mentioned your wife on the drive over. How long have you been married, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Not very long. Three years,” he answered.

  “You have children?”

  “No, not yet,” said the driver, but he didn’t add anything more, and in that lack of continuation, the Actress held her eyes on his, not wanting to look away and reveal her immediate wonder about his wife: if she could bear children, if she came from a religious family, if she was ill, if she had been the right woman to marry.

  “Someday,” he offered, the single word still feeble despite the confidence in his deep voice, hard lined and rigid straight like the horizon of his shoulders. “It must be tough for you as a mother to be on these shoots.”

  “It is. I’m thinking more and more that I won’t be doing it very much longer. I’d rather be with my children.”

  He blushed a little. “I didn’t even ask if you had children. I mean … well … I knew … I’ve read about you in the magazines, so …”

  She laughed. “Oh, I understand. But those are just publicity stories,” she said. “Some easy facts. You could never get a true understanding of anyone from those accounts.”

  “Of course not,” said the driver. “But you do come across as a very nice lady. People like you in this town. In Hollywood, I mean.”

  The early lunch crowd trickled in, yet the sidewalks remained relatively bare otherwise. The waitress who brought their plates wasn’t the same one as before—she was much younger and prepared to chat, staring at the Actress as if she were a puzzle that needed solving, but the hostess who seated them dismissed her quickly. The café began to gather its noise, the waitresses striding by with coffeepots and checks in hand, sliding coins into the pockets of their uniforms. The Actress buttered her toast, a meager little breakfast, aware of the stares on her despite all the activity. The driver splotched some ketchup on his eggs and tore into the bacon with a determined but measured hunger: he still held his knife and fork carefully, as if remembering he was eating with a lady.

  “Do you mind if I ask you about the film you’re making?”

  Without the benefit of a full plate of food to help her deflect the question, she paused for a moment and pursed her lips. “I’m under orders not to, I’m afraid to say,” she said apologetically.

  “I won’t say a word if you don’t,” the driver responded, no food in his mouth, everything politely chewed and swallowed, a man with thick dark hair and manners and laugh lines on his forehead, as if maybe he were living without any anxieties, any second thoughts.

  She took a bite of toast, thinking. She stole a glance at one of the customers near the windows, a woman, catching her in the act of being nosy, how they were making everything of her Los Angeles attire, the driver’s crisp white shirt and how strong his back looked to them, the full plate of food, his hearty appetite.

  “Well,” she began, “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt, since you’ve been so kind.”

  He smiled and took a bite of eggs, prepared to listen.

  “I play a woman—a secretary—who is carrying on a romance with a man who owns a little hardware store here in California. Not Bakersfield necessarily, more in the north, just a little town where you can remain anonymous if you want to, live a life without anybody paying much attention, if you color inside the lines. This secretary, she lives in Phoenix, though, and she doesn’t have a way to be with this man whom she loves so very much.”

  “What was the man doing in Phoenix? How did they meet?”

  “Good question. I don’t know. A salesman, I suspect, however clichéd that is. But I suppose it doesn’t matter. It’s at the beginning of the movie, so the scenario is just something you accept. Don’t you agree? If a picture starts, and there’s a man and a woman, and they say they’re in love, you believe them. Right? At least, that’s how I’m approaching it.” She didn’t believe that, but she appreciated the driver’s question, tinged as it was with the same urge she had for answers to the lives of characters, even if the answers weren’t very imp
ortant. “In any case, her lover goes back to California, just about calling off their affair because the situation has become impossible and unbearable. They live in different states and the man has an ex-wife who is taking all of his store profits for alimony. What kind of life could they live together?

  “That very afternoon, at the office where she works, her boss makes an extraordinary sale to a wealthy man and asks her to deposit the money in the bank. She agrees and then asks to leave work early because she has a headache, but instead of going to the bank, she goes home, packs a suitcase, and decides to drive to California.”

  “She steals the money?”

  “Yes, all of it …”

  “A bad girl. I don’t think my wife and I have ever seen you play one before.” He looked surprised, the rise in his voice suggesting that he disapproved, so much so that the Actress debated if she should continue.

  “It’s a challenge, I admit. To play against type.”

  “I’ll say. Aren’t you afraid people will have a negative reaction to you playing that kind of woman? A thief?”

  “She’s more than a thief …”

  “An adulterer. I forgot about that part.”

  “It’s a complex moral dilemma. That’s the way I like to think about it.” She took a sip of her tea, a sharply bitter black tea with a strange taste. She set down the cup. “I also believe that audiences are sophisticated and wise enough to separate you from the role you play.”

  “To a degree,” said the driver. “But if it’s the wrong part … I mean, if people remember you so strongly in that role, people may not ever forget you in it. Do you remember that picture from a few years ago? I don’t remember the name … It was about the little girl who envied things so much she killed people to get them.”

  “The Bad Seed. Interesting play, to say the least. I saw it in New York, but I never saw the film.”

  “Yes, that’s the title. Last year, I bought a television set for my wife, and we like to watch those theater shows, the playhouse specials. You know the ones? And whenever that little girl shows up, no matter what the role, my wife makes me change the station. She really hates that little girl!”