The Queen and I

by Russell Andresen

  Slightly stunned by the announcement, she asked, “A house? Are you serious? What house?”

  He shrugged his shoulders and replied, “A house on a lake.” “Where is there a lake in New York?”

  “Upstate.”

  “You bought a house in upstate New York?”

  He smiled and said, “Yes, Zion, New York.”

  Her eyes nearly popped out of her head. “Zion? Where the hell is Zion?”

  “In the Finger Lakes area.”

  She shot him an incredulous look and repeated, “The Finger Lakes? Why the hell would you want to go up there? They’re weirdos.”

  Jeffrey knew what she was talking about. Upstate New Yorkers had always had a reputation for being somewhat odd, a little on the eccentric side, and to be perfectly honest, devoid of all personality. He knew this was what she was talking about, but it did not matter, his mind was made up, and he had already closed on the purchase of the house.

  “I was hoping you would consider coming with me.”

  She laughed and answered, “No thanks, pal. I enjoy being nearly killed whenever I try crossing the street too much for that kind of peace and quiet.” She stood up and walked over to her kitchen table to get one of her emergency cigarettes. Rachel was not a smoker per say, but always kept a pack around exactly for moments like this when she was beginning to get stressed out and needed a release.

  She took a long drag and let it out slowly. “Why now? Is it because of what’s been going on with Schultz?”

  “That’s part of it,” he acknowledged, but he was afraid to tell her he was struggling to write as badly as he had been. He had not yet told her the depths and severity of his writer’s block and had no idea how she would take it. “The truth is I just need to get away for a while, and this way I’ll always have the house for quiet getaways—maybe for the two of us?”

  She gave him a quizzical look and asked, “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “What would you like it to mean?”

  “Jesus Christ!” she exploded. “Don’t start this shit again, not now!”

  “What shit is that, Rachel?”

  “I am not getting married, Jeffrey, not now, not when things are the way they are.”

  He shook his head and replied, “Who said anything about getting married? I just thought that maybe we could think about living together …”

  “Oh my God, you are so full of it! I know what you were thinking, Jeffrey. It’s not happening, not now.”

  They faced each other in silence for a while, and she finally continued, “You know that I love you, that’s why I am still here, and there is nobody else, but I am not the marrying kind. I am not the little homemaker who is going to give you children, and I am absolutely not going to live in fucking Zion, New York.”

  Jeffrey took in the words that she just spoke, and while they made him feel as if he were in a darker place than he had been when he got to her apartment, he was not surprised at her reaction; he had even expected worse. He walked over to her and took a cigarette from her pack, lit one for himself and inhaled deeply.

  “When are you leaving?” she asked sheepishly.

  “A couple of days; I have a few scripts out there right now waiting to see if there are any buyers.”

  “And if there are you won’t be going?”

  “Oh no, I’m going anyway. I have things that need to be done, and I can’t do them here.”

  “How long do you think you’ll be gone?” she asked like a little girl whose father was preparing to leave on business.

  “A couple of months.”

  The doorbell rang, and they looked at each other and said the words without speaking, the words that defined their relationship, and the feelings that they had for one another.

  He smiled at her knowingly and said, “Chinese food is here. You got any cash?”

  * * *

  One of the things that Richard Kearney had forgotten to do before making his hasty retreat from the town of Zion was cancelling his newspaper delivery. He had a subscription to the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the Zion Gazette, and all of them were piling up on the front porch.

  Some of them had made their way into the cabin, but they were mostly the Times entertainment section and the Zion Gazette. They were laid about the living area in a very orderly manner from Broadway gossip to Who’s Who in Hollywood, to the local theater production of Hairspray.

  The local paper was a guilty pleasure for the presence that still resided in the cabin, and it took much pleasure in the quiet solitude of the cabin reading about how the audience loved young Melissa Foreman in the starring role and how Mayor Elmo Baker as the mother brought a new enthusiasm to the role that was dearly missing from the mainstream performances. The ghost laughed to himself; he could show this town a thing or two about being a drag queen—amateurs.

  He read on a bit about local news when he came across Rose Zenkman’s gossip column called “Zion Is Calling.” She was breaking news to the small community of Zion that a “Real honest to God” celebrity was moving into the old Berkshire cabin, that being the name of the house which Kearney had just recently sold.

  The ghost would have fainted if he actually still breathed when he read that renowned Broadway playwright, Jeffrey David Rothstein, had purchased the property. Zenkman’s sources told her that he would be moving in within the week.

  The ghost let out a scream like that of an excited schoolgirl through its raspy voice and danced with delight through the hallways and rooms of the cabin. There was much work to be done before Jeffrey arrived. They were going to be best friends, he just knew it.

  * * *

  Jeffrey slept quietly in Rachel’s bedroom while she was on her computer checking her messages. He had decided that it was too late to go home so had stayed over. She deleted all of the junk mail and spam and opened one message from rkearney@zoom.com. It read:

  The article just printed. They will be expecting him. Talk to you soon, my love.

  She highlighted the message and clicked “delete.” Jeffrey shuffled and made some sleep noises while she lit another cigarette.

  Chapter Twelve: No Prospects

  Jeffrey sat staring at his computer screen as rejection after rejection appeared in front of him. Not a single one of his colleagues, friends, or backers wanted anything to do with him or any other future projects he was involved with, and they sighted their main concerns as not wanting to “rock the boat.” Jeffrey took that to mean that someone was reaching out to these people and putting a scare into them.

  He checked his phone for any voice messages or texts and found more of the same, rejections. He had to admit to himself that it was more than a little deflating, not to mention the fact that it was putting a damper on his plans for moving upstate to Zion for a while to write another play meant to bring about his revenge. After all, how could he realize his revenge if his longtime backers were already jumping ship and disavowing him?

  He knew in his heart that this too would pass, but he hoped that it would not be posthumously and that he would enjoy the results of what he had planned.

  There was one more small detail to consider; as of right now, he still had no clear-cut idea as to what he was going to write about or the particulars of an outline. He hoped the change of scenery would inspire him, but he could not count on that right now; he couldn’t count on anything.

  At this point, he was almost done tying up his loose ends. He had told Bubbe where he would be going, had asked Mrs. Glassman to check in on her, which she said she would be happy to do, and had gone over his general plan with Rachel, who was not as supportive as he would have liked, even though he had anticipated very little to begin with. The only thing left to do now was to inform his two stars, the two people who were always in his corner, who had starred in almost every play that he had written in the last fifteen years, and the two people he knew would be the hardest to convince about the merits of why he was doing what he was.

 
He waited for them to arrive, knowing that one of them would be on time, but the other, in true diva fashion, would most likely be about an hour late.

  Jeffrey had gone to the Second Avenue Deli and had a platter made of Jewish cold cuts and spreads and bought some nice challah bread for them to use as vehicles for the pseudo feast. He had just finished opening a nice bottle of rosé when the doorbell rang, and he opened the door to his old friend and leading man, Anders Anderson.

  Anders was an interesting man, to say the least. He had been born and raised in Sweden to Protestant parents, but once he moved to America, New York to be exact, he had buried himself in the culture of his new country, learned the language, and lost whatever accent he had before arriving in his new home. He also was introduced to and fell in love with the Yiddish lifestyle, thanks to the scripts that Jeffrey had exposed him to over the years. In many ways, Anders was now more Jewish than Jeffrey was, since his vocabulary was peppered with Yiddish word after Yiddish word.

  He grabbed Jeffrey and hugged him tightly and moaned, “Oy Jeffrey, such a shanda, such a shanda!”

  “It’s not a shame, Anders,” Jeffrey reassured his friend. “These things happen in the business, and you just have to fight your way through them.” He was trying to be strong for his emotional Swedish friend, even though he was hoping that he would be the one being comforted.

  “I’m so angry I could plats!” Anders said, throwing his hands in the air. “Who are these goyim? Tell me, tell me now!”

  “It’s not important enough for you to get involved with, Anders.” Jeffrey had to fight back the laughter. Whenever he spoke to Anders and the large Swede started in his Yiddish diatribes, he found it difficult to keep a straight face.

  Anders turned to him with a beaten expression on his face and handed him a white pastry box and, fighting back tears, said, “I brought some rugelach.”

  Jeffrey accepted the box and went to the kitchen to find a plate for them, yelling into the living area for Anders to pour himself a glass of wine.

  The two of them sat down on the sofa, and Anders, still holding back tears, asked, “So, when are you leaving?”

  “Well, since I have officially been rejected by every single friend I have ever had in the industry, I’ll be going tomorrow.”

  “Every friend?” Anders asked, hurt. “How could you hurt me so?”

  Jeffrey put a reassuring hand on Anders’s shoulder and soothed him with, “I misspoke, my friend. Of course, I can always count on you and Yvonne.” He looked at his watch and realized the time before asking, “By the way, do you have any idea what could be keeping her?” He called Yvonne her even though she had been born Yankel Deutsch and her W-2s still had that given name on them, as well as her license and passport. It was something Yvonne preferred and could become quite obstinate about if not accepted as being a woman.

  “You know Yvonne, Jeffrey; she always has to make a grand entrance, even when it’s one of her friends who are in trouble. Typical diva mamzer.”

  Mamzer was one of Anders’s favorite words in the Yiddish language, and he used it to describe everyone in one way or another. Literally meaning bastard, it was a word that he used in the negative and the positive, the problem was deciphering which one he meant at any given time, due to his deadpan delivery and affected way of speaking since he was a very gay man.

  They talked about nothing in particular and waited for the arrival of Yvonne Dubois. Jeffrey assured Anders that he would be gone only for a few months and that he would return with a new script that nobody would be able to reject. He would even find a way to fund it himself if he had to. This made the large Swede smile, and he happily ate for the first time since arriving at Jeffrey’s apartment.

  A knock on the door announced the arrival of Yvonne Dubois, and Anders added, “Her eminence has arrived.”

  “Please don’t start with her,” Jeffrey pleaded.

  He opened the door and in entered Yvonne, decked out in all of her drag queen glory. A navy sequined dress, red stilettos, and a red boa adorned her as she gave Jeffrey two shadow kisses, one on each cheek. She handed him a pink pastry box and said, “I brought you some rugelach. I know how much you love them.”

  Anders leapt from his seat and exclaimed, “How dare you bring rugelach! I always bring the rugelach!”

  “Well, I thought he would like some that he could actually stomach.”

  “You filthy mamzer! You did this on purpose.”

  “Unlike your parents.”

  “Enough!” Jeffrey broke in. He turned to Yvonne and thanked her for the pastries, and looked over at Anders and assured him that the ones he brought were delicious as well, and since he was driving upstate, he would just have that much more to snack on during the drive.

  “Now, I want the two of you to behave yourselves and be civil,” he ordered. “No more of these hostilities.”

  He was referring to a running feud that had been going on between his two friends ever since Anders had been asked to be a guest judge at the Miss Drag Queen of New York competition and had cast his vote for Roxy Rhodes, an Asian drag queen whose special talent was rolling egg rolls on stage. Yvonne was mortified, especially since her talent was reciting the famous Shirley McClain scene from Terms of Endearment when she was begging for her daughter, played by Debra Winger, for the medicine that she so desperately needed. Yvonne thought that her performance was riveting, while afterwards Anders was overheard saying that it was all just so much fluff.

  The two of them had barely spoken outside of work ever since, and even when they were working together, which was whenever Jeffrey had a new play, they were merely cordial toward one another, and by saying cordial, that was a true stretch of the word.

  Jeffrey motioned for the two of them to sit down so that he could break all of the news to them in full detail. He was not worried in the least that either one of them would reveal his whereabouts to anyone because they were the most loyal men that he had ever known, and that loyalty came from Jeffrey’s ability to look past their personal preferences and choices and see them for what they really were—two very talented actors who always brought the goods to whatever role he gave them.

  He sat them down and proceeded to give them a brief overview of what had been transpiring over the last couple of months and who was behind it. He explained that, try as he may, his tormentors seemed to have a reach that far outstretched his connections in the industry, and no matter what he tried, no matter what favors he had been owed, and no matter how much money his backers had made off of his plays in the past, he was avoided like the plague.

  “Who is this Schultz person?” Yvonne exploded, “Tell me; tell me right now!”

  “And what are you going to do, give him a bad dye job?” Anders chimed in.

  “Look who’s talking, highlights from L’Oreal!”

  A look of offended shock crossed Anders’s face, and Jeffrey quickly defused the situation by breaking in. “Come on, ladies. Just for tonight, can’t we be civil to each other? I might not see you for a while and just want to spend some time with my friends.”

  They both looked at Jeffrey and turned toward each other, quietly sitting down as Jeffrey continued. “I am going to need both of you once this new project of mine is complete. It is going to be crucial that you and all of your friends support me, or else I’m done before I even get started.”

  He outlined to them his intentions, what he was hoping would come from this exile that he was sentencing himself to, and how long they could expect it to take before he would be calling on them to come to his cabin upstate to go over the details of their new roles. Until that time, they were both instructed to keep silent about any knowledge as to where he was or what he was doing. He also warned them to trust no one and to keep both eyes open in fear of the possibility that Schultz and Fujikawa could try some form of intimidation tactic to scare them away from the project.

  The two of them vowed undying loyalty to the maestro, as they called him, and swore to sil
ence on the grave of Ms. Judy Garland. He knew that they were serious about their loyalty whenever they brought up her name; for them, it was more than a Christian mentioning Christ or a Scientologist speaking of L. Ron Hubbard.

  The three of them took the food into the dining room to make this platter into something more of a going-away party, and spent the rest of the evening talking about how Heinrich Schultz, Mendel Fujikawa, and Jacob Stone would all soon pay for their treachery and that the return of Jeffrey David Rothstein would be greater than that of Liza Minnelli to Radio City.

  All of his loose ends were now tightened, and Jeffrey was sure that when he did make his return, Schultz was going to regret the day that he had crossed paths with a man who had his own personal gay army at his disposal.

  Chapter Thirteen: Rewrite

  Jeffrey had been putting on the brave face and giving the impression of being the fighter who could overcome anything thrown at him, but what he was actually feeling was that nagging, gut-wrenching sense of defeat and failure. Try as he may to spin a positive out of what had been happening to him over the last couple of months, he was incapable of looking at it any differently than the way he knew everyone else was seeing it—that he had been beaten and his self-imposed exile was his way of accepting defeat without making a concession speech.

  This was a scary time in his life; he was hanging on by his fingertips over a precipice that threatened to swallow him up in darkness, and his only hope was that he somehow managed to remember what it was like to put words to paper again, to give the audience that alternate universe that they craved when they paid to go to a Broadway show, and to come up with the script that would be so dynamic that even the billions of dollars that Heinrich Schultz could afford to spend would mean very little when trying to stop him from his triumphant return.

  It was time for Jeffrey to reevaluate his life, to figure things out as to where he was going and where he had been. This was no longer a game, an eccentric way of taking a time out from life to explore his creative side; this was a direct attack against him, and he was forced to face the foe head-on and either do something about it or accept it as the new normal in his life. He was unwilling to do that.