Reign (50 page)

When the song was over, Bill
Miley
, the actor playing Rolf, shook his head. "Dennis," he said, "we did some comic business in the second verse that never got into the prompt book. Do you remember what it was, something about her sitting on my lap, and my hand's there, and she jumped or something?"

Dennis licked his lips, looked down at the stage floor and tried to remember. Something funny, but what was it? He recalled the audience laughing somewhere in the song, not too long a laugh for fear they would miss the lyrics, but a laugh . . .

"No, I . . . I don't remember."

"Maybe we could come up with something,"
Miley
said.

It was a plea for direction, and Dennis paused, trying to think of something funny, but nothing would come. He stood there for what seemed like hours, before Dex finally spoke.

"I think it was halfway through the second chorus, Bill. It was on the line, 'And bump, with a thump, all the sparks fly.’”

Miley
snapped his fingers. "Right! I remember — it was a little pat right when she. . ."

They worked it out while Dennis watched. He felt lost as they blocked it, confused when they laughed at how the action went with the music. Was it funny? he wondered. Had he ever laughed at that before? Had he ever, he wondered sadly, laughed at anything?

Later in the morning Kelly Sears arrived. It was the first time Dennis had seen her since Robin's funeral. She kissed him, then pulled out her copy of the sides, ready to work. They began rehearsing Act I, Scene 3, in which
Lise
first meets the Emperor in the forest without knowing who he really is. Curt called the blocking as they went, and Kelly glanced only occasionally at her set of sides, remembering her lines of many months before. Dennis, on the other hand, kept his eyes glued to his sides. Although he had played the role thousands of times, the words seemed only mildly familiar now, and he stammered several times per page.

Dennis knew that his reading was flat and lifeless as well as hesitant, yet he could do nothing about it. The more he tried to put emotion and life into the lines, the duller they sounded. He noticed with dismay that Kelly, who had begun the rehearsal with the perfect touch of feminine boldness that the character of
Lise
, the bright and lovely peasant girl, demanded, was now responding to his mood, and by the time the scene was blocked, both of them were murmuring their lines as though they were on Quaaludes.

Dex played the introduction to the song, "Someone Like You," but Dennis waved him to silence. "Let's break for lunch," he said, and the cast slowly filed out. Kelly put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed it lightly. "A little rusty?"

"Rusted shut," Dennis said with a weak smile.

"Don't worry. It comes back."

"I hope so. But do something for me, Kelly."

"What?"

"Don't hold back. Don't go flat to try and make me look better. Because that way we both look like shit."

"Dennis —"

"I know what you were doing, and I appreciate the thought. But the only way I'm going to come to life is if you and the other actors do. So don't patronize me. Challenge me."

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "I'm sorry. You're right. But you'll pick up, old bear. You always have."

"Kelly," Dennis said, "tell me something. The last year of our tour. Was I as good as at the beginning?"

Her face seemed to narrow as she thought. "You were different," she said. "Your voice was as good as ever, and your scenes with me were fine. But at the end of the first act, and later, after
Kronstein
and Kruger kill
Lise
, there wasn't as much . . .”

"As much strength?"

She nodded. "Maybe. Or 'command' is more like it. I mean, your sensitivity played fine, just like always, I really felt that, and sympathized. But where you're supposed to become the Emperor — in the scene with Count Rinehart? — it was the words more than your manner that offended him, and it has to be both for the scene to really work." She gave a self-conscious smile. "I'm sorry, old bear, but you asked me."

"I did. And I value your telling me the truth so much that I'm taking you to lunch."

"If I tell you your singing stunk, will you take me to dinner?"

~ * ~

Dennis had two drinks with lunch. They relaxed him enough so that he didn't try so hard that afternoon, and his readings were better, although nowhere near performance level. Kelly, true to her word, let out all the stops, and her believable display of constructed emotion seemed to spur Dennis on. Three more scenes were blocked that afternoon. Although what Dennis did could have generously been called acting, he did very little that could have been called directing.

That evening he poured out his frustration to Ann and Evan as they sat at the table in his dining room. "I couldn't seem to feel a thing," he said. "And as far as directing went, there wasn't a thing I could offer. What was funny, what was sad, what movements, what gestures to use — the well was dry."

"You can't worry about it," Ann said. "It'll be there when you need it to be.”

“I need it to be now. I'll never be able to . . . face it otherwise."

"Then get mad," Evan said.

"What?"

"Get mad. That's what my drill instructor tried to make me do when I was supposed to head my squad. I guess he figured that if I got mad, then I wouldn't be afraid."

"The Marine equivalent of whistling a happy tune, eh? Did it work?"

Evan shook his head. "I couldn't do it. Not with all those eyes on me. I tried to get mad, mad at them, mad at myself for being such a . . . such a wimp. It didn't work. I'd get the attacks. Couldn't talk, after a while couldn't breathe. But it might work for you."

"It might," Dennis agreed. "If something would
make
me mad. I don't think I can do it on my own."

~ * ~

On Friday afternoon Ann and Evan came in to the rehearsal to see if Dennis's performance in rehearsals was as bad as he had thought. They quickly discovered that it was. During a break, Dennis went to the larger studio where Quentin and Randy, his assistant, were rehearsing the chorus. Dennis signaled to Quentin, who called a five and went with Dennis into the comparative privacy of the hall.

"I want you to direct," Dennis told him, "not just choreograph."

"Why?"

"Because I can't. You've sat in, you've seen the scenes. I can't bring a damn thing to them, Quentin. Can you do it?"

He thought for a moment, then nodded. "Randy can bring the chorus the rest of the way. But first I want you to do something for me." He put a hand on Dennis's shoulder and looked at him with sad and ancient eyes that had seen too much weary death. "I want you to see a doctor."

Dennis gruffly shook off Quentin's hand. "I don't need a doctor, there's nothing wrong with —"

"
Listen to me
. I have seen friends by the dozens wither away and die, Dennis. And Christ knows I hate to say it, but they started the same way you are — pale, tired, as though the life's being sucked out of them. Now are you keeping something from me?"

"Are you asking me if I have AIDS?"

"Maybe. Or maybe something else. I do think you're sick. Now I know Phillips at Mt. Sinai, and she's the best internist in the city. I want you to have every fucking test known to man, and I want to find out what's wrong with you."

"There's nothing wrong with me. Nothing physical."

"Then prove it to me."

Dennis looked at him for a long time before he nodded. "All right. Set up the appointment. They can take all the blood, shit, and piss they want. They can stick tubes up me and X-ray me until my hair falls out. Just direct this show. Now."

Quentin immediately walked to the pay phone down the hall, made a brief call, and returned. "Monday," he said. "You're in at seven, be there most of the day. All right?"

Dennis shrugged. "I'll do as much good there as I will here. You've got a cast waiting for you."

After Quentin explained the situation to Randy, he followed Dennis into the studio in which the principals were rehearsing. Dennis said only that Quentin rather than himself would be directing the show, and offered no explanation. As he had assumed, none was necessary, and the day wore on.

~ * ~

At four o'clock Terri arrived at the studio to take Kelly Sear's costume measurements. She smiled at Evan as she came in and again as she went out. He followed her and found that she was waiting for him.

"I wanted to see you," she said. "I wanted to tell you I'm sorry. For being such a bitch." She smiled. "Did I need to add that?"

"You were a little . . . aloof. I didn't know what I did wrong."

"You didn't do anything. I was a little confused, that's all. I was mad at you for something that . . . that wasn't your fault. And I just wanted to apologize."

Evan nodded. "Apology accepted. How's
Marvella
doing?"

"She's fine. I don't think she likes having a roommate much, though. She's really depressed about . . . what happened to Whitney. It might have been better if she was alone for a while."

"I doubt it," Evan said. "Staying busy will be good for her. Help her forget.”

“She'll never forget." For the first time Evan saw tears in the girl's eyes. They seemed out of place there. "None of us will."

He held her then while she cried, and her body molded itself into his. "What's happening?" she whispered. "What's happening? Who's doing these things? And why?"

"I don't know, Terri. But we'll get him. We will."

Everyone involved with the show welcomed Sunday like a lover. They slept late, dined late, tried for several hours to banish the thought of the Empire of
Waldmont
and its fictions from their minds. Then some picked up sides and studied, or sat down at pianos in their apartments and plunked out tunes, or pushed back chairs and reviewed steps.

Evan Hamilton and Terri Deems had lunch together and then went to the new Woody Allen film. John Steinberg woke up, watched John Ford's
Red River
on his VCR while he ate a large and nourishing breakfast, then spent the rest of the day reading the Sunday
Times
and a T.V. Olsen western novel. Curtis Wynn and the young woman he had been dating on and off for several years woke up at noon, made love again, and went back to sleep.
Marvella
Johnson went to church in the morning, had lunch with some friends at their apartment, and then went back to her place, where she turned on the television and stared at the screen for several hours. If anyone would have asked her what she had seen, she would not have been able to tell them.

That afternoon, Dennis and Ann walked arm in arm through Central Park. There was a light drizzle, and they huddled together under a wide umbrella, more for the human contact than to keep the thin sheen of rain off their heads and shoulders. The air was warm for March, and here and there crocuses pushed from between the rocks by the side of the paths, their bright purples and yellows like miniature torches in the gray mist.

Dennis slowed down as they reached a bench. "Let's sit down a minute," he said.

Ann wiped the moisture from the wood with a handkerchief. "You're tired.”

“A little." They sat and Dennis lowered the umbrella. "It's stopped raining.”

“How do you feel? Really?"

"Terribly tired. I have no energy at all. All I want to do is just lie down and sleep. It's draining away, Ann. My life. The son of a bitch is taking it. He's back there in Kirkland, but somehow he's still taking it."

"You could be sick, you know," she told him, almost wanting to believe it. At least sickness was something that could be either fought or accepted. At this point, the Emperor allowed for neither. "We'll know better tomorrow."

"They won't find a thing," Dennis predicted. "My blood will be fine, there will be no tumors, no sites of infection. Blood pressure will be normal, and there will be not a trace of cancer. The test for AIDS antibodies will be negative." He smiled crookedly. "I won't even have so much as a cold."

He put his head back. The rain had begun again, a fine mist, and he closed his eyes and let his mouth fall open as if, she thought, he was about to receive some communion from the heavens. Then he closed it and, still looking up, said to her, "They can't see sicknesses of the soul."

~ * ~

He was right. They could not. The following day, after an evening in which he fasted and a night in which he purged himself with castor oil and Fleet enemas, he submitted himself to the ministrations of the doctors. Despite his apathy, some of the procedures were painful enough to make him cry out, and he welcomed the pain, welcomed anything that could make him feel, react, show an honest and unforced emotion.

At the end of the day, when he was dressed and feeling only dull aches, the weak memory of pains suffered rather than their sharp reality, the doctor told him that neither she nor all the vast machines of Mt. Sinai could find anything physically wrong with him, and suggested therapy to see if his condition could be of a psychosomatic nature. He declined the offer.