Attack of the Theater People (21 page)

I hear these names and they scarcely seem real to me.

“A half hour later they come back, smellin’ of booze, just in time for ‘The Rain in Spain.’ And I am tellin’ ya’, the audience blows the roof off. It’s like nothing I have ever seen. And then, two minutes later, Julie Andrews steps downstage and sings, ‘I Coulda Danced All Night.’”

Mrs. Fiamma lays her hand on her breast, almost in supplication.

“It was like goin’ to heaven. And Mr. Hart turns to me, so handsome he was, with those dark eyes, and he says, ‘We’re a hit.’ Just like that, like I wuz somebody.” She smiles, her eyes misting. “’Cuz that’s when he knew. He was a very nervous type, y’know, did a lotta psychoanalysis—I’m not gossiping; he talked about it in the papers. But that’s when he knew the show was gonna be okay. And I was Right There. Oh, you shoulda seen it. When it was over the audience came runnin’ down the aisles to the stage, standin’ on their seats, clappin’ with their hands over their heads. From then on it was the hottest ticket in town, sold out for two years, the number one record album in America. People camped out in sleeping bags to get standing-room tickets. Everybody came to see it. You name ’em, and I showed ’em to their seats. Cary Grant, Lucille Ball, Eleanor Roosevelt. During the show you’d look out at the audience and they wuz all smilin’. Like they wuz in love.” She pauses, lost in the memory.

“What other shows did you work?” I ask, a child stalling at bedtime.
One more story, please, please, please.

“Well, it musta been, I dunno, 1958, they opened the Lunt-Fontanne over on Forty-sixth Street and I got assigned over there. Boy, was I mad. For me,
My Fair Lady
was better than church. But I hadda go, and it opened with this thing starring the Lunts,
The Visit
? You ever heard of it? I still don’t know what the hell it’s about, and I thought, ‘ Uh-oh, here we go again.’ And then we got
The Sound of Music
.”

“With Mary Martin.”

“No, Dean Martin. Of course Mary Martin. The critics hated it, called it
The Sound of Mucous
; oh, they were so mean, but I loved it. So beauteeful, it was. I watched it every single time. The curtain went up, and there was Mary Martin in a tree. In a tree! She hadda be forty-five years old, but she seemed half that. She really was Peter Pan. And people would come back five, six times.

“One night, just before we open the house, there’s a blackout. Poof. The whole city goes dark. So the house manager goes out on the street and tells everybody waitin’ that it’s so dark backstage nobody can put on their costumes or their makeup; they can’t even move the set. But the audience won’t budge. So Mary Martin’s husband, who was also the producer, sends the crew out to get as many flashlights as they can. Naturally, they ask all us ushers if they can use ours, too. Then they do the show in the dark holding flashlights under their chins. Like they’re tellin’ ghost stories at camp. Oh, it was so much fun. No costumes, no sets. Just…
The Sound of Music
. About a half hour inta the show the lights came on, and there they all were, in their bathrobes and street clothes, like a spell had been broken. So they took a little break and the crew moved the set and the actors put on their costumes, but we wuz almost disappointed. It was so…magic.”

From inside the theater we hear the siren announcing another train race onstage, and my rage returns. If New York was plunged into a blackout, you couldn’t do
Starlight Express
by flashlight. The orchestra isn’t even in the goddamn theater; they’re piped in from a studio on the fourth floor by the men’s john. It’s so dishonest, asking us to root for a plucky little steam engine while garishly reveling in electronic overkill. They ought to call the show
Starlight Excess
.

I got to the theater too late. Broadway is dying, just like Eddie Sanders and his friends.

Thirty

After the show,
I walk Mrs. Fiamma to the subway, pressing her for details, hoping for more stories of Broadway’s Golden Age, maybe a tale of New York during the war—a night entertaining soldiers at the Stage Door Canteen, a quickie marriage with a sailor before he ships overseas? Or perhaps a melancholy tale of dreams deferred—the failed chorine who resigned herself to a life taking tickets. I want to—need to—go back to a time when the theater still seemed to matter. When the only steel onstage was Ethel Merman’s vocal cords. When doing a hit song in a hit show could land you on the cover of
Life
magazine. When Moss and Kitty Carlisle Hart lived a Cole Porter–infused fantasy.

But Mrs. Fiamma is tired. She tells me she grew up in Brooklyn, where she still lives, got a job ushering through a family friend, and has been doing it ever since. It’s rough on her knees, the audience has no manners, and she hates the commute. Her son keeps tellin’ her to retire.

“Why do you still do it?” I ask as she waddles down the street, purse in one hand, tote bag in the other, like a pack mule.

“You know that joke about the guy who shovels after the elephants in the circus?” she says.

“No.”

“There’s this guy. He works at the whaddya call it, the Barnum and Bailey’s Irish Circus, and it’s his job to shovel after the elephants, y’know, shovel their, uh, bowel movements, right? So he’s shovelin’, and some guy who’s just seen the circus comes out all excited—he’s eatin’ Cracker Jacks and swingin’ one of them little flashlights. He says to the guy shovelin’, he says, ‘Buddy, you’re one lucky fella. It must be real exciting workin’ here.’ And the guy shovelin’ says, ‘Excitin’? Look what I’m doin’. Every day I stand around these smelly elephants and shovel their bowel movements. Then I come home and my wife makes me sleep on the fire escape ’cuz I stink. Believe me, brother,’ he says, ‘This is the lousiest job in the circus. No, no,’ he says, ‘this is the lousiest job in the world.’ So the other guy says, ‘If you hate it so much, why don’tcha quit?’ And the guy shovelin’ says, ‘What? And leave show business?’”

She laughs, like a car needing a new muffler. We stop in front of the Fiftieth Street station, the Nowhere station.

“You need help down the steps?” I ask.

“Nah, I can manage.” She heaves her purse onto her shoulder.

“Well, good night, Mrs. Fiamma.”

She pats my hand. “Call me Lily.”

Lily.

As I pace down Broadway, a veil of sadness descends over me and I speed up, trying to shake it off. Maybe it’s enough for her, but, when I’m Mrs. Fiamma’s age, I don’t want my theater stories to be about a three-word conversation with a director in the back of a theater, or having my flashlight shine on the face of someone else, even if it is a Broadway legend like Moss Hart or Mary Martin. I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself, but I know I don‘t want to spend thousands of nights in the dark in the rear mezzanine while someone else stands in the spotlight center stage. I will not play a minor role in my own life.

As I pass Colony Music I scan the covers of the vocal selections in the window—Huck and Jim in
Big River
, the dancers in
A Chorus Line
, the urchin from
Les Miz
—my face reflected in the glass. How did I end up on the outside looking in? When I was in high school I thought for sure I’d be the next Kevin Kline, a serious Shakespearean actor who also does Broadway musicals and movies. When I saw him romping around as the Pirate King in
The Pirates of Penzance
—at the Gershwin, as a matter of fact—I knew that’s who I wanted to be, albeit a shorter, stockier version. It was the same feeling I had after I saw
Annie
when I was eleven and spent months bumping and grinding while belting out “Easy Street.” I’m sure my parents took one look at me and thought,
My son’ll come out—tomorrow.

Then, as if I were actually peering into my past, I spy Paula wearing a tartan tam-o’-shanter with a matching scarf, a large rhinestone pin attached to her herringbone overcoat.

She glances up and immediately starts talking, as if I can hear her, her fingers knitting sweaters in the air. She heads toward the entrance, bumping into another shopper as she goes. I enter the store, relieved to get warm.

“I shouldn’t be happy to see you,” she says. “I should be bitter and resentful that you missed
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
. I should walk right past you like I don’t see you.”

“I’m so sorry—”

“What has gotten into you?” she says, swatting me with a glove. “You abandon us on your birthday. You don’t answer my calls. It’s so
rude
.”

She punctuates the statement with an exceedingly noisy fart.

“You’ll have to excuse me,” she says, embarrassment rouging her cheeks. “It’s this wretched diet. You’re supposed to stay full by eating as much cabbage soup as you want.” She pulls a bottle of perfume out of her purse and spritzes the air. “And do you know how much cabbage soup I want? NONE! But otherwise I’d be reduced to eating paint chips.”

She continues talking as she leads me outside.

“It’s positively
mortifying
,” she says. “The other day I was rehearsing my scene for the presentation to agents, and, at the climactic moment when Mrs. Kendal touches the Elephant Man’s hand…fffftttttttppppp. Don’t laugh; it was like a truck backfiring. I tell you, I’m at my wit’s end. And don’t even ask how things are going with Marcus….”

“Why? What’s going on with—”

“I can’t even talk about it. He’s completely unreasonable. If I didn’t love him so much I would hate him, loathe him with every fiber of my being.” She thrusts her arm through mine and starts walking in the exact direction from which I came. “He simply isn’t qualified to run a theater company. There’s no schedule, no organization. We keep losing actors. I’m like, ‘Who’s going to rehearse on their off hours in Hoboken for no money for
three months
? I don’t care if it is deconstructed and ironic, it’s still just the fucking
Music Man
.’”

“You said that to him?”

“No. But I thought it really hard.” She pulls her scarf around her neck as a bitter wind whips down Broadway. “I tell you, I can’t
sleep
, I’m so worried. I’m just hoping that, once I get a little seed money for the company, we can start paying…What? Why are you looking like that? What happened?”

I stop, the cold stinging my cheeks. “It’s about your money.”

“Oh, my God. Natie lost it.”

“Sort of, but—”

“I’m having palpitations. Look at my hands.”

“Let me explain.”

She grabs my arms and shakes me. “DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND? MY RENT IS DUE!”

“We have it; we have it!”

She clutches her hand to her chest. “Don’t do that to me. I’m very vulnerable these days.”

I explain to her what happened, and how Natie’s earning back her $500 by ushering.

“That’s very decent of him,” she sniffs. “Y’know, it says a lot for Natie that he would return my money.”

I don’t tell her the part about the trade being Almost Legal.

There’s the usual pile
of take-out menus on the floor of the vestibule, branded with the footprints of neighbors who couldn’t be bothered to throw them away. I swear, this building is like Gorky’s
The Lower Depths
. I scoop them up without looking, trying to convince myself how delicious my cup of Top Ramen is going to be.

But my appetite disappears the moment I open my mail:

UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND

EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 24601

SUBPOENA

Pursuant to Section 10b-5 of

The Securities Exchange Act of 1934

EDWARD ZANNI

Is ordered to appear at

3 World Financial Center, Suite 400
No later than 10:00 a.m., Friday, March 20, 1987

Failure to appear will result in a charge of contempt, with a possible fine or incarceration.

Thirty-one

I’m covered in sweat
by the time I reach my apartment. Four floors, steam heat, and possible incarceration will do that to you.

I need evidence. I need a lawyer. I need a Valium.

I need my father.

Damn.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

Get a root canal. Work in a bank. Watch Sally Struthers in the female version of
The Odd Couple
. These are trials I would rather endure than admit to my father that I need his help. He’s going to go ape shit.

I look at the genuine fake Cartier I bought on the street, which reads 11:15 Edward Standard Time, which means it’s 11:04. Clenching everything clenchable, I succumb to the last refuge of the truly desperate, I call home.

A woman answers, her accented “Hello” indicating it’s
mi madre nueva
.

“
Hola, Milagros,
” I say, trying to sound chipper and bilingual. “Uh,
esto es Edward. Como estás?
”

I figure I should make an effort now that we’re family.

“Spanish Spanish Spanish Spanish,” she says. “Spanish Spanish Spanish.”

Unfortunately, my facility with pronunciation far exceeds my comprehension. “
Despacio, por favor
,” I say, “
despacio
.”

“Slower Spanish. Slower Spanish. Slower Spanish.”

“
No comprendo, no comprendo
,” I say. “Uh,
dónde está mi papá
?”

“Slower Spanish…”

“Mi papá! Mi papá!”

“Alberto,”
she calls, “
tu hijo loco
.”

I hear the
thunk
,
thunk
,
thunk
of the three locks to my apartment opening, followed by the thud of the door dislodging. I put my finger in my other ear and hear my father say, “
Gracias, mamacita
,” before taking the phone. “Eddie?”

“
Mamacita?
” I say, trying to sound casual. “That’s cute.”

“Well, she’s moved in for a while.”

“I should hope so, being your wife and all.”

“Huh? No, that was Milagros’s mother. She’s come to help out now that she’s on bed rest.”

Natie shuts the door, another
thunk
.

“What? How can she help if she’s on bed rest?”

“No, Milagros is on bed rest. On account of the twins.”

“Jeez,” Natie says, “it’s like an oven in here.”

I snap my fingers to get him quiet. “Milagros is having twins?”

“Didn’t I tell you? Sorry, it’s been crazy here, what with…
Hey, Fernando, turn up the news, will ya’? There’s gonna be una cosa sobre Ollie North
. I tell ya’, Eddie, it’s criminal what those fuckers in Washington did. Since the Nicaraguans went to war with the contras, wages have gone down ninety percent.”

“What’s Fernando doing there?”

Al pops his gum. “I got him a job at the plant. The kid was an engineering student in Nicaragua and he was mopping floors in Miami. But that Fernando, he ain’t afraid of hard work.”

I flap the letter in the air for Natie, who grabs it while trying to unzip his parka.

“So,” Al says. “You got a job yet?”

I’m no Gavin, but I can read Natie’s lips when he mouths,
Shit.

“Eddie? You there?”

“I’m sorry, what, Pop?”

“Everything work out with that stuff in the papers?”

“Sure, sure. I told you, it was all a misunderstanding.” Where do I even begin? Why can’t I tell him?

“You got a new job yet?”

At least I’ve got good news there. “Yeah, I’m ushering.”

My father backfires a laugh. “Finally made it to Broadway, huh, kid?”

I cringe. “Yeah. Something like that.”

Why do I talk to this man? Why do I keep setting myself up? I don’t care how much therapy he gets, how many Nicaraguan refugees he takes in; he will never understand me. He doesn’t know who I am. My whole life I’ve tap-danced as fast as I can to win his approval, and all he’s ever said is, “Cut out that racket, will ya’?”

Al.

“Oh, hey, my thing’s on,” he says. “Can we talk later?”

“Sure.”

“All right. Stay outta trouble.”

I hang up the phone, swallowing the teeth he kicked in.

“Son of a bitch,” Natie says.

“I know, can you believe it?”

“No, my jacket. The zipper’s stuck.”

“Natie, I’m going to jail.”

“One thing at a time. Right now I’m dyin’ of heatstroke.” He pulls out of his sleeves and tries to shimmy out of his parka, but it gets caught on his hips. “Dammit.”

“Here, let me help you.” I kneel down in front of him and try to pull the waistband away from his crotch so I can jimmy the zipper. Because it’s twisted, I have to reach around inside, my knuckles pressing against him.

“What is this thing?” I ask.

“I hope you’re talking about my ski pass.”

“Why are you still wearing it?”

“I thought it made me look cool.”

I pull the pass around and grab it in my teeth to keep it out of the way. Outside, I hear the clanking of keys and the
thunk
of the door.

“Come on, come on, come on!” Natie says, beads of sweat dripping off his face.

Out of the corner of my eye I see Willow.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ll come back later.”

No amount of explaining
seems to help when she returns. (“It’s okay, guys,” she says. “I’m from Berkeley.”) By then, at least, Natie has come up with another plan to finger Chad before my SEC appearance.

“All you need to do is get a job for the janitorial company that cleans Chad’s building, then go through his desk,” he says. “Ya’ see it in the movies all the time.”

I didn’t say it was a good plan. Because not only would I have to get assigned to the exact building and exact floor, I would also have to get hired. Which I don’t.

You know you’ve come down in the world when you can’t even get a job as a janitor.

Natie promises to come up with plan D. Or are we up to E? Whichever it is, we have to work fast, because the March twentieth deadline is just a few weeks away. Meanwhile, I continue ushering at the Gershwin. Since Kelly covers six roles, I end up watching
Starlight Express
more times than any person should ever have to. But even I’m not petty or bitter enough not to enjoy her performance as Dinah, the dining car, an Ado Annie/Miss Adelaide hybrid who performs one of the only decent numbers, a country-western takeoff on Tammy Wynette’s “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” called “U.N.C.O.U.P.L.E.D.” Kelly’s adorable and funny and sounds great, and I’m so proud of her I could cry, if I were capable of such a thing. Watching her take bows to the cheers of the crowd, I remind myself that her success has nothing to do with me. She’s worked hard for this and deserves it.

She deserves better, in fact.

Meanwhile, Natie gets to usher
Les Misérables
, the one show worth seeing this season, although he denies it to make me feel better. (“Two words,” he says. “Dow. Ner.”) But watching the chorus of desperate homeless people gives him the idea of how to infiltrate Chad’s apartment, which, at this point, seems to be our only chance of finding evidence to take him down. Natie gathers our growing crime syndicate—Ziba, Hung, and now Willow—to plan a little guerrilla theater of our own.

It’s a collaborative effort. Willow and I coach Ziba and Hung in their roles (apparently I can explain to someone else how to act; I just can’t do it myself); Hung teaches us how to distress costumes (“You’re ugly,” Natie says to a pile of clothes. “I hate you. Your aunt Gladys is dead.”), while Natie shows Hung how to use the lock-picking set we bought from Spy City on Fourteenth Street. It’s fun, in a Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland backyard-musical kind of way—that is, if Mickey and Judy embarked on a life of disorganized crime:

“Hey, kids, let’s commit a felony!”

Actually, if our latest scheme were a musical, it would begin with one of those ensemble numbers that establish the community, like “Tradition” in
Fiddler on the Roof
or “Iowa Stubborn” from
The Music Man
.

The curtain rises on the entrance to a luxury building on Sutton Place, with an awning extending over the sidewalk. A uniformed DOORMAN enters, sweeping the sidewalk. He addresses the audience.

DOORMAN:
Oh, good mornin’! You’re up early. Usually I’m the only one out here at this time of day. But you’re just in time to see the mornin’ rush. (He sings.)

Oh, there’s nuttin’

Like Sutton…Place.

From there, various tenants of the building appear: men in suits, their shiny shoes gleaming like sports cars, skinny women in workout clothes walking children to school.

The music switches to a calypso beat for “The March of the Caribbean Nannies,” followed by a contrapuntal duet for “The Ladies Who Lunch and the Ladies Who Clean Their Apartments.” Delivery guys and dog walkers come and go, taxis and Town Cars pull up, and soon the entire cast is singing:

There’s nuttin’,

Like Suh! Ton! Plaaaaaaaaaaaace!

The stage clears and a spotlight picks up a homeless man, one of the many mad vagrants who wander New York’s streets every day. Grizzled and prematurely old, he wears a baggy overcoat and a colander on his head. He sings one of those plaintive, “somebody, somewhere” songs.

Somebody please help me,

Even though I smell like pee…

In real life that vagrant is me, weaving along the sidewalk in the late morning, moaning, “Will you help me? Won’t someone help me?” I approach the doorman, who doesn’t respond in the cheery manner of someone who just performed the opening number of a Broadway musical.

“Okay, buddy, keep it movin’,” he says.

I’m amazed at how comfortable I feel playing this role. Even though we’re plotting to illegally enter Chad’s apartment, I can’t help but luxuriate in the pleasure of losing myself in a character. I know this guy. I see him every day.

I hold up a bank deposit envelope. “But I-I-I found this, and I don’t know what to do.”

“Neither do I. Now get the hell outta here.”

An Asian woman of indeterminate age approaches. She’s in china-doll slippers with white socks, and wears leggings with a worn-out down coat, a plastic rain bonnet on her head. She could be any of the number of housekeepers who come and go: conspicuously Not White, yet, paradoxically, almost invisible because she isn’t. I slump down on the sidewalk, pressing my hands to my head like I’m trying to silence the people who live there. “No! No! No! No! No!”

“That’s it,” the doorman says, “I’m callin’ the cops.” He makes a move to turn, but I reach up and grab his forearms because I don’t want him to see the Asian woman. I start singing “Camptown Races.”

Camptown ladies sing this song,

Doo-dah, doo-dah.

“Let go of me,” he shouts. “Let go of me.”

Behind him the Asian woman slips in the front door, and I wrestle with the doorman until I feel certain she’s gotten in the elevator. Then I let go, dashing down the street yelling, “Wait for me, Jesus! Wait for me!”

If this were a musical, the Asian lady would remove her disguise and Hung would perform a comic showstopper called “All in a Gay’s Work.”

While Hung breaks into Chad’s apartment, I ditch my homeless duds, wipe off the residual dust I have on my suit underneath, and head to the pay phone on the corner of First Avenue, standing behind a fashionable woman with one of those fur wraps around her head.

“Any word?” I ask.

“Nothing yet,” Ziba says.

I look across First Avenue, where Natie is stationed at another pay phone. He, too, appears to be talking, although that could just be for show. Or perhaps he’s already talking to Hung, coaching him as he goes through Chad’s apartment, explaining to him what he’s looking at. That is, if there’s anything to look at. If he’s even gotten in. So many ifs. Once they’re done, Hung will call this phone, and Ziba will cross the street to distract the doorman in the way that only an exotic five-foot-twelve beauty in a slit skirt can.

If this were a musical, she’d do a big femme fatale number called “I Love a Man in Uniform,” dancing on the doorman’s desk in the lobby, stealing his hat and wearing it at a rakish angle.

But this isn’t a musical. This is real life. Where a real taxi pulls up in front of the building. And out steps Chad.