Little Did I Know: A Novel (16 page)

My musical director, the fabulous Dr. Rosenstein, my choreographer, the leggy Ellie Foster, and the best stage manager on the planet, Jojo Backman, were all eager to begin. Knowing they were my foundation would allow me to sleep at night. It was like having an outfield of Mickey, Willie, and the Duke.

JB informed us that James was here to do his thing, which included pirating UHF stations (so all the Trekkies could watch endless adventures of the
Starship Enterprise)
, setting up music throughout the compound, overseeing our phone systems, and relighting the marquee. With extra glee in her voice she told me she had a plan to get the perfect press agent. The guy worked in New York, and she and I were headed there on Sunday night. Josh was going with us to meet a guy in the Bronx by the name of Louis Rosenberg who played a mean trombone and was all set to contract our pit players for the right price.

JB was going to work with Doobie at the Full Sail and Tommy to find us a crew to do some of the work, and since we needed a cook to feed everyone, she thought she would check in with Ma.

When JB finished at last, we all sat for a moment thinking of the scope of what we were about to do. James passed around another joint then blasted Ethel Merman through the sound system singing “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” from
Gypsy
. We listened and believed her. Even Secunda got up and danced.

T
ufts University was founded in 1852 by Charles Tufts. Women were invited to attend beginning in 1892, when Jackson College for girls opened and became part of the university family. Mr. Tufts donated the land, a parcel known as Walnut Hill, as the site for the original campus. The hill was the highest point in Medford, Massachusetts; from the school one had an unobstructed view of Boston a scant five miles away. Charles Tufts nicknamed the college “the hill of light” and scripted its motto “Peace and Light.”

P. T. Barnum, the circus showman, was a great benefactor of the university, and his name fronts many important buildings there. In fact, the school mascot is Jumbo the elephant, which of course was the face of his world-renowned three-ring extravaganza. Unfortunately, in 1888 a campus fire burned the Barnum museum to the ground, destroying all the memorabilia he had gifted the school. Even the famous stuffed Jumbo was lost in the blaze. Nevertheless, Barnum’s legacy remains; Jumbo was recreated by a hardworking taxidermist, and Tufts continues on as one of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in the land. More important for me and many of my classmates, Tufts had the best looking coeds in the nation.

I was admitted to Tufts on a fluke. Through happenstance and serendipity, I received an audience with the dean of admissions and literally talked my way into acceptance. One moment I was a former high school athlete in limbo, the next a “Jumbo.” I convinced Dean Palmer that I would make a difference if he admitted me, and I am proud to say I did. Now, four years after my audience with the dean, I was back at school, this time in the bowels of Cohen Auditorium, auditioning what seemed to be the complete student bodies of the major universities and professional schools that gave character to the great city of Boston.

JB had arranged for the use of several studios in the basement of the antiquated building. The hallways were backed up with dancers in tight leotards who stretched endlessly, catlike and alluring, as they prepared for their sixteen bars. When I took short breaks to get some fresh air, I’d walk through the sea of long legs and cleavage and think how much I loved show business. There were also singers waiting their turn. They sang scales to ready their voices or snippets of the show tunes they were going to audition with. Meanwhile, young actors were speaking passionately and with the greatest of animation to imagined persons. It was all a bit unnerving.

I always loved auditions. The room was filled with hope and the belief that the next person to try out would be terrific, life changing, or electric. I felt a bit like Tom Greenwade, the scout who discovered a sixteen-year-old Mickey Mantle streaking effortlessly across an Oklahoma ball field. However, not all precious stones dazzle upon first look; it was our job to find coal and transform it into diamond.

I also enjoyed the attention. I liked commanding the room, making acting suggestions or adjustments to the readings, flirting with the pretty dancers, or asking what seemed to be innocuous questions to get a sense of someone’s personality or sense of humor. I marveled at the talent of some and wondered how so many people thought they had any talent at all.
Find something else to do
, I often thought. Then I considered the comment made about Fred Astaire’s first screen test: “Balding, weak voice, dances a little.”
Shut up and give everyone in the room the benefit of the doubt.
So each time the door opened and a fresh face walked in, I offered a welcoming smile and asked, “Hello, Mr. Mantle, what are you going to sing for us today?”

In the studio with me were the best of Boston’s graduating artists. At the piano was our musical director, Dr. Elliot Rosenstein. Elliot was not yet an MD but he was on his way. If it weren’t for medicine, he would have been working on Broadway as a conductor of all the great musicals. When he was six years old, his parents took him to see
The Music Man
on Broadway; when they returned home Elliot sat at the family piano and played the entire score.

The “doctor” was the most beloved student at Tufts. He was quite handsome, looking a bit like Omar Sharif without the pretense. He had deep olive skin, piercing dark eyes, a slight but fit physique, and a thick mustache that made him seem as though he were wearing a perpetual frown. Elliot’s fatal flaw and personal heartbreak was that he was in love with Katherine Fitzgerald, a woman who used him without remorse. Katherine was a blue-collar Medford girl on a free ride at Tufts because her mom worked in the infirmary as a nurse. She drank way too much Jamison’s, fucked the frat boys when drunk, and smoked three packs of Marlboros a day. Dr. Rosenstein was a bit broken up by her vices; smoking being the one he minded most. One day in front of dozens of friends he announced that he was going to eat a pack of cigarettes to get Kat to stop her nasty habit. He ended up in the hospital for over a week with stomach trauma. I often wondered if Elliot was willing to do an entire frat house so that she would stop that as well, but the situation never came up.

One thing Katherine had going for her was a stunning voice that at top range, in full glory, would bring on an onset of chills. She was pretty, but a bit worn from the smoke, the booze, and the indiscriminate fucking; therefore she had the ability to play older.

Auditioning the dancers was our choreographer, Ellie Foster. The daughter of a top Dupont executive, she’d grown up in affluent Westchester and was headed for her MBA at Wharton in the fall. She was coming to PBT because dancing was her true calling, yet the pressure imposed by her corporate dad would not allow her to seek her bliss. Tall and lithe, Ellie had been dancing her whole life. She was also very sweet and so desperate for attention it broke your heart. Whether because the door on her love for dance had been shut or because she was acting out toward her domineering father, Ellie dated anyone and everyone, ending most evenings on her back. I was thrilled that the next four months would give her so much to remember and cherish.

In the studio and running the auditions like Patton’s assistant was Jojo Backman. Jojo was stocky yet pretty; femininity was not her strong suit. She was the captain of the girl’s field hockey team and looked the part. She was a big hugger and an easy cry. She smiled often and was the shoulder on which all girlfriends cried when stupid boys did them wrong. Jojo was planning a career in show business and she had the discipline, the moxie, the drive, and the trust fund to make that happen.

It was our first day of auditions. We had been in session for almost ten hours. Faces, songs sung, long legs, and scenes read all began to blur. Everyone had notes or headshots to remind them who they had seen. I rarely used such tools. I usually knew in an instant who I wanted, who worked for me, who was worth watching. True, it was helpful to remember someone’s height or coloring to know whether they matched up properly (no six-foot-three leading men if your leading lady barely topped five feet).

It was also important to flesh out the chorus so they could play all the small roles that gave a show texture, color, humor, and something continually new and fresh in order to catch your audience’s eye. The singers’ voices had to blend so they had a specific sound and didn’t just hit the notes. The dancers’ figures needed to be varied—some petite, some tall and buxom—to satisfy every taste.

I also looked for character and commitment in the individuals themselves. Over the next hundred days all these young men and women, with hormones raging, identities forming, and insecurities growing or fading were going to be living in confined quarters, working hard and playing harder, falling in and out of love, drinking too much, and partaking in illegal substances. They would find themselves naked and regretful in the morning, yet they would also soar to unmitigated triumphs on stage.

Everyone who came to Plymouth for that special summer would be part of a small city, an enclave, and a truly unique community. They had to be willing to take endless risks, fly without a net, and sing as if they didn’t need the money. They had to do press events and charm strangers. They had to work late and wake early. They had to perform when tired or recently blown off by their latest love. They had to reach deep and find out if they indeed had real talent, or mystery, or desired IT. They had to figure things out on their own, long after rehearsals had ended, and bring their creative energies and stamina to midnight rehearsals that began just a short while after an eight o’clock show had ended.

Perhaps most of all, they had to want to work for and with me, because I was going to be demanding and relentless. I wanted young artists dedicated to an orgy of ideas, emotions, passions, and the unbridled desire for greatness. I told everyone I considered hiring that if I didn’t see a comet of affirmation flash across their face or burn in their eyes I would thank them and wish them well.

Jojo finally called the day to an end. She would meet us at nine in the morning with a file of those we were ready to hire, those still under consideration, and those we thought should find another career path. No one should be late.

I walked from Cohen Auditorium, which was located at the base of Walnut Hill, and climbed the endless stone steps that led to the apex of Tufts University and its magnificent view of Boston and beyond. I had just spent more than ten hours in a basement, seeing nervous young performers whose scent was pungent with anxiety. It was truly beautiful atop the hill. The sun was almost gone and the sky was turning from azure to midnight blue. The stars complemented a fading moon, and the distant skyline of Boston looked like Oz. The quad that abutted the new library was awash in spring foliage, while the huge, ancient trees Charles Tufts had given the college more than a hundred years ago rustled and danced, with the cool spring breeze their accomplished partner.

I climbed the last steps to the library. I entered the modern edifice, all white stone and shimmering glass, and found my way to the microfilm machines. I had an early morning for sure, but I was not going to sleep that night until I’d done some research on a woman from Plymouth, Massachusetts—Susan Golden, attorney and board member of the Barrows Foundation. I was no PI, true, but my instincts told me that surprises were on the way. And that Ms. Golden’s background would head the list.

I
was asked to leave the library as Friday night turned into Saturday morning. A heavyset clerk with lots of wild hair and rimless glasses told me that the stalls closed at midnight; she had a date and needed to leave. I lingered, but was ushered out by a friendly yet firm security guard.

The temperature had dropped precipitously while I was researching Golden. It gnawed at me that she had been so accommodating even while on the side of an adversary. It made no sense. As I walked briskly down Walnut Hill to retrieve my car, I had to remind myself of Mr. Feldman’s admonition that I was “not a private investigator.” Nevertheless, I had just discovered that Susan Golden was not the budding acolyte she pretended to be. She had a rather famous father: a certain Dr. Anderson Barrows. And he had a grandson with a glass jaw who was a Plymouth badass with a history of unfriendly encounters that usually ended in a police report. True, I was a nice Jewish boy with more of an affinity for show tunes and chorines than for sleuthing, yet the info I had just uncovered made me want to continue the pursuit. I wanted to flesh it all out and make headlines. Admittedly, I was wired after a full day of auditions and now my evening’s role-playing as detective Nero Wolfe, but sleep was not on my immediate agenda.

The campus was quiet. Classes had ended two weeks earlier, and summer school was yet to begin. A few lights dotted the facade of the larger dorms and threw off harsh shadows that suggested Kafka had been involved in the design. A pizza delivery guy was bringing a hot pie to Stratton Hall, and Kenny Loggins could be heard on the stereo from somewhere deep inside the girls’ dorm. A beautiful coed with large, unencumbered breasts that stretched out the word
JUMBOS
on her thin T-shirt called down from her window to let the pizza guy know he should “just come on up.” I had spent a great many nights in Stratton Hall endeavoring to seduce Kathy Blaine. It never happened, and I eventually moved on to other more accommodating Jackson Girls. As I walked by I thought that pizza would be nice and then slowed my stride in a failed attempt to be invited up for a slice.