My Life: The Musical (19 page)

In fact, it had taken all the self-discipline Stephenson possessed not to put up all the money (and thus grab all the profit) himself, but he wasn’t an idiot. If he shut his best investors out of this, a surefire hit, where would they and their checkbooks be when he wanted to produce his next show? One that, unlike the Lanerick Rep, had an actual chance of failure?

There could only be one Lanerick Rep in a career, Stephenson knew this. He’d peaked, and the trick would be to make it last. He harbored fantasies of Lane and Broderick growing old together, still playing at the Rialto—they could do a gay spin on
The Gin Game,
perhaps, with Broderick in the Katharine Hepburn role. Or a senior-citizen version of
The Odd Couple
—they’d call it
The Old Couple
.

The Old Couple,
ha!
That would get a laugh out of Eileen; he’d have to remember to tell her when he was done yelling at this kid with the piggy bank. Tantrums were to Stephenson what meditation was to a monk: a daily cleansing practice. He believed his temper was other people’s problem; his blood pressure clocked in at an enviable 110 over 60, and he slept like a baby every night of his life.

“Does that mean you don’t need any more money?” Philip asked hesitantly. Math whiz that Philip was, he was regretting not having done more research on the financial structures of theatrical producing. Clearly it was more complicated than he’d imagined.

“NO!” screamed Stephenson. He seemed to relish the volume of his own voice. “I mean, YES, I don’t need any more money! Didn’t you see
The Producers
? You can only sell a hundred percent of anything! And the Lanerick Rep is SOLD!”

Philip, of course, had not seen
The Producers
. But he had seen
Aurora,
a lot. And the money for all those hundreds of tickets—Grandma Rose’s money, Emily’s college money, her bat mitzvah money, for heaven’s sake!—had been going, at least in part, into the pockets of this nutcase.

He was glad Emily hadn’t come.

20

“A TRIP TO THE LIBRARY”

She Loves Me

1963. Music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick,
book by Joe Masteroff

Emily’s house was still empty when she woke up.

Where was everyone? It was six-thirty; they should be sitting down to dinner by now. Emily wandered from room to room, quietly at first. Then she started calling out.

“Mom? Dad? Grandma?”

Emily’s brain was still foggy from her nap, so she endured a full minute and a half of mounting anxiety before she thought of calling Mrs. Pearl’s cell phone. (Mr. Pearl refused to carry one; he said they would only be truly useful once they could actually beam you up.)

As she grabbed the phone, her chest filled with dread, and the horrible lesson of
last times
came rushing back into her mind.
Maybe they’re never coming back. Maybe this morning was
the last time I’ll ever see my family, maybe something horrible has happened, maybe maybe maybe—

The call went through. Her mother’s cell was ringing, but it was also echoing somewhere in the house. Emily listened and walked, following the sound. Up the stairs, into the bathroom—nope, back into the master bedroom—now it was very close.

On Emily’s phone the ringing stopped and her mother’s voice spoke, tinny and overexcited.

“Hi, it’s Laurey Pearl! Please leave a message after the beep.”

There. Mrs. Pearl’s cell phone was lying on the carpet, next to her treadmill, which was paused but still turned on. A pair of headphones was plugged into the portable CD player Mrs. Pearl used when she did her workout (Mr. Pearl had wanted to get her an iPod for her birthday, but Mrs. Pearl pooh-poohed it as an extravagance. What would they think, should they ever find out, of the small fortune Emily had spent on theatre tickets? Emily couldn’t bear to imagine.)

A low, insect-like hum was coming out of the headphones. Emily picked them up and listened—

I believe in you!
I believe in you!

It was Matthew Broderick, in
How to Succeed
.

Emily turned off the treadmill. Something was horribly, horribly wrong.

The thought of a crud like Stephenson spending Emily’s money on monogrammed shirts and lunches at Sardi’s was making Philip really angry.

Not blind, storming-around angry—if he’d been that kind of angry, Philip never would have noticed the file folder marked “Final Box Office Statements” lying on Miss O’Malley’s desk when Stephenson finally threw him out of the office (“Now go home and join the DRAMA CLUB!” were Stephenson’s parting, apoplectic words).

No, this was the kind of deep, righteous anger that was the prerequisite for superhero powers. It gave you laser-sharp vision and ninja invisibility; it made you deft of hand and fleet of foot, not to mention somewhat unscrupulous.

Miss O’Malley was at the hot water dispenser making herself a fresh cup of tea. Her desk had plenty of paper on it; if some disappeared it would not immediately be apparent. Certainly Philip would have enough time to get downstairs to the street and disappear into the throngs of tourists and playgoers, hucksters and working folk. For a boy on the lam, Times Square was one big human shield.

How convenient,
Philip thought as he slid the file folder into his backpack.
I’ve been meaning to close out my
Aurora
spreadsheets. These will save me a lot of time.

He whistled as he rode down in the elevator, even though there were other people riding with him. Philip was so pleased with himself he decided to drop by the Drama Book Shop. Only a few blocks away, this was a whole store stocked only with books about the theatre. Philip sometimes browsed there but never bought anything because of his perpetual lack of funds.

Now, though, Philip had a pocketful of money, and what he wanted was information. The Drama Book Shop was the place to go, definitely. But he hardly expected to run into someone he knew in the producing section.

The absurd thing was, he didn’t even notice her standing there, reading glasses perched on the end of her gorgeous nose, with her head buried in a book called
Going Platinum! The A–Z Guide to Producing Your Hit Record.

No, Marlena Ortiz was the one who recognized
him
.

“Well, hello there!” she said, peering over her glasses. “The boy from the stage door, right? Number one fan? With the Sharpie?” She mimed signing her name. The book Philip was looking at slipped out of his hands and thudded to the floor.

“Oh—oh my God,” he stammered. “Marlena. Miss Ortiz, I mean. What are you doing here?”

“Actors read books.” She smiled her killer smile. “Don’t tell.”

“I won’t,” Philip said, while thinking,
I am such an idiot
. She was so pretty close up, in the daylight. None of that heavy stage makeup he was used to seeing her in, no fuzzy mittens or striped legwarmers or floppy velvet hats—just black leggings tucked into pointed-toe boots, a faded denim shirt, and a thin silk scarf tied loosely around her neck. She looked almost like an ordinary human being, only much, much more fabulous.

“But what are you doing here,
numero uno
?” she asked. “In the producing section? I would have thought you’d be over by the audition monologues. You could be an actor. You’re so handsome.”

Philip felt his face getting hot. “Not me!” he said. “I’m more—of a numbers guy, I guess.”

“That’s good,” she said, suddenly quite serious. “Trusting other people to manage your business is a terrible mistake.

That’s a lesson I already learned.” She gestured with the book in her hand and laughed, as if to say:
How ironic, that a great talent like me should have to learn about subsidiary rights and direct mail campaigns!

“I know what you mean.”
Ugh.
Philip’s attempts at banter were making him feel like the biggest flop on Broadway.

“Show business needs people like you.” Marlena’s lower lip quivered with feeling. “With a head for money”—she tapped Philip’s forehead with her fingertip—“and a heart of gold.” She laid her hand on Philip’s chest and spoke dramatically to her own thumb. “A heart that loves the theatre.”

The heat of Marlena’s hand cut right through three layers of clothing and settled on his skin. Philip wanted to close his eyes and stand there forever, soaking up Marlena’s warmth, but he was too flustered to let the moment last. “How’s the show?” he said, feeling like a fool. “How’s it going?”

“It’s the same every night.” Marlena took her hand away and ran it through her hair. “You haven’t been around lately, huh?”

“We couldn’t get any tickets. We tried,” Philip added, looking down in shame.

“Wait,” Marlena said. She reached into her purse. What she pulled out made Philip’s heart race.

“Two tickets for tomorrow night.” Marlena held them up right in front of his face. “If I offered them to you, would you want them?”

Oh my God,
thought Philip. “Oh my God,” he said. “Yes!”

Marlena looked at him with eyes like melting chocolate. “And if I only had one?”

But there were two tickets right there, in her hand.
“Yes,” he said. That had to be the right answer. “I would take one.”

“What about your friend?” Marlena asked. “The girl with the dark hair?”

Apparently this was some kind of game, but Philip had no idea how to play. “Emily,” he said, stalling. “Her name is Emily.”

“I think Emily loves you.” Marlena splayed the tickets like a winning hand at poker. “I see it in her face when the dancers flirt with you at the stage door. Especially that little one, Stephanie. She’s kind of a tart.”

“That’s why I would want the ticket,” Philip said. He felt like he was hearing his own voice from a distance. “For Emily.”

Marlena’s eyes started to glisten. She pulled one ticket from the pair.

“Here. My gift to you is to let you give this gift to her,” she said. “Perform an act of love, in real life. It will make you much happier than any show ever could. Even a show that stars
me
!” Marlena laughed.

“Oh my God,” said Philip.
Would it have been so awful for her to give me both of the tickets?
“Thank you!”

She looked at her watch. “Almost seven. I have to get to the theatre. Tell your friend she’ll be sitting with the head of RCA.” Marlena quickly stashed the other ticket and snapped her purse shut. “Hey, don’t forget your book.”

Philip picked it up off the floor with sweaty hands.
How To Produce a Broadway Musical.
“Got it, thanks,” he said.

Marlena glanced at his book, and smiled again. “Looks like I’ll be working for you someday,” she purred.
“Adios, numero uno.”

To: AURORAROX
Subject: A Present for You
Em,

I have a present for you.
Can’t say what.
But you can pick it up tomorrow night.
At eight o’clock.
At the Rialto Theatre.

Philip

Philip pressed Send and took his hands off the keyboard. To think the first great act of love he’d performed in sixteen years on the planet was executed under the fluorescent lights of a Kinko’s in Midtown. They charged by the minute for Internet computers, so he’d kept it short.

Would this “act of love” make him as happy as Marlena seemed to think it would? Did Emily love him? Did he love her? It was so hard to know these things. But an act of love, delivered from a safe distance by e-mail—you couldn’t go wrong with that.

For the rest of the evening, during the train ride back to Rockville Centre and the fast walk through dark streets to Birchwood Gardens, Philip kept imagining the look on Emily’s face when she got the message.

“What’s going on?” cried Emily. “What happened? Where were you? Where is Grandma?” Emily had been watching a rerun of the
Making of
Annie documentary on PBS and was just about to go check her e-mail when her parents finally walked in. Her father was still dressed for work and her mother wore a tracksuit, but they had perfectly matched dour expressions on their faces.

“Emily! Calm down,” said her mother firmly. “Grandma is in the hospital, but it’s nothing serious. You can see her tomorrow.”

“I’m going to make coffee,” said Mr. Pearl, marching grimly off to the kitchen. Mr. Pearl never drank coffee after dinner.

“The hospital? What happened?” Emily asked, growing more upset. “Why didn’t you call me? I’ve been going crazy here, waiting for you. I almost called the police.”

Mr. Pearl appeared in the kitchen doorway, holding the empty coffeepot. “The police?” he said. “Brilliant idea! Then your grandmother would have been busted that much sooner.”

“Busted?” Emily said, in a tiny voice.

Mr. Pearl stormed back into the kitchen, cursing and clattering silverware. Mrs. Pearl turned to Emily and took a deep breath.

“Emily, early this afternoon a New Jersey state trooper picked up your grandmother at a truck stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. She was driving a, one of those, what do you call them—”

“A Winnebago!” yelled Mr. Pearl from the kitchen. “And she wasn’t driving! Her blind boyfriend was driving!”

Emily’s heart began to sink. “Stan was driving the Winnebago?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Pearl. “He drove it right into a parked tractor trailer. And the trooper came over to see what was wrong. And—well, they gave him a hard time, apparently.”

“They tried to flee!” cried Mr. Pearl, fuming. “My crazy mother and her boyfriend in a high-speed chase on the New Jersey Turnpike! In a damn Winnebago!”

“Don’t exaggerate, dear. They never made it out of the parking lot.” Emily could see that her mother was struggling to remain calm. “But they both got arrested, and then they took Grandma Rose to the ER because she was having trouble breathing.”