Little Did I Know: A Novel (34 page)

I stood up and kissed her on both cheeks. “Problem solved.” I said. “Jojo, you got any thoughts on world peace?”

“Later,” she said. “Now we have rehearsal.”

Later that afternoon, Fitzgerald told me she couldn’t rehearse anymore. The penultimate number in the show was a ballad about how losing her man for all practical purposes ended her life, well at least emotionally. Kat had talked for weeks about how she wanted to sing that song and stop the show and give everyone goose bumps. Now, for inexplicable reasons, she couldn’t rehearse.

I turned the rehearsal over to Ellie and sat with Elliot to discuss this unexpected situation.

“Kat is pulling diva shit,” he said. “She’s fine. She sang great during the show last night and this morning at rehearsal. She wants attention. That’s it.”

I was a bit stunned by his intensity. “She’s got to be upset about you moving on with Diana. Attention is maybe what she needs.”

“Not from me! Been there, done that. I didn’t sign up to play Joe Gillis to Norma Desmond. I’m sorry. We all have real problems, we don’t need to make them up. ” He stormed away.

I called Jojo over. “Jojo, tell Kat she should take the rest of the afternoon off. Get her some tea and lemon. Have the town doctor come by and check her throat to see if there is any problem. Tell her she has to be ready for tonight. At break, tell everyone we’re going to run the scene into the song and Lexie will cover for Kat. Then let’s see what happens. Have Elliot rehearse the song with Lexie on the red deck so she is prepared. We’ll see who is truly under the weather or who is just putting us on hurricane alert.”

“Done,” she said.

Thirty minutes before we broke at six for dinner and free play for the company, we set the scene with Lexie ready to fill in for Kat. Lexie Dawson was wrong for the part. Too pretty, too sexy, too perky, but she could sing and she could give you chills when she did. She knew she was a pawn in the game of ego, but it mattered not. She was poised to remind everyone of Wally Pipp and a guy named Gehrig.

Everyone loves this sort of thing. You know, the understudy stepping out of the chorus and setting the world on its ear. The theater was packed. It seemed that everyone had found a moment to take a break just as Lexie was about to sing. And sing she did. Home run. Everybody cheered and whooped it up. Then they cheered some more. Lexie was very moved and gracious. We broke for dinner.

Jojo came up to me within minutes and told me Kat was feeling much better and could do her show tonight and would like to set an early rehearsal in the morning to make up for the time she’d lost today.

I don’t believe in homeopathic medicine or Chinese herbs, but after that day I knew that what heals you quickly is competition and the fear of being left behind. Maybe Lexie should be a doctor because she sure knew how to heal the star.

It was almost six. My day was about to begin.

O
fficer Richardson was waiting for me as I left the theater. The rain had picked up and he was seated in his squad car staying dry. Alongside the officer was JB, and they were chatting and smoking. I knocked on the car window and he rolled it down to say hello. JB bid farewell, shook hands with Richardson and said, “It was nice talking with you. Please come by and see the next show. I’ll give you the VIP treatment.”

I thought cigarette smoke sucked and didn’t want to speak in the car, so in spite of the heavy rain I suggested we walk over to the parking lot to chat. The lot was well landscaped except for an area that separated the cars from the back stage of the theater. We’d let the summer grass grow tall and it actually was quite beautiful, like long-stemmed, amber wheat out of some beer commercial. When the sun was setting, or on a day like today when the sky was gray and ominous, it all added up to a special sort of theatricality, suggesting that Mother Nature was the best scenic designer there ever was. As Officer Richardson and I walked into this towering maze, I thought of Cary Grant in
North by Northwest
using such a meadow to escape that crop duster.

“What’s up, Scott?” I asked. “Anything new since yesterday? Ellie do anybody since I saw you last?”

“Hey, that’s unnecessary,” he said. “I thought she was a friend of yours. We are just trying to protect her, that’s all.”

“Really? When did you start thinking about protecting her, Scott? When it became inconvenient for her to get naked with you? Make some demands on your schedule? Or impose on your time? Maybe she should have been protected from you. Did you ever think of that, hotshot?”

Officer Richardson was more than shocked by my aggressive attitude. In fact, so was I. He needed a smoke to get his wits about him. His crisp uniform wilted in the steady rain. Just like his body.

“Actions have consequences, my man and now you’re part of the Ellie situation,” I said. “I had a friend in college who used to say you could fuck any girl once and you never had to call her again, but if you fucked her twice you had a responsibility to call and blow her off with some respect. Warped, I know. How many times did you sleep with Ellie?”

“What are you doing?” Richardson asked, clearly flustered. “I like Ellie. I’m worried about her, that’s all. That’s why I had Chief Warren call you. That’s why I am here tonight.”

“I’m confused, Scott, I really am. Not looking to get in your face. You say you’re worried. Well, I’m terrified. This is not what I signed up for. What do I do, send her to her room without dinner? She is a woman, not a teenager, damn it.”

Scott took a long drag and exhaled the weight of the world.

“You’ll forgive me, officer, but I think you’re blowing smoke here and it’s heading up your ass. You’re a decent guy, so if you really cared about Ellie, you’d be talking to her. You’d find a way, you’d figure it out. You wouldn’t push it on me and go grab a beer. I’m not her father and I didn’t fuck her until she became a nuisance. If you don’t talk with this girl and be a man about it, then you’re an ass. It’s that simple. How’d you feel if she was your sister?”

“Ellie is hanging with a bad crowd. That’s it. How she got there or what happened between me and her is not important. She doesn’t talk to me anymore and she goes out alone without the other girls here. She’s been seeing this guy Johnny Colon. Pretends he has more money than he’s got. A punk. Small-time loan sharking. Tough guy. Way too old for her, and married. He has been arrested a few times for bar fights and beating up on women. Not connected or anything, just a bully. I tried to talk with her. She won’t speak with me, so I thought you were the next-best option. You know, you got a lot of good things going for you and until ten minutes ago I thought you were a pretty good guy. She’s your friend and your problem.”

“What if she was your sister, Scott? How would you handle this?”

He took a short drag on his smoke and flicked the butt into the tall wet grass. “See ya,” he said, “only when I have to.”

“Truth is hard sometimes, officer. Make sure you enjoy that beer. It helps you swallow a big lie.”

I found that I was so extremely sad that my heart actually hurt. I watched him walk to the squad car and open the door. He took his cap off and shook it so the raindrops wouldn’t sit heavy on its brim. He obviously had enough on his mind; he didn’t need any more weight to cloud his thoughts. Responsibility was burden enough for one rainy night.

I stood in the tall grass for a long time. I was drenched through to the skin yet my head was still mired with debris. What a fucking day. Capra said, “Everything important in life happens in the rain.”

I walked to the office and asked Debbie and Diana to find something else to do. I paged Ellie and said she had a call waiting. She arrived within a couple of minutes. She looked adorable. Her hair was matted from the rain and gave her a sweet, waiflike appearance. She had pretty brown eyes and perfect skin. She immediately noticed the phone was in its cradle and her expression changed from anticipation to concern.

“Nobody called, Ellie, but we need to talk.”

She took the chair across the desk from me and sat down cautiously. The rain had caused her T-shirt to cling to her body, and other than the dark frown she wore she was absolutely delicious. I wondered what made people do the things they did. Swim in the ocean on angel dust. Overstep their rights and be verbally abusive. Drink too much and drive. Throw a punch rather than talk like a man. Fuck some girl with a promise of more. All of those sins applied to me, and now I was going to talk with Ellie Foster about her indiscretions? What a hypocrite. The words of every parent played in my ear: “Do as I say, not as I do.” But I wasn’t her parent. For the time being and with the clock ticking, I was only her friend.

I told her what I had heard. I tried to offer no bias, just concern for her safety if not her reputation, and last for the jeopardy her actions might put the theater and her friends in if something should go wrong.

Her response was immediate. No contemplation or moment to measure a rebuttal. “Fuck you, Sam. You hired me to choreograph the shows here. I’m doing it and I am doing it damn well. You don’t know anything about me. When we were together in school that lasted all of what? . . . long enough for you to shower and wash me off before you found some other conquest. Don’t give me any self-righteous BS about your concern for me. I’m a big girl. I’ll take whatever ride I want on my own time. You had no problem with me riding you back when.”

“Ellie . . .” I tried to interject to no avail.

“You have any notes for me, then let me have them now because I have a date after the curtain comes down.”

She stared at me with such violent contempt that I found the episode almost more than disturbing. I was in way over my head and at a loss as to what to say or do next. I got up and tried to hug her, which she rejected as if I were a leper.

“Notes?” she demanded.

“No,” I said. “You’re doing a great job. I’m sorry if I offended you.”

She walked out into the rain without another word. I sat back in the desk chair and looked out the window. It was raining so hard I thought I saw a boat with a bunch of animals floating by. Boy oh boy, that Capra was one smart fucker.

It was almost seven when I placed the call to my dad that I had asked Jojo to set up. I tried him at his office where the phone rang and rang with no result. I then called home with the same endgame. I felt young and overwhelmed and in need of a grownup to talk things through.

I remembered how when I was younger my folks were always offering to get me something from the kitchen or help with a chore or homework assignment. Then one day, I asked my dad if he could get me a glass of milk. He replied, “What, are your legs broken? Get it yourself.” No malice at all, just the changing of the guard. I was no longer a little kid.

Right now it would be really nice if someone would offer to bring me a glass of milk.

O
ftentimes we’ll go to a play or musical that’s packed, and we leave wondering if all those enthusiastic patrons had been lobotomized before curtain. Other times we sit in an empty building and ask, “Why isn’t anyone here to see this? Don’t they know what they’re missing?”

It was like that for me at PBT before Bobby put us in the parade. Before that, as one headline had read,
PBT LIGHTS UP PLYMOUTH
. Terrific shows. No people. Now we had the opposite problem. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow would keep audiences from their dates with the third row on the aisle, and tonight was further proof of Plymouth’s growing commitment to our cast and company.

When I was seven I started collecting baseball cards. They were a luxury item to purchase out of my small allowance, so to have any sort of meaningful collection I had to win them from friends in “flipping contests.” I practiced and became what might be called a hustler of baseball cards. If it were pool, Paul Newman would have played me in the movies.

I enjoyed the competition, and once the cards were in my possession I would study the player’s statistics until I had memorized every one. Every player, every homer, RBI, and stolen base. For instance, Jerry Lumpe hit thirty-four doubles in 1962 while playing for the Kansas City Athletics. There wasn’t anything subjective or ephemeral about the back of a baseball card. If a player hit .330, he was good. If he batted .211, he’d be on a bus back to the minors. It was clear and precise, very much the opposite of the theater business, which is nothing but irrational or completely insane.

The rain hadn’t let up all day and now as curtain time approached it was almost comical in its intensity. Yet every ticket was sold! SRO made for a rather colorful array of umbrellas held by those waiting in line hoping for a cancellation. And all on a Thursday night. Nothing made sense. We weren’t bad when the house was sparse, and we weren’t world-beaters now that there was a battle for every last seat, even the one in the corner behind a pole.

There is nothing like the theater. There is no other entertainment medium that can deliver the surprise a live performance on the stage promises. Every night is like a snowflake unique unto itself. Tonight’s performance of our fluff thirties silly musical was proof positive. There was a terrific classic tap number in the middle of act 1 in which our character actress Mary Saloshin led the chorus girls in a wild, crazy, joyous ride into insane silliness. Mary was all bones and elbows and made Olive Oyl look like she needed to eat a salad. She owned the number from the downbeat and wore it like a glove. With flourish she built and built it. Unless you were Satan, you couldn’t help but smile from start to finish. Tonight the mirth meter was off the charts.