Free Dictation by Cynthia Ozick

these old fellows from around the world. Not that Matt had either, but he was married to someone who had read them all.
    "Right," Silkowitz conceded. "But you won't find MillerWeinstock on that list. The point is what I got from this woman is raw. Raw but full of bounce. A big look at things."
    Silkowitz was cocky in a style that was new to Matt. Lionel, for all his arrogance, had an exaggerated courtly patience that ended by stretching out your misery; Lionel's shtick was to keep you in suspense. And Lionel had a comfortingly aging face, with a firm deep wadi slashed across his forehead, and a wen hidden in one eyebrow. Matt was used to Lionel—they were two old war horses, they knew what to expect from each other. But here was Silkowitz with his baby face—he didn't look a lot older than that boy out there—and his low-hung childishly small teeth under a bumpy tract of exposed fat gums: here was Silkowitz mysteriously dancing around a questionable script by someone freshly deceased. The new breed, they didn't wait out an apprenticeship, it was drama school at Yale and then the abrupt ascent into authority, reputation, buzz. The sureness of this man, sweatshirt and jeans, pendant dangling from the neck, a silver ring on his thumb, hair as sleek and flowing as a girl's—the whole thick torso glowing with power. Still a kid, Silkowitz was already on his way into Lionel's league: he could make things happen. Ten years from now the scruffy office would be just as scruffy, just as out of the way, though presumably more spacious; the boy out front would end up a Hollywood agent, or else head out for the stock exchange in a navy blazer with brass buttons. Lionel left you feeling heavy, superfluous, a bit of an impediment. This Silkowitz, an enthusiast, charged you up: Matt had the sensation of an electric wire going up his spine, probing and poking his vertebrae.
    "Look, it's a shock," Silkowitz said. "I don't feel good about it, but the fact is I never met the woman. Today was supposed to be the day. Right this instant, actually. I figured first organize the geriatric ward, get the writer and the lead face to face. Well, no sweat, we've still got our lead."
    "Lead," Matt said; but "geriatric," quip or not, left him sour.
    "Right. The minute I set eyes on the script I knew you were the one. As a matter of fact," Silkowitz said, flashing a pair of clean pink palms, "I ran into Lionel the other night and he put me on to you."
    These two statements struck Matt as contradictory, but he kept his mouth shut. He had his own scenario, Silkowitz scouting for an old actor and Lionel coming up with Matt: "Call Sorley. Touchy guy, takes offense at the drop of a hat, but one hundred percent reliable. Learns his lines and shows up." Showing up being nine-tenths of talent.
    Matt was businesslike. "So you intend to do the play without the writer."
    "We don't need the writer. It's enough we've got the blueprint. As far as I'm concerned, theater's a director's medium."
    Oh, portentous: Silkowitz as infant lecturer. And full of himself. If he could do without the writer, maybe he could do without the actor?
    Silkowitz handed Matt an envelope. "Photocopy of the script," he said. "Take it home. Read it. I'll call you, you'll come in again, we'll talk."
    Matt hefted the envelope. Thick, not encouraging. In a way Silkowitz was right about novelists doing plays. They overwrite, they put in a character's entire psychology, from birth on: a straitjacket for an actor. The actor's job is to figure out the part, to feel it out. Feather on feather, tentative, groping. The first thing Matt did was take a black marking pen and cross out all the stage directions. That left just the dialogue, and the dialogue made him moan: monologues, soliloquies, speeches. Oratory!
    "Never mind," Frances said. "Why should
you
care? It's work, you wanted to work."
    "It's not that the idea's so bad. Takes off from the real thing."
    "So what's the problem?"
    "I can't