Angels All Over Town (6 page)

“Thank you, Dad,” I said, and I meant it.

He kissed me and gave me money for a cab. When I arrived at my apartment on West Seventy-fourth Street, I didn’t wait for Chance Schutz to call me. I found his card and called him.

“Ah, hello, Miss Cavan. Family obligations all squared away?” he said the instant he heard me speak.

His quick recognition shocked and flattered me. “How did you know it was me?”

“You have a distinctive, may I say, lilt to your voice. Very pretty. A very pretty voice.”

“Thank you.”

“You are calling about my offer, are you not?”

“Yes.”

“Wonderful. I am prepared to offer you a part on
Beyond the Bridge
. A part that will lead to a starring role.”

I held the smooth black receiver and listened to this man promise to change my life. He was going to make me a star. Adrenaline stung my veins. “A starring role?” I repeated dully.

Chance Schutz laughed. “You think about it. It’s a bit much to consider all at once. You come by my office and I will give you more details. You come by tomorrow, how’s that?”

I had dance, singing, and playwriting classes the next day, but I told him of course I’d be there. He took me to lunch at the Russian Tea Room. I ate blini with Malassol caviar and listened to his ideas. He had seen me act in previous Juilliard productions and had snuck into several rehearsals. For the part of Delilah Grant, he wanted a new actress, one who had my “chiseled features” and a gentle way about her. Delilah was to be a victim; she would be misunderstood by her stepmother and sisters, taken advantage of by the men in her life, and frequently placed in mortal danger. But as her character expanded she would find reservoirs of inner strength. She would turn the tables, and in five years Chance Schutz saw Delilah becoming one of the show’s two main characters.

He didn’t need to tell me that Rachel Moore, Kurtz Drago, Corey Levinson, and Cecile Van Vliet had stepped from
Beyond
the Bridge
into major stage and screen roles. Yes, it was a soap opera, but its scope was greater than that of most soaps. It demanded more of the actors; its plot lines were not as contrived as other soap plot lines. “Truthfully,
Beyond
has the most artistic integrity of any soap opera today,” Chance told me that afternoon. “We strive for something one usually finds in film or even theater. We are not pap.”

I sat beside him on the cozy rose-red banquette and popped fish eggs against the roof of my mouth with my tongue. Chance’s perfect hand rested on the tablecloth beside mine. His nails were clipped straight across; he wore a weighty gold crest ring on his pinky finger. Occasionally he would turn to smile at me, and I would see a softness in his wolf eyes. I found myself leaning forward, to see whether he wore a wedding band on his left hand. He didn’t, but I knew that meant nothing. Many Juilliard professors were married and didn’t wear rings. With dessert we had Russian tea in a glass, and I found myself in the middle of an elaborate fantasy. Chance Schutz would take me to his apartment in his limousine and invite me upstairs to continue discussing his offer. We would lounge on a glove-soft leather sofa. I envisioned yards of heavy brocade draperies at the floor-to-ceiling windows, soft lamplight, classical music on the stereo. Chance would say, “If you want the part, there is only one thing that you must do…”

Instead he handed me cab fare and told me to think things over. Then he hurried off to meet his wife, who taught a pottery class at the New School, leaving me to pocket the money and take a subway home. Riding through the tunnel beneath Seventh Avenue, I tried not to think about my fantasy. Only a daughter of James Cavan would expect sex demands from every man she met. I felt ashamed of myself. Chance Schutz cared about artistic matters, not sleeping with actresses. He had described in loving detail the sort of pots his wife created: huge, cockeyed things that looked like umbrella stands and spittoons. I began a new fantasy in which
Beyond
’s cast members were like a family, with Chance Schutz and his wife as the loving, benevolent parents. Before I reached my stop at Seventy-second and Broadway, I had already made my decision: I would take a screen test for
Beyond the Bridge
as soon as Chance Schutz could arrange it.

We set it up for the following Tuesday. I walked from my apartment to the studio on West Fifty-sixth Street, growing more nervous with each passing block. I was to read a scene with Stuart MacDuff, the actor who played Paul Grant, Delilah’s soap opera father. Paul Grant was a former bank president as well as the mayor of Mooreland. Delilah, his middle and favorite daughter, had run away from home five years earlier. During her absence she had been a victim of the white slave trade in Singapore, rescued by a ship’s captain who had turned out to be the first transsexual Rhodesian, and finally returned to Mooreland. The scene I read for my screen test was the first meeting between Paul and Delilah Grant in five years.

DELILAH
(
anguished
). Dad, don’t you know me?

PAUL
(
hesitating
). Not…Delilah?

DELILAH
Yes, I’ve come…home.

PAUL
(
embracing her
). Oh, Delilah, Delilah. You don’t know how much your mother and I missed…And now your mother is dead. I have remarried. (
Slaps his head, looks deeply into her eyes
.) But all that can wait. You
are
going to stay?

DELILAH
(
shy, eyes downcast
). If you’ll have me. If you’ll forgive me.

PAUL
Darling, forgive you? These years have been hell for us, not knowing. Tell me everything.

DELILAH
Oh, Dad, they’ve been hell for
me
. I didn’t really mean to run away, you know. I just had to think, to be alone for a few days. (
Becomes agitated
.) That man, that man—I’ll never forget…

PAUL
(
embracing her again, this time roughly
). Don’t talk, don’t think. We’ve all the time in the world for that.

Art Panella, the director, told me I had played the scene with more reserve than he would like. But basically he thought I was fine. Chance, dressed in khaki pants, a peach silk shirt, and a golden chamois leather jacket, leaned against one of the huge cameras. “I beg to differ, Arthur,” he said. “She is perfect. Quiet, shy. Perfect. And she comes to us via Juilliard. She will be a feather in our cap.”

I beamed proudly. Stuart MacDuff stood beside me until Chance handed me the contracts. Then he kissed my cheek and walked away. My starting salary seemed immense. Chance promised there would be better scripts as soon as they could lure a certain writer away from a competing show. I thought of hiring a lawyer, of showing the contracts to my father, but excitement prevented me. I signed on the spot. I would start two weeks later, leaving me just enough time to withdraw from Juilliard and inform my family.

That was seven years ago. Now I sat before my dressing-room mirror, made up for the wilds of Lake Huron, and prepared to film my scene with the fur trapper. As far as Delilah was concerned, I perceived no vast difference between a psychotic fur trapper and a white slaver; my character’s character had not changed as much as I had hoped it would. Chance had hired several new scriptwriters who were periodically replaced by other new scriptwriters. The truth, which I hadn’t wanted to face in my wide-eyed days, when I had hoped to revolutionize daytime drama, was that soap operas had to be formulaic. The audience liked them that way. Tears, love, and angst. “Make them laugh, make them cry, and make them wait,” the most famous writer in the business had professed.

Art was having some trouble getting the lighting exactly the way he wanted it. One of the stagehands told me there would be a fifteen-minute delay. I did what I always did during delays: I called Lily and Margo in Providence.

Margo answered. As soon as she heard my voice she called for Lily to pick up the extension.

“Baby, baby, baby, have I got news for you!” Lily said.

“She’s in love,” Margo said drolly.

“Oh, you miss Bruno?” I asked.

“No, he’s gone forever. I’ve faced that. This is someone new—a
New Yorker
.”

“Really? Tell all.”

“He’s a man of medicine,” Margo said. “Our Lily’s going to marry a doctor.”

“No one said anything about
marrying
,” Lily said.

“But you’re seeing quite a bit of him,” Margo said.

“Tell me! I only have a few minutes,” I said. I could hear Art making happy, satisfied grunts in the studio, and I knew he’d call for me soon.

“Okay. He’s forty. He’s a heart surgeon at New York Hospital, and he’s giving a seminar here in Providence.”

“A heart surgeon,” Margo said gravely.

“Also, he loves art, especially cinquecento! I met him in Professor Bachman’s office—they’re close friends.”

“What’s his name?”

“Henk Voorhees. He’s Dutch.”

“You should hear him,” Margo said. “He’s always scoffing at everything. He looks at our white paper towels and says ‘Eh, you should get a color.’”

“He’s forty?” I asked.

“Yes, but a very young forty,” Lily said.

“Married?”

“No, divorced.”

“His ex-wife lives in The Hague,” Margo said.

“Well, it sounds interesting. When did you meet him?”

“Just last Thursday. He’s in Rhode Island for another week, and then it’s back to New York.”

“Do you think you’ll visit him sometime? I’d love to meet him.”

“Definitely.”

“She took him to Newport, and they had brunch at the Candy Store,” Margo said. We all laughed, thinking of the secrets about Lily known by the Candy Store waiters, of the things Henk could have learned if he’d known whom to ask.

“So, our Lily’s living dangerously,” I said just before Art rang the bell in my dressing room, indicating that I was wanted in the studio. We said goodbye, and I hung up smiling. Perhaps Lily wouldn’t go to London after all. My secret wish was that all three of us could live in the same city, if not under the same roof.

Saturday night I went to Susan and Louis’s party in their loft apartment snuggled beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. They shared one floor of an old warehouse with two other couples. All except two were actors, and they were painters. The loft, divided into three separate living areas with a communal kitchen and bathrooms, had windows on only one narrow wall, so most of it was very dark. Susan and Louis combatted this by painting their rooms white, but one of the other couples said that the cavelike aspect had drawn them to the loft in the first place, and had painted their walls black. The noise of rushing bridge traffic was constantly overhead, rattling the old building’s foundations. But the rent was cheap, and that was why Susan and Louis stayed there.

I wore snug black jeans, battered black boots, and a big blue corduroy shirt. I put more kohl around my eyes than I usually do, and I wore huge, dangling silver earrings. Whenever I go to parties at Susan’s I feel super-aware of my clothes. I make at least three times as much money as anyone else there, so I don’t like to look affluent; also, it is the most artistic crowd I know, and their clothing is as much a means of self-expression as paper, canvas, or the stage. That night I stood in the stairwell, listening to Talking Heads music blare from inside, patting my hips and wondering whether I looked too casual, not funky enough, or too contrived.

Louis Pease, Susan’s husband, opened the door. He hugged me tight, and I kissed his lips through his soft brown beard. Louis, a composer of avant-garde string music as well as an actor, looks more like a husky cowboy. He wears jeans that flare, flannel shirts, and string ties. He could stand to lose some weight.

“Hey, Una,” he said. “You’ve arrived.”

I looked into the room behind him and saw masses of dancers. “Oh, Susan said this was a small party.”

“You’ve seen our big ones—it’s relative.”

It was true; I had never been to their place with fewer than seventy-five other people, many of whom Susan and Louis didn’t even know. Word got around about their parties; to people who loved parties, theirs had the right chemistry or something. Susan, Louis, and the loftmates left bowls of fresh popcorn, pretzels, cherries in season, M&M’s, Fritos with hot dip, and chicken wings around the room. You brought your own liquor. You couldn’t even get a ginger ale from the hosts.

I recognized several Juilliard classmates right away. Susan, lithe in a turquoise turtleneck over black tights that made her legs look as if they went on forever, ducked between dancing guests to greet me. She stood with her back to Louis and squirmed with the music against his body.

“Glad you’re here,” she said, leaning just far enough away from Louis to kiss me.

“Una is saying you lured her here on false pretenses,” Louis said.

“This started out to be a very tiny party—dinner for thirteen people. I was going to make paella. But then I started figuring—hors d’oeuvres, the shellfish,
saffron
, which costs a veritable fortune per pinch, wine, dessert…I would have spent as much and worked six times as hard as I did for this party.”

“It’s okay,” I said. I knew that in an hour I would be having a good time, but entering a room filled with people terrified me. Sometimes I wondered whether that fact lay behind my choice to act before cameras instead of a live audience; the reactions of crowds were immediate and brutal. Standing within one, you could see what everyone thought of you by the expressions on their faces. I always acted confident as hell, as if
I
knew I was wonderful and therefore couldn’t give a shit for what anyone thought of me, but secretly I constantly scanned faces for clues: did they think I was too flashy, too conceited, too reserved, too quiet, too eager? I honestly didn’t know. So I acted as if I didn’t care. Only Susan knew.

After showing me their stash of Scotch, since I hadn’t been forewarned and therefore couldn’t be expected to have brought my own, Susan and Louis left me to my own devices. Intimate orange light shined from small table lamps. I stood against the old refrigerator, its metal skin yellow and its edges round, and watched the dancers.