Famous

by Stan Charnofsky

  “You got it right, Harry. I think my dear old, abusive dad squashed the lovingness out of me. I have wonderful carnal urges, but I don’t think I know how to convert those into tender feelings.” She paused, seemed to sweep the room with her gaze, avoided looking at Harry, and said, “I wish I did know how.”

  Despite her attempt to hide them, Harry saw tears fill Juliet’s eyes, turning them into small azure mirrors.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “No need to be. I am what I am. My lifelong aim has been to become intimate with the public, a nonentity, amorphous, safe. I am what you might label an acting animal. My reward comes from the exaltation of my fans, not from the exclusive love of one person.

  “A Frenchman,” she continued, “a prolific composer, when asked about how he wrote so much music, answered, ‘I have the composition virus.’ Well, Harry, my old buddy, even though you may not have liked that I placed you lower on the priority scale, I have the performance virus. Number one in my life. Nothing could get in the way of it.”

  “No you don’t,” Harry answered. “You have the fame virus. There’s quite a difference.”

  Startled by his retort, Juliet hesitated, then challenged: “And you don’t?”

  “Oh yes, I do. But the difference in us is I am desperately looking for an antibiotic, and you’re not.’

  He turned away from her, from the object of his seven long years of marginal love, of addiction, a lustful compulsion that he was only now beginning to put into perspective. He felt warm tears of his own that he did not want Juliet to see, turned away, and whispered over his shoulder, “I’ll see you around.”

  Two days after Harry left for New York, a news item appeared in the Los Angeles Times, disseminated the same day on television channels, reporting what appeared to be the apprehension of a murderer. An arrest had been made in an old, unsolved killing. Advances in the art of record keeping and DNA matching had allowed authorities to identify collected, but never analyzed, skin under the fingernails of one, Whitey Carter, as belonging to a prominent west-side attorney, Bruce Thurston. The report noted that authorities, all along, knew that there had been a struggle and that the victim had scraped skin from his attacker’s body. New technology was able to place the skin as coming from the facial region. In making an arrest, police noted that old medical records cited a visit by Mr. Thurston to a skin specialist for treatment of a wound to his cheek, the day after the murder. The DNA, a spokesman said, was a perfect match. An indictment had been filed.

  Louis Schiff fired off the article and an accompanying email to his son on the east coast.

  “Harry, this is likely local news only, so I am forwarding it to you. Who would have thought it? You may be upset with your father for certain attitudes, but you need to know that he, I, would never engage in such nefarious activity. I admit to getting that Whitey character involved in the squeeze Thurston was putting on your mother and me. But I settled that issue, and kept my part of the bargain with Thurston. Apparently Whitey Carter put on a squeeze of his own, and paid the ultimate price. Looks as if Thurston got out from under Carter’s blackmail by plotting his death, and, in the process, has trashed his career and his life as well. I have to admit, I feel sorry for his wife, Jennifer. She lost both the men in her life.

  “Your mother and I aren’t so bad. I hope you can see us differently.”

  TEN

  H arry finished his post-play, dressing room chores and realized with blunt annoyance that the loneliest time in an actor’s life is after the show, after the adoration settles. People go home. They have their own lives, the theater a fleeting diversion. For him, the spotlight is stirring but brief. It is like coming down from a high, like the emptiness of sex without love—now what did that remind him of; who, in his experience, met that description?

  The cast would have a celebration at an elegant New York club, but he would be alone in the crowd, no face across the room to nod to at some mutual recognition, a clawing sense of missing out on intimacy, a dull but growing awareness that he did not have what was most important in life.

  For a moment he sat in silence, the four bright bulbs above his dressing-table mirror reflecting to eight, flooding his face, making him look, as he observed himself, washed out, like an over-exposed photo, pale, white, garish.

  Juliet? She was on her meteor-ride, top of the heap, a legitimate superstar. And tonight, where was she? Not here, not sharing in his sweetest personal triumph. But of course, he realized, she could not. It was not who she was. Never had been. The erotic seduction had, for years, blinded him to the reality of her intent. Nothing, not even her father’s sick criminal behavior, would deter her from her focus. She was destined to be, would settle for nothing less than, was now in the glorious soup of, what could only be appropriately labeled as, famous.

  Well, that is why he had to let her go. Had he loved her? From a somewhat more mature perspective, he was able to say that he loved the excitement, her wicked ways, the clandestine nature of their early rendezvous, a sense of being desired by a lovely woman, but now, from his grown-up view, he understood that those elements, while savory and rewarding, did not make up love, were not the ingredients of an intimate connection. So, no wonder there had been an empty feeling after their sexual happenings, blandness along with the thrill, and a disquieting sense of emptiness.

  In his own ascent to this moment of theatrical success, there had been no lack of female adulation, the usual hangers-on eager to pair up with glamour, to join in his fast-track ride to the top. He found all of it demeaning, as if he were not a person, unique in the world, but seen, instead, as a means to an end, an object without personality, as the kids put it, a cool dude on the rise.

  There was a soft knock on his door and without hesitation he called out, “Come in,” some recalcitrant spark of romance stirring him to the impossible dream that, at any moment, a remarkable woman might walk through the door and his life would be forever altered. Why not? Always leave the door open.

  The knob turned, the door swung wide, there was a measured moment—as if time had a mind of its own and decided to slow down—as Harry, not believing what he viewed in his mirror, turned, himself in slow-motion, and saw, grinning like a child with a present, Katy Bloom.

  He nodded to the attendant who was staring over her shoulder, and said, “Katy! You’re here.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it. Oh, Harry, you were superb!”

  “I can’t believe you were in the audience.”

  She moved towards him, opened her arms and embraced him, the old wishful hunger still there, the hug, as always, meaning so much more to her than to him. She tried to squelch her emotion, focus on his grand moment, to bend her salute into pure appreciation.

  Subtly at first, then palpably, she felt him returning her hug in a different way. Always, his response had been brotherly proper, a friend greeting a friend. This time he seemed to be absorbing her body, relishing her soft parts, clutching her as if to keep her from flitting away. It was confusing.

  “Katy, I’ve missed you.”

  “It’s only been two or three months. Remember the drink at The Farmers’ Market when you got the part?”

  “Of course, but it seems longer.”

  “You did wonderfully. Your voice was just right for the part. The character came alive.”

  He reached down and rolled up his pant leg. “You will be delighted to know that I taped a little message on my upper thigh.” He pulled off the tiny rectangle secured on two sides, and read: “Success is yours. Keep on Trucking.”

  “The same kind of message you gave me.”

  “And you thought you were the only superstitious one.”

  “It’s not superstition. It’s good sense. Karma. You need the forces of the universe working hard for you.”

  For a moment, he felt awkward, then asked, “How’s Harriet? Learn any new words lately?”

  “Every day. I kept saying ‘Pippin’ and she now won’t stop saying it. I think it
fits her vocal apparatus.”

  “Did you have an okay seat? I didn’t know you’d be here.”

  “I’m still in the Stoppard play at the Geffen, Jumpers, but I took two performances off and caught the redeye last night.”

  “To see my opening.”

  “I had to.”

  “But your play is basically a two character piece, and you’re the star.”

  “I have a superb understudy. A student in Garth Benjamin’s class.”

  They both laughed.

  Harry took her hand and guided her to two soft chairs across from his make-up stool. There was an odd light in his eye.

  “I need to talk with you.”

  “So talk. We’ve never had a problem saying things to each other.” This wasn’t totally accurate, she knew, but close enough for the moment.

  “In some ways we have. I mean I have. I mean I’ve said a lot of the wrong things.”

  “Harry, what are you talking about? What’s going on?’

  “I’ve just realized something. It scares the shit out of me.”

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “I think it’s more like what’s right. I finally understand that you’re what’s right.”

  “I’m…”

  “I know I’m too late with too little. I know you’ve got Randy Gold in your heart and in your life, but I need to tell you something I finally figured out.

  “See, I used to hold Juliet up as the paragon of women. But, it was always in a darkened room. I have to own up to that. I never saw her clearly. All of a sudden, you walk in my door and the floodlights go on.”

  “What are you saying? You see Juliet differently now?”

  “I don’t love her, Katy. I never did.”

  “Could have fooled me.”

  “I had lust for her. Anyone can be fooled that way.”

  “So she’s lost her luster?”

  “In my eyes, you’ve found yours.”

  “Harry…”

  “No, wait, let me finish. I was blinded by my childish passions. I’d been deprived as a teen. Juliet’s glamour sucked me in. I can see it now.”

  He stopped, still holding Katy’s hand, his eyes boring into hers with an almost desperate fervor.

  She looked confused, uncomfortable. This could not be what it seemed. All those years. Clear boundaries. Friends for life. Now what?

  “I know one thing for sure,” Harry said. “I don’t want Juliet.”

  “You don’t.”

  “No.” He looked abject, miserable, and said, “I want you. Can’t have you, I know, and it’s killing me, but I have to tell you this.”

  A tiny squeal of disbelief escaped Katy, and she said in a quavering voice, “Are you saying you want me in…well, in that way? In the way you wanted Juliet? Are you saying you don’t want Juliet in that way anymore?”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “I know I’m not as attractive as Juliet.”

  “You’re beautiful.”

  “I’m not sexy the way she is.”

  “You are the most erotic woman I know.”

  “I have no experience with love.”

  “Love is a novelty every time; no experience needed.”

  “I’m not a star.”

  “Stars are in the sky. You sparkle like a star.”

  “You see me through a wishful prism.”

  “I see you, finally and at last, as you are.”

  “Oh, Harry, what’s happening? Have you lost your mind?”

  “And come to my senses.”

  “We’ve been friends.”

  “Have been. Love that. Now I wish we could be lovers too.”

  “How could we be sure?”

  “Sure is for sunrises. Sure is for seasons.”

  “What about Juliet? I mean are you positive?”

  “She was what I thought I wanted, was brought up to think I wanted. I’m clear about one thing: I don’t want her.”

  “You’re on the edge of being a star, the jumping-off place. One more juicy role and you’ll be famous.”

  “If I’m not famous, it’s okay. I want to love what I do…and, damn it, love you.”

  “And that would be enough.”

  “It would be my zenith, the pinnacle of my ambition.”

  She began to cry. How lovely those emerald eyes, luminous as an iridescent sea at sunset!

  Softly, as if her voice came from a far-away planet, she whispered, “Randy is not in my heart and not in my life. He’s in love with himself. In fact, he has cut out all financial support for the Odyssey, his little revenge. I kissed him off, had to get out. He couldn’t handle it.”

  Not sure he heard correctly, Harry leaned toward her and said, “Are you telling me you and Gold are not an item? You’re alone? Tell me, Katy, are you alone?”

  “I’m alone.”

  He pulled her to him, held her tenderly, and spoke softly over her shoulder. “We’ve never made love. I’ve never kissed you. I was stupidly focused on the superficial. I don’t know if you have a middle name, if you wore braces, if you were an only child. I do know I feel appreciated and supported by you, more than by anyone in my entire life. I know I feel whole when I’m around you, sheltered and safe. I was bewildered by what love really was. But now I think I finally know.”

  Katy was silent, as if this whole scene was from a fantasy script, implausible, impossible. At last she said in a small voice, “I’ve always loved you. Been insanely jealous. What’s happening now…” She shook her head, pulled back and looked him in the eyes, unable to finish her thought.

  “Here’s what’s happening now,” Harry said, as he took her face in both hands and pressed his lips to hers, hard, as if punctuating a line, at last, in his real-life drama.

  When they came apart, she looked flushed, and a beatific smile spread across her face like sunlight edging out from behind a cloud. “I can’t believe this. Are we on stage, sharing a scene? Is this more theater, or are we live, in person? If we are, I have to say, I love this role.” In an instant she grew sober and touched Harry’s cheek.

  “You need to know this. Regardless of how the theatrical world ranked you, with me, you’ve always been the brightest of stars. In my heart you’re number one, state-of-the-art, irrefutably famous.”

  “Nice to know it,” he said softly, “and more important to be in your heart than in all the headlines in the world. To be adored is for Juliet. That kind of fame is for athletes and politicians. May sound dumb, but for me, your love is what makes me famous. Hey everyone, hey audiences, look over here Broadway, pay attention America, heads up world! Look at how important I am, because Katy Bloom loves me!”

  A naughty smile spread across his face, as he stepped behind Katy and twisted the latch on his dressing room door.

  “Do you have,” he asked, with mock seriousness, “anything on under that dress?”

  About the Book

  Wealthy, mega-successful parents reared Harry Schiff to hunger for fame and fortune. At college he sees others throw off family fiats and successfully begin to define themselves. He meets Juliet, driven to be an actor, sensuous, passionate, yet never with commitment. His good friend, Katy Bloom, also a striving actor, becomes his confidante, secretly in love with him. A fourth buddy, Galen Thurston, an Adonis, blessed with Hollywood connections, gets a seeming break because of his father, but with strings. A tragedy explodes when Galen discovers his father’s ugly secret. The group’s chemistry is altered with an intrigue that involves both Harry’s and Galen’s parents. Juliet is on her rocket to fame, her own family’s tale so sordid that she cannot tolerate her father’s presence. Is Harry Juliet’s toy? She would deny it, but eventually, Harry must face off his two demons: his parents’ domination and Juliet’s emotional indifference. Resolution comes when he gets a heady break, screws up his courage to confront his issues, and sees Katy Bloom in another light. To be true to himself becomes more important than to become famous.

  About the Author<
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  Stan Charnofsky is a psychologist and professor at Cal State University, Northridge. Famous is his fifth published novel. He has also published the non-fiction books: When Women Leave Men, and The Deceived Society. He is the father of three grown children, Kim, Dana, and Jordan, and the grandfather of Molly and Jack.