by Sol Stein
I found myself searching the audience to see if I could spot Walzer.
“What is it?” Ben whispered.
I shook my head. “Nothing.” Ben was right to risk this play.
Nick, having a good time in an alien world, seemed to want to do something with his hands in addition to applauding. Was he echoing the audience’s reaction, or had the play’s magic walloped him, too?
Ben said to him, “Relax, Nick. A great first act makes it harder for what’s to come. The audience won’t forgive us if we let them down now.”
Comment by Mary Manucci
At the end of the first act the four of us were touching each other. Ben wasn’t pulling away. Jane touched me and meant it. When we stood up, she hugged Nick for a second, I couldn’t believe it. Theater makes people crazy. Look at Ben, he’s moving through the intermission crowd, eavesdropping.
Nick said, “I want to do this.”
“Do what?” I asked.
“This, what we’re doing.”
“Don’t get carried away,” I said.
“Too late,” he said. “I’m away, I’m away.”
31
Ben
The second act held. In the last thirty seconds, nobody breathed till the bottom edge of the curtain touched the stage, then the applause came on like thunder. Some young people in the back shouted Bravo as if they’d never heard a verse play before. I felt like I was standing outside under a spring rain.
Louie’s voice was so clear.
Stand up!
Was I the only one still sitting? I stood up.
It feels better standing, Louie said, if you’ve climbed up on your hands and knees.
I said to Jane, “It’ll be harder for act three.”
The audience was one large porous membrane now, exuding the smell of success. Laughing, we wrapped our nerves with sound.
“Hey, hey,” Nick said, “looks good, looks good. Mary, look at old sourpuss Ben, he must be used to hits.”
“Nick,” I said, “there are fourteen men sitting on the aisles who are making notes instead of gossiping in the lounge. Six of them count. One counts more than the rest of them put together. I don’t know what they had for breakfast or lunch. What the state of their lives is. Who they’re mad at, including themselves. I don’t know what’s going on inside their heads. Each of them is like Jane’s father in his chambers just before he comes out with a decision. Jane’s father is not more objective than the rest of us. Why should critics be what judges aren’t?”
“Hey, hey,” said Nick. “Enjoy.”
Mary said, “Considering the number of good plays you’ve produced, the critics must look forward to reviewing one of yours.”
I remained silent for a moment because one of the critics was coming up the aisle close to where we were. He saw me and, stone-faced, nodded. I nodded back. Normal people who’d known each other for fifteen years would have exchanged a smile.
“Where’s he going?” asked Nick. “Isn’t he waiting for the third act?”
“I would guess he’s going to the men’s room. Better he pisses in the loo than on the play.”
Mitch, who’d just sidled up, heard me. “That’s what I like about you, Ben, an optimist who won’t count his chickens because all the foxes are out tonight.”
“Where’s Walzer?” I asked.
Mitch said, “His woman took him out to the alley so he could have his heart attack in private.”
“You guys are in some business,” Nick said.
“We guys,” I said.
*
During the first week of out-of-town tryouts, Nick had suggested an early dinner with me alone for a briefing on the economics, how the money comes in to the box office from brokers and charge-outfits, how much the theater gets to keep as rent. I told him the theater charges a percentage of the box-office gross. Nick wanted to go over the budget line by line, asking questions.
When I put the paperwork away, Nick said, “Tough racket this is. It’s like lending someone a lot of dough to play Vegas. If he wins, he can win real big and you get your loan back and half the profits. If he loses, you go on to the next player. The only business in Vegas is owning the tables. Maybe you should have owned theaters, Ben, instead of putting on the shows.”
“I’m not a landlord type,” I said.
“I was only kidding. I appreciate the fill-in. You know…”
I had a feeling he was thinking about whether he wanted to trust me with something other than money. Then he said, “Where I grew up, in the Bronx, the kids traveled in dog packs. The ambitious kids wanted to be chief dog. Sometimes it took fists, knives. My old man was king of the hill, and I could have been chief dog in any of the gangs. I didn’t want to be chief dog and I didn’t want to be a hydrant for the other dogs to piss on. The power I wanted was to be let alone.”
“I can understand that,” I said.
“My old man,” he said, “was a loner, but when it looked like I was shaping up as one he thought I was a freak. He used to say look at the Jewish kids. The father is a nobody, they want to be doctors. The father is a doctor, they want to be a bigger doctor.”
“I never wanted to be a doctor for five seconds,” I said. “The flops would kill me.”
Nick laughed. “I tell you,” he said. “I wanted to build buildings, but the old man said did I want to spend my life bribing building inspectors? Once I had an idea. I saw all these Italian people going downtown to buy their boat tickets for a summer trip back home, buying tickets for family to come over here, all that money going to midtown agencies, I thought I’d start a travel agency right in the middle of Little Italy, in the Bronx, and a branch down near Mulberry Street in Manhattan, and maybe later on in Brooklyn, in the Spaghetti Zone. Well, my father was right there with his cracks, saying, you think I brought you up to work for commissions like a salesman? He put the kibosh on every damn idea I had, and this one time I couldn’t stop my mouth. I said right at him, ‘Pimps give commissions to the women instead of taking them.’ He punched me in the belly like a maniac. If there was a baseball bat around, he could have killed me. I was down on the ground and he was going to stomp on my head when my mother came in and started screaming. He ordered me to my room. How dare I criticize! According to his code, when I was little I had eaten the food that came from his business and I should be grateful, whatever that business was. He was right, but who knows that when you’re a kid?
“What got to me about the travel business was hearing that travel agents get to go all over the world for next to nothing. I liked that. My old man went straight from Naples to the Bronx. After he made it, he moved his ass out of the Bronx only to his farm in Italy and back. He never went anywhere except to that farm. What kind of living is that? I wanted to find out what the world outside the Bronx was like, Yellowstone, California, Mexico, Europe, even Japan. Crazy?”
“Not as crazy as investing money in plays,” I said.
“You know what, Ben? I would never have seen you if the old man hadn’t ordered me to.”
“You sorry?”
“Ben, I’m having one of the best times of my whole life. Besides, this play’s going to be a hit if I have to get everybody that owes me out there dragging people to the theater.”
“You ever been to Europe, Nick?”
I knew the answer before he said no.
“South America? Mexico?”
“No.”
“San Francisco?”
“I’ve never been west of Minnesota, and that was just to visit Mary’s folks. Maybe with my end of the profit from the show,” Nick said, “you know, maybe I should start a travel agency.”
“Nick,” I said, “you don’t need an agency to go anywhere. Just open the door.”
*
Mitch had told me he had a little surprise coming for me in the third act. I don’t like surprises, but we were less than a minute from the third-act curtain, and I hadn’t seen anything that wasn’t in the last performance I had caught out o
f town. I thought I must have missed it.
On stage, Christopher’s arms were being held by his friends. Ruth was coming over to deliver an obligatory slap to his face. Instead she kissed him on the mouth, then raised her hand to deliver the delayed slap, and instead kissed him again, and as his friends let go, his arms went around her. It was a stunning idea. Not a word of the play had been changed. That move, I later learned, had come to Mitch only two days earlier, and he and the actors had risked it.
The cast took three curtain calls before a standing audience. Ruth and Christopher came out together, holding hands, then Christopher alone, then Ruth alone, and that’s when the audience went wild. She was probably the largest woman on a stage since Kate Smith, and they were applauding her with affection the way they applaud Hepburn.
I thought of the investors who had run for cover. I must buy Harrison Stimson a ticket for this play.
The instinct to crow, I thought, is the instinct for vengeance. It was too early to crow. The critics got their turn next. And then God, with His weather. At least this early in the season it couldn’t snow for ten days straight as it once did so that not even the treasurer could get to the box office.
I glanced over at Nick and Mary. Though the cast was gone and the asbestos curtain down, they were still clapping like tourists.
All sorts of first-nighters were stopping to shake my hand. I moved each one to Nick, introducing him as my co-producer. What the hell, Nick was on a roll, blushing from the gush of compliments, thanking people, introducing Mary, soaring.
Where was Gordon? Out in the alley, Pinky holding his head? He knows about the party, doesn’t he?
I said to Nick, “The limo will take us to Elaine’s.” He looked as if I were interrupting his wedding night. There were still hands to shake.
“We ought to get there before the cast does, Nick.”
“Sure, sure,” he said, beaming at the last hand-shaker. I led him by the elbow.
In the lobby, the mob was thinning. Nick said, “How come the box office isn’t open to sell tickets?”
“Union hours,” I said.
“On opening night?”
“Any night. Don’t worry, there’ll be a line-up a block long before the box office opens tomorrow.”
Nick grinned. “Eager beavers.”
I shook my head. “Scalpers buying up the best seats.”
“Businessmen,” Nick said.
Outside, I spotted our limo among the four still in front of the theater. I let Nick and Mary have the back seat and parked Jane and me in the jump seats facing them.
As the driver plowed his way through the dense theater-district traffic, Nick said, “Come on, come on.”
“Relax, Nick,” I said, “the party doesn’t start officially until we get there.”
32
Nick
Jesus, I was happy as a kid maneuvering Mary through the crowd in the lobby. All that buzz was how terrific the play was. And now my first opening-night party.
When we got to Elaine’s there was this small crowd of gawkers on the sidewalk. How do they find out about things like this?
The driver helped Jane and Ben out, then folded up the jump seats so Mary and I could get out. Those people staring at us, I just beamed right back at them.
“Come on,” said Ben.
“Okay, okay.” I told the driver to come back for us in a couple of hours, and turned to go in when I saw Bert Rivers partway down the block coming toward me. He had a nerve. I didn’t care if anybody heard me. I said at the top of my voice, “What the fuck you doing here?”
Would you believe Bert moved his way through the gawkers and held his hand out to me, saying, “I’m sorry, Nick.”
“Sorry my ass. You deserted me. This is a private party,” I said. “You can’t come in.”
Bert’s ball-bearing eyes couldn’t make up their mind to look at me or the ground. I was looking at that asshole mouth of his, waiting for his stupid excuse when I heard Mary yelling, “Nick! Nick!” and I just turned my head when something in his hand roared into me. The street was dirty, I tried to keep standing, but I felt myself falling backwards to the curb, thinking my tux will be ruined for the party.
Comment by Mary
While I was sitting in the theater watching the actors, listening to the words coming at me fast, I felt like I was back in college, wanting to stuff everything into my head whether I understood it or not, keeping it like in a camel’s hump, stored for the future. I kept glancing at Nick, wondering how he was taking this highbrow stuff, I never expected he could get turned on by anything like this, but he was going like lights running around the rectangle of one of these Eighth Avenue marquees. It isn’t the play, I thought, it’s the excitement of winning.
In the limo, it was as if we were starting all over again when he took my hand.
I saw Bert Rivers going over to Nick before Nick saw him, but only by a second, and my reaction was so clear my head had an instant ache: Why is Bert here? Nick, I was thinking, is vulnerable when he’s high, and then in all that noise I swear I heard the crack as if I’d been waiting for it all my life. Then Nick fell back toward me. Before my hands could reach him, he was in the gutter, blood on his clean white shirt. Jane was holding me in her arms, but I screamed and screamed and screamed because I had wasted my life.
33
Ben
My first instinct was: chase Rivers. Louie’s voice stopped me. Go to Nick.
Nick was conscious. The red stain seeped through his white shirt, a large amoeba spreading. I looked around as if the presidential limousine should be there to speed us to the nearest hospital. This was the swank East Side of Manhattan, dozens and dozens of people around, and, of course, one of the worst places in the world to get help fast.
Nick seemed to be trying to form words. I knelt down. The bubbles from his breath were pink.
The gawkers crowded around, swilling the excitement. “Hey, move back!” I yelled. The one that didn’t move was the doorman of Elaine’s. “I called for an ambulance, Mr. Riller.”
“Thank you.” I motioned for him to lean down. “Don’t tell the people in there. It’ll spoil their party.” The man didn’t move so I reached into my pocket for a twenty and gave it to him. “I won’t say a word,” he said.
One minute it looked as if Nick’s eyes were pleading for life. I balled up my white silk scarf and held it tight against the wound. I had no idea what I was doing. This happening to Nick was my fault. I heard a siren. It’s my fault. Could it be an ambulance so fast? I looked up. It wasn’t an ambulance. It was a police car trying to get closer.
A cop got out and said, “He get hit by a car?”
“He was shot!” someone in the crowd yelled eagerly.
“You with him?” the cop asked me.
“I’m with him,” I said, words that would remain.
The other cop was out of the car now. “The ambulance takes forever,” he said.
Would the two cops have put Nick, bleeding, into the police car if he hadn’t been in a tuxedo in front of Elaine’s?
A cab took Mary and me and Jane to the hospital. The stretcher was already being wheeled inside. We followed through the doors marked EMERGENCY and saw a doctor and nurses gathered around Nick.
Jane had her arms around Mary.
The cop with the pad wanted to know the victim’s name.
“Nick Manucci,” I said, spelling Manucci.
“Address?”
“The Seagram Building.”
“I mean home address.”
I turned to Mary. She recited the address of the house that had burned down.
“Did you see what happened?” the cop asked me.
“The three of us saw it,” I said.
Jane nodded. Mary turned her head away.
“Can you give us a description of the perpetrator?”
“You mean the man who shot him,” I asked, “or the man who gave the orders?”
“Just what you saw.”
“You sure?”
“Sure I’m sure.”
I thought the cop was about to read me a lecture but we were interrupted by the doctor, who wanted to know if either of the women was Mr. Manucci’s wife.
Mary held a hand up as if in school.
I thought of all those people at Elaine’s. There was always mad gaiety until the first review was called in.
The doctor said, “He’ll be in surgery for some time, Mrs. Manucci.”
“Can I wait here?”
“It’s nerve-racking waiting here. Why don’t you go somewhere with your friends and leave a phone number. We’ll call you in about two or three hours.”
“Somewhere,” of course, was Elaine’s. I took Mary by one arm and Jane by the other.
“I can’t go,” Mary said.
“Sure you can. It’s what Nick would want.”
In the cab on the way over Jane asked if I wanted to call the party off.
“It’s too late,” I said, glancing at my watch. “They’re probably well under way.”
I looked at Mary. “Would you rather we went somewhere else?”
“They’re expecting us,” she said.
*
From amid the chatter and smoke, Mitch emerged saying, “What’d you guys do, walk? What was all that noise out there? Where’s Manucci?”
“He had to stop somewhere,” I said. And because my voice sounded like I was lying, I said, “He’ll be along.”
Mitch was about to say something when Spelvin, the play’s press rep, grabbed his arm and said, “It’s time for the Post.”
We followed Spelvin to the phone. “Yeah,” he kept saying as he scribbled things down on the back of an envelope. Spelvin’s handwriting was execrable, but the message was all over his face. When he hung up, he said, “A class act. Christopher Beebe terrific. Ruth Welch fantastic.”
“What about the play?” I said.
“Ably directed,” said Spelvin.
“Ably my ass,” said Mitch.
“What about the play?” I repeated.
Spelvin glanced at his notes. “‘Don’t mind the poetry,’ it says, ‘the audience loved it.’”
