At Night We Walk in Circles by Daniel Alarcón Page B

apologized; the actors apologized. They squinted at the pages, then read phonetically, and everyone laughed. Some of the actors translated as best they could, Mónica and Nelson listening with some amusement as the Portuguese was rendered haltingly into stiff and lifeless Spanish. If there was any acting happening, it was hard to tell.
    Nelson took notes, but as the heat intensified, as the monologues became increasingly predictable and maudlin, his mind drifted. The soporific heat, the grating sound of broken Portuguese, and these disappointing actors—his friends, many of them—it was all too much. More than a few gave up and walked out. They blamed the heat; they blamed the script; they blamed the Ministry of Health and the entire hapless government.
    Ixta was different. They’d already been at it for three and a half hours when she walked in. She wasn’t pretty but had what one might call “presence”: the set of her jaw, perhaps, or her pale, powdered skin, or the bangs that fell precisely before her eyes, so it was difficult to guess what she was thinking or what she was looking at. And she’d dressed the part, wearing a schoolgirl’s uniform, right down to the white knee-high socks and shapeless gray skirt. With a few quick steps she carved out a space that became hers, transforming the carpet into a stage. She took the pages they’d given her, and flipped through them very quickly, nodding. She handed the pages back to Mónica, and promptly crumpled to the floor. It happened very fast.
    â€œIs everything all right?” Mónica asked.
    Ixta looked up for a moment, and shook her head. It was a hideous, pitiful face: battered and young and streaked with tears.
    â€œHow can everything be all right?” she muttered. “How can it?”
    Mónica looked on with a raised eyebrow.
    â€œWhat happened?” Nelson asked, playing along.
    â€œThe girls at school. You know the ones. They say things.”
    Ixta sat up, rolled her head around, so that her bangs fell back, and Nelson caught, briefly, a glimpse of her red, swollen eyes. Then she stood slowly, unlocking each of her joints one by one. When she was on her feet, she slouched and crossed her legs, scratching her face and mumbling a few words neither Mónica nor Nelson could make out. Something about the cliques that ran the school and a boy she’d liked.
    â€œHe said he wanted to kiss me,” Ixta whispered, “but then he didn’t.”
    Mónica remembers the audition well: “The girl exuded so much vulnerability it felt indecent just to watch her.” After a while, she asked Ixta to stop. They still had six or seven actors waiting, she explained; and Ixta nodded, as if she understood, then all but ran from the room into the hall. She hadn’t even given them her contact information.
    â€œGo on,” Mónica said, turning to her son. “Go after her.”
    Nelson found Ixta sitting by the elevators, legs crossed, head drifting into her chest, back against the wall. The rest of the actors eyed her with a mixture of curiosity and dread.
    He knelt beside her. “You all right?”
    Ixta nodded. “It’s hot in there.”
    â€œYou did very well.”
    She bit her lip, looking straight ahead at the elevator door, as if she could see through it, into the shaft and farther, into the metal cage that rumbled invisibly through the old ministry building. “I suppose you’re going to ask me out now.”
    â€œI was going to ask you for your information, actually,” Nelson said. “For the play. In case we need a callback.”
    â€œSure,” she said, unconvinced. “For the play.”
    He gave her a piece of paper, and Ixta wrote down her full name and telephone number. Her letters were rounded and bubbly. It was the handwriting of a teenage girl. She was still in character.
    â€œDon’t call after ten,” she remembers saying.