Jean Bluer distinguished four stages of disguise: the photograph; the dance; the poem; and the person. The photograph, as the label implied, centered on visual accuracy. Under Jean’s severe tutelage, Daniel learned how to use skin tints, crepe beards, putty, sponges, false eyelashes, contact lenses, paint-on tooth enamels; a variety of wens, warts, and beauty marks; and molded latex masks which, worn overnight, pulled his features to their designs.
Initially they worked from a file of photographs. When Daniel finished his makeup, Jean Bluer inspected the face, offering a barrage of criticisms and suggestions.
‘The seal between the nose putty and lip line is faulty – use a bit more glue, and mix a touch of Max Factor Number Nine in with it.
‘The beard is inept, much too sparse below the jaw. The powder on the cheekbones is excessively dark, thus exaggerating the hollow; in sunlight you’d look like a zombie. And smear the lip gloss; it’s blinding. Small amounts, smoothly applied – that’s the proper application. Small and smooth. Suggestion, not statement. The harmonious integration of details.’
After a month working from photos, they moved to the street for an hour every morning. Jean Bluer would pick out a model for Daniel to reconstruct back at the warehouse. Jean commented as Daniel, squinting into the semicircular mirror on the makeup table, reproduced the face from memory. As Daniel soon discovered, each face Jean chose as a model presented different problems.
‘No! Never! The eyes are too far apart. You couldn’t fool a blind man,’ Jean Bluer would admonish, picking up the eyeliner. ‘Like this, you see – a bolder line, and a little more arch to the brows. The eyelashes, now, curl them away from each other. Notice how it widens the placement of the eyes, thus broadening the forehead, harmonizing the illusion.’
Or another day: ‘Acchhh! The scar is terrible. Atrocious. Like scars little kids paint on their faces playing pirate. Utterly one-dimensional.’ (One-dimensionality was, for Jean Bluer, the only unforgivable fault.) ‘Wipe it off before its stupidity paralyzes us both. Now try this: a whitish-grey liner, a hint of silver, a faint streak of blue for the highlights. Then, the little bottle next to the Max Factor Flexible Collodion that you’ve used to hold wigs and seal putty – no, next to it, yes, the little bottle that says Non-flexible Collodion. Now, paint over the scar. See? It shrinks the skin and draws it inward. Notice how the lower lid of your eye is just slightly pulled down? Yes, yes – excellent. You did especially well on the coloration. That is a scar. Merely looking at it one can feel the pain of the original wound, the pain of healing.’
When Daniel was proficient with makeup, Jean introduced him to costume. From Amish hats to zebra-striped panties, Daniel learned materials, cuts, padding, and the conventions governing them. Women’s clothing in particular confounded him.
‘Heavens,’ Jean Bluer howled at his first attempt, ‘you’d be arrested in a moment as a transvestite, and any self-respecting drag queen would assist the police. The nylons are baggy. If your upper lip were any thinner you could slice salami. The purse was out of style seven years ago, and you are holding it like a dead baby. Your breasts have ridden up around your collarbones because you have not imagined their weight, thus are holding your shoulders too far back. Also, your feet are too far apart and your center of balance seems to be around your knees rather than between your hips. This is bad, Daniel. This makes me ill.’
After school, Daniel, who lived in a rooming house down the block, was free to do as he pleased, as long as he observed how people looked, walked, talked, and thought. Daniel kept notes, and while he practiced the morning’s lesson in Tao Do Chaung, Jean critiqued them aloud.
‘“Waved.” Which hand? Was this coat buttoned, open, or partially buttoned. You note a blue-striped dress shirt. What sort of collar and cuffs? “European laugh?” “Southern accent?” Meaningless descriptions. The laughter of the French and Italians is completely different. There are well over a hundred southern accents. Precision, Daniel. Detail. Nuance. One perfect gesture or inflection will carry even a hasty physical disguise.’
When Jean Bluer was satisfied with Daniel’s progress, he introduced the second stage, the dance. He started Daniel at the center: muscle, bone, integument – what was connected to what and how it worked. From that center, Jean explained, posture, movement, and gesture naturally expanded.
‘Physique is the deposited history of our forebearers, and thus a component of character. Any voluntary movement is, naturally, a gesture of consciousness – certainly our main interest – but always pay initial attention to the arrangement of muscle, bone, and skin, for they determine the actual form of the movement.’
Daniel learned ten basic walks, each emphasizing a different center of gravity, and therefore a different balance. He worked barefoot to sense the precise distribution of weight and strain. They spent the lunch hour on the street, observing the way people moved their bodies, endless variations on a few skeletal themes. Jean emphasized hands – the position of the fingers, angle of the palms, the speed and force of movement, continually reminding Daniel to look for each person’s pattern of motion, not just isolated moves. And at the end of eighty strenuous days, Jean, pleased with Daniel’s abilities, announced they would move to the third stage of disguise, the poem.
Daniel started with breathing exercises, first establishing a ‘regular’ breath as a median from which to explore different rhythms. ‘Accent, pitch, inflection’ – Jean dismissed them with a wave – ‘they can only be added after you have the basic cadence. Listen to how people breathe when they talk, and the rest falls into place.’ As usual, his advice was amazingly helpful.
From breath cadence, Daniel moved into sound, the vibrating air of vowels and consonants, the bare phonetic minimums and the corresponding placement of teeth and tongue, the subtle variations in pitch and duration. Daniel practiced from Jean’s vast catalogue of tapes as Jean listened for flaws in Daniel’s imitations.
‘Not “you-all”; it’s “yawl.” Roll the jaw – it’s a broad elision… More drag on the gutturals and more hum in the nasals – you’re in New Mexico territory, pahdnah. Pay attention to that tongue! Northern, more forward; southern, let it loll back a little. And diction, Daniel, diction! You’re supposed to be an Irish hod-carrier, not a British barrister.’
Daniel’s favorite of these admonitions was ‘More mumble, please, more mumble.’
When they entered the last stage of disguise, Jean gave a short speech about what he was after. ‘So far we have been involved in the duplication of appearance, movement, and speech. Duplication requires craft. Now we enter art, for the fourth stage requires not merely a physical extension of identity, but its assumption. Real imagination, where you become what you create. And this needs to be stressed: Those identities are already within you. We think of identity as being singular, unique. But it is only the expression of one possibility. Think of identity as a braid of many identities through which the force of life flows – like an electrical wire composed of many smaller, intertwined wires coated with a rubber insulation that keeps them intact, coherent. You are both the Ancient Mariner and the wedding guest, the bride and the groom, minister and derelict. Every person dead, alive, or to be born is within you. Tap that storehouse of selves, draw upon your own body of metaphor.’
The exercises for the fourth stage of disguise, the person, were challenging to the point of absorption. At seven each morning Jean gave him a problem to solve. Daniel had till noon to find a solution, which he performed for Jean. If Jean approved, he sent Daniel out on the streets to present it under real circumstances. The problems were people.
The first was easy. ‘Daniel, become a thirty-seven-year-old union electrician, born in Chicago, with a wife and two children. You fell from some scaffolding two years ago and shattered your left shoulder, living on disability insurance ever since. You’re on your way back from seeing the doctor and have stopped for a drink in an unfamiliar bar. I’ll be taking the part of the bartender.’
Th
e problems soon became more difficult. ‘You are a twenty-year-old female journalism student at Columbia University. You were born in Lubbock, Texas, lived there till you were fourteen, then moved to Newark. Your father is a mid-level executive with Standard Oil, and your mother is a closet alcoholic. You have been increasingly depressed the past few months and have sought help from the university counseling center. I will be a psychologist.
‘You are a thirty-year-old male Puerto Rican cocaine dealer. You’ve been in prison once for three years for assault on a peace officer. You have a scar on your right cheek. I will be a new buyer, whom you suspect may be a narc. You want to be careful, but you could also use a new customer.’
Although Jean always sent Daniel to the street with each solution, it was nearly four months before the sharp, continual criticism gradually gave way to praise. The day Daniel passed through a welfare interview as a fifty-year-old female Colombian immigrant with four children and little English, Jean told him, ‘As you know, you are my first student under my agreement with Volta, and I’m either a much better teacher than I ever hoped, or you are a natural talent. I can find very few flaws lately, and they are flaws only experience, not instruction, can correct. You are good enough to leave any time you choose. I will notify Volta.’
‘Thank you,’ Daniel acknowledged the praise, ‘but I won’t leave until I can fool you as you initially fooled me.’
‘Ah, but Daniel, that was much easier on my part, since you’d never seen me before or suspected I would be in disguise. Do remember that I can spot a disguise very quickly, especially when I’m looking for one. Your chances of getting past me are extremely poor.’
‘With all respect, I believe I can do it.’
‘Very well, if you insist. At the end of Tao Do Chaung each morning, I will tell you where I plan to eat lunch and the route I’ll take to get there. Assume the disguise of your choice and engage me along the way. If you can fool me for thirty seconds, consider yourself successful.’
The first day Daniel disguised himself as a window washer, renting a van and equipment. As he began washing the windows of the restaurant, Jean emerged, laughing, and told him that most professionals used some sort of detergent in the water since it seemed to get the windows cleaner.
The second day he joined a group of winos huddled in a doorway. As he passed by, Jean put a quarter in his hand and whispered, ‘It would have been a twenty if you’d fooled me.’
That night, Daniel had a brainstorm. He would disguise himself as the one person Jean might not expect, might not even recognize: He would disguise himself as Jean Bluer.
Daniel left early for the studio next morning, still excited by his plan. There were very few people on the street. An old black man, so drunk he’d entered another dimension, lurched past with his eyes rolled back in his head. A sturdy Ukrainian woman stood at the bus-stop. A sawed-off, pot-bellied army sergeant carrying a duffel bag fumed by, muttering to himself, ‘Fuckin’ reveille motherfucker and no fuckin’ sleep – fuck the fuckin’ army!’ Daniel hurried on.
Daniel crossed the kitchen toward the large dressing room where he usually changed into a jock and sweatpants for Tao Do Chaung. Volta was standing at one of the mirrored makeup tables, idly examining a color chart. The moment Daniel saw him he realized he’d just passed Jean Bluer on the street, and that he would most likely never see him again. It was an appropriate farewell.
Volta glanced up. ‘Daniel, how have you been?’
Daniel said, ‘Was that fat sergeant I just passed on the street Jean Bluer?’
‘It was indeed. Jean’s talents are required elsewhere. Not an emergency exactly, but a pressing concern, you understand. Your work here is through.’
‘Not quite,’ Daniel said, shifting his center of gravity into the Tao Do Chaung stance known as the Wounded Crane and simultaneously unleashing a flawless Do Rah Ran, a powerful side kick that swept Volta’s feet out from under him.
Volta, however, controlled his fall, tucking himself midair and rolling on his shoulder as he hit. He was on his feet instantly and assumed the .38 Colt Python stance, the front bead locked on Daniel’s navel. ‘Don’t make me defend myself,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m no match for your youth. I’d have to shoot you.’
Daniel said with certainty, ‘You wouldn’t kill me.’
‘I didn’t say I’d kill you; I said I’d shoot you. In fact, since the gun is full of snake-loads – birdshot instead of a bullet – I doubt if I could kill you, but I could probably perforate about a half mile of small intestine, which would slow you down enough to make it a fair fight.’
‘No,’ Daniel said in the same implacably certain tone, ‘you wouldn’t do that either.’
Volta shrugged. ‘You’re right.’ He released the hammer and tossed the pistol to Daniel.
Startled, Daniel grabbed awkwardly.
While he was still fumbling, Volta started talking. ‘What are you so ferociously peeved about anyway? That I’ve been neglecting you? Daniel, I’m not your father. I have responsibilities to many others as well as you. And I have my own life, too. Or is this because I didn’t have either the time or inclination to hear your dream? I told Robert to convey my congratulations, which I trust he did.’ Daniel began to say something but Volta rolled on. ‘Or was that spiteful kick the result of my high-handed presumption in ending your work with Jean and sending him to attend other business? Daniel, your work with Jean, by his report, was finished a week ago. Since then, again by his report, you’ve been trying to convince yourself that you’re adept enough to fool him – that is to say, his equal. You’re not. Though having said so, I hasten to add that I think you have the talent and passion to surpass him eventually. The opportunity is there. And have you noticed how opportunity seems to expand as it narrows?’
‘I sure have,’ Daniel said. ‘That’s why I’m quitting AMO.’
‘You’re welcome,’ Volta snapped. ‘Bye.’
Daniel flipped open the .38’s cylinder and ejected the shells into his palm. They were snake-loads. He looked at Volta. ‘Maybe you would have shot me.’ He tossed Volta the gun.
Volta caught it by the butt and in virtually the same motion flipped open the cylinder, magically producing a speed-loader in his other hand, and had the pistol ready to cock again before Daniel could blink twice. ‘I’m a man who draws lines, Daniel. That way I know where my edges are. One of those lines is a refusal to be brutalized for petty reasons, especially youthful petulance. If you were a Zen master, I would be bowing to you. But you’re not. As you’ve no doubt noticed.’
Daniel took a deep breath, and for a moment seemed to be gathering himself for a heated reply. ‘Okay,’ Daniel said. ‘I’m sorry. I apologize.’
‘Accepted and forgotten,’ Volta said. The gun disappeared into his jacket.
Daniel said, ‘It was a bit of all the reasons you mentioned, but the work with Jean especially. You think my work here is done, Jean thinks it’s done, but I don’t. Today I was going to try something that may well have worked – I was going to disguise myself as Jean.’
Volta sat down at the makeup table, turning the chair away from the bank of mirrors to face Daniel. ‘That might have proven difficult, since there is no Jean Bluer.’
‘I thought I sensed one.’
‘Possibly you did.’
They were silent a moment and then Daniel said, ‘I need a vacation, a serious rest. A year at least; maybe two.’
‘You quit, remember? I assumed you quit in order to do exactly as you please. Do so.’
‘“Accepted and forgotten?”’ Daniel reminded him. ‘Don’t beat me with my apology.’
‘Your apology was for the kick, not your resignation – for that, no apology is necessary. We couldn’t very well call AMO a voluntary alliance if one wasn’t free to withdraw.’
‘I want to stay. It was an addled act. Jean gone, you here telling me what to do … it was too much at once.’
‘I’m truly glad to hear that, Daniel, because righ
t now we need your help.’
‘My help?’
‘I don’t understand why you seem startled,’ Volta said with more than his usual dryness. ‘We haven’t been providing your training without some expectation of return. We consider you what we call a free agent. We assume you will listen to various requests for assistance, though of course you retain the right to refuse, or to suggest alternatives. No more teachers, unless you wish to arrange further study on your own. And remember one of Wild Bill’s better lines: “When the teaching ends, learning begins.”’
‘So what am I needed for? To grow dope? Gamble? Crack safes? To disguise myself as an Italian waiter and find out what the Secretary of State discusses with his mistress over the scallopini?’ Daniel’s sarcasm belied his excitement.
‘Nothing so mundane. This is much more in tune with your romantic nature: a jewel theft. An extraordinarily difficult theft, I warn you, but it is an extraordinary jewel. To steal it, you will have to surpass Jean Bluer.’
‘You just finished saying––’ Daniel began, but Volta cut him short.
‘What’s the ultimate disguise, Daniel?’
Daniel considered a moment. ‘Invisibility, I guess.’
‘Exactly.’
‘I’m not quite able to do that yet.’
‘I am,’ Volta said. ‘Or I was at one time.’
‘Actually become invisible, right? Dematerialize? Poof?’
‘Vanish is the term I use. And no poof. It’s more like slipping underwater.’
‘You’re telling me you could vanish into thin air?’