“There’s the alone side,” he says finally.
Olive waits him out.
“He lives inside his head, this guy; he’s a muser, a philosopher, a solitary soul. He likes to tumble his thoughts over and around, catching glances of them in every different light. A hundred years ago, in the shtetls, these guys were always there. The air men. They never worked a day in their life; they never lifted a finger. Occasionally they hung out with other bums like themselves and philosophized about angels on the heads of pins. Occasionally, out of pity, people would bring them a sandwich or something—so they wouldn’t starve to death.”
Olive waits.
“There are these two sides to him.”
“To you. Two sides to you.”
He says nothing.
“I know that you talk to yourself.”
He just stares at her.
“Annie told me. And I saw you doing it one time when you came to the bar. You were going on and on about something, cracking yourself up.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Olive smiles now. “I’ll make you a deal.”
“What?”
“Come home with me now and stay with me tonight—and then tomorrow you can talk to yourself all day. I have two shows anyway.”
This almost gets a laugh, but he shakes it off.
“I’m gonna get old and sick,” he says. “It’s not far off. What do you do then?”
She shakes her head and shrugs. “I don’t know. I honest-toGod can’t give you an answer about that, Herbie. I mean, you’re about to go away, right? To do your movie?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
“And I’m here doing the play for another month. By the time we see each other again, we’ll be completely different people. Isn’t that what you believe?”
He takes a moment to think about that. “So, who knows? That’s what you’re saying?”
“I know that I want to be with you tonight. I have no doubts about that. You know that nervousness you have when you’re about to go to bed with someone new? I don’t have it. You’ll just be you and I’ll just be me and we’ll be fine, whatever happens. Or doesn’t happen. We can’t miss, Herbie.”
She’s just hit him with his own philosophy. What’s he going to do, argue?
“I play a game with myself sometimes,” he says. “I’m walking up to the deli on Broadway to get milk for my coffee or something and I say, all right, either I could walk down West End Avenue to Eighty-second Street, make a left and go up to Broadway, or I could walk a block farther on West End and go up Eighty-first Street. And I say, easy Herb; take a moment; this decision could change everything. Say I take Eighty-second Street and I run into a guy I haven’t seen in years and he says what a coincidence! I’m casting a play Off-Broadway and you’re perfect for the lead—I didn’t know you were back in New York. And I do the play and it’s a big hit and I get a movie out of it that gets me an Oscar nomination and my whole career takes off again. Or maybe I take Eighty-first Street and I step off the curb in the middle of the block and a Chinese food delivery guy coming the wrong way runs into me with his bike and they rush me to the hospital where I get one of those infections that eats your skin and they have no cure for and I lie there in pain for the rest of my miserable life. You know?”
She nods. She knows. “So?” she says.
“So what?”
She opens her arms to him. “So take Eighty-second Street.”
He wants to enter the embrace she offers; he wants to smell her hair and feel her warmth.
“There are things,” he says, shaking his head.
“Like what?”
“Like I have this cream. I have to put it on my ass sometimes when I get an itch down there.”
She stares at him in disbelief. He raises his eyebrows in innocence and holds his hands out in the surrender position— as if to say, hey, I thought this was a good time to get everything out onto the table. Then he sighs and looks around for the waiter, who must have given up and gone home. Olive starts to get her coat on and he thinks, so where are we going? My hotel? Her apartment? She’ll probably want to have her own toothbrush. He nods to himself. Girls don’t want to mess with somebody else’s toothbrush. He gives up on the waiter and walks toward the bar to pay the check.
“Hit the ball, Herb,” he says out loud. “Just waltz right up to the fucking ball and whack away.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I WOULD LIKE TO THANK A NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHOSE advice and encouragement helped me while I was writing this book: my fiercely loyal agents, Jane Dystel and Miriam Goderich; everyone at Overlook Press, especially my editor, Stephanie Gorton, and, of course, the estimable Peter Mayer. And, in no particular order: Jane Kramer, Stephen Bochco, Jim Moore, JoAnn Verburg, Susan Liederman, David Liederman, Ron Shechtman, Lynne Meadow, Jeffrey Sweet, Bruce Adgate, Joanna Ross, Jeffrey Isaac, Sophie Clarke, John Pankow, Kristine Pankow, Martin Steubenrauch, Karen Bamonte, Carol Venezia, Michael Venezia, Pam Moskow, Ron McLarty, David Rapkin… and anyone I may have forgotten.
After Annie (9781468300116) Page 19
