Free The Poser by Jacob Rubin Page B

declared, the vindication like wine in his voice. At this there was no applause, just the quiet of anticipation. He was right. Everyone wanted a nibble of magic, the duet of spotlights.
    â€œWho would like to be next?” he asked now. “Who next will be impersonated by the incomparable, the inexplicable, the indefatigable Giovanni Bernini?” Immediately, fifty hands went up.
    Â â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢Â 
    â€œYou demented genius!” said a jubilant Maximilian after we’d exited through the wing to a shadowed nook backstage. “This is just the fetus of the whole thing, boy—just the goddamn slimy-headed fetus!” He hugged me. “I know you sensed it, my boy. I know you did ’cause I did!”
    A hundred hands must’ve cluttered the dark that night, but we had time only for ten. All of their threads, thank God, curled out of their person. I gave a tug, and that was that. A paunchy lawyer. Two transparent teens.
    Our last volunteer that night was a schoolteacher. She liked to nod four times after saying something true. Max asked her: “You teach which grades?” And she said, “Second and first graders. That’s right,” and nodded four times. After the imitation, I’d returned to my default position, staring at my feet when she all but tackled me. She pecked me on the cheek and then rushed back to her spot beside Max, eyeing me like a bashful fawn. The crowd
ooohed
with delight, and, without thinking about it, I scampered over to her, pecked her on the cheek, and hurried back to my mark—the spotlight running with me—batting my eyelashes. The crowd ate it up. I bowed, they
hurrahed
more. Giovanni the Thief bowing! I was delighted, it’s true, and yet I could not shake the feeling that I was tricking these people, or they were tricking me, that together we were collaborating in some vital deception.
    Despite these strange notions, I said, “Mmm-course” to Max, because I had been confined to that spotlight all night, and it was such an odd, pleasing feeling to be hugged.
    â€œJust the beginning!” he said, walking to the corner where he crouched down, and from behind a wooden scenery of pink clouds, dragged what appeared to be a bucket. It contained, I saw as it came closer, two bottles of champagne. He removed one. “I got these in case tonight went as swimmy as it did,” he said and then turned to face the wall as if for the privacy of a urination. There was a
pop
and he tilted his head and the bell of the bottle rose into view over his considerable hair-scape. He turned, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Ah!” he added viciously, then handed me the bottle.
    Not wanting to disappoint him, I poured too much down my throat, bent over, and managed to swallow before hacking hard. Max slapped my back. “That’s it, boy. Drink.”
    Before long we were on the second bottle. I was telling Max things. My predicament with Lucy, for one. “You can just imagine how I felt with her coming to the stage.” I was making severe shapes with my hands. Only later did I realize I was imitating him.
    â€œYou
were
her.” He stood with one foot against the wall, a sleepy smile on his face.
    â€œNo, my great friend, not in the slightest!” Like that, I began a drunken excursus on the thread. It was the first time I’d discussed the concept with anybody but Mama, and the words, existing aloud, sounded both miraculous and thin.
    â€œYou got it, man,” Max said, the two of us carrying on interlocking monologues. “That shining star in the belly. It’s not something you get if you’re lucky or you try real hard, you know that? You’re born with that seed inside you—you either are or you
ain’t
—and if you’ve got it and the world
waters
that seed, then you become
fame-us
.” He pronounced the word like a spell, and a shiver went through me.