by Marc Acito
He stops. “You don’t remember?”
This is almost physically painful for me to admit. Three years I’ve been waiting for this moment, imagining it and reimagining it in my mind—the feel of his lips parting and yielding to mine, his skin against my skin, his heavy manhood in my hand. Or possibly hands. And now I can’t remember anything beyond, “Oh, Bruce.” It makes me want to run around in circles screaming like the crazy homeless guy who hangs out across the street from my apartment wearing a colander on his head.
I swallow, trying to moisten my mouth. “Do you?”
He stares at the crooked sidewalk. “No.” He looks up, his sky blue eyes cloudy. “But whatever it was, it can’t happen again.”
Yes, it can. It will. It must. Inside me, Jennifer Holliday wails:
You’re gonna luuuuh-uhuh-uuuuuh-huh-huh-uhuhuhuuuuuve…
(gasp)
…meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh.
Unlike Dreamgirls, no intermission follows, forcing me to cope with my roiling emotions in the time-honored method of Miss Effie White and thousands of other spurned lovers: I go home and eat a half gallon of ice cream in one sitting.
Luckily, I don’t have much time to sit around feeling maudlin and showstopping. The following night is my Beautonics® gig, so I suit up in my new Brooks Brothers uniform, a gray-blue single-breasted two-button suit that makes me look like an insurance salesman, and show up at the Waldorf=Astoria, an atmosphere so swank that even the pissy punctuation of the hotel’s name intimidates me. Much as Einstein probably had a blackboard’s worth of notation to prove e=mc2, the answer to what makes Waldorf equal Astoria is not for mere commoners to comprehend.
I tread down the hallway of the fourth floor, past photos of former guests like Charles de Gaulle, Winston Churchill, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, wondering how I’m going to pull this off. Jokes, real estate, electronics, and sports, I tell myself. Jokes, real estate, electronics, and sports. I touch my hair to make sure it’s still in place and am relieved that I slicked it back with so much mousse it feels shellacked. Adjusting the nonprescription reading glasses I’m wearing to look older, I round the corner into the Louis XVI suite.
The room is what you’d expect—a blue-and-gold baroque fantasy of padded silk walls and heavy velour drapes—but what surprises me are the guests. It’s not like I imagined a beauty-product company would only employ people in black turtlenecks with severe wedge haircuts, but now I understand why Chad had me buy the gray-blue single-breasted two-button suit. I’m looking at a roomful of my fathers. From the Midwest.
This is never going to work, I think. I don’t know how to talk to my own father, let alone a roomful of them.
I glance past murals of French châteaus and immediately pick out the stealth guests: There’s Zach, circulating with apparent ease, all backslappy and how-ya-doin’, while Courtenay, Kate, and Robyn effortlessly command the attention of several middle-aged middle managers. The female motivators have it easy, because these guys neither expect nor want them to act like businesspeople; it’s enough to look pretty and feign interest in what they have to say, which is a skill in and of itself. The only reason to keep up any pretense at all is so the out-of-towners don’t think they’re hookers.
Nearby, a cluster of my fathers listen to another tell a joke.
“So there’s this new colonel at the Foreign Legion,” the guys says. “And, after a coupla weeks in the desert, he asks his sergeant, ‘What do our soldiers do to satisfy their physical urges?’
“And the sergeant says, ‘Well, sir, we’ve got a camel in the stable.’
“‘A camel?’
“‘Yes, sir.’
“This sounds pretty strange to the colonel, but it’s been a while, so he figures, Why not? The sergeant brings him to the stable, and the colonel steps up on a stool, drops his pants, and fucks the shit out of this camel. And when he’s done, he pulls up his pants and says to the sergeant, ‘So, is that how the enlisted men do it?’
“And the sergeant says, ‘Actually, sir, usually they just ride the camel into town.’”
When the laughter subsides, I say, “I’ve got one,” and the men turn around and see me for the first time. I smile, trying to be the Life of the Party, albeit in a backslappy, how-ya-doin’, insurance-salesman way. “This wino is pan-hassling on the subway, right, and he comes up to this businessman and says, ‘Loan me a dollar?’ And the businessman says, ‘ “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”—William Shakespeare.’ And the wino says, ‘ “Eat shit and die, motherfucker”—David Mamet.’”
They stare at me like I suggested boiling babies.
“So,” I say, “how about that real estate, huh?”
Nothing. My forehead starts to rain.
“Yeah,” I continue, “it sure is, uh, real.”
I try switching topics, but apparently my little anecdote about how I can never tell which side my cassette player is playing isn’t the kind of electronics discussion these guys have either. I escape to the bar.
I’m fortifying myself with beer when a hedgehog of a man sidles up to me. “Hi, there,” the hedgehog says, used-car-salesman friendly. “Gus Gunderson.”
“Eddie Sanders,” I mumble. I suppose I should come up with a different name when I’m not being MTV’s hottest new veejay, but Sandra says it’s important to keep your party aliases close to your own name, so you remember to answer to them. Plus, I forgot.
He cocks his head to hear me better. “Eddie Zander? Like the football player?”
And, just like in a comic strip, a lightbulb switches on in my brain. “Shore as yer born,” I drawl. “He’s mah daddy.”
“No!”
“If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’.”
“Well, how do you like that.”
“I like it vurry much, thank yew.”
He slaps his knee and laughs. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen someone actually slap his knee.
“Y’know, I saw your dad play…”
And he’s off, relating some incomprehensible tale of running, passing, blocking, and tackling, which gives me time to hastily cobble together a plausible autobiography for Eddie Zander, Jr. That way, I’m ready when he asks the inevitable:
“Did you play ball like your dad?”
There’s no way I can fake my way through that conversation. “No, sir,” I say. “I wish I could’ve. I was born without kneecaps.”
It’s the best I could do on short notice.
“I thought all babies were born without kneecaps.”
Shit. Who knew? No wonder babies’ legs look like sausages. “That’s true,” I say, “but mine never grew in.” I put my foot up on the rung of the bar stool, leaning my forearm on my thigh in a folksy, Western fashion. All I need is a lasso and some chewin’ tabacky. “One hundred percent plastic,” I say, tapping my knee. “Mah daddy said I wuz the bionic boy. That’s why he got into the artificial limb business. Once he said ta me, ‘Sprout…’—that’s whut he calls me, Sprout—‘dreams only come true in dreams. The sooner you learn that the better.’”
Gus Gunderson gives a sage nod. “So what brings you here?”
“I’m fixin’ to take over Daddy’s business when he retires, but he wants me to get out in the world first. Y’know, get some seasoning. So I became a sales rep for this here company.”
I’m about to extol the virtues of the Beautonics® product line, most especially their Ready-Set-Go Spray Mousse, when Gus Gunderson puts a paternal arm around my shoulder and says, “Let me introduce you around.” He waves to a man across the room. “Hey, Ted, you’ll never guess who this is.”
Before the evening is over, I’ve met an alphabet soup of executives—PR, VP, GM, IT—all of whom get the same gleam in their eye when they hear Eddie Zander’s name. In an instant they’re twelve-year-old boys, and soon I’ve got a group of them around me as if I were at a bash mitzvah. Mostly the guys just want to talk, to share with me the seemingly magic qualities Eddie Zander had on the field. And how
their innocence ended when Zander suffered his tragic buttock injury. A couple of them even get dewy-eyed about it. I assure them that my father went on to live a fulfilling life, even with only one ass cheek.
Finally, after several drinks (and several hints that I need guidance in my fledgling sales career), Gus motions me aside with a boozy wave and mutters, “Now, son, don’t tell anyone I told you this….”
Fifteen
I ride down in the elevator with my new friends, whom I’m eager to dump so I can call Chad. But they cling to me like socks from a dryer, unaware that they’re talking and laughing too loud. I glance around at the ballrooms flanking each side of the lobby, concerned we might be making a spectacle of ourselves, when a voice calls out:
“Eddie! Eddie, it’s me!”
I wheel around and there’s Lizzie Sniderman, rising from an overstuffed chair by some potted palms, wearing a leather bomber jacket with a plaid miniskirt and combat boots.
I keep walking.
“EDDIE!”
Shit. Doesn’t this kid have parents?
Gus Gunderson turns around. “Is that little girl calling your name?”
“What little girl?”
“That one.”
“Oh, her. That’s, uh, my sister.”
I wave, giving Lizzie the Internationally Recognized Signal for “Don’t come over here, you crazed harpy, or you’ll fuck up everything.”
She gets the message. Unfortunately, Gus Gunderson doesn’t. “A sister!” he shouts. “Do ya’ hear that, boys! That’s Eddie Zander’s little girl.”
They advance on her like they’re a pack of dogs and she’s a hamburger that just dropped on the floor. Okay, I think, I can do this. I actually have a sister. She’s a drug-addled craps dealer in Reno, Nevada, but acting’s all about making substitutions. Faced with the collision of my British and Oklahoman alter egos, I simply put my arm around Lizzie and keep my mouth shut.
“Well, hello, there, little lady,” Gus says. “What’s your name?”
Lizzie seems distracted by my hand on her shoulder, probably because I’m cutting off her circulation. “Lizzie?” she says, like she’s not sure.
“Lizzie! Why, you’re the spitting image of your dad.”
She gives a metallic grin. “You know my dad?”
“Of course. We all do. We’re big fans.”
“Really? You’ve seen his movies?”
“Movies?”
“Debs Behind Bars and Debs Behind Bars Two: Muffy’s Revenge. They’re mostly on cable, but they’re real popular in Germany.”
Gus turns to me. “I thought you said he sold prosthetic limbs.”
“What’s a prosthetic limb?” says Lizzie.
Suddenly they all go silent, undoubtedly wondering why Eddie Zander’s daughter doesn’t know what he does for a living.
“Would you excuse us?” I say in what I hope is an Anglohoman hybrid. I pull Lizzie a few steps away, saying, “Listen, poppet, be a dearie and wait for me over there. I just need to talk with these gentl’mun about a wee bit a’ business.”
“Why’d you say my dad sold—”
“I didn’t. They’re just pissed.”
“At what?”
“No, pet, pissed means drunk.”
“Oh. Ya’ mean, like, in English?”
“Yes. Like in English. And some of those blokes fancy young girls. So just wait for me by the door.”
Lizzie scuffs down the steps to the front door, giving the alleged child molesters murderous looks. I saunter back, maybe just a little bowlegged for effect.
I’m sure this situation will help me in my acting, that it will someday make a great anecdote for a profile in the New York Times Sunday Arts and Leisure section about how this year’s Tony Award winner first got his start, but right now it’s got me more nervous than a maid at the Helmsley Palace.
“I’m shore sorry you had to see that,” I drawl. “Poor thang got dropped on her head when she was little and she ain’t been right since.”
They all shake their heads, tsk-tsking. “That’s awful,” says Gus Gunderson.
“Yeah, bless her heart. I need to get her outside. Otherwise she’s liable to start barkin’ like a dog.”
I say good night, then dash down the steps, shoving Lizzie through the revolving door.
“What are you doing here?” I say, the night air slapping me in the face.
“I came to see you.”
“How’d you know where I was?”
“I called your apartment. I mean, your flat. Some bloke told me.” She pulls a pack of cigarettes out of her purse. “You want one?” she says. “They’re Silk Cut. I had me dad get ’em from the duty-free shop.”
I find it really irritating that she’s affecting an English accent. I mean, it’s one thing for work, but this is just pretentious. “I don’t smoke.”
“Me, neither,” she says. “But these are British.”
“Do your parents know where you are?”
“I don’t even know where they are. Me dad lives in Beverly Hills, y’know.”
“You said.”
“And me mum is always at work or at parties for work. I just take the phone off the hook so she thinks I’m talking to Marcy all night, which is what I usually do anyway, because Marcy’s so fucked-up.”
As she trails me heading west, Lizzie shares some of the more sordid details from Marcy’s life—how her dad had an affair with the nanny, how her mom threw all his suits off the terrace onto East Seventy-fourth Street, and how Marcy goes to therapy three times a week to deal with her habitual bed-wetting. All of this is interspersed with a running commentary on the sights we pass and how they figure into the rich, eventful life of Lizzie Sniderman: Saks (“It’s okay, but I do all my shopping downtown”), St. Patrick’s (“Marcy and I went once and I dared her to drink the holy water”), Rockefeller Center and Radio City (“I used to go a long time ago, but it’s strictly Bridge and Tunnel”).
I stop on the corner of Broadway, where Cats is playing Now and Forever, which sounds more like a threat than a promise.
“You should catch a cab here,” I say. There’s no way I want to be responsible for a thirteen-year-old in Hell’s Kitchen. My neighborhood’s so tough even the rats are armed.
“Why don’t you come over?” she says. “I’ve got some really trippy Kate Bush records. Have you heard her? There’s, like, whales on ’em and stuff. We could turn down the lights, have a glass of wine….”
As if I didn’t have enough problems, now I’m being propositioned by the Lenox Hill Lolita. I shove her in a cab and hurry home. According to the genuine fake Movado I bought on the street, it’s 11:05 Edward Standard Time, which means it’s actually 10:54 and not too late to call Chad to tell him my inside information: Beautonics® newest blow-dryer, the Beau-Sonic 2000, is being recalled because it overheats and sets consumers’ hair on fire. It’s less of a blow-dryer than a blowtorch. I dash up the four flights to what I’ve come to think of as Sanderland, only to find a note on the door:
Be quiet. I’m baking.
I’m not sure what the latter has to do with the former. Natie might as well have written, Be quiet. I’m knitting. Or Be quiet. I’m sandblasting. And since when does he bake? I unlock the door and am immediately intoxicated by the aroma of vanilla, accompanied by the sight of Natie tiptoeing toward me, raising a finger to his lips like he’s Elmer Fudd hunting wabbits. “Don’t let the door ba—”
Behind me, the door bangs shut.
“Never mind,” he says. He shuffles back to the kitchen, his slippers scuffing against the floor. Natie’s the only person my age I know who wears slippers. “I have very soft feet,” he says.
I follow him into the kitchen, where he opens the oven door. “Good,” he says, “it didn’t fall.”
“That only happens on TV.”
“That’s what you think. You didn’t grow up with Fran Nudelman cooking.”
Actually, I did. When my mom left town I pretty much lived at th
e Nudelmans’. Fran followed the sacred Jewish tradition of taking perfectly edible meat and vegetables and torturing them until they gave up every last nutrient.
“What are you making?”
“Banana-nut upside-down cake. Eddie’s mother sent the recipe.”
“She did? When?”
“In 1965. I found it in his journal.” He hands me a sallowed newspaper clipping from the Des Moines Register.
“Natie.”
“What? Don’t look at me like that. As coexecutor of the estate, it’s practically my responsibility.”
“You’re not the coexecutor.”
“De facto coexecutor. And who else is gonna read it? His little old white-haired mother in Ohio?”
“Maybe.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got two words for her: Butt. Love.” He fans himself with the book.
“Then why are you reading it?” I ask. “Is there something I should know?”
He gives me a look like just-’cuz-I-like-musicals-and-can’t-get-laid-doesn’t-mean-I’m-gay. “There’s a lot of fascinating theater stuff in here.”
“Like…?”
“Like after Eddie left The Sound of Music, he did this show about homeless people called Subways Are for Sleeping. I know. Poverty! The Musical. Anyway, the show was a dog, but it almost broke even because the producer, David Merrick, was a fucking mastermind. He found seven guys with the same names as the theater critics of the seven daily newspapers, gave ’em free seats, then took out a full-page ad in the Herald-Tribune with quotes like, “Best Musical of the Century!” Natie smiles, his squishy face like a baby’s butt. “Genius!”
I sit down at the table, pushing aside Natie’s textbooks (something called Quantum Microeconomics: Structural Theory of Discrete Data and Econometric Applications, as well as a phone-book-sized tome simply titled Psychology) and study Eddie’s personal effects, including a stack of souvenir record albums from industrial shows like General Motors’ Diesel Dazzle and American Standard’s The Bathrooms Are Coming, as well as a collection of 1960s soft-porn physique magazines like The Grecian Guild Pictorial and Manorama.
