Free Lives of the Circus Animals by Christopher Bram Page A

wonder Toby had left him. Caleb didn’t want his own company either. He wished he could walk out on himself.
    All right, he thought. While you’re picking at scabs, why not dig at that one too?
    â€œYou don’t love me. You love only my success. And now that I’ve lost that, you want to go.”
    â€œIf I want to go, Caleb, it’s because you’re such a shit to be around. I don’t know what you want anymore. If I didn’t love you, I would’ve stopped seeing you weeks ago.”
    â€œThat’s not love. That’s just feeling sorry for me.”
    â€œCaleb? Why are you trying to hurt me?”
    â€œBecause it hurts me to be with you. Someone who doesn’t know me. Who doesn’t know himself. Who’s mistaken a few weeks of fun for love.”
    Or words to that effect. They hadn’t said any of this so neatly, or all at once either. Caleb could not help rewriting and tightening up their scenes in his head. Toby was not very articulate—he had never even called Caleb “a shit.”
    But Toby was young. He was new to New York. He had escaped his family in Wisconsin. He wanted fun, good times, laughs, sex—he was just discovering the lewd joys of his body—as well as help with his acting career. So what if there was a streak of gold digger in him? He’d made Caleb happy for a few months. The fucker.
    So Caleb forced the break. He’d needed to make Toby leave, before leaving could cause great pain to either of them. He was glad he’d never asked the boy to move in. He was happy it was over, for Toby’s sake as well as his own. Or no, he was happy only for himself. It was too painful living in the presence of such a cheerful, hopeful, eager youth,someone who simply didn’t get it. What did a twenty-four-year-old know of middle-aged doubt, grief, and failure?
    So was that what was eating at him tonight? He was depressed over losing Toby? More than the failure of his play or turning forty-one or even the death of Ben? None of these causes seemed entirely right. He was only trying them out, like an actor trying out past experiences, looking for one that would give the deepest, most useful pain. Yes, the hurt was real, the pain, only he didn’t know the exact cause. Here was another danger in being a writer. Everything in life seemed to be just an idea, merely a thought. And any thought can be rethought into something else.

10
    A gang of birds whistled and shrieked in the maple tree outside the window on West 104th Street. The sun was bright, the hour early: ten o’clock. A half dozen half-awake actors sat on the pinewood floor or shabby sofa, wincing and blinking, sipping take-out coffee, their faces as rumpled as their clothes. They resembled a pack of nocturnal mammals stranded in daylight.
    â€œI don’t know,” said Frank. “Can’t we come up with something more interesting for Toby to do than brush his teeth?”
    â€œWhat if he were taking a shower?” said Allegra.
    â€œWhat if he was taking a dump?” said Dwight.
    Frank groaned. “We want this real, but not that real.”
    Toby sat cross-legged on the floor, smiling, trying to be a good sport but looking as he often looked, like a large, uncertain deer.
    The first public performance of this thing—play, skits, sketchbook, whatever one called it—was Friday, less than a week away. The show was titled 2B, which really was the apartment number, a set of vignettes about roommate living in New York. It was supposed to be slice-of-life, but the script by Allegra’s boyfriend, Boaz, was more slice-of-sitcom. Boaz had just moved here from Israel, and his brain was soaked in bad American television. Frank and the actors were reworking his words in Mike Leigh–style improvisations, hoping to find a few truths, or at least hide the worst clichés.
    The bulk of the play took place in the living room, which faced the dining room,