Acts of Love (14 page)

Luke skimmed the next letters describing the decorating of the new house, and then came to the last letter he held. Folded inside was a clipping from the
Vancouver Tribune
announcing the new theater season, which would culminate with Jessica Fontaine's long-awaited first appearance in Canada. She would star in
The Heiress
for a six-week run beginning on February 1, and already the performances were sold out. Luke opened the letter.

Dearest Constance, I'm so glad you're feeling better and that you had a good visit with Luke. It's lovely for you that he gets there so often. Will he be there in March? Well,
I
plan to be! I'm going to Vancouver in February, to do
The Heiress,
and then, about mid-March, I'll take a train trip across Canada to unwind. Then, when I get to Toronto, I plan to leap on the first plane for Italy and spend a couple of weeks—if that's not too long for you—lolling on your terrace, breathing your pure Italian country air, hiking those hills and fields around your villa that I so loved last time, and just being with you. Does that sound all right to you? I'm so much looking forward to seeing you. I'll call you from Toronto, but I plan to write long letters from the train, chock full of adjectives and exclamation points; I'm told it's a beautiful trip, especially through the Fraser River Canyon and the Canadian Rockies. I'm really very excited about it. More soon, I love you, Jessica.

Rehearsals for
The Magician
started on a day that would be proclaimed by television's weather people the hottest day of the decade. New York lay in a torpor: dog walkers clung to the shade, forcing their pets to find new venues, pretzel vendors stood at arm's length from the radiating heat of their stands, and even the children turning on fire hydrants seemed to be moving in slow motion. As the cast for
The Magician
gathered in the studio Monte had rented on 45th Street, they all offered elaborate comments on the heat, and Luke, sitting at a table some distance away, heard in their voices a note of pride, as if they felt that New York's heat was far more intense than that afflicting other cities—just as its cold, its crowds, its crises, were more intense—but because they were people of ingenuity and wiliness they would come through just fine.

“Hell of a place to live,” Monte Gerhart muttered as he took the chair beside Luke. “Always something: trial by fire every goddamn day of the year. Other cities, they've got normal weather, they live normal lives, dull but normal. They'd have a hell of a time getting through an hour here, talk about a lifetime. I got Tracy's budget. Seems high in spots. Two hundred fifty thousand for publicity?”

“That doesn't buy much these days. We'll look at it again, though. What other spots?”

“Costumes. Props. We're not putting on
Phantom of the Opera,
you know; it ought to be pretty simple.”

“I agree; I thought those were high, too. We'll ask Tracy when she gets here; she must have a reason for those numbers. Anything else?”

“No, that's it. The money's coming in, Luke; it rolled in as soon as I wrote to a few people that we had Abby Deming,
plus
I had Abby write a P.S. that she's all excited about Rachel and Cort. I mean, those kids've only done a few TV things, I couldn't raise a dime on their names, but if Abby gives thumbs up, a lot of people pull out their checkbooks. But that doesn't mean we don't watch the budget; you never know what's coming.”

Luke nodded. He remembered from the earlier time they had worked together that it had taken him a few weeks to get used to Monte's apparent crudeness and bumbling manner that disguised one of the sharpest producers in the business. Clever of him to have Abby add a postscript to his letter; it was probably enough to tip the scales in their favor with any would-be investors worried about her reputation as a terror. And am I worried about that reputation? Luke asked himself as he stood up to greet Abby and the rest of the cast. You bet I am.

The room, on the second floor of an old warehouse, had been remodeled as a dance studio, and one wall was mirrored, with a bar running along it. On the opposite wall, high windows stretched from one end of the room to the other. Klieg lights hung from the ceiling, and Luke had turned on a few to illuminate the area he had marked with tape to represent the stage. Folding chairs and packing boxes were scattered about to be used as furniture; there would be no stage set, furnishings or props until dress rehearsals in Philadelphia, in six weeks. This was a decision Luke and Monte had made together, to avoid the expense of the stagehands union, which would have moved in if there had been any piece of furniture or props on the makeshift stage. Three window air conditioners labored against the heat, sounding like asthmatic patients walking up a flight of stairs.

“Good morning, I'm glad to see you all,” Luke said. “I'm looking forward to the next weeks—we have an extraordinary cast and an extraordinary play and we'll have a good time putting it all together. Most of you haven't worked with me before. I won't give you a laundry list of my peculiarities, but I will say that I don't give orders and ‘should' isn't a big word in my vocabulary, though I do know how to use it. Rehearsals are a conversation between us to figure out the emotions and meanings behind everyone's lines and bring out the strengths of the play. Any questions or comments? Okay, then, I'd like to start by going straight through the first act. Kent's given us a few stage directions and you can follow them, but most of the time you should move around any way you want. If you feel like sitting, grab a chair and put it wherever you want. Action springs from words and emotions, and I'm not going to tell you what to do; you'll find out when it happens. And it will happen, and then change over and over again, as your understanding of your lines changes, and as you refine the way you play your parts. If you have questions that absolutely can't wait, we'll stop, but I hope you can save most of them until we've gone through the whole act. Okay, let's get started.”

He moved back to the table. “Where the hell is Kent?” Monte demanded in a loud whisper.

“He said he'd be here. You'd think he'd be the first.” Luke cleared a space on the table amid paper cups half-filled with coffee, thermoses of coffee and iced tea, bagels and sweet rolls, cans of soft drinks, extra copies of the script, jars crammed with sharpened pencils, and a stack of yellow notepads, and put one of the notepads and three pencils in the clearing in front of him.

“Well, look who's here,” Monte said as Kent came in. “We always start on time,” he told him.

“Sorry.” Kent put a bulky string-tied package on the table and began to work at the knot. “Listen, you've got to see this; it's the most—”

“Later,” Luke said, his eyes on the actors.

Kent turned. His body grew still and then curved forward in an arc of pure intensity, as if he were being drawn the length of the room and into the cast . . . as he truly was, thought Luke, glancing at him. He was hearing his lines—all of them, the entire play—delivered for the first time by professionals and Luke knew that they sounded to him even newer than they had at the casting. He turned to Luke, his eyes glistening. “It sounds okay,” he whispered. “I mean, it sounds
good.”

Luke smiled, for the first time beginning to like him. But he did not take his eyes off the actors, and Kent and Monte watched with him as the first act of the play unwound. Luke was tense and watchful, but he was also exhilarated. This was one of the best times: everything beginning, everything unformed, a world waiting to be created. The week before, the cast had gathered around an oval table in Monte's office and twice read the play aloud without any attempt to dramatize it. It was a way for them to hear their lines in context with all the other lines, and to hear the play as a whole. Now, in a bare room, on a makeshift stage beneath glaring lights, speaking above the wheezing air conditioners, they were taking their first steps in building their characters and constructing a story, and so this time there was emotion and laughter as they read their lines and moved about, and they eyed each other like strangers getting acquainted, circling, touching, sitting, standing, finding their own rhythm and their own space that set each of them distinctively apart from the others but always kept them part of a whole.

They all felt the same exhilaration that Luke felt, and the undercurrent of anticipation built as voices grew stronger and the shape and momentum of the story became clear. When the first act ended, there was a brief silence, like that of diners savoring a good meal. Then, slowly, they began to move away from the stage, relaxing, preparing for the next act. Cort sat down at the table where Monte was opening a package of croissants. “What's this?” he asked, gesturing toward the bulky package Kent had carried in.

“I want Luke to see it,” Kent said. He untied the string. “Marilyn designed another set. I told her to go all out; get really dramatic. Here's the model.” He pulled off the wrapping paper.

There was a long silence.

“All those dark little rooms,” said Abigail. “It looks like a whorehouse.”

Kent flushed. “No, it—”

“Marilyn designed this?” Monte demanded. “She wants to build this set?”

“Well, actually, she said it was up to all of you.”

“When did she do this?” Luke asked.

“Well, I was at her studio, and she showed me this . . . she'd done it for another play, as a kind of experiment, and never used it—”

“For obvious reasons,” said Abigail.

“And I thought . . . all these rooms, you know, all the parts of Lena's psyche, it would be like looking inside her head. I mean, this play is about how we learn to trust ourselves enough to believe that other people will love us for what we really are, not some kind of image they have of us, and I thought these rooms would be a metaphor for all the ways Lena acts and thinks. . . .” His voice trailed away.

“Metaphor,”
Monte said. “Fritz will have a heart attack.”

“Fritz won't see this,” Luke said. “Kent, we're not using it. It may say something special to you, but it won't to audiences, and that's what we have to think about. I've already asked Marilyn to simplify the other design and she—”

“Simplify?
She didn't tell me that! I mean, I was there all weekend—”

“Which we weren't going to tell anyone,” Marilyn said, coming up behind him. “What a gallant gentleman you are, Kent.”

Kent reeled back. “I didn't know you were coming this morning.”

“I brought sketches for Luke.” She turned her back on Kent, unrolling a large sheet of paper. “What do you think?”

Luke and Monte bent over it. “This looks good,” Luke said. “Monte?”

“Nice idea, living room, bedroom, screened-in porch. And you've got the windows and doors sort of off center like before, but not so much. I like it. Luke?”

“I do, too. Do you have a model, Marilyn?”

“I've started it. I can have it in a couple of days.”

“Bring it in when it's ready. We can't make a final decision until we see it, but I think we're very close. Thanks, Marilyn. This is a good job.”

“It's a good play,” she said quietly. She looked around the room. “I thought you'd be rehearsing.”

“That was the idea,” Luke said drily. “We're about to start again; do you want to stay?”

“If nobody minds. I love this part of it, the beginning.”

“Have a seat.” Monte pulled out the chair beside his.

Luke walked toward the stage. “I'd like to start again and go through all three acts without stopping. We'll break for lunch at one o'clock. If anyone has comments or questions, hold them until afternoon. Okay. From the top.”

Kent stood behind Marilyn's chair. “Could we go out later? I mean, lunch or coffee or whatever you want. Please.”

She did not turn around. “I'll think about it.”

“Kent,” Luke said. “We're starting.”

“See you later,” Kent said, and touched Marilyn's shoulder as he walked to a chair near the stage.

At the end of the first act, Luke waited for comments or complaints, but there were none. “Act two,” he said, and picked up his pencil. His list was already several pages long, and he knew how many hours lay ahead, in his office and at home, when he would go over each point to find ways to communicate his ideas to the actors, to incorporate their suggestions, if possible, and to shape each scene so that, one by one, they built to a final scene that audiences would feel was inevitable and right.

“Luke,” Abigail said, “I'm going to be on stage at the beginning of the act instead of coming in later.”

Kent's head shot up. “But—”

“Go ahead and try it,” Luke said. “And then go straight on, Abby; any way you feel comfortable.”

They settled into the play, and the rehearsal filled the rest of the day, with a brief break for lunch in which Marilyn and Kent disappeared for fifteen minutes and he came back alone. “It'll get worked out, or maybe it won't,” he said cryptically to Luke. At the end of the day Luke sent his actors home with a promise that the next day they would talk about their parts. “We'll go over everything: questions, problems, any kind of discomfort with your lines. It will probably be the only day we devote to that and nothing else. Day after tomorrow we'll be rehearsing again.”

A few minutes later the lighting director arrived. “I know it's earlier than I usually get started on a play,” he said, “but I just saw Marilyn's model and I'd like to sit in on a few rehearsals. I had some ideas when I saw the model. . . .”

He and Luke went over the sketches in his notebook, until Kent grew bored. “Think I'll take off,” he said to Luke and Monte, and they nodded, still talking about lights.