Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [41]
Jeff was saying, “Yeah. Martin was a lot older than Catherine. It was a May-December thing. Also his third marriage.” He glanced at me. “But maybe you knew that already? You seem to know a lot about Darius, after all.”
We stopped outside the doorway of a room that had about fifteen teenagers in it. I heard one of them say, “Hey, there he is now,” and realized this must be our class.
“What’s going on, Esther?” Jeff looked puzzled. “Did you know Darius? Why did you come here today? And why were you asking Catherine all those questions about him?”
“I’ll explain after class.” I exchanged a look with Max. “And we’ll have some questions about Frank as well as about Darius.”
Max asked, “Who’s Frank?”
Jeff said, “The guy who was filling in for me before Esther.”
“Ah,” said Max. “Of course.”
Jeff frowned, looking even more puzzled. “Why do you have questions about Frank? And what’s he got to do with Darius?”
“Later,” I said. “The students are waiting.” And punctuality was a cardinal virtue of our profession. I was once ninety seconds late for a rehearsal on my first Equity job. The producer took me aside and gave me a memorably stern lecture about it. Ever since then, I had been religiously punctual as an actress; and I didn’t like starting off on the wrong foot with these kids by showing up late for my first session with them.
Jeff nodded and entered the room ahead of me. “Sorry, folks! I had to take my new coteacher upstairs to sign some paperwork before we could get started today.”
I realized I would indeed have to go back upstairs to sign paperwork at some point, now that I was working here. But not today. Catherine Livingston and I had already spent enough time together for one day.
“This is Esther Diamond, and, as you can see . . .” Jeff gestured to me, bulging out of my low-cut leopard-print top and barely covered by my tiny red skirt. “She’s very shy and modest.”
The kids laughed and I rolled my eyes. Then Jeff explained that, actually, I was wearing my D30 costume, having come straight here from filming, and they looked suitably impressed. Apart from all being African-American teenagers, they were an eclectic-looking group. A few of them were dressed in well-pressed preppy summer cottons, several were in Afro- Caribbean ethnic wear, some of them wore gangsta drag (and how anyone could possibly think those sagging trousers and baggy shirts looked cool would forever baffle me), and some dressed exactly like the kids that Jeff and I had each grown up with in the Midwest.
Jeff also introduced Max, who took off his hat and gave a little bow to the group. “I am neither an actor nor an acting teacher, but since I have accompanied Esther here, may I remain and serve as your audience today?”
“What is he, then?” one of the baggy-clothes boys asked me with a bold grin. “Your pimp?”
“Down, Jamal,” Jeff said mildly.
“He’s my bodyguard,” I said. “In case any young men make disrespectful comments to me while I’m dressed like this.”
The rest of the kids enjoyed this noisily, and Jamal laughed, too. They seemed like a nice group.
Jeff suggested that Max take a seat. Then, rubbing his lower back again, he asked if any of the kids had any painkillers with them. A girl named Shondolyn had a jumbo-sized bottle of ibuprofen, and I cadged a couple of pills, too, since my head still hurt. And then we got down to work.
It was an improvisation class, so we mostly played various theater games for the next ninety minutes, exploring different ways of doing each exercise and solving new problems, and then discussing how to apply what we had just learned to other acting situations—including scripted work.
Since my outfit so boldly proclaimed the profession of the character I was portraying on D30, we played with that a lot, mostly by using it as a communication-challenge exercise. In some of the games, I picked a different reason, other than the obvious one, that I would be dressed like this, and the students playing the scene with me had to figure out—without my telling them, just based