by Sol Stein
“Nick,” Rivers said, “it’s extremely important that you remain calm. We’ll settle all our financial matters when this blows over. I just can’t represent you now.”
“They got to you, Bert, didn’t they. How much?”
“It isn’t money, Nick, I swear it. You shouldn’t be in a phone booth. It’s a bad place to get trapped in.”
“This is the Four Seasons, Bert.”
“Nick, this is my last favor to you. It’ll cost me if they find out I said anything. They’ve got someone there right now from out of town.”
“Here?”
Suddenly the phone booth was no place to be in.
Rivers said, “Don’t phone me again, Nick. Don’t come to my office. Try to stay away from me as if your life depended on it.”
26
Ben
I watched Nick’s anger fan across his face when he got the note. I thought he was going to throw the table over as he pushed it away from him before the captain could help.
The minute he was out of earshot Mary said, “It’s probably one of his girlfriends.” She was half smiling. Half a joke.
Jane got up before the captain could restore the table to its rightful position. “Back in a minute.”
When she went off to the ladies’ room, I felt Mary Manucci’s knee touch mine under the table.
“Excuse me,” I said, thinking I had bumped her knee by accident. She smiled. What I felt on my thigh was unmistakably her hand. A touch. Just for a second.
Louie once said, The daughters of the women who made passes at me, Ben, will make passes at you. Don’t refuse them in a hurtful way.
I smiled at Mary Manucci. Her hand, having delivered its message, had gone back to where it belonged.
“Do you come here often?” she asked.
“I come when I can.”
She reacted before I did, laughing greedily and, I thought, suddenly radiant.
“There’s Nick,” I said, relieved.
As soon as he sat back down, his gaze panned around the room.
The waiter asked if any of us wanted a refill. I waved him away.
Nick’s gaze had stopped. I had to turn a bit to see who he was looking at.
A man who looked as if he’d been in the sun a lot was sitting at a banquette alone.
“He’s the only one in the restaurant who’s not with somebody,” Nick said.
“Do you know him?” I asked.
Nick shook his head. “They wouldn’t use someone I knew. They’d get someone from out of town.”
I’d hired Nissof to put pressure on Nick, but not this.
Jane returned.
I’d opened Pandora’s box.
Mary Manucci’s voice overrode my thought. “The four of us ought to go away on vacation together, in the Caribbean. Under made-up names so nobody’ll know. We could have a good time until this blows over.”
Nick kept his eyes on his assassin.
Jane, the slightest trickle of irony in her voice, said, “Nobody’d look for us in a Club Med.”
I looked at her as if she were crazy. She went on, “We’d meet all kinds of people we’d never met before. It’d be a lark.”
Don’t blow it, Jane, I thought. His money isn’t in the production yet.
“I’m pleased the two of you are partners,” Jane said. “With Manucci money and Riller command of the theater, you two could conquer New York like Romulus and Remus.”
“That was Rome,” I said.
“Getting to be the same thing, isn’t it, dear?” Jane said.
I heard Louie’s breath at my ear. Zipporah talked the same way.
You’re nuts, Pop.
If you think it’s a coincidence you don’t know how God works. Pay attention, He doesn’t have time to give you private lessons.
The four of us, I thought, are sitting here in four separate worlds.
The five of us, I added.
The only one paying attention to reality was, of course, Nick.
Mary’s left hand fidgeted with her pearls. “Nick?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you see something? Somebody?”
I could see the pulse in Nick’s neck.
The waiter set the main courses down in front of us.
Jane said, “If the food tastes as good as it looks, why don’t we plunge in?” She looked at me. I was looking at that lone diner. “Ben,” she said, “that man you’re staring at probably’s never been in the Four Seasons before. I bet it feels dreadful eating alone in a place like this.”
Nick laughed.
“I, for one, am going to eat,” Jane said.
“I for two,” Nick said.
My fork was going down to the plate, it hadn’t yet touched the food, when Mary Manucci said, “Nick, tell Bert Rivers to give Barone what he wants.”
Nick looked at her as if she’d farted.
“We can’t live this way, Nick,” she said.
Nick smiled at me and then at Jane as if Mary didn’t exist. “I think Rivers gets Mary nervous,” he said. “He didn’t want us going back to my sister’s. He was going to put us up at the Carlyle for tonight. Jack Kennedy used to stay at the Carlyle.” He laughed. “It’s got to be safe.”
Jane put her knife and fork down on the side of her plate. “Why don’t you both stay at our house for the night?” she said. “We have a very nice guest room on the second floor, with its own bath.”
“It’ll be an imposition,” Mary said, glancing at me.
“Not at all,” Jane said. “When businesspeople stay over, it helps at tax time. Mr. Rivers will tell you that.”
Nick looked at his wife, whose fork was picking at the food in her plate. “They have terrific desserts here, Mary. You loved their Chocolate Velvet.” To Jane he said, “I appreciate the invitation.”
I said, “I suppose Bert and Ezra will be getting together first thing tomorrow morning to get the papers worked out.”
Jane seemed relieved at the shift of subject.
“I guess you’ll all know sooner or later,” Nick said. “Bert isn’t representing me anymore. That note was from him. Somebody got to him. I’ll have to find someone else to work with Hochman in the morning.”
The heavyset man with the dark suntan who’d been eating alone put his utensils down. He was staring at the entranceway to the main dining room. I saw what he saw, a reporter I knew from the New York Post. The man with him carried his camera down at his side, but his mission was unmistakable.
“I think we’d all better look like we’re having a good time with each other,” I said.
The maître d’ was hurrying along behind the reporter and the photographer, trying to stop them without touching them. Better a camera, I thought, than a gun, just as the photographer exploded his bulb. Ringed by restaurant personnel, the reporter and the photographer, having gotten what they wanted, surrendered. They allowed themselves to be escorted out of the restaurant.
“It’ll be good publicity for the play,” Nick said. “Won’t it, Ben?”
He wasn’t looking at me.
“I have an idea about that fellow with the suntan,” I said, motioning for the check.
“On me,” Nick said.
“I wouldn’t think of it. I’ve been chewing over the idea of introducing myself to him,” I said.
“You feel bulletproof?” Mary said.
“Now listen, you know where the limo’s waiting. I’m going over and have a word with him. As soon as I sit down at his table, you all head for the limo. I’ll be down in three minutes.”
“Ben, be careful,” Jane said.
“I know what I’m doing.”
I looked straight at the suntanned man as I walked toward him so he’d be certain I was coming to him, and when I stood in front of his table I said, “Excuse me, I noticed you were looking at us. Do I know you?”
I could see Nick, Mary, and Jane heading out. So could the fellow I was talking to. I slid into the banquette, boxing him in. I extended my hand. “B
en Riller,” I said. “You’re not from Texas, are you? Someone who looks just like you invested in one of my plays.” I signaled the waiter. “Please bring this gentleman an amaretto and charge it to my account.”
“I don’t know you,” the man said, straining to see Nick and the others, who’d left the room. “I got to go.”
I signaled the waitress. “Would you have the waiter cancel the amaretto, please. My friend here needs his check. And could you hurry it, please.” To him I added, “I wouldn’t try leaving before you have your check. They’re very efficient here. They’d stop you before you got out the front door.”
There was no way he could get up without my getting up first. When the check arrived, he just glanced at the bottom number and started to peel bills off a roll.
On my way past the maître d’, I said quietly, “Those may be phony bills, Maurice. I’m certain you know how to distract him while the bills are checked, but do ask your person to be careful. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was armed.”
“Thank you,” Maurice said, as if this were an everyday event.
I took the stairs two at a time. Outside, I quickly spied the limo with three occupants and slid into the jump seat. “Let’s go,” I said to the driver.
I told the others what had transpired upstairs. Nick loved it. “How does a guy like you,” he said, “learn to think like that?”
“Oh,” I said, taking Jane’s hand in mine, “I saw a lot of gangster movies when I was a kid.”
27
Gordon Walzer
The best revenge, of course, is living well, but something always comes up.
After all these months of run-throughs, rehearsals, midnight meetings to discuss changes, and all-night sweat sessions at the typewriter, there was suddenly a black hole in life: nothing to do! On the morning of opening night, I sat at the counter in a Chock Full o’ Nuts half a block from the theater, drinking my fourth cup of coffee, hearing the clink of plates, the thunk of the cash register, people giving orders to the waitresses in near whispers so as not to wake themselves too much.
On this day I expected to hear drum rolls, crowds shouting as we long-distance runners neared the tape. Hey, everybody, it took five hundred fifty thousand dollars and pain to get the words I wrote into the mouths of the actors in that theater next door, and you’re not even looking at me.
Wrong. The black counterwoman is looking at me to see if this nut is going to have a fifth cup of coffee. Don’t look at me, look at all those other people sitting at your counter, bags under the eyes, wet armpits, burbling stomachs, do you think each and every one of them is loved? Some of them not even their mothers loved, why am I so angry at these strangers for not being aware that as of tonight I’m a produced playwright! The playwrights whose work made Broadway in my lifetime wouldn’t fill one car of a subway train!
The last two weeks out of town all I heard from Mitch was “Walzer, stop improving. Don’t change any more lines, don’t rattle the actors.” Night after night, seeing the play in front of audiences, I heard the coughing, saw the fidgeting, detected gaffes, gaps, the pimples in the way of perfection. Walzer, I told myself, shut up, the play is out of your hands. I had no way of knowing whether The Best Revenge would last a week. How would you feel, mother, if the hospital told you we don’t know if the baby will live long enough for you to take it home.
Never mind, there’ll be a revival some day. I’ll improve it for the revival.
“Yes, please,” I said, “another cup.” Coffee makes cancer in the pancreas. Is that too slow?
In Baltimore, the audiences were lukewarm. “Don’t worry about it,” Mitch had said. “In Baltimore they don’t know how to feel until somebody tells them. It’s not a place to try out a play, it’s a place to bring a road show after it’s a hit in New York.”
In Washington, I hugged Mitch, I was ready to dance. “Hey, look at this, two out of two good notices!” Mitch said, “Those aren’t selling notices, Gordon. They are fucking reverent about your play. They treat it like a classic. Nobody’ll come.”
“The house seemed pretty full to me.”
“Don’t be stupid, kid,” Mitch said. “From the ninth row back those are students from Georgetown. We’re papering the place. Those aren’t real people. They didn’t pay.”
I asked Ben Riller, “Is it true the house is being papered?”
“I’ll talk to you about it later.”
“Is the play a flop?”
“I said I’ll talk to you about it later.”
I could have killed Riller with my bare hands. I didn’t exist. The only one he ever talks to is Manucci. It may be Riller’s shirt, but it’s my play. I called Pinky.
“Sweetheart, fly down on the shuttle. There isn’t a single human being here.”
Would you believe those pricks made me buy her a seat for the play? They’re giving all those freebies to students and Alex the Pencil has the nerve to tell me, “There’s nothing in the Dramatists Guild contract that says you get free tickets.”
Pinky had to sit alone. I’d forgotten how to sit except when there was a typewriter in front of me. I watched from the back, standing. After the show, I took Pinky to an all-night diner.
“Well, what do you think?” I said, as if I were under Niagara Falls waiting for the water to be turned on.
Pinky kissed my right cheek with Danish still in her mouth. “What’s that mean?” I said. “Condolences?”
She swallowed the rest of the Danish and said, “Gordon, you’re crazy. The play is terrific. It’s better with the actors than it was reading it.”
“Then why are the audiences not breaking down the doors? What am I supposed to do, hawk to street-corner crowds?”
“You said Riller told you it was building.”
“Yeah, but what the hell does that mean? Three more customers!”
“Everyone is looking at you,” Pinky said. “Tone it down. Bertha Goodman said to me a quality play takes word of mouth.”
“How do you get enough mouths going to keep the theater full before Riller closes the play down?”
“You’re getting yourself all worked up, Gordon. They’re running ads, aren’t they?”
“Those ads wouldn’t make me want to see that play.”
“You don’t have perspective.”
“Right. I’m one-dimensional. I want the play to be a hit.”
“It’ll be a hit in New York.”
“If you’re going to have fantasies, Pinky, let’s go back to the hotel. I like fantasies better in bed.”
Pinky left Washington. She didn’t even suggest coming to the next stop in the tryout tour, Philadelphia. “I make you nervous,” she said.
“Masturbation makes me nervous,” I answered.
Mitch made me admit that in Philadelphia the cast was developing a certain confidence. He called it polish. I told him he was mispronouncing Polish. He told me you didn’t get three curtain calls for a flop. I said they’re applauding the actors, not the play. He said what the hell do you care what they’re applauding, as long as they like it. I wanted to kill him and I hadn’t even gotten around to killing Riller, so I went to the hotel and made myself watch television. I woke in a cold sweat. The clock said three a.m. Jesus, the TV was still on and it was showing a commercial for the other play in town! Writers have the hearts of murderers!
Back in New York, I didn’t know what to do with myself. That fifth cup of coffee tasted terrible. My tongue was rotting. My teeth were decayed. My alimentary canal wanted to burp and fart at the same time. Hasn’t anyone got a body bag I could crawl into?
I felt the hand of authority on my shoulder. A cop? I’ll go quietly. Then the familiar voice. “Hello, Gordon.” I looked up and saw him in the Chock Full o’ Nuts mirror before I turned. Ben Riller slid onto the stool on my right. “How goes it?”
“If you’re running out of ideas, I’ll be happy to write early morning dialogue for you,” I said.
He laughed. “You’re a bag of nerves,�
�� he said.
“I don’t know how we’re doing.”
“Even if the play’s a smash, there’ll be a lot of work to keep it going.”
“I’ll settle for a minor hit right now,” I said. “Where’s your Italian friend?”
“I’m meeting him at the theater in ten minutes.”
“I haven’t seen you without him since our little money crisis five weeks ago. I thought you guys were married.”
Riller had the nerve to laugh again. How can a guy laugh on the day of opening night? Is it possible you shower, shave, and shit today as on any other day?
“I have a suggestion,” Riller said. “See that counter lady? Every time she takes a warm hot-dog roll out of the bottom of the machine, she puts in another one at the top to get warmed up. Why don’t you go home and start a new play on page one?”
“Today?”
“What better day?” Riller said. “Start a new one just before the old one opens.”
“You can’t be that cool.”
“No,” he said. “There’s Manucci heading for the theater. Got to catch him. See you tonight, Gordon. Remember, it’s black tie.”
Black tie? Why didn’t anybody tell me? Who owns a tux? Could I rent one the right size on short notice? I could see myself in a monkey suit four sizes too big. “That’s the playwright,” they’d all point.
In the taxi I sat on the edge of the seat all the way home, as if by keeping my body weight off the seat the cab would go faster.
“Pinky,” I shouted, “start on the Yellow Pages. I need to rent a forty-long tux for tonight. I hope you’ve got a gown to match.”
Pinky said she was busy with the kid, why didn’t I do the phoning. How could I, I said, I had something urgent to do.
A half hour later she came into the tiny room I use as a place to work in and found me at the typewriter.
“You’re not making changes for tonight?” she said.
“Get out of here!” I shouted without looking up. “I’m trying to write a new one!”
28
Nick
I told Mary, “After twenty years in this business, I don’t see too many new situations anymore, except for Riller and this show. This has been like five weeks of foreplay and the thing still to come. What are you looking at me for?”
