The Fourth Wall (22 page)

Ah, so. “Who is she?” I asked.

“He,” Loren corrected. “And I don't know who he is.”

That caught me by surprise. “I didn't know Michael Crown was homosexual.”

“Hardly anyone did. Crown was fanatically secret about it. He even married and fathered a couple of children to hide the fact that he was gay.”

“But why? Nobody cares—not the way they used to. ‘Gay' isn't something to hide any more.”

“Nobody cares
any more,
” said Loren, “but twenty, twenty-five years ago when Crown married, things were different. A lot of homosexuals married then simply because they didn't dare come all the way out of the closet—and then proceeded to make themselves and their poor wives thoroughly miserable.”

“But there have always been homosexuals in the theater,” I objected.

“Ah, but Michael Crown wasn't in the theater twenty-five years ago. He wrote a newspaper or magazine column or something like that. He'd only been writing for the theater six or seven years when he stole that play.”

I thought back. “You're right, I remember now. But what about his wife? Surely she knew.”

“You'd think so,” said Loren. “I don't know. I don't know how much women sense about these things.”

“Depends on the woman, I guess. Loren, how did you know about it?”

“Purely by accident. I designed
Thank You, Ma'am—
remember that smarmy little play? It was one of Crown's first efforts, and the tourists loved it—kept it running for almost two years. Well, during one of the rehearsals I was poking around backstage and I tripped over this guy. He was all bunched up into a ball, and he was crying. He was just a kid, nineteen or twenty—he had a small part in the play. I asked him what the matter was, and he told me Michael Crown had rejected him. At first I thought he meant professionally—I thought Crown had kicked him out of the play. But he made it clear he'd been rejected sexually.”

“He told you? Just like that?”

“Abby, it was embarrassing. It all just came spilling out—he would have told anyone who happened by at that particular moment. I felt sorry for the kid—he was so young and
so
miserable. He went on and on about how deeply in love he was with Crown, but Crown didn't want to have anything to do with him. The kid said Crown had told him he'd been with the same lover for fifteen years and he wasn't interested in any side action.”

“And you believed this kid?”

“Not entirely. I mentioned to Crown that the kid was pretty upset. Crown just brushed it aside and said he'd get over it, he was young. I urged him to talk to him, to try to cheer him up a little. Absolutely not, said Crown. His own lover was jealous and he wouldn't understand. Then he realized what he'd given away and told me to stop butting in, and that's the last word we ever exchanged on the subject.”

“Well. Horse's mouth.”

“Yeah. This was, oh, eleven or twelve years ago, and Crown and his lover had already been together for fifteen. So whoever the lover is, he's no spring chicken. Tell that police lieutenant of yours to look for a middle-aged fag.”

We talked a little longer before it was time for me to leave. Loren seemed to have perked up some. We'd spoken of suicide and murder and disfigurement, hardly cheering subjects. But it was the renewed possibility of finding an answer that had revived him; knowing
why
can make a lot of intolerable things tolerable.

About halfway back to the airport the air conditioning in the car stopped working. I rolled down the window to keep from being baked alive, and within ten minutes my sinuses were clogged and my eyes were smarting. No wonder Hugh Odell had had to abandon a movie here. By the time I reached the airport my eyes were watering so badly I could hardly see. I gave Mr. Hertz his car back and walked the three hundred miles to the terminal where I'd catch my two-thirty flight to San Francisco.

Look for a middle-aged fag
, Loren had said. In spite of Loren's suggestion that our persecutor could simply be someone who knew us all, I still felt that Michael Crown's unknown lover was connected with
Foxfire
. As Lieutenant Goodlow had pointed out, he'd have to be free to move around backstage without attracting attention. Which meant that Michael Crown's lover was someone I knew and had probably known for a long time.
Look for a middle-aged fag
.

The only middle-aged fag in the
Foxfire
company was Leo Gunn.

7

I spent the short flight to San Francisco thinking of Leo Gunn. Leo, whom I'd known all my professional life and whom I'd grown to trust like a brother. Everyone who knew Leo knew he was gay; he'd never tried to hide it. Whatever problems his homosexuality caused him, Leo kept them to himself. No one ever thought about it—the man's sex life was his own business. Only now maybe it was our business too.

But I couldn't believe it. Not for a minute. Leo was a
good
man—honest and fair and decent. He was comfortable with himself and with other people. He was the
calmest
homosexual I'd ever met. He could no more kill another human being than I could. And the thought of his throwing acid in Loren's face—no, it was just impossible.

Besides, Leo was no actor. He'd never been an actor and he'd never wanted to be. The man Loren and John Reddick had seen was acting the role of a stranger. Leo couldn't do that; he just wouldn't know how.

Unless all those years of watching from backstage had taught him a hell of a lot about acting.

No, that was absurd. The whole thing was absurd. Leo Gunn was not a destructive man. He would never do these horrible things. Never.

Foxfire
had a cast of eleven people; other than Ian Cavanaugh and Hugh Odell, only two of them were men over forty. Neither was homosexual, I was sure. There was one actor in the
Foxfire
cast that I knew was gay. But he was in his late twenties, far too young to have been Michael Crown's lover. He was out.

Gene Ramsay? Definitely not homosexual. Stagehands, front-of-house workers? I didn't have any reason to think so.

Leo Gunn, Leo Gunn, Leo Gunn.

No. I couldn't accept it.

Brian Simpson had sent a gofer to meet me at the airport. Her name was Sandy Keegan and she was Simpson's production assistant. Sandy was in her thirties, California-blond, and one of those women usually described as perky. I'd met her once before, briefly; she'd been the one Brian Simpson had sent to Pittsburgh to see Claudia Knight's production of
Double Play
.

“I hope you don't mind going straight to the theater,” she said. “We can get you settled in a hotel later. Brian's been tied up in conferences all day and he wants you to join him as soon as you can.”

“That'll be fine.”

I waited at the terminal entrance with my one bag and my attaché case while Sandy went for her car. Now that I was actually here, I was looking forward to meeting Brian Simpson again even less than before. It had been several years since I last saw him, and I wondered if he'd changed any.

Brian Simpson and I had got off on the wrong foot at our very first meeting and it had been downhill ever since. Simpson had been touring his production of
A Midsummer Night's Dream
. I happened to be in Philadelphia visiting friends after my first play had closed, so I decided a little cheerful Shakespeare was just what I needed.

Mistake.

Simpson turned out to be an advocate of the pop theory that Shakespeare was a “cruel” writer, that all his plays have a dark, sexual undertone that puts them right in step with the disillusioned, violent black comedy of modern times. Even so life-affirming a play as
A Midsummer Night's Dream
is not immune to this “approach.” Simpson's production began with the cast dragging dead bodies off the stage—plague victims, you know. This was to help set the proper dark tone of the performance. Simpson's program notes mentioned the fact that
A Midsummer Night's Dream
had not been performed in the Globe Theatre when it was first produced in 1595. He went on to say the probable reason for this was the presence of plague in London that year, which most likely closed the public theaters and sent the acting companies to safer places in the country. All of which was by way of justifying starting the play with the removal of plague victims from the stage. Very ingenious.

When I met Simpson after the performance, however, I suggested that the true reason the play hadn't been performed in the Globe Theatre in 1595 was that the Globe hadn't been built yet. It opened its doors in 1599, four years
after
the first production of
A Midsummer Night's Dream
.

That didn't go down too well. Simpson huffed and blustered and dismissed the whole thing as unimportant. He was not a man to allow fact to interfere with his “concept.”

Thus my reluctance to entrust my two flawed one-acts to Simpson's directorial eccentricities. Besides, I felt sure the only reason he wanted to do
Double Play
in the first place was that
Foxfire
had been in the news so much lately—Simpson knew the value of publicity. But I had a seven-day option to withdraw permission for production; I'd insisted on that escape clause in my agreement with Simpson.

Sandy pulled up to the terminal entrance and we drove into town. Along the way I learned she'd been with Brian Simpson for eleven years. “Ever since I left Berkeley,” she said proudly.

“Exactly what is it that you do?”

“I participate in the decision making—the selection of plays, casting, determining production concepts. Some fund raising, though Brian does most of that himself.”

If there was one thing Brian Simpson was gifted at, it was getting money out of people. He'd managed to persuade several affluent foundations that the only true experimental work in American theater today was being done in
his
theater. The theater itself had been built by funds provided by an oil magnate's wife whom Simpson had courted financially for over a year. He repaid her by accepting speaking engagements in which he made jokes about California matrons who wanted theaters named after them.

The theater was serene-looking from the outside, but inside was chaos. Sandy led me on a roundabout route that took us across the stage. A new set was being erected, but no one seemed to know what it was supposed to look like. There was a lot of shrieking back and forth.

Sandy just laughed at the confusion. “We're all crazy here,” she said happily. Claiming to be crazy always seems more glamorous than admitting one is merely disorganized.

Behind the stage area Sandy stuck her head through a doorway, said, “Here she is!” and stepped back to let me go in. Brian Simpson sat at a table with two other people in a small conference room. He looked exactly the same—tall and thin, his bald crown gleaming above the fringe of hair that reached his shoulders. He erupted from his chair, took one of my hands in both of his, and gazed sincerely into my eyes.

“I knew that someday we'd create something together,” he said, “and now that day has come. Welcome, Abigail James, to Brian Simpson's theater.”

Oh, yes, he sometimes spoke of himself in the third person. The two people he'd been talking to were quickly introduced and even more quickly dismissed.

“Sandy, dear, see if you can find the boys. Try the green room.” Sandy hurried off on her errand. “Now that we're alone,” Simpson said to me, “I want to know everything there is to know about what's been happening to
Foxfire
.”

“In twenty-five words or less?” I sighed. “Even the police don't know everything there is to know, and I certainly don't.”

“You must have some idea why your play has attracted so much malice.”

“What a charming way of putting it.”

Simpson leaned back and looked at me speculatively. “You're writing a play about it, aren't you?”

That made me uncomfortable. I was doing just that. I wasn't writing about the specific events in
Foxfire
's beleaguered history. The
Foxfire
experience would have to be sea-changed into something I hoped would turn out to be rich and strange. But I still wasn't ready to talk about The New Play yet.

Simpson gave me a knowing look. “I respect your reticence, Abby. I understand the creative process—I live with it every day of my life. Those of us born to create are slaves to our passion.”

I worked at keeping my face straight.

“So if you don't want to talk about it, I certainly won't press you.” Simpson lowered his voice and spoke confidentially. “But I do have a reason for asking. Every few years I need to stimulate my nerve ends, get away from the familiar. Do a play outside San Francisco once in a while. I thought I'd try the East Coast next year.”

So
that
was the reason I was in San Francisco. Brian Simpson wanted to direct a play in New York.

“Sorry,” I said. “I've already promised it to John Reddick.”

Simpson lifted one eyebrow. “The little man who isn't there?”

“He'll be back,” I said shortly.

“But if he isn't …?”

“He'll be back.”

Just then Sandy came in with “the boys” Simpson had sent her to find. “The boys” were about thirty, and they were holding hands. They could have been twins—they were both modishly thin, they both had Brillo hairdos, and they both wore the blue jeans uniform. But there were differences, too. One wore glasses, the other didn't; one was an assistant director, the other was a designer; one was Simon, the other was called Peter. They stared at me humorlessly.

“I'd like to start off,” Simpson said as the others took seats around the table, “with Abby telling us in her own words what her concept of
Double Play
is. What she hopes the two one-acts to achieve, what she felt when she wrote them, what she wants the people to feel.” (Simpson never said “audience”; they were always “the people.”) “Will you do that, Abby? In your own words.”