“They’ve had more experience than you, that’s all, but you have a unique personality. You’re going to make it. Just be patient.”
He sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe I’d be better off forgetting the whole thing and selling insurance or something.”
She looked at him in quick surprise. “You mustn’t,” she said.
Toby shook his head. “After seeing those pros last night, I—I don’t think I have it.”
“Of course you have, Toby. I won’t let you talk like that.”
In her voice was the note he had been waiting to hear. It was not a teacher talking to a pupil now, it was a woman talking to a man, encouraging him, caring about him. Toby felt a small thrill of satisfaction.
He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know, anymore. I’m all alone in this town. I have no one to talk to.”
“You can always talk to me, Toby. I’d like to be your friend.”
He could hear the sexual huskiness come into her voice. Toby’s blue eyes held all the wonder in the world as he gazed at her. As she watched him, he walked over and locked the office door. He returned to her, fell on his knees, buried his head in her lap and, as her fingers touched his hair, he slowly lifted her skirt, exposing the poor thigh encased in the cruel steel brace. Gently removing the brace, he tenderly kissed the red marks left by the steel bars. Slowly, he unfastened her garter belt, all the time telling Alice of his love and his need for her, and kissed his way down to the moist lips exposed before him. He carried her to the deep leather couch and made love to her.
That evening, Toby moved in with Alice Tanner.
In bed that night, Toby found that Alice Tanner was a pitiful lonely woman, desperate for someone to talk to, someone to love. She had been born in Boston. Her father was a wealthy manufacturer who had given her a large allowance and paid no further attention to her. Alice had loved the theater and had studied to be an actress, but in college she had contracted polio and that had put an end to her dream. She told Toby how it had affected her life. The boy she was engaged to had jilted her when he learned the news. Alice had left home and married a psychiatrist, who committed suicide six months later. It was as though all her emotions had been bottled up inside her. Now they poured out in a violent eruption that left her feeling drained and peaceful and marvelously content.
Toby made love to Alice until she almost fainted with ecstasy, filling her with his huge penis and making slow circles with his hips until he seemed to be touching every part of her body. She moaned, “Oh, darling, I love you so much. Oh, God, how I love this!”
But when it came to school, Toby found that he had no influence with Alice. He talked to her about putting him in the next Showcase play, introducing him to casting directors, speaking to important studio people about him, but she was firm. “You’ll hurt yourself if you push too fast, darling. Rule one: the first impression you make is the most important. If they don’t like you the first time, they’ll never go back to see you a second time. You’ve got to be ready.”
The instant the words were out, she became The Enemy. She was against him. Toby swallowed his fury and forced himself to smile at her. “Sure. It’s just that I’m impatient. I want to make it for you as much as for me.”
“Do you? Oh, Toby, I love you so much!”
“I love you, too, Alice.” And he smiled into her adoring eyes. He knew he had to circumvent this bitch who was standing in the way of what he wanted. He hated her and he punished her.
When they went to bed, he made her do things she had never done before, things he had never asked a whore to do, using her mouth and her fingers and her tongue. He pushed her further and further, forcing her into a series of humiliations. And each time he got her to do something more degrading, he would praise her, the way one praises a dog for learning a new trick, and she would be happy because she had pleased him. And the more he degraded her, the more degraded he felt. He was punishing himself, and he had not the faintest idea why.
Toby had a plan in mind, and his chance to put it into action came sooner than he had anticipated. Alice Tanner announced that the Workshop class was going to put on a private show for the advanced classes and their guests on the following Friday. Each student could choose his own project. Toby prepared a monologue and rehearsed it over and over.
On the morning of the show, Toby waited until class was over and walked up to Karen, the fat actress who had sat next to him during the play. “Would you do me a favor?” he asked casually.
“Sure, Toby.” Her voice was surprised and eager.
Toby stepped back to get away from her breath. “I’m pulling a gag on an old friend of mine. I want you to telephone Clifton Lawrence’s secretary and tell her you’re Sam Goldwyn’s secretary, and that Mr. Goldwyn would like Mr. Lawrence to come to the show tonight to see a brilliant new comic. There’ll be a ticket waiting at the box office.”
Karen stared at him. “Jesus, old lady Tanner would have my head. You know she never allows outsiders at the Workshop shows.”
“Believe me, it’ll be all right.” He took her arm and squeezed it. “You busy this afternoon?”
She swallowed, her breath coming a little faster. “No—not if you’d like to do something.”
“I’d like to do something.”
Three hours later, an ecstatic Karen made the phone call.
The auditorium was filled with actors from the various classes and their guests, but the only person Toby had eyes for was the man who sat in an aisle seat in the third row. Toby had been in a panic, fearful that his ruse would not work. Surely a man as clever as Clifton Lawrence would see through the trick. But he had not. He was here.