My Life

by Maryrose Wood

  She hung up the phone and turned to Philip. “Can you believe the cheek?” she said. “That lot could’ve bought out the whole theatre any night of the week for the past three years. Now that there’s not so much as a barstool left to sell, they call looking for a handout. Even if I had a ticket I’d say no, but I don’t, of course.” She eyed him suspiciously. “That’s not why you’re here, is it, dear?”

  “No! I know. It’s completely sold out,” Philip said quickly. This may have been the first time in his life he felt in the same boat as Donald Trump.

  “ ’Tis,” she said, adding another packet of sugar to her tea. “Why are you here, then? Selling chocolates for school, is it?”

  “I would like to speak to Mr. Stephenson,” Philip said, trying to sound businesslike. “It’s a financial matter.”

  “Aren’t they all, darlin’, aren’t they all,” she clucked, punching buttons on her phone. “Hello, Mr. Stephenson’s office—ah, not you again! Now listen, you barrel of monkeys, I just turned down the crown prince of Arabia, what makes you think I’ll say yes to you? Hang on, then.” She pressed another button. “Mr. Stephenson, Nathan Lane is on line one.” Miss O’Malley turned to Philip with a sigh. “It’s the funny ones who are saddest in real life, you know.”

  Philip didn’t know, and he was sure he didn’t want to. “I have some money to invest,” he said. “Will I be able to see Mr. Stephenson soon?”

  “What are you, lad, fourteen? Fifteen?”

  “Sixteen,” said Philip.

  “Stevie was twelve when he produced his first show, did you know that?” Miss O’Malley sipped her tea. “If you’ve got money to invest, he’ll see you. Office policy. It’s ‘on principle,’ he says, but it’s more of a superstition if you ask me.” She glanced at her phone. “Pardon me—when Mr. Lane’s on the phone I’ve got orders to interrupt after two minutes, otherwise it goes on the whole blessed day.”

  Miss O’Malley stood, smoothed her skirt, and walked on a pair of formidably high-heeled pumps to the door of Mr. Stephenson’s office. She rapped sharply, twice, and opened the door a crack.

  Philip heard a muffled roar from inside Stephenson’s office. Rage or laughter, he couldn’t tell.

  “ ‘Like printing [expletive] money!’ Can you believe that joker! But that’s you, baby, the human printing press. Hang on, Eileen is telling me something—”

  “It’s time to leave for your doctor’s appointment, Mr. Stephenson,” she shouted, too loudly.

  Stephenson waved the phone in Miss O’Malley’s direction before putting it back to his ear. “Hear that? Gotta run. Love you too. Now start printing!” Stephenson slammed the phone down and wiped his brow. “Comedians! They break your heart.”

  “There’s a boy to see you,” Miss O’Malley said. “With money to invest.”

  “A boy with money?” Stephenson smiled. “Show him in.”

  The CD clicked forward to track fourteen—this was it, Emily’s favorite song. Emily reached for her Chex, but the bag had slid off the bed and onto the floor. It probably had spilled, which made her reluctant to look, so she didn’t. She just burrowed more deeply into the pillows.

  In the first act of Aurora, “Never Be Enough” was an upbeat song of love triumphant over all. One intermission and several broken hearts later, Aurora was a different woman. Now she knew that all her dreams wouldn’t necessarily come true. Hence, the second-act reprise: a slow, sad version of the happy, peppy song everyone had liked so much in the first act.

  How can ballad tempo and a minor key make the same song mean something completely different? Emily wondered. And why do you never hear happy reprises of sad songs?

  As the music filled her room, Emily closed her eyes and had a kind of waking dream. She was onstage at the Rialto Theatre, singing her heart out, when she looked out at the audience and spotted a pale, crying teenage girl with long dark hair, clutching her program in her lap.

  Poor kid, dream-Emily thought as she strode across the stage in a circle of light. This kind of light was called a follow-spot, because no matter where you went on stage, the spotlight followed you, like a bubble of love.

  Poor kid. I’m gonna sing this one for her. And in her dream, Emily onstage sang her heart out for Emily in the audience, and it was happy and sad at the same time.

  I’m having a dream ballet, thought Emily as she dozed off. Just like in Oklahoma. . . .

  Philip’s meeting with Stevie Stephenson only lasted a few minutes.

  “In the first place,” Stephenson said sternly, once Philip had managed to stammer out his offer, “five thousand dollars is not a real amount of money.”

  Philip was bewildered; it seemed like an enormous sum to him. “Okay,” he said, sounding shaky. “How much is?”

  “I don’t know!” shouted Stephenson. “But I know it when I see it! And in the second place, do you honestly think I need MORE investors for the Lanerick Rep? This is a COUP! It is the INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY OF A LIFETIME! Only a very, very select few, handpicked by ME, were PERMITTED to put money into this project! And those people will make a FORTUNE. And they will OWE ME FOR LIFE.”

  In fact, it had taken all the self-discipline Stephenson possessed not to put up all the money (and thus grab all the profit) himself, but he wasn’t an idiot. If he shut his best investors out of this, a surefire hit, where would they and their checkbooks be when he wanted to produce his next show? One that, unlike the Lanerick Rep, had an actual chance of failure?

  There could only be one Lanerick Rep in a career, Stephenson knew this. He’d peaked, and the trick would be to make it last. He harbored fantasies of Lane and Broderick growing old together, still playing at the Rialto—they could do a gay spin on The Gin Game, perhaps, with Broderick in the Katharine Hepburn role. Or a senior-citizen version of The Odd Couple—they’d call it The Old Couple.

  The Old Couple, ha! That would get a laugh out of Eileen; he’d have to remember to tell her when he was done yelling at this kid with the piggy bank. Tantrums were to Stephenson what meditation was to a monk: a daily cleansing practice. He believed his temper was other people’s problem; his blood pressure clocked in at an enviable 110 over 60, and he slept like a baby every night of his life.

  “Does that mean you don’t need any more money?” Philip asked hesitantly. Math whiz that Philip was, he was regretting not having done more research on the financial structures of theatrical producing. Clearly it was more complicated than he’d imagined.

  “NO!” screamed Stephenson. He seemed to relish the volume of his own voice. “I mean, YES, I don’t need any more money! Didn’t you see The Producers? You can only sell a hundred percent of anything! And the Lanerick Rep is SOLD!”

  Philip, of course, had not seen The Producers. But he had seen Aurora, a lot. And the money for all those hundreds of tickets—Grandma Rose’s money, Emily’s college money, her bat mitzvah money, for heaven’s sake!—had been going, at least in part, into the pockets of this nutcase.

  He was glad Emily hadn’t come.

  20

  “A TRIP TO THE LIBRARY”

  She Loves Me

  1963. Music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick,

  book by Joe Masteroff

  Emily’s house was still empty when she woke up.

  Where was everyone? It was six-thirty; they should be sitting down to dinner by now. Emily wandered from room to room, quietly at first. Then she started calling out.

  “Mom? Dad? Grandma?”

  Emily’s brain was still foggy from her nap, so she endured a full minute and a half of mounting anxiety before she thought of calling Mrs. Pearl’s cell phone. (Mr. Pearl refused to carry one; he said they would only be truly useful once they could actually beam you up.)

  As she grabbed the phone, her chest filled with dread, and the horrible lesson of last times came rushing back into her mind. Maybe they’re never coming back. Maybe this morning was the last time I’ll ever see my family, maybe something horrible has happened, maybe
maybe maybe—

  The call went through. Her mother’s cell was ringing, but it was also echoing somewhere in the house. Emily listened and walked, following the sound. Up the stairs, into the bathroom—nope, back into the master bedroom—now it was very close.

  On Emily’s phone the ringing stopped and her mother’s voice spoke, tinny and overexcited.

  “Hi, it’s Laurey Pearl! Please leave a message after the beep.”

  There. Mrs. Pearl’s cell phone was lying on the carpet, next to her treadmill, which was paused but still turned on. A pair of headphones was plugged into the portable CD player Mrs. Pearl used when she did her workout (Mr. Pearl had wanted to get her an iPod for her birthday, but Mrs. Pearl pooh-poohed it as an extravagance. What would they think, should they ever find out, of the small fortune Emily had spent on theatre tickets? Emily couldn’t bear to imagine.)

  A low, insect-like hum was coming out of the headphones. Emily picked them up and listened—

  I believe in you!

  I believe in you!

  It was Matthew Broderick, in How to Succeed.

  Emily turned off the treadmill. Something was horribly, horribly wrong.

  The thought of a crud like Stephenson spending Emily’s money on monogrammed shirts and lunches at Sardi’s was making Philip really angry.

  Not blind, storming-around angry—if he’d been that kind of angry, Philip never would have noticed the file folder marked “Final Box Office Statements” lying on Miss O’Malley’s desk when Stephenson finally threw him out of the office (“Now go home and join the DRAMA CLUB!” were Stephenson’s parting, apoplectic words).

  No, this was the kind of deep, righteous anger that was the prerequisite for superhero powers. It gave you laser-sharp vision and ninja invisibility; it made you deft of hand and fleet of foot, not to mention somewhat unscrupulous.

  Miss O’Malley was at the hot water dispenser making herself a fresh cup of tea. Her desk had plenty of paper on it; if some disappeared it would not immediately be apparent. Certainly Philip would have enough time to get downstairs to the street and disappear into the throngs of tourists and playgoers, hucksters and working folk. For a boy on the lam, Times Square was one big human shield.

  How convenient, Philip thought as he slid the file folder into his backpack. I’ve been meaning to close out my Aurora spreadsheets. These will save me a lot of time.

  He whistled as he rode down in the elevator, even though there were other people riding with him. Philip was so pleased with himself he decided to drop by the Drama Book Shop. Only a few blocks away, this was a whole store stocked only with books about the theatre. Philip sometimes browsed there but never bought anything because of his perpetual lack of funds.

  Now, though, Philip had a pocketful of money, and what he wanted was information. The Drama Book Shop was the place to go, definitely. But he hardly expected to run into someone he knew in the producing section.

  The absurd thing was, he didn’t even notice her standing there, reading glasses perched on the end of her gorgeous nose, with her head buried in a book called Going Platinum! The A–Z Guide to Producing Your Hit Record.

  No, Marlena Ortiz was the one who recognized him.

  “Well, hello there!” she said, peering over her glasses. “The boy from the stage door, right? Number one fan? With the Sharpie?” She mimed signing her name. The book Philip was looking at slipped out of his hands and thudded to the floor.

  “Oh—oh my God,” he stammered. “Marlena. Miss Ortiz, I mean. What are you doing here?”

  “Actors read books.” She smiled her killer smile. “Don’t tell.”

  “I won’t,” Philip said, while thinking, I am such an idiot. She was so pretty close up, in the daylight. None of that heavy stage makeup he was used to seeing her in, no fuzzy mittens or striped legwarmers or floppy velvet hats—just black leggings tucked into pointed-toe boots, a faded denim shirt, and a thin silk scarf tied loosely around her neck. She looked almost like an ordinary human being, only much, much more fabulous.

  “But what are you doing here, numero uno?” she asked. “In the producing section? I would have thought you’d be over by the audition monologues. You could be an actor. You’re so handsome.”

  Philip felt his face getting hot. “Not me!” he said. “I’m more—of a numbers guy, I guess.”

  “That’s good,” she said, suddenly quite serious. “Trusting other people to manage your business is a terrible mistake.

  That’s a lesson I already learned.” She gestured with the book in her hand and laughed, as if to say: How ironic, that a great talent like me should have to learn about subsidiary rights and direct mail campaigns!

  “I know what you mean.” Ugh. Philip’s attempts at banter were making him feel like the biggest flop on Broadway.

  “Show business needs people like you.” Marlena’s lower lip quivered with feeling. “With a head for money”—she tapped Philip’s forehead with her fingertip—“and a heart of gold.” She laid her hand on Philip’s chest and spoke dramatically to her own thumb. “A heart that loves the theatre.”

  The heat of Marlena’s hand cut right through three layers of clothing and settled on his skin. Philip wanted to close his eyes and stand there forever, soaking up Marlena’s warmth, but he was too flustered to let the moment last. “How’s the show?” he said, feeling like a fool. “How’s it going?”

  “It’s the same every night.” Marlena took her hand away and ran it through her hair. “You haven’t been around lately, huh?”

  “We couldn’t get any tickets. We tried,” Philip added, looking down in shame.

  “Wait,” Marlena said. She reached into her purse. What she pulled out made Philip’s heart race.

  “Two tickets for tomorrow night.” Marlena held them up right in front of his face. “If I offered them to you, would you want them?”

  Oh my God, thought Philip. “Oh my God,” he said. “Yes!”

  Marlena looked at him with eyes like melting chocolate. “And if I only had one?”

  But there were two tickets right there, in her hand. “Yes,” he said. That had to be the right answer. “I would take one.”

  “What about your friend?” Marlena asked. “The girl with the dark hair?”

  Apparently this was some kind of game, but Philip had no idea how to play. “Emily,” he said, stalling. “Her name is Emily.”

  “I think Emily loves you.” Marlena splayed the tickets like a winning hand at poker. “I see it in her face when the dancers flirt with you at the stage door. Especially that little one, Stephanie. She’s kind of a tart.”

  “That’s why I would want the ticket,” Philip said. He felt like he was hearing his own voice from a distance. “For Emily.”

  Marlena’s eyes started to glisten. She pulled one ticket from the pair.

  “Here. My gift to you is to let you give this gift to her,” she said. “Perform an act of love, in real life. It will make you much happier than any show ever could. Even a show that stars me!” Marlena laughed.

  “Oh my God,” said Philip. Would it have been so awful for her to give me both of the tickets? “Thank you!”

  She looked at her watch. “Almost seven. I have to get to the theatre. Tell your friend she’ll be sitting with the head of RCA.” Marlena quickly stashed the other ticket and snapped her purse shut. “Hey, don’t forget your book.”

  Philip picked it up off the floor with sweaty hands. How To Produce a Broadway Musical. “Got it, thanks,” he said.

  Marlena glanced at his book, and smiled again. “Looks like I’ll be working for you someday,” she purred. “Adios, numero uno.”

  To: AURORAROX

  Subject: A Present for You

  Em,

  I have a present for you.

  Can’t say what.

  But you can pick it up tomorrow night.

  At eight o’clock.

  At the Rialto Theatre.

  Philip

  Philip pressed Send and
took his hands off the keyboard. To think the first great act of love he’d performed in sixteen years on the planet was executed under the fluorescent lights of a Kinko’s in Midtown. They charged by the minute for Internet computers, so he’d kept it short.

  Would this “act of love” make him as happy as Marlena seemed to think it would? Did Emily love him? Did he love her? It was so hard to know these things. But an act of love, delivered from a safe distance by e-mail—you couldn’t go wrong with that.

  For the rest of the evening, during the train ride back to Rockville Centre and the fast walk through dark streets to Birchwood Gardens, Philip kept imagining the look on Emily’s face when she got the message.

  “What’s going on?” cried Emily. “What happened? Where were you? Where is Grandma?” Emily had been watching a rerun of the Making of Annie documentary on PBS and was just about to go check her e-mail when her parents finally walked in. Her father was still dressed for work and her mother wore a tracksuit, but they had perfectly matched dour expressions on their faces.

  “Emily! Calm down,” said her mother firmly. “Grandma is in the hospital, but it’s nothing serious. You can see her tomorrow.”

  “I’m going to make coffee,” said Mr. Pearl, marching grimly off to the kitchen. Mr. Pearl never drank coffee after dinner.

  “The hospital? What happened?” Emily asked, growing more upset. “Why didn’t you call me? I’ve been going crazy here, waiting for you. I almost called the police.”

  Mr. Pearl appeared in the kitchen doorway, holding the empty coffeepot. “The police?” he said. “Brilliant idea! Then your grandmother would have been busted that much sooner.”

  “Busted?” Emily said, in a tiny voice.

  Mr. Pearl stormed back into the kitchen, cursing and clattering silverware. Mrs. Pearl turned to Emily and took a deep breath.