Thoughts While Having Sex

by Stephanie Lehmann

  I was feeling too tense to watch the play. The really scary thing about a comedy is wondering if anyone is going to laugh. Because if the play fails—it fails loudly. With silence. The loudest silence in the world. And it's the worst feeling, to sit through your play, which was meant to get people to laugh, and see them frowning like they're sitting through Death of a Salesman. So if no one was going to laugh, I didn't want to be stuck in the theater suffering, so even though there were empty seats inside, I stayed in the lobby and listened.

  When the laughter came, it seemed like a miracle. They got my weird sense of humor! They didn't hate the grungy office furniture! They weren't puking from the foul smelling air!

  I didn't go in to watch the play until the last five minutes. I couldn't resist seeing the end. I stood in the back, in the aisle, and smiled.

  Gabrielle: "It seems like the art director shouldn't get involved with his copywriter."

  Paul: "You think so?"

  Gabrielle: "Yeah, because then they'll just want you to hire them to write the copy for all their ads."

  Paul: "Are you being sarcastic?"

  Gabrielle: "What do you mean?"

  Paul: "Because we are involved."

  Gabrielle: "We are?"

  Paul: "Aren't we?"

  Gabrielle: "I'm not sure if we are or not. Aren't you madly in love with Kiki?"

  Paul: "Why would you think that?"

  Gabrielle: "Why wouldn't I think that? I mean, she's beautiful and sexy and I'm just a boring, sexually repressed copywriter."

  Paul: "Maybe YOU should sleep with her."

  Gabrielle: "So you aren't madly in love with her?"

  Paul: "Beautiful blondes like her, they're always so full of themselves. It gets on my nerves."

  Gabrielle: "Really."

  Paul: "So anyway, I'd better go."

  Gabrielle: "So soon?"

  Paul: "I'm exhausted. And tomorrow is a big day. We do have that presentation first thing in the morning and I really need to get some rest."

  Gabrielle: "Why don't you get some rest... here?"

  Paul: "Here?"

  Gabrielle: "I live so close to the office. It'll save you the subway ride tomorrow morning."

  Paul: "Is that the only reason you're offering?"

  Gabrielle: "No. As a matter of fact."

  Paul: "Yes?"

  Gabrielle: "The truth is, I'm in love with you. I've been in love with you since the day we met, and you interviewed me, and I thought you weren't going to give me the job, but then you did."

  Paul: "But I've been in love with you ever since the day I interviewed you and I wasn't going to give you the job but then I did."

  Gabrielle: "So does that mean you'll get involved with me? Even though I write the copy for your ads?"

  Paul: "I'm already involved with you." (pause) "Just don't expect me to approve all your copy."

  (They kiss. Blackout.)

  And there was applause. I clapped too. It felt satisfying, how they ended up together. The actors came out for the curtain call. Unfortunately, the lights were still down. Jack motioned for Cal, the guy up in the lighting booth, to turn them up. They still didn’t come up. The actors took another bow in the dark, and then left the stage shaking their heads and swearing.

  The houselights came up, and people left the theater. It was hard to tell what they had thought of the play, since they were all talking about the fact that the actors had taken a curtain call in the dark.

  Cal didn't usually make mistakes like that, so I followed Jack up the steep steps to the lighting booth to see what happened. And there, to my surprise, sitting with Cal, was Peter. I must've looked as horrified as I felt.

  "Hi, Jennifer!" He was grinning.

  "Peter—" I started to say, but Jack interrupted me.

  "What the hell happened?!"

  "Sorry about that little problem at the end," Cal said.

  I imagined they were so busy laughing—not at the play, but at me and what I'd written—that he'd forgotten his cue.

  "The light blew. I'll change it as soon as the theater empties out," he said.

  "Cal is an old friend of mine," Peter said. "He mentioned he was doing lights for your play. I hope you don't mind."

  "So you saw it?"

  "Sure. I watched from up here. It was great," he said. "Very funny. Cal and I were laughing the whole way through."

  (Laughing at me?)

  "Oh, good." I didn't know what to say. I'd already said too much—in the play. And now I was truly tongue tied.

  He looked into my eyes then, and my fantasies went on overdrive. Maybe he saw now that I had always wanted to profess my love to him, and now that Gabrielle had done it onstage in front of everyone, he saw that I'd just been too shy to get it out, and maybe he had always wanted to say that to me too, and now maybe he would ask me out for a bite to eat, and we'd admit our love for each other and go back to one of our apartments and do our very own seduction scene that very night!

  "Congratulations," he said, "on your play. Good to see you again."

  "You too."

  Chapter 14

  As soon as I stepped into the Helen Hayes Theater and found my way to my red velvet third row orchestra seat, I was so happy that I had come. Not just because of the excitement of seeing Kelly. (Even if I did hate her—proximity to fame inspires forgiveness.) I do love going to a Broadway play if I can manage to forget the rip-off ($75!) price of the ticket. So I settled into my seat and took in my surroundings with pleasure and tried not to compare the whole sumptuous atmosphere of this chandeliered, high-ceilinged, gold-trimmed cherub-decorated theater to the crummy little smelly dump where my own play ($12.50) was being done.

  I love going alone. Going alone to the theater is very intimate. It's like the play is your date.

  I paged nervously through my Playbill and looked for Kelly's biography. I hoped against hope that she would mention Til Death Do Us Part in her credits, even though I knew she wouldn't. My eyes scanned down the blurb, and of course it wasn't there, no surprise, of course.

  So I closed my Playbill and scanned the audience. Just one row of these dressed-up theatergoers would fill the whole audience at the Matrix Theater. But I told myself not to torture myself with envy as I waited for the lights to go down. This should be fun, to sit in the dark and observe her. Nothing required of me but to watch and to listen.

  And finally the lights did come down, and the curtain went up, and there was that moment I love when the entire audience falls completely silent in communal anticipation of the story that's about to seduce them in.

  And there she was sitting at a cafe table with Fred Harris, an actor who'd done a lot of theater in New York but had not yet broken into movies. I wondered how he felt about their New York Times review. He'd been almost completely ignored while the reviewer fawned over Kelly's performance. And now she was center stage, beautiful as ever in a white chiffon dress and white high heels.

  I love how it adds that extra dimension when you watch someone you know in a play. I don't think you ever fully separate them from the part, just like you can't separate the movie star from the part, as if you know the movie star like you know a friend. And here she was both movie star and friend. Or ex-friend. She did seem slimmer than I remembered. More angular, less voluptuous. Her agent, I thought, must not be letting her eat cake.

  The play proceeded in its crisp, clear, clever way, going backwards in time starting from when the lovers break up to the moment they first realize they're going to have an affair. Kelly faked a British accent. Not perfectly, but good enough. I tried not to think about whether I would stay after to say hello to her. But the worry kept intruding into my thoughts, and I found it hard to immerse myself into the play.

  When intermission came, I stayed by my seat and listened in on people's conversations around me. Nobody was talking about the play. They were talking about problems at work. The line at the bathroom. Where to go for dinner after the show.

  I tried not
to think about my own worry—to stay or not to stay after the show. What if she didn't remember who I was? What if she remembered, but didn't want to see me. What if I went to see her, and she brushed me off because of a pending dinner date with Russell Crowe or George Clooney or whoever she was having a torrid affair with these days?

  Finally the lights flickered and people returned to their seats and the play resumed. I tried to pay attention, but I knew the story too well (saw the movie) and was consumed with my own anxieties. The man in front of me was dozing, chin to chest, not snoring thank god. He didn't wake up until the play was over and the audience broke into noisy applause.

  When the actors came out to take their bows, lots of people stood up to applaud. That always makes me smile. It seems less about wanting to show appreciation to the actors than the wish to perform the role of audience member to the hilt. Plus, the audience could feel like what they saw was really, really, really great—a performance that will go down in history. They've gotten their money's worth.

  But even if I had felt compelled to stand, I wouldn't have. Because I still wasn't sure if I was going to stay to talk to her. And I didn't want her to spot me. She was less than twenty feet away. Flanked by both the male actors, Kelly smiled and bowed regally to the audience. Hoping I would avoid her gaze, I squinched down in my seat like an escaped prisoner avoids the sweep of a searchlight. Finally the applause started to level off, and the actors got off the stage before it would be gone completely, and the curtain came down, and I was left with my dilemma.

  I got up from my red velvet seat and made my way to the exit along with the rest of the audience.

  The fresh air and the crowds and the traffic thick with cabs and limos jolted me awake. I paused to get my bearings. The street seemed as much like a stage set as what I'd just left. After all, Manhattan was just an island with trees on it before everyone came and built high-rises, right?

  I stood on the sidewalk shivering. Not from the cold, but from nervousness. It was zero hour. Time to decide. Stay or go. It would be so much easier just to walk off into the night. Facing her wasn't worth the anxiety. It was as if I was having stage fright. And we were lacking a script, and I didn't know what we might say.

  The other thing that made me nervous—and I don't even want to mention it because it's so ridiculous—was that I had this sense of her being a "celebrity." Even though I knew her when she was "a regular person" and I had all sorts of reasons not to think very highly of her. I couldn't help myself. She had been elevated to something beyond normal person-hood, and I felt in awe.

  As I was standing there, a line started to form along a police barricade that one of the stagehands had set up outside the stage door. A whole contingent of fans was gathering quite enthusiastically and without conflicted feelings to see Kelly Cavanna the movie star. Most of them gripped a pen and a Playbill open to the page with her photo. I shook my head and smiled. They wanted her autograph. Little did they all know, I thought with pride, she had once been in my play. And I had once been in her bed.

  Now I was feeling curious. Just to see Kelly come out and sign autographs was worth the price of admission and would probably be more entertaining than Betrayal, no offense to Harold Pinter. So I decided to wait. And watch. That still didn't mean I'd have to say anything to her.

  So I stood a few feet back from the rest (the fans, the plebes, the common people) who were crowding the sidewalk and tried to be careful not to step off the curb and get hit by a car passing behind me on the street.

  And I waited.

  It took fifteen minutes before the two male actors appeared. They graciously signed autographs, though no one was really interested in them and we all knew it. It was Kelly Cavanna they'd come to see.

  When she finally did come out about ten minutes later, the crowd broke into applause. She smiled and nodded, and I imagined that her ego must be incredibly bloated, especially considering it had been pretty puffed up in the first place.

  She was wearing tight black leather pants and a gold tube top with silvery threads woven through it and gold high-heeled sandals. Her makeup had been removed and she looked tired. But she gracefully stopped to sign autographs and chat with all her admirers in line behind the barrier.

  I looked down at my Playbill and then back at her. Even I could see, having come this far, that I really should go say hello. It would be totally idiotic not to. I would always regret it. So I tried to talk myself into it. Just say hello and compliment her performance. That's all. Nothing fancy. I didn't have to chastise her for sleeping with Peter or for leaving me off her bio or not mentioning me on Jay Leno or forgetting that I existed. Just a simple hello and good-bye. That was all.

  The honk of a cab racing by—passing less than a foot behind me—gave me the charge I needed. The rude blare of the horn made me jump, and I used that momentum to make my way to Kelly.

  I approached the police barrier—not so crowded now. And I stood there feeling like a fool. And I waited for her to make her way down the rest of the line.

  It was after she finished a conversation with a woman from

  Indiana who wanted the autograph for her twelve-year-old daughter who had a poster of Kelly in her room, and Kelly said how sweet that was and signed the woman's program, that out of the corner of her eye she saw me standing there. I smiled.

  She registered surprise and then said "Jennifer!"

  I felt like a real big shot in front of everyone else. SHE KNEW ME. And not only that, she came to me and KISSED ME ON THE CHEEK!

  I told her how much I enjoyed the play and what a wonderful performance it was. Now I was annoyed that most of the people in line had left, so they couldn't see how important I was.

  "Thank you! I'm so glad you came! You should've told me you were coming."

  "I know," I said, "I just wasn't sure how to reach you."

  "You could've left a message with the box office. Anyway, since I'm almost done here, would you like to walk me back to my hotel? I'm staying at the Plaza until a sublet comes through."

  "Sure. I'd love to," I said.

  Now I was REALLY feeling like a big shot.

  So I stood to the side and waited with bloated head for the rest of the autograph seekers to get their little autographs. And finally she was free to go.

  The night was warm, the air was clean, and I couldn't help feeling like it was good to be alive as I walked up Broadway with this woman who had stolen away the love of my life, but what the hell, she was famous.

  "My play must seem like a long time ago," I said, "considering the changes in your life."

  "Another lifetime. Those were the days, huh?"

  "Those days are still pretty much the same for me now. Not much has changed."

  "You're still writing plays?"

  "Yes."

  "Good," she said, "because you're such a good writer."

  "Thanks."

  I didn't mention that I had a play up right then at the Matrix Theater. Even though something was better than nothing, it would sound too god-awful pitiful compared to Broadway.

  "Til Death Do Us Part deserves to be done again," she said. "Someone should do it Off Broadway."

  "Thanks," I said.

  I didn't mention not seeing it listed in her credits. I didn't mention that she never did like the ending with the "ghost." I didn't mention that she in fact had the power to get it done right smack on Broadway itself if she'd commit to doing the part.

  "Have you seen Peter recently?" she asked.

  "No," I lied.

  "That's too bad. He liked you."

  "You think so?"

  "And you liked him."

  "He was okay."

  She laughed and shook her head. "You are such a bad actress. The only person you're fooling is yourself."

  "Well it doesn't matter, anyway.” Suddenly felt like no time had passed, and we could step right back into being like we'd been. "I thought he wanted me. And you proved me wrong."

  We'd reached The Plaza
. Uniformed bellhops scurried to assist hotel guests getting in and out of cabs. I felt sorry to have to say good-bye. I knew she probably had all sorts of interesting anecdotes about Hollywood, and there were all sorts of things I needed to know about her like was she or was she not romantically involved with George Clooney like they said on Access Hollywood?

  "I'd invite you out for a piece of cake," she said, "but my agent has me on this onerous diet."

  I loved the idea of eating cake with her again. I loved how being around her even made me feel like I was with my sister again. "So what's it like?" I asked.

  "What's what like?"

  "The whole star thing."

  "Disgusting and weird. I want my privacy back."

  "I don't believe you."

  "Nobody does. Except my lover." She gave me grin and a wink. "She's waiting for me upstairs."

  "Oh.” I smiled back. No wonder. "Then I won't keep you."

  "You know, Jennifer."

  "What?"

  For a fleeting moment I thought she might say something about our own "sexual encounter." My "rejection" of her. How she was still attracted to me, and if I ever wanted to give her a call because the woman upstairs was getting on her nerves. (Funny how durable the ego can be even when you have low self-esteem.)

  "I always hoped that you and Peter would find your way to each other. I felt badly about interfering."

  "It wasn't your fault," I said, thinking that it was. "It just wasn't meant to be."

  "I'm not sure. Because"—she hesitated—"that day I walked out on rehearsal and you said he wanted you and not me... When Peter called that night to talk about the play, I asked him out for dinner. And I made a move on him. And you were right, you know. He told me he was into you."

  "He did?"

  "And I told him not to waste his time, because you weren't into him. Which is what you always said, not that I believed it. So he was bummed out, and then I took advantage."

  "So he succumbed to you on the rebound?"

  "Something like that. When I see something I want, I tend to go after it. And you—"