An Idol for Others (24 page)

“I hope you’re listening now, darling. I have some rather nice news. Our production is all set to appear in about eight months.”

His mind ground into action, circled the words, fixed on their meaning. “You’re kidding,” he shouted. He let out a whoop of laughter. “You mean it? It’s really going to happen? Oh, God, I wish I could see you.”

Fay laughed softly. “In view of the way paternity affects you, I wish I could see you, darling. It’s nice knowing the little dear has such a beautiful father.”

“We’ve got to get together as soon as possible. Next week when all the fuss is over, I want to hear all about it.”

Fay laughed again. “You’re a darling boy. I don’t see what more I can tell you, but I’d gladly reenact the way it happened in case you haven’t quite got the hang of it.”

They laughed together, and she wished him luck and promised to arrange a meeting for the following week. He encountered Greg in the corridor, and they winked at each other as they passed. Finished business. The passions he had unleashed were all harnessed and working productively.

The final preview ended with what was as close to an ovation as could be expected from an audience of freeloaders. Clara hugged Walter, and Johnny gave him a restrained pat on the back while they watched the curtain calls from the back of the theater.

“It’s a bloody miracle,” Johnny said. “I was sure he was going to kill the show.”

“What did you do to him, dearest?” Clara inquired, her eyes glowing with pride. “You’ve turned him into a great actor. I’m rather sorry to see him wasted on Hollywood.”

“I’ve just been made an honorary member of the Svengali Society,” Walter said.

He was faced with the three dangerous days of waiting for the opening night. It was plenty of time for the performance to fall apart, but he didn’t know what he could do to prevent it. It had been planned this way from the beginning, but he knew now that it had been a major blunder. Once actors were accustomed to an audience, it was like depriving them of air to make them work in an empty theater. He gave them a day off. The day after that he brought a stack of plays to the theater and had them all do readings as different as possible from the parts they were playing. It was an experiment in using a permanent company. They all enjoyed themselves. After that there was nothing to do but put them through a final run-through to make sure they hadn’t forgotten their lines and hope for the best.

Faced with an opening night in a few hours, Walter supposed he must be nervous, but it manifested itself in lethargy. There was too much at stake to think about it. Since the rewards of success were incalculable, he preferred to dwell on the possibility of failure, which would leave him no worse off than he had been before. “Let’s get away from here for a while, Clarry,” he said, standing onstage and taking a last look around the deserted theater. “I can’t believe it’s all going to be decided so soon. It seems only yesterday Johnny brought us the play.”

They picked up coffee and sandwiches and went to the office a couple of blocks away. David wasn’t there. Clara went over some recent bills. Walter sprawled as comfortably as he could in a straight chair and tried not to think. There was no reason for their being there, but he couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. He hadn’t made love to Clara for more than a week, and this wasn’t the time to resume. He heard fire sirens screaming through the streets.

“It would be interesting if the theater burned down,” he commented idly.

David called ten minutes later to tell them that that was what had happened. He threw down the telephone and lunged for the door without stopping to tell Clara. She came sweeping after him. When they reached the scene of the disaster, it was all over. The fire had been confined to the stage and backstage area, but the auditorium was a shambles. The set was gone. The costumes were gone. David, who had been there though it all, greeted them with a hopeless shrug.

“Didn’t I say something once about setting fire to $25,000? Well, here you are,” he said with none of his usual bounce. “It was quite a light in that forest.”

Walter looked at him and burst out laughing. He leaned against the wall in the lobby and shook with helpless laughter. Clara joined in. The contagion spread to David, and the three of them stood in the lobby, rocking and clutching their sides in a hysteria of shattered nerves. A man in a waterproof coat and hip boots and a fireman’s helmet slogged past. He glanced at them disapprovingly and shook his head. After a few moments they managed to get themselves under control.

“We’d better have a little chat,” Walter said to David. His shock and dismay were tempered by curiosity. What in the world would they do now? He supposed there was a proper procedure to follow. If it involved delays, collecting insurance, raising more money, it struck him as dreary. He already had an idea of what he wanted to do. His lethargy was gone. “Come on. Let’s go back to the office.” He set a fast pace as the three of them strode off down the street.

They shut themselves in the office, with Clara’s presiding behind the littered desk. There was complete silence. Walter righted an overturned coffee carton and took a quick breath to repress another wave of laughter.

“Well,” David began. “We’ll have to postpone for two weeks, maybe three. We’re going to need more money. The set’s covered, of course; but it’ll take money to keep the company together and all the rest. This is an item I didn’t include in the budget.”

“I don’t want to put more money in it,” Walter said.

“We’ve got to. We’ve done damn well so far. Even if we have to throw in another $10,000, it’ll still be cheap.”

“I don’t want to.” He could feel Clara’s eyes boring into him. She knew he was about to spring something on them.

“There’s no alternative, old pal. I don’t get it. What do you think we can do?”

“Well …” He threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, for God’s sake, let’s stop being so goddamned grown-up and solemn. We’re young. And what does youth do? It laughs in the face of adversity.”

“So I’m laughing. Then what?”

Walter sprang up and took a turn around the confined quarters. He faced them. “Why shouldn’t we just go ahead and
do
the goddamned play?”

“How do you mean?”

“I mean, just get up on a stage and
do
it.”

“Now, wait a minute, honey. You saw the theater. There’s no stage to get up on.”

“Call Al Finebaum, or whatever his name is. Ask him if he can give us a theater for tonight.”

“For
tonight
?” David’s voice broke with disbelief. “There’s no production. We don’t even have a backdrop.”

“The hell with a backdrop. I’ve never liked that damn set anyway. Call Al.
Make
him give us a theater. Let’s have a little fun, for God’s sake. Everybody takes this business too damned seriously.” He looked at Clara. She smiled.

“If Al’s no help, there’s always Cousin George.” She had never found him more thrilling. This was the way she wanted life to be–innovative and unpredictable. If she had been given a free hand, she couldn’t have invented anybody so elegantly mischievous while at the same time sublimely young and awesomely authoritative
and
so physically irresistible.

They sprang into action. David and Clara took turns on the telephone. They were offered a theater for ten days. “Take it,” Walter ordered. If they had a hit, there would be no trouble finding another. They called the city desks of the papers and suggested coverage of the story. They managed to contact all the members of the cast and gave them instructions. Signs were rushed to the burned-out theater to announce the change. Making one feverish call after another, they generated an excitement between them that they imagined must be spreading throughout the theatrical district. An event was being created. When they had done everything they could think of doing, they sat back and looked at each other and laughed excitedly.

“This may be the flop of the century, but at least it’ll be a resounding flop,” Walter said.

Somehow he found time to rush home and put on the dinner jacket Clara had insisted he must buy for the occasion. He hurried to the new theater, where David was waiting for him with the stage manager and backstage crew. He devised a simplified light plot. He paced the stage and confronted the problems created by not having a set and worked out solutions on the spot. At David’s insistence he went out to the stage door and met several reporters and photographers. Much was made of the fact that he was not yet 21. Together they dreamed up the story of the parade up Broadway, Walter and David at the head of their cast, which landed on the front page of several papers the next day and which gave the impression that the fire had occurred just before curtain time.

He spent what little time remained working with the actors on the changes imposed by the bare stage. They were fired by his excitement at improvising, at creating theater out of a vacuum. At about 8 o’clock, somebody suggested that it was time to lower the curtain, but on the spur of the moment he decided to leave it up while the audience was arriving. He went on coaching the actors. Eventually he heard the house filling up behind him. By this time, he had reached a sort of delirium of nerves and excitement in which all his perceptions were vividly heightened while he remained outside events and moved in a dream. He gave directions in a voice that couldn’t be heard across the footlights, but the audience remained quiet, straining to hear, and he knew he was achieving his purpose of winning its participation before the play began. He enlarged his movements and dramatized the role of the director in the theater, as if he were the conductor of a symphony orchestra. He beckoned actors to him and moved with them about the stage. A pattern emerged, a sort of mime of the play to come. Only the creak and clatter of seats being occupied by latecomers broke the almost religious concentration of the house. When David gave him a signal from the wings that it was time to begin, he closed his eyes in an instant of unformulated prayer. When he opened them he turned slowly to face the auditorium and lifted his hands. The hush in the theater became more intense.

“Ladies and gentlemen, because of circumstances beyond our control,” he paused, making the most of it, “tonight belongs to a writer and to the actors who know his words.”

It brought the house down. He saw David in the wings hugging the stage manager and joining the applause. The curtain descended, and he hurried off into the arms of Johnny Bainbridge.

“I hope I never have to go through anything like this again, but Jesus–” Johnny actually choked with emotion.

When Walter looked back, the curtain had risen, and the play had begun.

It worked. The actors responded to the challenge and gave a better performance than Walter had thought possible. The play emerged strongly in this novel treatment. Before half an hour had passed, he knew he was having a triumph. He hid in a bar during the intermission. Greg took over in the second half and turned into a star before the spellbound audience’s eyes. The curtain fell to stunned silence and then the thunder of applause. There were shouts of “Bravo!” There were calls for the author.

Walter bowed his head, tears spilling from his eyes. This was Broadway, and he had done it. He choked with pride and gratitude and the wonder of being him. Clara moved in beside him. He fought for control and lifted his head. His throat was blocked with an aching knot.

“It’s … so … damn … good.” He barely got the words out one by one.

“Oh, my dearest. It’s you; you’re wonderful.” She stood before him, head held high, more majestic than ever. “This is what you can do. I’m so proud I’ve left you free to do it. No wife, no family–just you, and the world to conquer.”

He was famous overnight, so he soon felt as if he always had been. He had the impression of being rich because so many of his new friends were, but it took more than another year before any substantial sums accumulated. He was too busy to spend them. Success permitted him to do the work he had been waiting to do, and he flung himself into it. He followed his first success with two more, one a fantastical musical in which he experimented with masks and novel scenic effects. He was the Boy Wonder, whose touch turned everything to gold. His name became a trademark for high, but not solemn, quality. He contributed a lighthearted touch to everything he did. He taught Broadway that Chekhov could be a comedy smash. His fourth and fifth productions didn’t break his winning streak. When he was preparing his sixth, he saw a chance of striking it really rich. By becoming his own backer with the money that had been piling up, he would with luck be in a position at last to set up the permanent company in his own theater that had always been his dream. David urged caution, but Clara encouraged him. The play ran less than a week and wiped him out.

He discovered that events compressed time. Three years passed in a flash during which he had kept a step ahead of the draft. The unfamiliar feel of failure seemed to dictate a change in pace. He bowed to circumstances and accepted a commission and entered the entertainment branch of the Army.

The only nonprofessional event of any significance during that period had been his marriage to Clara. It occurred just after his 21st birthday. To his surprise, Clara allowed her family to turn it into a major Washburn event. He had always imagined they’d run off to City Hall in a spare moment. The press had a field day. By now he was accustomed to publicity, but his grand marriage into the overwhelmingly grand family put him on a level far above any run-of-the-mill Broadway celebrity. Despite Clara’s strictures, he got along easily with the Washburns, and they seemed to welcome him. They couldn’t turn him into a Washburn, but he didn’t despise the official connection.

Clara found a small apartment on West Tenth Street with two big high-ceilinged rooms and moved them into it. It wasn’t the sort of place he intended to live in eventually–there was no room for children–but he was too busy to make a fuss about housing. The low rent proved a blessing when he went off to the Army.

Walter’s new Charvet dressing gown rustled as he sat opposite Clara and poured himself some coffee. She was deep in the morning papers. He had been back in residence for such a short time that it was still a novelty to join her for a leisurely breakfast in the living room overlooking Tenth Street. She made an impatient sound in her throat and handed him a neatly folded paper. She went through them with businesslike efficiency, never letting them get rumpled or disordered.