Jacob's Folly (18 page)

D
erbhan Nevsky was breakfasting at that moment, newly sixty, sporting a pair of white jeans pressed by his mother and current housemate, Silvia, along with a bleached white shirt—also octogenarianly pressed—and tumble-dried sneakers. He looked like Mr. Clean without the muscles, or the earring. He blazed with new sobriety, singleness of intent, and the remains of a West Coast tan. As much as he had wanted to get to the top when he was a young man, that ambition was nothing compared with his determination to climb back up now that he was old and toppled. He sipped his sugary black coffee, his first of twelve cups for the day. Silvia walked in, a tidy figure wearing lilac pull-on trousers and a matching blouse, the paper in one hand. She poured herself some coffee, then aimed a sprinkling of Frosted Flakes into the china cup. Lit a cigarette.

“What are you up to today?” she asked, dipping her spoon into the coffee and taking a bite of soggy cereal.

“I'm going to see Bridget,” Nevsky said, in his sped up, jerky way.

“Who's Bridget?”

“Bridget Mooney. Remember her? I lived with her. Before I moved to L.A.”

“Oh. The big one.”

“She wasn't so big,” he said. “She was curvy.”

“That's not what you said at the time.”

“I was an idiot.”

“You're telling
me
this?”

“Okay.” Nevsky got up to go, springing out of his chair as if he had just remembered he had a plane to catch.

“You marrying her now or what? She must be sixty years old,” said Silvia, pointing her powdered face in his direction and raising her penciled-on eyebrows up a notch. “Just like you are.”

“Forget about it. She's an old friend. She teaches in Far Rockaway now.”

“That's a coincidence. You both ended up in Queens.”

“I'm going to see her class. Looking for the next big thing,” said Nevsky, leaping over to his mother and kissing her on the cheek.

She shooed him away, chuckling. “Okay, okay,” she said. “Throw me a twenty, will ya? I'm low on cash.” Nevsky unpeeled a bill from the wad in his pocket, knowing full well his mother had more money than he did; she just hated spending it. Now over eighty, Silvia had welcomed her firecracker of a son two weeks earlier with the shrug of a fellow addict, told him his dinner was in the oven, and caught the bus to Atlantic City so she could work the slot machines till dawn and return, silent and morose, the following morning, having lost yet another chunk of her husband's life insurance money, one quarter at a time. Silvia was counting on dying any minute. If she didn't, she warned Derbhan, he would have to support her completely. She didn't give a shit about reforming herself. Her addiction gave her a spiritual high, a sense of absolute, all-consuming hopefulness she defied any holy roller to replicate. She was a fatalist through and through. “If you're born to be hung, you'll never be drowned” was her favorite expression. Hence, her unending consumption of Benson & Hedges extra-long cigarettes, her breakfasts of Frosted Flakes in black coffee, and her absolute devotion to one-armed bandits. She simply didn't
believe in freedom of choice. Thought it was absolute hooey. This made Silvia Nevsky a very relaxed individual.

Derbhan jittered spryly along the sidewalk in his blazing whites, snapping his fingers as he wove through the human traffic, scanning faces. Somewhere there was a girl. He needed to start with a girl, a face, a surprise. Something to build onto. There was a new movie franchise he had just found out about, an old casting agent friend of his had tipped him off. They were looking for an unknown. Someone stupendous. Derbhan needed to find some girls. Boys too, but Derbhan was better with girls. He ran down the subway steps in Woodside, feeling invigorated and intensely happy.

It had taken him some time to find Bridget Mooney. Her acting school in Manhattan wasn't in the phone book anymore, and he hadn't kept up with any of their mutual friends. It wasn't till he ran into her son, Gavin, while he was in line at the drugstore, that he caught a break.

Gavin was around thirty-five, with a big sloppy build, wearing trousers covered in smears of clay, and a rank T-shirt that Derbhan, who was himself fastidiously clean, had smelled before he recognized the kid in profile. Even though he hadn't seen him since he was a teenager, there was no forgetting that bulldog face.

“Gavin!” Derbhan had called out in his boyish, hoarse voice. Gavin turned around, his angry eyes expecting something bad.

“Derbhan Nevsky,” said Derbhan.

“Whoa,” said Gavin, looking him up and down. “You're back.”

“Risen from the ashes.”

“I'll say.”

“How's your mother?” asked Derbhan.

“She had a stroke,” said Gavin ruminatively.

“Oh, Christ, I didn't know,” said Derbhan.

“She's okay, she still teaches.”

“I looked up her school, but it was—”

“She gave that up. It was too much. She teaches in Far Rockaway now. Bought the bungalow next to us.”

“You're married?”

“With two girls,” said Gavin joylessly.

“And—let me guess—a sculptor?”

“Potter,” said Gavin.

“Wow. Pots. Give me your mother's number, I'll give her a call,” said Derbhan, shifting from one foot to the other. Gavin noticed this.

“I'm clean, by the way,” Derbhan said with an embarrassed grin.

“None of my business,” said Gavin, flipping open his phone. He read out Bridget's number so quickly that Nevsky barely had time to punch it into his phone.

“Let me repeat that back to you,” said Nevsky, doing so.

“Yup, that's it,” said Gavin, not checking.

Once he'd picked up his prescription, Gavin made an insolent little salute and ducked out of the shop, his eyes on the floor.

Derbhan Nevsky took the 7 train to Times Square, then walked to Port Authority and got on the A to Far Rockaway. He stared at the newspaper while snapping his fingers, a lifted, excited feeling in his belly. Seeing Bridget again after her stroke alarmed him somewhat—what if half her face were drooping like wet underwear hung on a line?—but still, he looked forward to seeing his old friend. Plus she might have some interesting students. She always used to. Then again, maybe she was just clinging to the idea of teaching; maybe her class was stuffed with losers, or worse, virtually empty, a sad shadow of the days when she trained some of the hottest young actors in New York.

He had to walk from the station. There was dirty snow on the sidewalk, but the sun had a hint of warmth in it for the first time in two punishingly cold post-California weeks. Nevsky breathed in
deeply and wandered through the suburban streets. A lot of serious Jews out here, he noticed: men in black hats, fringes peeking from under their vests, climbing into minivans or hurrying along the sidewalk, heads down; women in snoods pushing strollers. Then all of a sudden artists, with their trademark filthy garments and jobless look, started popping around corners, lurking in cafés, riding by on bicycles. He also stumbled into a small Carribean neighborhood, where the smell of fried plantains wafted tauntingly through the air.

After asking several people and getting deeply lost, Derbhan came on the Bridget Mooney School of Acting, installed in a storefront below a tuxedo rental establishment. He pushed open the glass door and clocked a bombshell, right off the bat. She was straightening papers at the desk. Her hair was glossy, nearly black. Her eyes, when she looked up at him, seemed to be dark purple.

“Can I help you?” she said.

“I'm looking for Bridget Mooney,” Derbhan said. “I'm an old friend of hers.”

“She'll be here soon,” said the young woman. “She's out.”
This one would need diction class
, thought Nevsky.

“Oh, that's good she can get around,” he said, trying to get a subtle look at the girl's body, which was well covered in a button-down checked shirt and, he noticed as she stood up, a long black skirt. The girl seemed uneasy, and walked across the room to the filing cabinet, opening the glass door a crack as she passed it, in spite of the cold outside.

“I heard she'd had a stroke,” he said. The girl said nothing, but went about her business as if he weren't there. Presently another girl glided through the glass door on Rollerblades. She was built like an athlete, with short, strong legs. Her face was red from the cold.

“Hi, Ellie,” said the bombshell.

“I never signed up for scene night,” explained the girl on Rollerblades,
grabbing a pencil from a cup on the desk and rolling across the room, where a list of names was taped up on the wall.

“There's still room,” said the black-haired one, gesturing to the list with a languorous flourish.

“You're doing
Orpheus
,” noticed Ellie.

“Yeah,” said the girl.

“Good. See ya tonight,” said Ellie, swinging the door open and gliding out onto the street. The bombshell kept the door ajar, returned to the desk, took out a copy of
Orpheus Descending
, and started reading, cheek on fist. Derbhan Nevsky sat, his hands pressed between jiggling knees, for a good five minutes. The cold seeping through the open door was beginning to irritate him.

“You mind if I close that door?” he asked. The girl hesitated. “I've been living in California for the past eight years,” he explained. “Not used to the cold anymore.” The girl looked up at him, impassive. Nevsky rose and pushed the door to.

“Where you from, exactly?” he asked.

“Farrackaway.” She said it as one word.

“Are you one of Bridget's students?”

“Uh-huh,” she said.

“I'm an old friend of hers. Derbhan Nevsky.”

“Masha,” she said. Nevsky whipped out his hand for her to shake, but she just looked at it.

“Hi,” she said. But she wouldn't take his hand. Eventually he sat down again. The girl smiled awkwardly, then returned to her book. Nevsky was startled by the sound of the door. He looked up and there was a sixty-year-old version of the voluptuous and caustic Bridget Mooney, limping over the threshold.

“Bridge,” said Nevsky, standing. Bridget didn't recognize him at first. She tucked her chin into her neck, squinting at him.

“David,” she said.

“Derbhan, but yes.”

“You're back.”

“Very much so.”

“How did you find me?”

“I ran into Gavin. He gave me your number, but I must have written it down wrong, so then I just looked you up. He said Far Rockaway.”

“I'm impressed. Come on back,” she purred. He followed her, casting one last look at Masha, who was studying her lines.

“I'm starting again, Bridge,” said Nevsky, perched at the edge of his chair, leg shuddering.

“Are you okay, then?”

“Clean, sober, ready to go,” he said.

“Where are you living?”

“Queens, for now.”

“Glad to see you. Sorry I'm not much to look at these days,” she said, holding up her claw. “I was struck by a little brain lightning.”

“You look great,” said Nevsky. “I thought you'd be all scrunched up.”

“Thanks.”

“Bridge, I need help finding some girls. A guy too, maybe. I'm going back into management. You know I'm the best. I just need a break.”

She looked at him doubtfully, lips clamped shut.

“Okay,” he said. His voice was hoarse, as if he had been yelling, though he hadn't. “Just let me see
something
—a scene night. Whatever. Let me court you. Them. If you have anyone. Do you? Have anyone? That one at the desk looks amazing, but she's a little odd. She wouldn't shake my hand.”

“She's an observant Jew. She's not allowed to touch strange men.”

“How's she gonna be an actress if she can't touch strange men?”

“It's a process. That girl is a long story.”

“You know who she reminds me of? A young Judy Garland, but sexier …”

“I've thought Judy Garland too,” she said. “But David. Look. No offense. You come here out of the blue, the last thing I heard, you … These kids aren't ready, anyway, most of them. To go out in the world. I just set up here six months ago. A few followed me out here, some
are already working, but the rest are brand-new. I'm not inviting any agents out here yet. It's not just you.”

“So we're both rising from the ashes! How 'bout I come as a friend? As a
friend
! To see what you're up to. I want to reconnect anyway. I missed you.” And this was true. He had missed Bridget Mooney.

“Okay, okay,” she said, chuckling. “Come back in two weeks.”

“Can I buy you dinner tonight?”

“You don't have to do that,” she said, wondering if he was good for even a meal. “Truth is, after class I'm exhausted anyway.”

“Lunch tomorrow?” he asked.

“Take it easy. You live here now, right? We have all the time in the world.”

Derbhan Nevsky had been Bridget Mooney's lover in the late 1970s, when he was still scrabbling his way up a pile of assistants to become a talent agent at the American Artists Agency, and Bridget was an ingénue with a Mae West twist. She had trouble getting work, was the truth of it, because she had a midcentury build—all hips and boobs and lips; the ideal woman had lost about twenty pounds over the past fifteen years, and Bridget had come of age too late: however much she starved herself she couldn't get Ali McGraw thin. Too big for the serious parts, too pretty for the funny parts, she had to content herself with playing an endless stream of next-door neighbors. They simply wouldn't employ her to do the work she'd have been great at.

She and Derbhan lived, for the most part, in Bridget's railroad apartment on Great Jones Street. Derbhan's given name was David, but he decided, while sitting on Bridget's fire escape high on acid one Friday afternoon, that his true soul's name was Derbhan. His inner
self, a young man looking just like him but with huge yellow eyes and a lilac silk shirt, walked up the fire escape and told him that he would never achieve his true maximum potential unless he changed his name to Derbhan. He spelled it out and everything. Nevsky, his inner self said, he could keep. Even while he was hallucinating, Nevsky's practical ambition was turning over, like the idling engine of a getaway car: he wanted a name that no one could forget. He planned on becoming a legend. It's true, he had an eye for talent. Jane Stamp, Hal Maynard, RoSalind Jones were all to become his discoveries. He had a knack for what kind of person was fashionable, who would appeal to the crowd. Once he took someone on as a client, he worked them over, bringing them to parties and charity events, grooming them, putting them on diets, getting their hair extended, teeth straightened, their past made more or less interesting with the help of various publicity agents around town. But all this was after he and Bridget had broken up. They were really only lovers for six desperate months when neither of them had broken through and all they had for consolation was each other and the occasional bottle of Wild Turkey. But once David Nevsky became Derbhan Nevsky, his luck changed; he was promoted to agent within the month. Naturally, Bridget leaned on him to represent her. He, in turn, put so much pressure on her to lose weight, making her eat radishes and cottage cheese for lunch, boiled beef and salad for dinner, Weetabix with apple juice for breakfast, that she became violent with hunger, her rages climaxing when she broke her pitiful lunch plate over his head and ground the shards into the carpet with her platform shoe. Derbhan left then, cottage cheese in his hair, and told her he didn't represent fat actresses. He was steamed, but he wasn't bitter; he knew Bridget was a great girl—it wasn't her fault she was curvy. Bridget was hurt, but she realized the relationship had been doomed, and she really just wanted to teach anyway, and eat what she liked. So they remained friends, grabbing a bite every month or two, as Derbhan rose through the ranks of the agency and Bridget
trained to become an acting teacher. They called each other regularly through Bridget's marriage, the birth of her son, her quick divorce, all the way till Derbhan moved to Los Angeles in the early eighties, when they lost touch. Bridget heard and read things over the years, of course. She saw Derbhan's feature in
Time
magazine, where he was proclaimed one of the most successful young agents in Hollywood; she also saw the article in the
Daily News
that described his sad dismissal from the agency he had helped build. The board of directors had simply fired him—albeit for good reason: he was coked up far past normal behavior patterns pretty much all day, his clients were leaving him in droves, he refused to acknowledge there was a problem, stopped sleeping, and spent all night making manic, unnecessary phone calls to producers in whatever part of the world was awake, ranting on behalf of his clients who were filming in Prague or Australia, making outrageous demands just so he didn't have to go home to his empty house and the heartbreak of coming down and feeling lousy enough to hang himself. He'd sit there, his feet up on the desk, noose of a tie hanging at an angle, eating Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and calling producers of his clients' films the way he used to make prank phone calls as a bored kid in Queens, telling women their girdles were ready to be picked up: