You in Five Acts(34)

“Then why the hell—”

“The experience!” he said. “This is an experience. The bus is just a bus.”

He was leaning out and grinning so aggressively that I was afraid he’d yell, “I’m the king of the world!” when we started to move, but instead he pointed to a tiered building on the east side of the skyline and told me that his mom used to work as a secretary there. “Just like in Working Girl,” he said proudly. I’d been a decade off on his movie reference.

The ride was twenty-five minutes, but cold enough that we didn’t talk much. Ethan seemed genuinely psyched to have me over, which was kind of endearing, although some of the stuff he said (“My dad’s really old. Most people think he’s my grandfather, but he’s not!” or “I have the sickest Blu-Ray set-up. There’s a 90-inch HD TV, so you can watch Citizen Kane and see the outline of Orson Welles’s bald cap.”) still made me nervous. From the boat, Staten Island looked flat and desolate, kind of lonely. It was weird to think that New York City had this other big island in it that most people barely even noticed.

? ? ?


Ethan’s dad did look really old when he met us at the ferry terminal. He was wearing a plaid golf cap and had a transistor radio around his neck, like someone carrying a giant boombox but even less cool. He was short like Ethan but much thicker, with tan skin and white hair, and he squeezed my hand so hard when we shook that my knuckles cracked.

“We’re so happy to meet one of Ethan’s Janus friends,” he said as we lobbed our bags into the trunk of his sweet Mercedes. Only instead of Ethan it sounded like Eh-tahn.

“Ignore the Russkie accent,” Ethan said.

“Ignore my impolite son, Dah-veed,” Mr. Entsky said. He motioned for me to get in the front seat.

“This is a great car,” I said, running my fingers over the dash. I instantly missed my old Saab—well, Mom’s old Saab that had been mine for a brief but memorable period during which I completely underappreciated it, ignorant as I was to the coming vehicular famine.

“Thank you,” he said, pulling out of the labyrinthine parking lot into traffic. “So, tell me, how is my son’s play?”

“You . . . haven’t read it?” I asked, stalling.

“I’ve read it, I just want to know what you think.” I saw him wink at Ethan in the rearview mirror.

“Dad,” Ethan groaned.

“I think it’s really strong,” I lied. “Really interesting and . . . layered.” Thanks to years of getting rejection phone calls from Daphne, I was a pro at using vague buzzwords that sounded good but actually meant nothing.

“Well,” Ethan said, grinning down into his lap, “I mean, I wrote it, but you guys are bringing it to life. Everything’s coming together. I actually think with a few tweaks, I can take it all the way.”

“All the way?” I asked.

“Broadway!” Ethan said. “It’s nothing but revivals now, and the original stuff is hack work.”

“He wants his name in lights,” Mr. Entsky said, smiling, and I just nodded and tried to look like I was really into the passing scenery. I wondered if he knew that Boroughed Trouble was a Frankenstein monster made of characters and scenes borrowed from other playwrights. There was even an Italian immigrant character named Rodolpho in A View from the Bridge. Ethan hadn’t even bothered to steal stealthily.

“I sent the script to a few agents,” Ethan said. “And just so you know, dude, I’m inviting some VIPs to the performance. Stephen Karam, Tracy Letts, Lin-Manuel Miranda . . .” Ethan listed them casually, like they were old friends. But I let him have his fantasy. If anything, it gave me hope. If he was that deluded about the play, then maybe he was deluded about you, too. Maybe it really was all one-sided.

“You know, it was your movie that inspired him to be an actor,” Mr. Entsky said as we turned onto a broad, tree-lined street.

“Oh,” I said, gritting my teeth—my automatic nervous system response to anyone bringing up my one-hit wonder.

“Dad, come on,” Ethan said, annoyed. “You know that’s not true. It was the regional tour of Newsies. And it doesn’t matter anyway, since I’m not an actor anymore.”

“No, no, I remember it,” Mr. Entsky said. “We took you to see it and by the end, when the little boy died, you and your mother were both crying, and afterward you started begging us to take you on auditions.” He glanced over at me for a reaction and I tried to arrange my face in a way that I hoped would read as flattered. Inwardly, though, I was cringing. Why had I thought that going to Ethan’s would be anything other than horribly awkward? Why hadn’t I just said no like everyone else and spent the night lying in bed with my phone, waiting pathetically for you to text?

As if on cue, my phone vibrated in my coat pocket.

Regretting it yet? you’d written, with a grimacing emoji.

You have no idea, I typed back, with a wink.

? ? ?


Ethan’s house was insane, not in the floor-to-ceiling photo shrine way of a secret serial killer, but in the columns-in-the-front, pool-in-the-back way of a secret rich kid. It looked more like the houses I was used to seeing in L.A., set back from the street, with a sprawling lawn and a circular driveway. His mom, a New Yawk–accented redhead who looked tired but significantly younger than her husband, met us at the front door and immediately ushered us into the kitchen, where she’d laid out bowls of candy and chips alongside trays of cheese and salami and cut-up vegetables arranged in rainbows.