“I think I get it,” Senderovsky said.
“I’m not sure you do. I don’t do this for the money. I don’t do this to be loved. I don’t want people to laugh or cry with me. If there’s applause, fine. Silence is dandy also. I don’t need cute articles written about my apartment or my favorite soap. I have respect for the work that I do. From the moment I saw the stage, I was awed by it. What awes you about the work you do? How does it humble you?”
“Although,” Senderovsky said, “permit me a lame defense. Even those of us without your natural advantages must still make do in the world. There’s a Russian term: krutista, meaning ‘to spin around.’ To spin around from one thing to another trying to make ends meet. That’s the human condition for most of us. We spin and spin like a dreidel in December. We go, as they used to say, ‘in service’ to others. Aren’t we all in service to you?”
“Tell your wife she can come and finish what she started,” the Actor said. “Because, yes, she started it, if you must know. She put her hands on me first. How little she thinks of you.”
“But what about her?” Senderovsky said.
“What about who?”
“The one you really love. Dee.”
“Fuck you,” the Actor said. “It’s not me, it’s the algorithm. She sees me as a robot because of what your friend did to me.”
“What if I could do something about that?” Senderovsky said. “What if I could bring you together naturally? She’s a writer, you’re a writer.”
“I never said that I’m a writer. Only that I would be if I applied myself. I might start a memoir, actually.”
“She wants to go on a walk with you,” Senderovsky said.
“She said that?” The Actor met the landowner’s gaze. His face was red, but his chakras were pulsing blue. Senderovsky was taken by his vulnerability. “What about her walks with Ed?”
“I think she’s capable of walking with more than one person,” Senderovsky said, his voice now cold and authoritative. “Maybe you can talk about the script. I printed out a version for her.”
Ah, the Actor thought. It has something to do with the script. He’s enlisted her. That was the angle from the start. “No, this is not a quid pro quo at all,” Senderovsky said, anticipating the Actor’s objections. “I just want you two to have something to talk about.”
He turned around to leave.
“When?” the Actor shouted.
“When what?”
“When can I go for a walk with her?” So now he was asking permission. Like a supplicant. Like a man “in service.”
“I’ll let you know,” Senderovsky said. “But it shouldn’t be long now.”
* * *
—
The day passed between cold and warmth, but he dressed in a way he hadn’t since the virus arrived, skinny jeans and a white tee, all designed to showcase his elemental attractiveness, even at the cost of continuous shivering and preternaturally erect nipples. He also wore a cap with the logo of a defunct baseball team low with sunglasses so that it would be harder for passing motorists to identify him.
At the foot of the driveway, per Senderovsky’s instructions, she awaited him in her usual sweatpants and fleece, and the fact that she didn’t care to change her daily outfit for him depressed the Actor. “Hey, thanks for agreeing to take a walk with me,” he said. Already he sounded ridiculous: hoping for favor instead of disbursing it. He had to act like the man he was. On a busy shooting set, among hundreds of concerns circulating about, each crew member had two others: What is the Actor’s mood? What can I do to please him?
“Ed and I always walk in this direction,” she said. “Should we try going the opposite way?”
“Yes,” he said. “So mysterious. In this direction. To go walking.” What did that even mean?
It was the late afternoon, the day’s glare turning soft around them. “I hear it’s finally going to stay warm next week,” the Actor said. “God, listen to me small talk.”
“Love me some small talk,” Dee drawled. “The smaller the better. Yessir.” He laughed. He was, like most of the important Actors, far shorter than one imagined, of very average height, really. Practically, this meant that her non-nose was about even with his full chin, now dappled in soft wiry fur and cleansed with milled Danish soap that he had ordered for this very occasion. He wasn’t of that ethnicity, but he reminded her of some of the older Jewish boys in her neighborhood fresh from the local cheder, their eyes still glossy with scripture now bedeviled by the sharp light of the Christian outdoors. How those yeshiva boys looked at her, or rather looked away from her, all of them aflame with the worst and most common kind of want, the want that is unarticulated, shriveled purple, and forever stuck in the chest. His want wasn’t so different from theirs, was it? Karen’s algorithm had that feel of fundamentalist religion to it. She herself couldn’t fall in love, Dee thought of the Tr?? Emotions inventor; she did not have the courage to accept Vinod’s love, and now millions around the world had an unnecessary cross to bear, were suffering from the very desire she herself refused to countenance.