Then he would take off his belt and stimulate my brain. Father was a practical psychologist and believed that warming the glutei maximi with a strap drew excess blood away from a boy’s brain. While the theory may have been shaky, the results justified the method; by the time I was fifteen I could stand on my head on a slack wire and quote page after page of Shakespeare and Shaw-or steal a scene simply by lighting a cigarette.
I was deep in the mood of creation when Broadbent stuck his face in. “Good grief!” he snapped. “Haven’t you done anything yet?”
I stared coldly. “I assumed that you wanted my best creative work-which cannot be hurried. Would you expect a cordon bleu to compound a new sauce on the back of a galloping horse?”
“Horses be damned!” He glanced at his watch finger. “You have six more minutes. If you can’t do anything in that length of time, we’ll just have to take our chances.”
Well! Of course I prefer to have plenty of time-but I had understudied my father in his quick-change creation, The Assassination of Hu•ey Long, fifteen parts in seven minutes-and had once played it in nine seconds less time than he did. “Stay where you are!” I snapped back at him. “I’ll be with you at once.” I then put on “Benny Grey,” the colorless handy man who does the murders in The House with No Doors-two quick strokes to put dispirited lines into my cheeks from nose to mouth corners, a mere suggestion of bags under my eyes, and Factor’s #5 sallow over all, taking not more than twenty seconds for everything-I could have done it in my sleep; House ran on boards for ninety-two performances before they recorded it.
Then I faced Broadbent and he gasped. “Good God! I don’t believe it.”
I stayed in “Benny Grey” and did not smile acknowledgment. What l3roadbent could not realize was that the grease paint really was not necessary. It makes it easier, of course, but I had used a touch of it primarily because he expected it; being one of the yokels, he naturally assumed that make-up consisted of paint and powder.
He continued to stare at me. “Look here,” he said in a hushed voice, “could you do something like that for me? In a hurry?”
I was about to say no when I realized that it presented an interesting professional challenge, I had been tempted to say that if my father had started in on him at five he might be ready now to sell cotton candy at a punkin’ doin’s, but I thought better of it. “You simply want to be sure that you will not be recognized?” I asked.
“Yes, yes! Can you paint me up, or give me a false nose, or something?”
I shook my head. “No matter what we did with make-up, it would simply make you look like a child dressed up for Trick or Treat. You can’t act and you can never learn, at your age. We won’t touch your face.”
“Huh? But with this beak on me-”
“Attend me. Anything I could do to that lordly nose would just call attention to it, I assure you. Would it suffice if an acquaintance looked at you and said, ‘Say, that big fellow reminds me of Dak Broadbent. It’s not Dak, of course, but looks a little like him.’ Eh?”
“Huh? I suppose so. As long as he was sure it wasn’t me. I’m supposed to be on. . . Well, I’m not supposed to be on Earth just now.”
“He’ll be quite sure it is not you, because we’ll change your walk. That’s the most distinctive thing about you. If your walk is wrong, it cannot possibly be you-so it must be some other big boned, broad-shouldered man who looks a bit like you.”
“Okay, show me how to walk.”
“No, you could never learn it. I’ll force you to walk the way I want you to.”
“How?”
‘We’ll put a handful of pebbles or the equivalent in the toes of your boots. That will force you back on your heels and make you stand up straight. It will be impossible for you to sneak along in that catfooted spaceman’s crouch. Mmrn 11 slap some tape across your shoulder blades to remind you to keep your shoulders back, too. That will do it.”