I wish I could have done a more demanding job, really, though not mentally, of course, just physically, as that gives you even more appreciation of what you�re doing, more of a sense of achievement. A man who�s worked indoors all his life could hardly become a brickie all of a sudden though, especially at my age, so a janitor was a nice compromise. I didn�t go for the children�s television style school janitor option though; instead I worked now in the Browhouse, mainly because there would be fewer kids there to irritate me. I was told by a few of my (new) friends that I really should give up janitoring and paint full time - I was even earning enough money from selling a few landscapes, combined my pension, to live quite comfortably � but I realised I wouldn�t be able to paint the same without the simple job to get me up, give me time where I had pretty much nothing else to do but think. Besides, it�s always nice to feel you�re being useful. It�s too easy to be drawn into the retirement trap and just stop being of use to anyone else.
There I was sweeping a particularly vigorous spill of popcorn (salted, I noticed from its colour) when Ben walked by. At first I didn�t recognise him: he had aged a bit. There was something about him though that clicked and I called him back, hoping to talk. He turned and vaguely looked at me, obviously oblivious as to whom I was and so I obligingly filled him in (allowing three words starting with �ob� to appear in a single sentence, among other things). His eyes kind of lit up:
�Mr Berry! How are you doing, you old sod?�
I replied positively, inquired as to why he was here, and it turned out he was performing. The lead in the play scheduled to start that night was ill, and so someone had called up Ben and asked him to fill in for the night; hopefully the play would be able to start the next night. I asked him what he was even doing in the area, his reply:
�Well, after that business with Clara,� Clara was his by now ex-wife superstar who had split up with him in a massive bust up much loved by press and public alike, �I kind of couldn�t go on. I�d just had enough of the constant attention, and wanted to stop being in front of everyone. When you get to a certain stage, everything�s an act, everything�s a performance. I suppose the split showed me more than anything that all my life I had been performing in various ways, even off the stage or set I was always filling a role: celebrity, husband, I just played the characters as best I thought, there was no me. After all the publicity of the split, I tried to relax and be myself, and I realised there was nothing there. I was nothing, just a mimic playing parts other people had thought up. You can�t live like that, always playing a role, so I quit, quit and ran home, to see if I could find myself.� He chuckled, �I never thought I�d ever say I needed to find myself, never believed it, called it New Age crap, yet here I am now, trying to find myself back where I grew up.�
He looked into my eyes and I could see: he was where I had been years before, when Christine had died. He had no purpose, no drive; all he knew was that he wanted something else, something more, than what he had had so far.
�Anyway, I�m doing this piece as a favour for an old friend, then tomorrow I�m off to the East, thought I�d find something to stir me there.�
�Oh, you�re going to Asia?� I asked in reply, �I went there myself a few years back, Thailand especially, if you�re��
I never got any further, a flustered stage manager charged out and forcibly extracted Ben from me, and a brief goodbye was all we managed.
Of course, I finished my jobs early and snuck into the back of the audience to watch Ben. There was no missing an opportunity like this. I�m quite sure that if I�d had a video camera I could have sold the footage for a fortune to some media types, loving the �depths� to which an ex-movie star had slumped, though I�m also sure I wouldn�t have done.
The performance was a monologue he had written himself, his first piece of writing, an old man once more (he always had a connection with the older types, even if his most famous parts were as younger types) he was in a bare set, only equipped with a single threadbare armchair, probably salvaged from the market that very afternoon. He spoke of his life, his joys (his wonderful wife, giving those strapping kids), his sorrows (his wife�s death, his children moving away with their children, all his friends slowly drifting apart from him), his triumphs (starting his own garage, turning it big) and his failures (the bankruptcy announced just days before the play was set). The words, the broken syllables, the facial stretching pulled at the soul and I knew Ben was the old man, had felt these things, was feeling like this. He wasn�t just giving a performance, he was telling me my life, or nearly. As he sat down and poured a whiskey at the end though, I knew I had done one better than him. Unlike Ben�s beautifully terrible character, I had pulled back from this introspective morbidity and made something of the last few breaths life had to give me.
Not Ben, not on this stage. He uttered his last line and puffed a last breath, exhaling all the life out of himself. His character actually died there, so convincingly there wasn�t a person in the audience not actually believing Ben actually was dead. For that matter the paramedics who arrived later, bursting through the auditorium doors believed him too. The hospital doctors, the morgue physicians, they all believed his act too. Even as his funeral cortege threaded down the street I was waiting for the play to end, for him to rip open the coffin and give his last bow. He didn�t. He had given such a good performance, that for all the doctors muttered of heart failure, I knew what he had really died of. He�d been so damned convincing in his performance that he�d even managed to convince himself.
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