by Marc Acito
“Rusty and Dustin stand by,” the stage manager says.
I feel someone nudge me. “You ready?”
“I’m sorry?” I say, leaning to hear better. Onstage, sirens wail.
“That shmatte on your head givin’ you trouble?”
“What?”
Someone takes my hand and places it on the loop on the back of a costume. “C’mon, follow me.”
“But—”
“Rusty and Dustin go,” the stage manager says.
As I feel myself lurch forward, I hear a voice behind me say, “What the fu…?”
Suddenly the ground disappears and I’m sliding down the slope to the floor, rolling across the stage, and then back up again. And because the Dustin costume is a fat suit, I’m basically skating from the knees down. It’s like being wheeled around in a box. A soggy, smelly box. Rusty whirls down the bowl again toward center stage, comes to an abrupt stop, and I smash into him, nearly taking us both down.
“What’s wrong with you?” he hisses. “Are you high?”
I’ve dreamed of performing on Broadway ever since I was nine, when I sang “Where Is Love?” in a school talent show. I’ve imagined this moment countless times. Perhaps it goes without saying this isn’t what I had in mind.
Then, just as abruptly, we’re off. Through a tunnel, up a bridge, around corners, down a bridge, through the bowl, into the audience, back onto the stage, Kong flying in and out, the Teeter-Totter teetering and tottering, lights flashing, music blaring, sirens wailing. It’s like being inside a pinball machine.
I never thought I’d say this, but thank God I’ve seen so many performances of Starlight Express.
I’m beginning to get the hang of it when I feel the Velcro at my temples loosen and the mesh shmatte slips over my eyes. I now have two choices: I can either continue being led around and skate blind, or I can let go of Rusty and pull the hood off so I can see.
I choose to see.
And what I see are federal agents waiting for me in the wings, flanked by a pair of uniformed cops. I need to get to the other side of the stage, so I turn around and skate up the Teeter-Totter, narrowly avoiding the actors heading down.
“Sorry, ’scuse me, pardon me…”
Once I’m up on the third level, I whip around the corner to take the Front-of-House Bridge to the other side. But no one’s supposed to be here. The gate is coming down; the bridge is rising.
And I’m going thirty miles an hour.
I duck under the gate and fly into the air.
Thirty-six
The audience gasps. I’m hanging thirty feet above the stage by the tips of my fingers.
Okay, this is my worst nightmare.
I try to gain more of a grip but there’s nothing to grab onto. The surface is Plexiglas. My hands are sweating. And I’ve got shoulder pads the size of car batteries.
Saint Jude, I think, if you save me, I’ll do whatever you want, I promise. I’ll go to Mass every day. I’ll become a priest. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Just don’t let me die onstage in a show by Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Suddenly time seems to slow and I feel as if I’m no longer in my body, like I’m outside watching myself summon every bit of strength I have, pulling, pulling, pulling myself up.
Nothing doing. I’m carrying a dead second-grader.
I need leverage. My only choice is to let go with my left hand and grab the railing. The orchestra continues sawing away because it’s on the fourth floor by the men’s room and obviously hasn’t gotten the message yet.
I count to three.
One.
Two.
Three.
Okay, I’ll count to three one more time.
One.
T…Oh, fuck it.
I let go with my left hand. The audience screams. The orchestra stops. My whole right arm shakes. I can’t hold on. I’m going to fall to the stage and become a quadriplegic typing with a pencil attached to my head.
You know how, when you’re faced with death, your whole life is supposed to pass before your eyes? It really happens. I read somewhere that this is your brain’s way of finding a solution to the problem, as if it were flipping through a file cabinet in your head for information. As I hang by my sweaty fingertips, I see the kids on the school bus in the third grade, the ones who called me Edward Fanny and held their noses as I went past, even though I explained to them the proper Italian pronunciation of my name and how it rhymes with Bonnie (after which they simply called me Bonnie Zanni, accompanied by mincing, effeminate gestures). Then I see the time in junior high that I panicked while climbing the rope in gym and the teacher—the teacher—called me a fag. I see my mother saying good-bye, shutting the shade in my room so I wouldn’t watch her car pull away, which I did anyway. I see the time in high school that Paula and I got mugged while in line at the TKTS booth and nobody did anything about it. I see myself running out of my house telling my father to call me when Dagmar is dead. I see me having a nervous breakdown at my Juilliard audition.
Nothing in my experience can help me here. My entire life has been misspent. I’ve been on the wrong track. In the space of a millisecond I resolve that, should I survive, I will dedicate my life to something more meaningful than my own ambition.
And then I feel the railing.
I currently weigh 155 pounds, perhaps closer to 160 since I stopped working as a party motivator. Okay, maybe 165. And the costume must weigh at least 30 pounds. So it’s not unreasonable to think that I am pulling up somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 pounds using my right arm. And I’m left-handed. That would be like a pairs skater lifting a quarterback above his head.
Like a mother whose child is trapped under a car, I somehow summon the strength to lift myself up just enough to wedge my chin onto the bridge. With a samurai scream, I let go with my right hand and grab the railing, inch-by-inching my body onto the bridge. Once my shoulders clear it’s pretty fast, like a baby exiting the birth canal.
The audience goes nuts, cheering, screaming, stomping. I stagger to my feet and feel the bridge lowering into place. The gate raises and I skate to the other side.
It is my first Broadway ovation. God, I hope it’s not my last.
I sail down the Teeter-Totter, my heart pounding in every cell of my body. Never have I felt so alive. I am one with the universe. I am the starlight.
I am so out of here.
Sliding past the cheering cast on the stage, I zip onto the stage-right audience ramp, wave to the crowd, and jump off the ramp, adding a sprained ankle to my dislocated shoulders. Then I am out the door and into the lobby. I stumble down what feels like a thousand steps, tumble out of the theater and into the street.
I hear a police siren.
Thank God I have the presence of mind to head east on a westbound street, so the car can’t follow me. Adrenaline soaring, I skate down Fifty-first Street, past the Nowhere subway station, Cats, Radio City, Rockefeller Center, St. Patrick’s, and finally through the revolving door of the Waldorf equals Astoria.
Two parties compete for attention on opposite sides of the Park Avenue lobby, neither of which would welcome a roller-skating choo-choo, so I’m relieved when I see Natie.
“What the—”
“C’MON!” I shout, grabbing him by the hand and dragging him to the elevators.
“Where have you—”
“I don’t have time to explain. I need you to get questioned by the police.”
“What?”
The elevator doors open and I push him in. “Here, put this on,” I say, peeling off the costume.
“Why?”
“The cops’ll be here any second to arrest me, and I’ve got to meet Chad.” I plop down on the floor and untie my skates, the costume bunching around my thighs. “You’ve got to be me.”
“I don’t wanna get arrested.”
“You have to stall them,” I say, yanking off my skates. “You owe me.”
“What? After all
I’ve done for you?”
“You mean done to me. If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be in this mess.”
He gives a marsupial sniff. “Is that how you really feel?”
“Yes.” I step out of the costume.
“Okay.” He shrugs, then bends down to take the outfit in his hands. “Jeez, this thing smells like a zoo.”
I arrive on the eighteenth floor looking like I was fished out of the East River. In the marble rotunda stand Ziba and Hung, both dressed in Party Planner Black.
“What happened to you?” Hung says.
“Where’s Willow?” I pant.
“She’s with Paula and Marcus.”
“Get her. She needs to fill in for Natie.”
A shadow of worry crosses Ziba’s face. “What happened to Nathan?”
“He’s filling in for me.”
“Then who are you being?”
“Myself.”
“What?”
Hung returns with Willow, who is nearly unrecognizable with her raven wig and tan makeup, so much so that she could have played Mrs. Almost Shah, had the role not already been cast.
“Wow,” Willow says, her eyes widening at the sight of me. “Talk about a sweater.”
I take her by the shoulders. “Will, I need you to fill in for Natie and keep an eye out for the feds.”
“But I’m supposed to escort Marcus and Paula.”
“They’ve already got a bodyguard. That’s enough.”
The fact is, Marcus and Paula never really needed Willow to escort them. As gifted an actress as she is, we didn’t want to assign her to any essential task. But Willow’s a loyal friend, so we found her a role in our sting operation. Because that’s what friends do.
I quickly explain what’s happened to Natie and that she needs to patrol the lobby for wholesome Mormony-looking men with haircuts above their ears. It’s an extra precaution, but I have to be certain I connect with the feds when I bring Chad down to the lobby after getting his confession.
If I get his confession.
Ziba turns to me. “Where’s the tape recorder?”
I pull it out of my jeans, click it on, and stick it back in.
“And here I thought you were happy to see me,” Hung says.
I arrive downstairs just in time to see the back end of a train being dragged out of the lobby by two uniformed policemen. I smooth my hair and shake out my sweaty shirt. Judging from the age of the partygoers darting in and out of the ballrooms, there seem to be dueling bash mitzvahs going on, and I wonder if either is a La Vie de la Fête event. I miss being La Vie de la Fête.
I’m craning my neck to get a better look at the rococo interior of the south ballroom when a voice behind me says:
“What are you doing here?”
I turn around.
No. This cannot be happening to me. I must have done something awful in a past life (like been the Aztec priest who ripped the heart out of all those people) to deserve this.
“Lizzie,” I say in the tone of someone who just got socks for Christmas. With severed feet in them.
“Fuck you, fuckwad,” she says. “It’s your fault I hafta go to therapy.” She glances at her companion, a bovine creature with that sausage-y look prepubescent girls sometimes get before they sprout boobs. She wears an aquamarine dress with a large white satin bow, making her resemble a gift box from Tiffany. “No offense, Marcy.”
Lizzie sneers at me. “I’m gonna tell the management to throw your ass out.” She starts to march away and I reach for her.
“Wait—”
“DON’T TOUCH ME!”
Several people in the lobby look up like prairie dogs.
“Okay, okay,” I say, holding up my hands. “Listen, if you keep quiet I, uh…I’ve got a secret for you. I’m on my way upstairs to meet someone very important.”
Lizzie tugs indecorously on the sleeves of her taffeta dress, a pair of paper lanterns. “Who?”
“If I tell you, you can’t tell anyone. Promise?”
“Yeah, yeah. Who is it?”
“Bruce Springsteen.”
“BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN!” Marcy screams.
More prairie dogs.
“Shh, shh.”
“Oh, my God, oh, my God,” Marcy says, flapping her hands in front of her face in that inexplicable way Miss America does when she wins. “I’m freaking out, I am freak. Ing. Out.” She pulls an inhaler out of her purse.
“She loves Bruce Springsteen,” Lizzie says, patting her friend’s back. “When he got married, she was out of school for a week.”
“Was not.”
“Was too.”
“I had mono.”
I see Chad stroll through the revolving door.
“He’s rehearsing upstairs,” I say. “If you calm down, you can watch.”
They grab each other’s arms and jump up and down. Then, like two chimps, they start picking at each other, fixing each other’s hair and outfits.
Chad spies me from the bottom of the stairs and gives a politician’s wave—friendly, but not too effusive, yet it still makes me swoon. As he trots up the stairs like he’s the homecoming king, I remind myself that he’s helping to bankroll the Moral Majority.
He shakes my hand, clapping me on the shoulder with the other. “It’s great to see you, man.”
Prick. Slimeball. Sleaze.
“You, too!”
And the Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in an Entrapment goes to…Edward Zanni.
“Sorry about how I look,” I say. “I got locked out of my apartment.” I’m supposedly introducing him to the former crown prince of Iran and I’m apologizing.
“You always look great,” he says, winking.
Fuckwad.
I introduce him to our dates, the psycho stalker and the neurotic bed wetter.
“Lizzie’s dad is Shel Sniderman,” I say, “the TV producer.”
“Oh, of course,” Chad says, smiling and nodding.
Liar. Phony. Jerk.
“Do you work with Bruce?” Lizzie asks.
“Bruce?” Chad says, giving me a look like, The shah’s name is Bruce?
As I lead them to the elevator, I explain that Springsteen is performing at a party being thrown by my friend Ziba, and it’s okay to watch him rehearse as long as we stay out of the way.
Way out of the way.
Ziba’s waiting for us on the eighteenth floor. I make introductions, Chad looking at her the way men always do, Lizzie acting timid and giggly, providing a welcome change from her usual behavior as the miniature Lucrezia Borgia.
We head down the hall to the Starlight Roof.
Hung stands in front of the door flanked by a black-clad bodyguard, one of the two remaining cast members of The Music Man? still speaking to Marcus. Hung puts a finger to his lips and lets us in.
With its two-story windows offering a panoramic view of Midtown, the Art Deco room evokes an Astaire-Rogers fantasy; that is, if a man in a headband and a sleeveless T-shirt muscled his way onto the scene.
Chad looks as excited as a little boy seeing Superman, and I immediately appreciate the wisdom of having Almost Bruce open for the Almost Shah, “Blinded by the Light” acting as an aural aperitif. Just as Barbara Cook convinced us she was a not-too-sharp lass in love with a fisherman, the power of suggestion leads Chad to believe he’s watching a rock ’n’ roll legend. After this excitement, he should believe he’s meeting royalty.
I look at Doug gripping the mike in his hand, his bicep bunching, and it makes me want to swing from a trellis and sing “Hopelessly Devoted to You.”
There’s just no getting over him.
We stay for “Born to Run” then Ziba summons us into the hall, leaving Lizzie and Marcy inside.
“That was fucking amazing,” Chad says. “Do you know what people would pay to see that?”
Usually a $2 cover charge.
“Come,” Ziba says, glancing at her watch. “We mustn’t keep His Majesty waiting.”
We line
up outside the elevator, clearing our throats and smoothing our clothes. The bell rings, the door opens, and a bodyguard appears, followed by a gorgeous couple looking poised and imperial.
It’s not Marcus and Paula.
“Your Majesty,” Ziba croaks, her voice breaking like a bar mitzvah boy. “I thought you weren’t coming.”
It’s a good thing I already stink. That way, no one will notice if I wet my pants.
The couple smiles at her, yet still look like they belong on postage stamps: Mr. Almost Shah, with his hawklike profile; Mrs. Almost Shah, with her feline beauty. They each kiss Ziba on both cheeks; then the prince says, “We weren’t, but we heard that Bruce Springsteen is going to play. Is it true?”
“Uh, yes, but the party doesn’t actually start until—”
The next elevator rings.
I widen my eyes at her, the Internationally Recognized Signal for “Get the real Almost Royalty out of here before the fake ones show up.”
The doors open.
“Actuallyhe’srehearsingdownthehallway,” Ziba says. “Wouldyouliketoseehim?”
“Oh, yes,” replies the princess. “We love the Boss.”
Behind them, a Juilliard-trained bodyguard appears. I give a frantic wave to signal him back into the elevator.
The princess stops and stares at me. “Are you all right?”
I regard my flailing arm. “Palsy,” I say.
The royal couple passes.
“Should we go with them?” Chad whispers.
“No!” I say. “I mean, that’s not the prince.”
“It’s not?”
“That’s the prince’s brother. The Almost Almost Shah.”
Ziba returns, as does the elevator. This time the guard peeks his head out like a bird in a cuckoo clock.
I give a quick beckoning gesture with my arm.
“You really ought to get that checked,” Chad says.
I stifle my arm as Marcus and Paula appear, looking poised and imperial. While they don’t actually resemble their real-life counterparts—no one would put Marcus’s mottled face on a stamp, and Paula’s well-fed figure suggests the princess has been inflated with an air hose—I’m struck by how they’ve captured the self-possessed air of people they’ve never met. Marcus finally gets to play a king and Paula a leading lady. They seem to roll toward us as if on casters.
