"Your image isn't strong enough! I want to see joy! JOY!"

Isobel and Delphi exchanged dubious glances as Terence Hoff, a slim, effeminate, beaky man, shouted at the quivering young woman at the front of the small, dark room.

"I—I'm trying," she stammered. "It's just that I'm not...well...I'm not by nature a very happy person."

"That's why it's called ACTING!" screamed Terence.

"If it's acting, then why is she working so hard to remember something that actually happened to her?" Isobel whispered to Delphi. Nikki, seated next to them, shushed her. Isobel sat back and watched the young woman repeat the exercise.

"Think of an image that brings you great joy," Terence insisted. "It doesn't have to be an event from your own life. It could be a scene from a movie or some music that sets your heart a-twitter."

"But I told you—"

"No excuses! Think, April. Think!"

April stood in front of the class and thought. A flicker of emotion crossed her face, and one side of her mouth pulled up in an involuntary smile.

"That's it! Go with that! Whatever it was you were just thinking!" shouted Terence.

"It's not joyful, it's funny," April protested.

"Just GO WITH IT!"

April began to leap around the room, letting out ahs and whoops that, to Isobel, sounded completely phony and forced.

"Physicalize it more!"

April swung her arms wide and twirled around.

"Use your whole body!"

She flung herself every which way, until Terence shouted, "Now, start your monologue!"

Accusations and invective streamed forth from April in a high-pitched, singsong voice that was completely at odds with what she was saying.

After a minute, Terence cut her off. "Perfect! Brilliant!"

"Ridiculous," Isobel muttered.

Terence rose from his chair and took the panting, shaking girl by the arm. "Now, how did that feel?"

April hesitated. "Good?"

"Excellent work. A big breakthrough, I think."

"I don't get it," Isobel whispered. "That monologue has nothing to do with joy. There's nothing joyful about it."

"What do you expect?" Delphi stifled a giggle. "It's from Look Back in Anger."

"That's not the point," Nikki hissed. "I told you, it's all about subtext. It's about being able to call up any emotion at will and use it to color the words."

"But that's not acting, that's, that's..." Isobel paused.

"Masturbation?" Delphi let out a snort of laughter.

"Excuse me," Terence broke in. "Is there a question?"

"Yes," said Isobel. "Why didn't April use material that fit the emotion better?"

"Because that isn't the point of the exercise. Wednesday evening's class is for monologue and scene study. The point here is to experience the integration of genuine emotion with any available text."

"But when would you ever need to do such a thing?" Isobel asked.

Terence walked over to her chair and looked down at her, his baggy reptilian eyes glinting.

"If my methods are not clear, I'd be happy to discuss them with you after the session. I'd prefer not to waste the time of my students who are paying good money to be here."

Isobel looked around the room. A blue-jeaned Adonis in the back row caught her eye and smiled. Emboldened, she addressed the room. "Isn't the whole point of acting to make believe? And to let the audience experience the emotion?"

"That is what I refer to as the 'nobody cares how you feel' school of acting, and I do not subscribe to it. Genuine emotion inspires genuine emotion," Terence said grandly.

"But this isn't genuine emotion," Isobel said, exasperated. "It's completely manufactured, and it has no connection to the play!"

"If you're on a movie set and you have to make an entrance sobbing because your mother has just been shot, you're going to have to film that scene ten times from three different angles, so you'd better have a solid technique in place to get yourself there emotionally," Terence said, through gritted teeth.

"What about simply imagining yourself in the character's situation?" Isobel argued.

"It's not as immediate."

"Maybe if you have no imagination, but if that's the case, you shouldn't be an actor to begin with."

"Young lady, are you here to audit the class or teach it?" Terence snarled.

"Sorry." Isobel retreated back into her chair.

"Now," Terence continued, struggling to compose himself, "if we're not too rattled by that little...digression...let's continue to bring up joyful images in our chairs. When you feel you have yours, come on up."

Nikki glared at Isobel, then placed her hands over her face to shut her out while she conjured a joyful image. Isobel stole a glance at the hot guy in the back row. He was sitting thoughtfully in his seat, and when Isobel caught his eye, he winked at her.

"That's it, concentrate. Concentrate." Terence stalked among the students like a panther on the prowl. "Remember, joy is difficult. Joy is elusive. I know you're all relieved when I schedule joy, but it rarely produces your best work. We're not as accessible to joy as we are to anger or frustration." He glowered at Isobel as he passed her seat. "We don't have to dig very deep for those emotions, do we?"

There was a movement behind Isobel, and the hot guy leaped from his seat and practically pirouetted to the front of the class.

"That's it! Yes, Justin, yes!"

Justin soared around the room like an airplane, spinning his arms wildly, escalating into peals of wild laughter.

"Your monologue! START YOUR MONOLOGUE!"

"Now is the winter of our discontent! Made glorious summer by this sun of York! And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean buried!" Justin wailed ecstatically.

"Fabulous! Class, did you see how free he was? How joyful?" Terence preened triumphantly and began to applaud. The rest of the class dutifully followed suit.

"Now, Justin, you must have had a very strong image. Will you help the rest of the class understand why it has to be that strong in order to attain that level of emotional release? Tell us your image, Justin. What were you thinking about?"

Justin caught Isobel's eye and winked again. Then he threw his arms wide and turned to Terence.

"Nothing," said Justin. "Not a goddamn thing!"

*  *  *

"Half the class is faking it," Justin said. He leaned against the railing of the brownstone next to Terence Hoff's studio and took a long drag on his cigarette, blowing the smoke away from Isobel and Delphi. "But if you admit it's all bullshit, that means you've been suckered into spending a ton of money on nothing."

"What about you?" Delphi asked.

"I was going to quit anyway." He stubbed out his cigarette on the bottom of his boot and flicked it into the street. Littering offended Isobel greatly, but she bit her tongue and focused instead on the way his jeans hugged his butt and thighs.

"How did you find this class, anyway?" she asked.

"Terence is an old friend of my mom's. I promised I'd give it a try. But he's a complete crock."

"Obviously some people in the class get something out of it," Delphi said.

Isobel wondered if Nikki was one of them. She still wasn't sure. Apparently, anger and frustration had interfered with Nikki's access to joy, keeping her in her seat for the entire class. So in the end, Isobel hadn't been able to assess her acting. But from her silent, furious looks, Isobel was willing to bet that Nikki was a true believer. It wasn't hard to imagine her blind with rage, threatening to go after Doreen.

"You certainly fooled Terence," Isobel said.

"Nah. He just wants to fuck me." Justin smoothed a brown curl off his forehead.

That makes two of us, thought Isobel. Beside her, Delphi gave a quiet sigh. Make that three.

"Is Nikki any good?" Isobel asked.

"Is that the tall babe who was sitting next to you?"

"Yeah."

"She seems to really get into it. When we did sadness last week, she was a mess. Anger...she was good at that one too. I get the feeling that if you really let yourself go there, it's kind of hard to shake it off afterwards."

Isobel nodded. That settled that.

"Do his students get a lot of work?" Delphi asked.

Justin shook his head. "Terence won't let you audition for anything until you've completed his course," he said scornfully.

"That's crazy," Isobel said. "It's all well and good to take class, but you only really learn by doing it."

Justin turned to her. "Listen, half of New York City is made up of people who call themselves actors, but haven't done a play since college. Acting teachers play into that. It's a Svengali thing."

"Don't you think it's important to study?"

"Oh, sure. But you gotta be careful. Terence isn't the only phony out there. And he's by no means the worst of them."

"Sounds like you speak from experience," said Delphi.

"Nah, my friends' experiences. I'm not that interested in acting, anyway."

"What do you do, then?"

"I'm an underwear model." He reached into his leather satchel, pulled out a catalogue and handed it to Isobel, who coughed self-consciously.

"Um, that's not much underwear," she said.

He smiled. "Keep it. As a souvenir of our time together." He snapped open a baseball cap and swiped it onto his head. "I gotta run. See you around."

Delphi watched him go, a lascivious smile on her face. "Well, I wouldn't call this morning a total loss." She pointed to the catalogue in Isobel's hand. "He didn't happen to scribble his phone number down, did he?"

Isobel shook her head sadly.

"No," Delphi said with a sigh. "They never do."