nine,” Kate said. Then, “You smell.”
“Yeah. I hope they don’t repackage this costume after I’m done with it.”
Kate clutched the doll he had given her when she was little, one of those bald plastic ones that you can put in the bathtub with you. She had named it “No-Hair,” and still translated for it frequently. “No-Hair wants to see a Rated-R movie,” she said. “No-Hair hates salad.” After her father got sick, No-Hair stopped asking for anything, but rarely left Kate’s arms.
“Why did that man call you that name?” Kate asked.
“Eraserface? It’s just a nickname, honey.”
“It sounds mean.”
“Is No-Hair a mean name?”
“No. She really doesn’t have any hair. But you have a face.”
“Is Kate a mean name?” He tried to tickle her. She squirmed away, but didn’t laugh.
Truth was, Isaac was grateful for his nickname, grateful for the work it brought him, especially now. Grateful that he was the only talent in the business who had a nickname. It seemed like every actor in the world was jostling to get in front of the same Vaseline-smeared lens to sell sleep medication, or jock itch cream, or food in a can. His therapist said that gratitude created serotonin, so he was awash in gratitude for a starring role in a commercial for an up-and-coming lunch meat manufacturer, right here in LA.
Half his work was here, but he traveled constantly for acting gigs—commercials, trade shows, bit parts in direct-to-video movies. His agent croaked, “New York,” or “Chicago,” or “Houston,” and off he flew, renting an economy car, staying at a discount hotel, ordering pizza, and halfheartedly watching cable porn.
It was a life, his. After graduating from Northwestern University armed with his MFA, his sincerity, and his acting credits (Wasn’t he Hamlet in the Northwestern production? Wasn’t he Willy Loman?), Isaac had moved to LA to break into film via commercials. Film faded, but the commercials endured. It seemed that there was an endless supply of crap that Americans had to buy, and Isaac had built himself a reputation—good looking, reliable, and willing to do almost anything, no matter how demeaning. He got corporate gigs, commercials and infomercials, training films and TV-order products. Then the jobs got more upscale—credit cards, fashion designers, car manufacturers. Soon, Isaac found that he had sunk to the top of his field.
In fact, he was on his way to becoming a world record holder for the most TV commercials in a single career. The frenzy had begun when a casting director dubbed him “The Man with the Erasable Face,” and TV Guide did a short article on him. It was all about how Isaac could appear in multiple commercials for multiple products, but nobody ever recognized him. For every product he sold, he looked like a different person, and directors cast him over and over without exhausting his range.
Bookings increased even more after that article came out. Isaac’s agent hired an assistant, bought a condo near the beach. Everyone was requesting “Eraserface” for airline commercials, insurance commercials, luxury vehicle commercials. Proctor & Gamble executives dialed him direct, on his cell phone. They called him “son.” Sometimes, though, when extolling the benefits of a new weight loss pill, or dressed up as a giant tube of toothpaste, Isaac wondered what it was all for—if he was doing any good in the world, or just annoying people.
Isaac scratched some dried egg from Kate's upper lip and she batted his hand away. Kate could never act, or even lie. Her pale face and squinting eyes would betray her. She could do some kind of public service commercial about neglected kids, maybe. She glanced at him, looking just like her dad for a terrifying moment before it passed. Unexpectedly, she plugged her hand into Isaac’s damp one, as they watched the costume designer scuttle around with duct tape and cheese. At that second, Isaac missed Kate’s father with a new ferocity, undaunted by the sorrow of the day before.
He cleared his throat. “I booked us a flight to Denver next Monday.”
“I’m scared to fly,” she mumbled and started kicking his metal chair leg.
“You’re too young to be afraid of flying. Please stop that.”
Kate swung her foot in the empty air.
“What are you afraid of?”
“Dying.”
Isaac pulled a pencil and scratch pad from the coffee table. He drew a plane that looked like a flying hot dog. He pointed with the pencil. “An airplane’s wings are tilted like this, see? When it moves forward, more air goes underneath the plane than the amount that goes on top.” He drew a bunch of arrows pointing under the wings. When Kate’s face didn’t unscrunch, he drew darker arrows. “The air sucks the plane into the air. So it doesn’t fall down.”
“I’ve fallen off monkey bars before,” Kate said. “The air didn’t suck me up. And a plane is much bigger than I am.”
“It’s aerodynamics. Size doesn’t matter.”
From Kate’s scowl, Isaac saw that no woman, no matter how young, seemed to buy that argument. “The wings don’t flap.” Kate ate like she was feeding a meter.
“I fly every week for work. If we’re going to be living together, even in the short term, you have to fly. Don’t you want to try to find your aunt?”
Kate’s cheeks bulged, food stashed in them. “I guess so.” She chewed and chewed, swallowing several times. “She’s my only relative.”
Isaac glanced at her and away. That was the issue, wasn’t it? In his will, Chris hadn’t given custody of Kate to Isaac, his best friend of twenty-three years. Instead, he had given custody to his renegade sister Nina, wherever the hell she was.
Despite a measure of relief (Isaac had never even changed a diaper, and wasn’t exactly ready to father a child who wasn’t his—not that he’d have to change Kate’s diaper, she was almost nine, but even so), he was somewhat baffled by Chris’s choice, and he burned with low-grade resentment. Nina was lost. How would Isaac find her to dump Kate on? Which he wasn’t even sure he felt comfortable doing. I mean, who knows what the situation was there. Why did Chris choose to give Kate to the Ghost of Sister Past, when it was Isaac who was there the whole time, in the flesh?
Except he hadn’t been around much, either.
He had only disappeared at the end. Until then, Isaac had been around plenty when he wasn’t working, and on weekends after Chris got sick. He had helped Chris through his wife’s death, through Chris’s own medications and their failures. He had helped them move to that Section Eight place once Chris got too weak to work at the service station. Isaac had downgraded his own apartment to pay for Chris’s. He had handled Chris’s mail for him, paid his bills with his own money.
It wasn’t easy taking care of an indigent widower with drug-resistant AIDS. Chris had thrown up all the time. He had lost his hair in clumps on the carpet. He had constant diarrhea. Isaac went south every day and cleaned up. He deodorized. He had power of attorney. He was the point person, right up until Chris went into the hospital for his last weeks on earth.
Then Isaac never visited him.
Instead, he went to nine auditions. He had sex with eleven women, once each. He cried on his sofa fifteen times, and six times in bed. He went to a grief counselor seven
