“You don’t mind me smoking?” Jimmy asked, probing his trousers pocket for cigarettes.
“Go ahead,” Roy said distractedly. Setting up the tape recorder was taking longer than he thought. He began to sweat.
Jimmy pulled out a cigarette and held the opened package out to Roy.
“I don’t smoke,” Roy said.
Jimmy took out a lighter from his shirt pocket and lit the cigarette. Roy knew he shouldn’t be watching, but he couldn’t help it. He didn’t know Jimmy was a smoker. Roy waited, watching, excited. But somebody knocked on the door before Jimmy could take his first puff. The intruder was a waiter – with two glasses of iced lemon tea. Roy groaned quietly. He glared at the transgressing waiter. Jimmy balanced the lit cigarette between two clefts in a glass ashtray on the table between them. The waiter set the glasses on the table and left after he watched Jimmy a curious, lingering look.
“You don’t have to be nervous, you know,” Jimmy said. “I’m used to people looking.”
“I wasn’t, uh, staring,” Roy stammered, suddenly sweating again.
Jimmy watched the young journalist sweat. He picked up his glass and took a sip of his lemon tea with a straw. Jimmy was beginning to enjoy himself. They always broke down, these people. Roy the journalist sweated as if sweating was the most important thing in the world. His shirtfront was soaked; his gelled hair had gone limp from the sweat. Jimmy knew he was expected to speak – to say something, anything, to ease the ballooning silence. But he wasn’t going to do it. Why make it easy for them? Jimmy wasn’t going to say anything to explain himself. At any rate, there was nothing to explain.
“Do you mind if we begin with your movie?” Roy asked. He hoped his perspiration wasn’t so obvious. He was worried that he appeared laughable, incompetent, amateurish. He still couldn’t get over how normal Jimmy was. The guys Roy had spoken to didn’t lie: Jimmy was pleasant. But that was exactly what made Roy nervous. A guy like that – like Jimmy – wasn’t supposed to be pleasant. Jimmy was supposed to be bitter and angry with life. Jimmy was supposed to feel like he had a thing or two to teach the world. Roy had expected him to be caustic and grumpy and rude. Living on drugs. That would give Roy something to write about. Who would believe that Jimmy drank ice lemon tea?
“How do you feel,” Roy continued, “about being cast in the role of Birdman?” Roy glanced at the poster that was plastered on the wall behind Jimmy. It was the promotional poster of Birdman the movie, with the figure of Birdman himself looming large in the center, green and muscular and beaky. Birdman looked almost like the Hulk, with the exception of his beak. It was a beak like a parrot’s, curvy and pointed and solid. Birdman’s shirt was torn along the middle, exposing a nauseatingly muscular chest – reminiscent of Salman Khan’s own – and a similarly built torso, all coated in a greenish sheen.
“It was an obvious choice,” Jimmy said and laughed, “don’t you think?”
Roy stared at Jimmy with big, nervous eyes. Was there a point behind Jimmy’s laugh? Suddenly Roy felt humiliated. He looked at the list of questions he had neatly written down on his notepad. Was there any way around it? Could he ask new questions – at least rephrase the ones he had listed? He could hear the creak and scrape of the tape recorder and he felt his back getting wet. Did he put on deodorant today morning? Roy looked up at Jimmy, who was sitting serenely in the chair opposite, fiddling with his fingers.
Roy felt his throat drying up. “The movie,” he persisted, “as you know – the movie is popular. It’s crazy. Do you think it has a lot to do with you being in it?”
“People love wonders, don’t they?” Jimmy looked as if he was smiling. Except that Roy couldn’t really tell, however hard he stared at the beak-like protrusion in place of Jimmy’s lips -- a protrusion that looked much like a parrot’s bill.