The Stand-In Crush

I was forty-two years old and eating cereal at nine on a Tuesday night when my phone buzzed. Austin, from down the hall. Two years he'd lived in that building and we'd traded maybe fifty words total, most of them about the busted mailboxes.

*Come to the lobby. Trust me. Bring nothing.*

I read it twice. I looked at my bowl. Soggy flakes, milk going gray. I looked at the wall, which I'd been looking at for about three months straight now, ever since David moved out.

So yeah. I went down to the lobby. Boredom will make a man do a lot of things.

Austin was standing by the mailboxes in a black crew jacket, looking like he had somewhere better to be. He's thirty-five, works as a sound tech on indie films, and he's got one of those faces that makes you think he's about to sell you something. I like his face. I'd noticed that before. I'd never done anything about it, because that's not what you do with neighbors.

"Robby. Hey. You came."

"You said trust you. Bold move, texting that at a stranger."

"We're not strangers. I know you take your trash out at 7 a.m. on the dot. Very reliable man."

"That's my whole personality, apparently."

He laughed and rubbed his hands together, all business. "Okay. Here's the deal. We're shooting a movie. Low budget, romantic drama, downtown loft we rented for the week. One of the actors just bailed. Like, an hour ago, text, gone, no explanation."

"And this is my problem because?"

"Because you're about his height and you've got nothing going on tonight."

"Wow."

"I mean that as a compliment. Look, it's one quiet scene. Two guys on a couch, talking, holding hands, the whole sad beautiful falling-in-love thing. Camera catches it, we wrap by two in the morning. You'd literally just have to sit there and be a person."

"Be a person. On film."

"On film. And I'll buy you dinner for a week."

I should have said no. Here's what my life looked like at that point: work, home, couch, wall, repeat. David and I had been together five years and I'd built my whole schedule around another person, and now the schedule was just me and soggy cereal. A sane man would have gone back upstairs.

"I get dinner for a week," I said.

"For a week."

"And I don't have to say lines."

"Two lines. Maybe. We'll dub them if you choke."

"Fine. But if this ends up on the internet I'm suing everybody."

We took his car downtown. The loft was one of those big open spaces with exposed brick and pipes on the ceiling that they charge artists way too much for. There were maybe fifteen people in it, lights on stands, a couch in the middle of everything, a guy staring at a monitor. Somebody handed me a coffee before I even gave my name.

"Okay, so," Austin said, walking me through it with his hands moving the whole time, "director's name is Mara. She's intense but she's good. The scene is the last one in the movie. Two guys who've been circling each other for ninety minutes finally sit down and admit it. Original actor would have played Daniel. You're Daniel now."

"Who's the other guy?"

"That's me."

I stopped walking. "What?"

"I do sound, but I act when they're short. I'm the other guy. Will. You and me, Robby. Couch. Holding hands."

"That was not in the pitch."

"It was implied."

It was not implied. But Mara came over before I could argue, shook my hand like she meant it, and said, "Thank you for existing." Then she looked me over and said, "God, the wardrobe is going to love you," and walked off. I decided right there I liked her.

Wardrobe was a woman named Dot, older than me, zero patience, all warmth. She looked me up and down, said "Forty-two?" like she was guessing a price at an auction, and I said "forty-two, yeah," and she said "perfect, come here."

They put me in a soft gray henley and dark jeans and these boots that were broken in already. Then makeup, which I'd never had in my life. A kid named Petey sat me in a chair and started dabbing stuff on my face with a sponge.

"You have great skin," Petey said.

"Thank you. I mostly just wash it."

"No, seriously. Do you drink water?"

"Sometimes."

"Well it's not showing. Keep it up."

I was not expecting this. I liked it. I liked sitting in a chair under lights while people decided what I should wear and touched up my face and told me I had good bones. Nobody had fussed over me in months. David used to do it, in the beginning, and then he stopped, and then he left, and I'd forgotten what it felt like to be looked at on purpose.

Dot came back, tugged the henley straight at my shoulders, and stepped back. "Huh," she said. "Yeah, that works."

"What works?"

"You look like a man who's been lonely and is about to stop being lonely. That defines the character entirely. Don't mess it up."

"That's it? That's the direction?"

"That's most of it. Mara will give you the rest."

I found a spot by the craft services table and watched the crew work. It was loud, then quiet, then loud again. Somebody rolled cable. Somebody yelled about a flag. Austin came over carrying two waters and handed me one.

"You look good," he said. "Dot knows what she's doing."

"You're just saying that because I'm saving your shoot."

"I'm saying it because it's true. Also because you're saving my shoot." He cracked his own water. "Nervous?"

"No. Should I be?"

"A little. Mara's going to want it to feel real. She doesn't do fake. So when we're on that couch, you're not acting at some guy, you're talking to me. That's it."

"And you?"

"What about me?"

"Are you nervous?"

He grinned. "Nah. I've done this before. It's you I'm worried about. You've got a face like a locked door, no offense."

"Offense taken, actually."

"But it opens up. I've seen it. In the hallway, when that lady's dog got loose and you caught it. Your face did a whole thing."

"You watched me catch a dog in the hallway."

"Everybody watched you catch a dog in the hallway. It was the most exciting thing that building's produced in a year."

Mara called us over before I could decide how I felt about being watched. She sat us down on the couch, which was more comfortable than it looked, and explained the scene in about nine sentences. We're Daniel and Will. We've been friends for years. Tonight Will finally says the thing out loud. Daniel doesn't run. That's it, that's the scene.

"So I just don't leave the couch," I said.

"You just don't leave the couch. It's harder than it sounds." She looked at me a second longer than was comfortable. "Why'd you say yes tonight? Austin didn't tell me much, just that you owed him."

"I don't owe him anything. He said he'd buy me dinner."

"That's not an answer."

She was right, it wasn't. I thought about the cereal. The wall. The three months.

"I wanted to do something I've never done," I said.

Mara nodded like that was the correct answer, which I guess it was, because she said "good" and walked back to the monitor.

We did a dry run first, no cameras, just sitting. Austin, out of nowhere, reached over and took my hand, and I about jumped off the cushions.

"Sorry," he said, not letting go. "That's in the scene. We should get used to it."

"Warn a guy."

"I'm warning you now. From here on out, hand stuff is fair game. Deal?"

"Deal." His hand was warm and rough in the palm and he kept his thumb still, which I appreciated, because I was already at capacity.

"Okay," he said, quieter. "You ready?"

"No."

"Good. Nobody is. It means you're taking it seriously."

They lit us. The room went dim and gold. Mara's voice came over everything, calm, telling people to be quiet, telling us to just start whenever it felt true.

And Austin, looking at me instead of at the camera, said, "Daniel. Can I tell you something I've never told anybody?"

I looked back at him. I forgot the camera was there. I forgot my name was Daniel.

"Yeah," I heard myself say. "Tell me."

Austin's thumb moved. Slow. Up off my hand, over my wrist, and then his fingers came up and touched my cheek. Light. As if he was verifying I was real.

"Hold that," Mara said softly from behind the monitor. "Don't lose that."

I didn't lose it. I couldn't have. My skin was doing something all on its own under his hand.

"You've been sitting on this for how long?" I said, because that was the line. Daniel's line.

"Six years," Austin said. "Give or take."

"Six years." I shook my head a little, which moved his fingers, and he kept them there anyway. "And you picked tonight."

"I picked a long time ago. Tonight's just when I got brave."

Somewhere off to the side a light buzzed. Somebody breathed. And I said my next line, the one about how Daniel didn't know what to say, and Austin said Will didn't need him to say anything, he just needed him to stay.

"Cut," Mara said. Quiet, but it cut through everything anyway. "That was good. Weirdly good. Robby, are you sure you've never done this?"

"Pretty sure," I said. My voice came out lower than I meant it to.

"Okay. Again. And this time I want more. It's too polite right now. Will has been holding this in for six years, he's not polite about it anymore. Austin, take whatever you want in this take. Robby, just stay with him."

"Take whatever I want," Austin repeated, looking at her and not at me.

"You heard me."