“But I enjoy talking to the playwright,” said Ronnie.
“I’m sure you do, beauty,” George Gordon said with a knowing smile. I will say this—he was right, the playwright and the leading lady probably shouldn’t have been talking. They certainly shouldn’t have been discussing an interpretation of the role that was at odds with the director’s vision. But we continued to do so over the course of the rehearsals. We were crafty—Ronnie’s Hester continued to be cowed and subservient. Occasionally, though, she would signal to me as I sat in the tiers—subtly, a small shrug or a short glance—and the more assertive Hester would make an appearance. George Gordon would stop the proceedings immediately. “Beauty, darling, what the fuck was that?” But I would smile, and the corners of Ronnie’s mouth would flicker. There is nothing like collusion to bring two people together. Why do you think the milieu of the French Resistance is romantic, why do we imagine ourselves wearing scarves and berets and rutting like bush-babies as the storm troopers patrol the streets?
Opening night was a triumph. Indeed, it was probably the best evening of my life, and I would claim it as such unreservedly if I had not spent a certain portion of it wanting to throw up. I wanted to throw up for several pre-curtain hours, although when Ronnie/ Hester wheeled on, carrying a tray of draft and looking as though she ’d lived a full and very active life, the butterflies landed. And when the curtain descended, the audience members sprang to their feet and roared. Backstage there was pandemonium, much of it created by the irate George Gordon, who wanted to tear a strip off Ronnie’s hide. By this point, he knew he was out of the sweetheart stakes, and was legitimately angry over artistic matters, but every time he tried to blast Veronica, someone would stop in front of her and gush. In a few minutes George was beaming, pocketing a few free-floating kudos. They gushed over me as well, friends and strangers alike. I remember a young fellow with wild hair that was already peppered with grey. “My god, that was a fine bit of writing,” this man said. “Lambent” was the word he used, over and over again. “Positively lambent.” He gave me his card, which I threw on my dresser and never thought about again. Mind you, it had no information embossed upon it, not profession nor address nor phone number, other than the man’s name: WILLIAM BECKETT.
The post-play celebration was, where else? at the Pig’s Snout, but we didn’t stay long. We didn’t stay long, christ it stings me to type that, to remember that we once operated as a single entity. We didn’t stay long, we only had one drink and then we disappeared without any fare-thee-wells. We went back to her place, because we thought mine was a filthy pigsty. (Ronnie had never seen my place, but she’s always had good instincts.) We made love.
I will supply no details. It’s not that I’m being genteel, but I can’t really remember the event. All of my Ronnie-related lovemaking memories tend to blur, although that word has connotations of indis-tinction, and that’s not at all the case. I can remember details, oh brother, can I remember details. I can recall precise shades of coral, I can summon to mind exact constellations of goosebumps. But it is hard for me to remember any individual act.
Excuse me, that’s not so. I can remember very clearly the last time I made love to my wife.
“For what city, please?”
“Ah.”
“Ah?”
“Mmm. Ah. What city.”
“Yes. What city?”
“That… is a very good question.”
“Ah.” “Ah?”
“A bottle call.”
“Sorry?”
“A lot of people, when they have a few drinks, they start making phone calls.”
“Really. Well, I can assure you, young lady, that I am very definitely one of those people.”
“For what city, please?”
“Let’s put our heads together on this, Watson.”
“Leslie.”
“Leslie. I’m looking for a fellow named Peter Paul Mendicott.”
“Two tees?”
“I’m sorry.”
“At the end of Mendicott? Two tees?”
“Yes! Two tees.”
“And what do we know about Mr. Mendicott?”
“He wrote a movie that has had a profound influence on my life.”
“If he’s in the movie business, shouldn’t we try Los Angeles, California?”
“Spot on. Give it a go, Les.”
“All right, let me take a look here … mmm… nope.”
“Mind you, this movie was based on a novel he wrote. So, perhaps New York City.”
“One should always check New York City. And there I have a, um, a Michael Mendicott. And a J and a G. No Peter Paul.”
“I’m not sure what I’m going to say to him, Leslie. I’m afraid I have to confess to what, at least at first blush, looks like plagiarism. But there is a sense in which the movie happened to me.”
“Do you mean that he stole your life story?”
“No, I don’t mean that. You see, I was just a kid when I saw the film, and I was very affected—”
“Excuse me, Mister—?”
“Phil.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Phil, but may I ask how old you are now?”
“Yes, you may. Forty-eight.”
“I see.”
“How old are you, Leslie?”
“I’m twenty-one.”
“Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty. Youth’s a stuff will not endure.”
“But I’m twenty-one.”
“That was poetic licence, dear.”
“Besides, I’m … here’s what I was thinking, Mr. Phil. It seems as though you saw this film approximately forty years ago.”
“Besides, you’re what?”
“We are not supposed to get involved in personal discussions.”
“Who’s going to know?”
“The supervisors listen in every so often. Clandestinely.”
“Besides, you’re married?”
“Oh, no. My gosh, no, Mr. Phil.”
“Besides, you’re what?”
“Well, the thing is, you know, it happens from time to time that men will, um, respond to something in my voice.”
“Well, yeah. I would think so. You have a very sexy voice.”
“Mm-hmm. And then they find out I’m young, and single …”
“Do you field a lot of bottle calls?”
“I get my fair share, Mr. Phil. The telephone traffic is mostly bottle calls after a certain time of night.”
“Really.”
“Really.”
“And so these men, these somewhat pathetic men, fall in love with you…?”
“It has happened.”
“Yes. I can see that. I have some insight into pathos. Not to take anything away from the sexiness of your voice. Or your pleasant manner.”
“Well, that’s just it, isn’t it? I mean, all I am is pleasant. Helpful. What kind of dismal existences do these men have that me being pleasant is all it takes for them to fall in love?”
“Good question.”
“This Peter Paul Mendicott, he might be a very old man now.”
“Not so fast. I need to know, besides you’re what? Please.”
“I’m large.”
“Large.”
“Very large.”
“I see.”
“Do you?”
“Don’t I?”
“You’re likely imagining me now as, well, plump. Well-proportioned but oversized. Whereas in reality I am freakish. Sideshow fat, Mr. Phil. I am what they call morbidly obese, which means that my weight will kill me. What do you think of that?”
“I think … I think we all have something freakish about us, Leslie. While yours seems harder to bear than most—I’m not trying to demean your suffering—we all have some crooked cross to bear.”
“What’s yours?”
“Blindness.”
“You’re blind?”
“Yeah.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Have you been bli
nd from birth?”
“I would have to answer that in the affirmative.”
“See now, you must be lying to me. Making fun of me. Because you saw this movie when you were a kid.”
“Ah. I had corrective lenses.”
“Is that a fact?”
“But they got broken. I walked outside—there was all this rubble everywhere—and I realized that finally I was all alone. I could live my life with books. But somehow my spectacles got pitched off my face. They shattered into a million little pieces.”
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t exactly believe you.”
“Hey, you know what, Leslie? I don’t believe you. How’s about them apples?”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I think you’re one of the most beautiful women in the world. Stunning. You’re perfect, and that’s what makes you feel like a freak. That’s what I believe, and I’m going to go to bed believing that I made contact with a woman of inconceivable exquisiteness, and my sleep, if it comes at all, will be troubled.”
“Carson City, Nevada.”
“What?”
“This Peter Paul Mendicott. I realized he would be a very old man, so I checked places where you might find very old people. Arizona, New Mexico. The air is better for them in those places.”
“Great! Thank you. Is there some way I can call you back if I find him?”
“Please hold for that number, sir.”
…
PART THREE
THE TWILIGHT ZONE
14 | THE DATE
I CAN SEE NOW THAT THE MCQUIGGE/VAN DER GLICK RELATIONSHIP IS doomed. At least, it’s very ill, and I can’t see it living much longer than a few weeks. Rainie and I are rankers, after all, and even our most tender moments possess a sort of spastic desperation. It’s not pretty.
Last night, we went on a date. Neither of us called it that, indeed we took some pains to avoid the word. When she called, Rainie suggested a “get-together.” I responded by saying (and note that I employ the terminology of a thirteen-year-old), “Sure, let’s hack around.” She pointed out that there was a play in Toronto that had received stellar notices and heralded the arrival of a fresh new voice in Canadian theatre. “That sounds great,” said I, a position of such manifest disingenuousness that the prospect was instantly abandoned. Then we discussed movies; Rainie read titles from the newspaper and gave me a brief précis or some salient point, the name of the star or the director. I had heard of very few of these people, which made me wonder how long, exactly, I had been living underground. Rainie was more knowledgeable. Her gig at the radio station brought her into daily contact with people, and very often the topic of her phone-in show had something to do with popular culture. So even though she never listened to her callers (the show’s popularity had much to do with the inventive ways Rainie hung up on these people), she could say to me, “Oh, you know the guy, he was the star of that television show Island and he married Grace Juniper and he was in that movie Hellbent for Heather.”
I knew none of this, of course. And although I kicked myself mentally for never thinking of it, the title Hellbent for Heather struck me as so profoundly idiotic that I began to think Rainie and I existed in the Twilight Zone.
Submitted for your consideration: Phil and Rainie, two lonely people who were ejected from the Garden of Eden prematurely, propelled from childhood to adulthood without stepping on the rocky shores of adolescence. Now, they try to reclaim it … But their purchase on reality grows weak, and they enter…
“Aw, fuck it, Phil,” said Rainie. “Let’s just eat, get drunk and screw.”
The eating portion of the evening didn’t really amount to much. Rainie said she’d heard that this particular restaurant was good, so we went there and started to run through the wine list. Our waiter, who’d identified himself as Maurice, drifted by the table regularly, a little notepad in his hand, a pencil licked and poised. Rainie and I would pluck up menus, stare at them blearily. “Need a couple more minutes?” Maurice would ask. We would nod, he would disappear, Rainie and I would dive for our wineglasses. I finally demanded a piece of meat, but when we left, the thing still lay on the plate unmolested. It had a tiny wooden stake driven into it (labelling it as rare), and looked much like a vampire’s heart that had been mercifully laid to rest.
“Where to now?” I asked. A cold wind blew, but I didn’t button up my overcoat; I enjoyed the fresh and sudden pain.
“Hey, I know,” said Rainie, who was working all the fasteners she could, in meek defiance of the October weather, “let’s go to that place where your brother plays.”
“Birds of a Feather,” said I, and off we stumbled. I had had sufficient wine that I never considered whether the excursion was a good or bad idea. It was simply an idea of something to do, of which I had none, so we journeyed forth to do it. But as we entered the establishment, I had misgivings. For one thing, I wasn’t sure I wanted to present my intoxicated self before Amy. Plus the fact that I was with a woman, quite a tipsy one, who, as she removed her outerwear, popped almost all the buttons on her blouse and displayed an intricately lacy brassiere. Not that I thought there was anything happening with Amy, who, after all, was quite a bit younger than myself—oh, who am I kidding? I probably nursed some tender hope deep in my soggy heart. But whatever else Amy thought, I hoped she might perceive me as a moderate, thoughtful and basically decent human being rather than a satyriatic souse. But as Rainie and I lurched forward I realized there was little chance of that. Not only did I bump into a table, forcing the occupant to rescue a tumbling martini glass, but Rainie commanded, at a high pitch, “Don’t drink too much, Philly. We got some serious fucking to do.”
Uh-oh, thought I. Serious fucking. This was trouble. I had hither to thought van der Glick was only interested in lighthearted, pointless, inconsequential fucking, my old specialty.
Amy didn’t seem to find anything untoward. She smiled and greeted me nicely enough, although her question “Have you read Barchester Towers yet?” may well have contained a little barb, being as it appeared, at that moment anyway, that I was incapable of reading.
“This is Rainie,” I explained. “A childhood friend.”
“Vodka martini. A great big fucker,” ordered Rainie, who hadn’t really had a childhood. “With about seven olives.”
“How about you, Phil?” asked Amy.
“Oh, um…”
“A pint of bitter and a double Laphroaig?” she suggested.
Spot on, I wanted to say, but instead I shrugged as though the order would never have occurred to me, although I was willing to try this unique combination.
Amy wheeled away and I was forced to consider the other downside of going to Birds of a Feather, my little brother, Jay.
I stole a glance. He was hunkered over the keyboard, his huge head so close that his curly hair brushed across the ivory. He was playing an odd and disjointed piece, his right hand picking out a frangible melody, his left banging out dense lumbering chords. To me it sounded atonal, like Charles Ives or something, Ives on heavy-duty medication, but Rainie began to sing along.
“—you’ll come a-waltzing, Matilda, with me. Waltzing Matilda, WALTZING MATILDA …” The song becomes quite lively and rousing there, you know; Rainie didn’t quite accomplish it, and her attempt was screechingly loud. All of our fellow patrons startled and looked. Even Jay raised his head from the piano, squinting into the shadows.
“Jay-Jay,” called Rainie. “It’s me. van der Glick.”
“Ah. The fairest of the rankers. Requests?” asked Jay.
“Don’t get me started.”
Jay lowered his head and concentrated on his music. Amy brought the drinks. Rainie moved her seat so that she could 1) watch Jay directly and 2) bury her hand in my crotch, and although this last was accomplished under cover of the tabletop, that was mere coincidence. I was aghast, but nowhere near as aghast as my dick, which burrowed into my tummy.
“He’s not talking to me,” I said to Rainie.<
br />
“Who’s not?”
“Jay.”
“How’s come?”
“He’s mad because I fucked up my life.”
“That can’t be right, Phil. If that was his attitude there’d be no one left to talk to.”
“He’s mad because, you know, I broke up with Ronnie.”
Rainie tilted her head, considering this. “But if neither one of you guys was happy, then it was the only reasonable course of action. I think Jay would understand that.”
“Well, he doesn’t,” I said, realizing immediately that Rainie was right. It’s not like Jay believed in the sanctity of the institution or anything. He had ended three marriages, blown them off, not really contesting any of the terms and maintaining civil, almost friendly relations with all of his exes.
I assayed the drunkard’s adamancy, pressing a finger down onto the tabletop. “I’m not sure why he’s not talking to me, van der Gliupp,”—a hiccup had interfered—“all I can tell you is, he’s not talking to me.”
Jay vaulted from the piano over to our table, picking up a chair along the way, spinning it around and then straddling it as he sat down, crossing his arms across the back in a folksy manner. “Hello,” he said. “How goes it, Rainie?”
“Couldn’t be better,” was her answer. It gave me vague misgivings. Vague because I was more than a little drunk, also because all of my emotions are vague. But I guess I thought that her response should have been along these lines: Things are going so badly, Jay, that I’ve taken up with your miserable brother.
Rainie turned toward me. “I thought he wasn’t talking to you.”
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