Prose

     New York City. If you are thinking of an emerald lady with a torch, the empire state building (which is just an office space that’s called a landmark) or a Plaza hotel where some six-year-old wild child ran around in a book once, you are probably a tourist. Visitors are easy to spot because they always see, but never watch. Never observe the little things. I live in a brownstone apartment in the heart of Manhattan. If you’re looking for privacy, move to the crop expanses and little cabins of the country. But if you are looking to live multiple lifetimes, as so many dreamers are, come to the heart of the living. I have two next-door neighbors myself. In the movies, the neighbor is always the best friend or the worst enemy. Hmmm…that’s interesting. 

     Every day, after I’ve laced up my hightops and buttoned my tattered overalls, I open the tall imposing door and skip (yes, I do skip - I’m still a child, give me a break) to sit on the iron steps that provide an entrance to our townhouse. I can’t have a treehouse without any grass in my yard, or a yard to speak of. So this is my perch. I sit, and I look. I look at chips in the dusty stone that has been welded together for centuries. I like to think that a glamorous heiress in a ballooning pale pink hoop skirt once spun out of this urban palace to attend a garden party. Such a high society maven would be born to love all things beautiful, as all glamour would be firmly in her possession. Oh that I was a queen of the Upper East Side. I hear the steady click-click clackety! of glittering ruby stilettos, the kind that make you want to click your heels and say “there’s no place no home” like in an old movie I saw once. What is that smell? A fresh pan pie, must be. An orchestra of cherry tomato and stringy mozzarella permeates the confines of my nose. In the distance, I hear the crust give that airy crackle, like the dying embers of a fire in their last spark of life. Savor the slice, good sir. Wow, is that old Mrs. Maybelle? I once thought that she lived in a subway car. I mean it. It turns out she just really likes the spring collection of wide-brimmed hats at Bloomingdales. She boards a train in the super early morning to get the deepest discounts and the best selection. 

     “Louise!” My best friend Marge prances out of her brownstone and steps light and graceful like that old-fashioned heiress down to fling herself beside me in what she calls a “power pose.” 

I live Marge’s life through watching her, and being with her like, all the time. Marge once heard the word nonconformist, and decided she liked it. Last year, after an eternity of begging and pleading and just a hint of deception, her parents finally let her dye her hair, and she chose hot pink.

     “Well, if it isn’t Ace and the Cotton Candy diva.” 

     You may ask who belongs to this voice, and I will tell you promptly that its owner is “cocky” Colin White, owner of the brown house on the other side of this chain, and my thus my other neighbor. Colin always calls me Ace because I carry around a composition notebook and write the stories and people I see. He thinks I should have them published in the school newspaper. But he doesn’t understand. I’m comfortable being the prop in the play of Marge’s life. She needs me to clap when she gives a stirring performance, and the spotlight is too bright anyway.

     “You know, cocky Collin, you could care to learn our real names, if you wanted to,” Marge snaps.

     “You could care to learn your real name, if you tried.” 

     Marge insists I (and anyone else she can convince), call her Marilyn and not Marge. She thinks Marge sounds like the name of a fifties sitcom character, and she wants to be a Broadway starlet. She always tells me that Marilyn is very old Hollywood while also sounding smart. 

     “You remember my name, cocky Collin. Someday it's going to be on every playbill. In fact, today is my big break. Starlets Curtains is having open auditions for Annie, and I’m going to play that orphan and get out of my hard-knock life! Aren’t you coming with me Louise?”

     “I thought your parents didn’t want you to audition. They said you're too young for the pressure.”

     “Well, I may not be as cocky as Collin, but the show must go on, Louise, and I must star in it. All these passersby you scribble about on loose-leaf deserve to see my genius!”

     “Did you ever think that Louise watches people for inspiration? She writes, in case you forgot,” Colin cuts in.

     “She is my best friend, of course I know she writes her little articles and stories, and someday they will be published. But that day is not today. Today is the day I emerge from obscurity and into fame. Now, dear sweet friend Louse, let's leave our most persistent critic and run away.”

     If it wasn’t for Marge Marilyn, I might never dare to dodge snickering rats and decomposing garbage to leap onto the subway and glide to that mecca of drama and pizazz that is Starlets Curtains.

     “Okay, Louise. We need to look older. I didn’t want to say so in front of cocky Colin, but the competition is going to be more experienced, more seasoned, they will have had more starring roles than me, and I don’t like that. So put this on.”

     I take the tube of lipstick she hands me and apply it generously. Then we gently untie each other’s hair ribbons and let wisps of blonde multiply as we loosen our braids.

     “Better. If we walk tall with confidence, we will be taken seriously.” 

     Starlets Curtains is an institution. Starlet has trained more future Broadway fixtures than one can count. The theater is grand and luxurious, a red carpet is rolled out as we step in. Marble arches trimmed with brass stand resolute as new posters for upcoming features are pinned to the walls. 

     “Hello, says Starlet’s melodic voice as she approaches us. If it isn’t my youngest apprentice in the dramatic arts, Miss Marilyn Bixby.”

     “In the flesh, and ready to sing about how the sun will come out tomorrow.”

     “Well, you certainly are the most enthusiastic prospect, and a budding talent to boot. Come then, aspiring performers.”

     Tomorrow! Tomorrow! I love ya, tomorrow! You’re only a day away! 

     Marilyn finishes her performance with a beaming smile I can feel in my toes. I clap boisterously. After her audition, Starlet allows us to peek backstage. There are crates of props buoyed by long-ago painted sets: swords and crowns, books and dishes, cardboard  fire-breathing dragons and rustic barns, painted to the texture of real wood.

     “Marilyn, I ask, do you think props are important?”

     “Of course. There could never be an Annie without her curly red wig or a phantom without his moon-shaped mask. Holding the prop that defines a character, helps you act better, it believes in you, even if you don’t believe in yourself. I have an idea. Let's do an interview!” 

     I flick on my camera, and give a rousing intro. “Hello world! I’m talking to my super-talented, future award-winning best friend Marilyn Bixby! Lets interview her. So, Miss Bixby, how do you think it will feel to star as Annie in the play?”

     “I will be filled with indescribable joy. My heart starts beating faster just thinking about it. That red dress and curly hair. A moment, just one, that will be all my own. I’ve never wanted anything more.”

     “What makes you so happy about acting? Where does your infectious passion come from?”

     “Acting makes me feel free. Of course it's fun to have a flair for the dramatic, but the true pull is being a powerful, strong character. Feeling the emotions, being another person for an hour and a half. If my life is bleak, I can live as someone else for even a short time. It's comforting and thrilling to see the curtains part. The burdens fall off my shoulders when I fit on a costume.”

     “Last question: other than acting on Broadway and winning every honor possible, what do you want most?”

     “For my BFF Louise to drop her pen and act with me on stage of course!”

     “Sorry Marilyn. But I am cursed with stage fright. That’s never going to happen.”

     “A girl can dream, Louise.”

***

     “Louise! The cast list was posted!” I can hear the tap of Marilyn’s ballet flats as she jerks with a hold on the subway pole. “You know Louise, you’re one of the little people I’ll thank when I’m famous. You are my most valuable prop.”

     “Thank you, Marilyn,” I say supportively. But living in Marilyn’s shadow is beginning to lack appeal. Her shadow, once a warm and welcoming nest I cradled in, now feels cold.

I remember those moments. Those last, precious moments of hope and optimism before we found Marilyn's name and followed it across the page. I both yearn to hold those moments, and cast them off.

     “Sandy? I’m the dog??? My only lines will be barks.”

     “But it's like you said. Sandy is Annie’s best friend. Her most important prop.”

     “I’m not the prop, Louise. You are! I want to be the star, and you believe in me.”

     “But if I wanted to write a story or an article, you would believe in me, right?” There is a paralyzing silence.

     “You’d never be brave enough to give your pieces to a newspaper. Recording a few sounds and smells that no one gets to read doesn’t make you a writer, Louise. You’ll always be a prop. I can’t believe you want to drag me down with you.”

     Starlet tries to explain to Marilyn that she has a beautiful singing voice, but she is very young. In a few years she will be able to...that’s as much as I heard before the door slammed.

***

     I’ve sat on the steps of my brownstone apartment for two days without even a trace of Marilyn. She has probably become a ghost, haunting Starlets Curtains like the Phantom of the Opera. If you see a neon-haired woman scorned with a half mask, please let me know.

     “Where’s little orphan Annie, Ace?”

     “Probably at rehearsal. Hopefully she realized there are no small roles, only small actors.”

     “How does it feel to no longer be an understudy in your own life?”

     “What do you mean, Colin?”

     “Like that. You called me Colin. You’ve called me cocky Colin ever since you became friends with Marge.” 

     I’ve never told Marilyn this, but Colin was my first best friend. There was a time before Marilyn burst on the scene with her makeup and her costumes and her acting dreams. There was a time when Colin and I would sit together, and look at the world. He would write down the shade of green that shirt was, while I would contrast the smells of roses in flower boxes with gas exhaust. We would craft our observations into tales inspired, quite literally, by real life. I would come outside and see Colin waiting on my brownstone steps so we could walk to school. There were birthday parties with pastel balloons and butcream confections. There were cardboard valentines with those chalky hearts that said stuff like “be mine.” There had been conversation that went beyond those pastel candy hearts. Colin had listened to me. I hardly got in a word for Marilyn to listen to. Then Marilyn moved into the third brownstone in our apartment triangle. In true Marilyn style, she practically declared me her friend, and the truth was, everyone needed a friend like Marilyn. She is so unapologetically herself that she has become my refuge from everything that I am, and, I now realize, everything that I could be. She was jealous of Colin, and wanted me to believe in her above everyone else.

     “I’m sorry I abandoned you, Colin. But don’t worry about me.”

     “I know you do well on your own, Louise. Just let me believe in you for a second, so you can know what that feels like.”

     “What are you talking about? Marilyn and I have been friends for years.”

     “Please just call her Marge. You give into her elevated ego every time you call her that stupid stage name. You have been Marge’s friend, she has not been yours. Now, lets see. Oh I like this one about old Mrs. Mallory and her obsession with Bloomingdales. You’d love her hatbox collection.”

     It takes me a moment to register that Colin is reading from my notebook, but then I dart past the Eden of snow-tipped lilies, romantic roses and pastel easter tulips that divides our houses and seize upon my written word.

     “What have you done?”

     “I’ve believed in you. I found your notebook on the steps yesterday and I brought your work to the Bayview Times. My dad is the editor, remember?”

     I want to say that he had no right. That he is just an insignificant boy next door who had no right to read my thoughts, much less submit my stories for publication. But all that comes out is: ‘What if they don’t like my articles?”

     “And what if they do? My father wants to publish your article, “Watch New York.” What if you, Louise, could have a spotlight of your own? Come on, we’ll pull a page from Marge’s book. Lets run away.”

***

     The Bayview Times newsroom buzzes like a hive, if the queen bee is an editor always demanding something fresh, something new, or something real. There is something delightful about the typewriters on each desk, polished to their ebony-hued glory. There is something so freeing about having the authority to write a story the way you want it told. That familiar Click, Click, clack! of the typewriter keys as they imprint the page at the slightest press. The ping of the hidden bell when the end of a line is reached. The inky smell of the ribbon, the words marching across the page with the writer as captain. I give a confident knock on that heavy wall of a door, the final barrier between the head editor and I. When I emerge from the office as an almost published author, I sit at one of those empty desks in pride.

     “You know Colin, I think Marge needs me to believe in her. I can’t let you replace her.”

     “I’ll be your sometime friend. I’ll be in the space between. You believe in Marge, and I’ll believe in you.”