Stages (46 page)

“
The Miracle Worker.
Wha—wa—wa—wa…cocktails!”

While the argument about everyone’s place in the universe was still raging, Kathy slipped away.

She took a deep breath and tugged on David’s sleeve.

He turned around.

He smiled broadly and reached out to hug her.

Kathy flushed. It was as if he’d recognized her in a way that was different from the time he’d tapped on her window in the parking lot of the Mercedes dealership, almost as he had known her in the very beginning, when he had been as innocent as she, before his doubts and his ambition had separated them.

“Kath” was all he said for a moment.

Kathy put her hand against her mouth while he held her. There was no doubt about it. This one word—her name—had come from his heart.

When he asked her to join him for dinner, of course she said yes. He was staying at the Copley Plaza. She, at the Ritz.

“Let’s eat at the Cafe Budapest,” said David. “It’s sort of in between.”

At dinner, after a few drinks, he told her everything.

“I was heavy into coke,” he said. “Maybe inside, I knew what she was doing, but I blotted it out. I let her get away with it, because I wanted her so much. In the end I wanted to die, Kath, but I didn’t. So I’ve gone on, one step at a time. I live from day to day. I don’t hate the morning anymore. I’ve come that far.”

“Are you happy?” Kathy asked. “Working for your father?”

“I get my bills paid,” David replied. “No credit rating anymore, but I pay my bills on time.”

“Do you ever think of getting back into the business?”

“No, I’m washed up out there.”

He looked like a little boy lying badly.

“You really think that?” Kathy said. “You never get the itch?
Never
?”

“You know me too well,” David confessed. “When I cleaned out my office, there was this one script I didn’t throw out, for some reason. An adaptation of a short story by Dorothy Parker. The sort of thing you could make in New York—mostly in an apartment. I thought of getting Geraldine Page, and Lee Remick.”

Kathy was listening intently, but in a corner of her mind a resolution was made to have ice cream for dessert.

“I couldn’t even begin to get the financing together for even that, though,” David said.

“Don’t be so sure,” said Kathy.

“What do you mean?”

“Remember what you said years ago that Lauren Holland didn’t do?”

“What?”

“You said, and I quote, ‘She doesn’t
put out.
’
Well, she does now. Money, that is.”

“She’d never be interested….”

“Of course not, not if you’re not. You know something, David? My grandfather started three businesses in his lifetime. He lost two of them. But the third one made him a lot of money. He used to say, ‘Of course I kept trying. Did Babe Ruth leave the plate after only two strikes?’”

David looked at his plate.

“By the way,” said Kathy. “You left California in such a rush that you forgot something.”

“I did?” said David.

“Yes,” said Kathy. She reached into her bag, pulled out David’s Emmy, and plunked it down on the table.

“I left that behind deliberately,” David said. “How did you ever…”

“I’ll tell you if you promise me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“That you’ll stop sulking once and for all. And act like a big boy.”

“I’ve been working on…just being a nice guy, if I can.”

Kathy swallowed quickly. “I’d be satisfied with that,” she said.

79

“What’s that dress made of?” Bruce asked. “It looks like something expensive chocolates come wrapped in.”

“Ombré chiffon,” Veronica replied. “It’s an Adolfo. Only a man could confuse material like this with tissue paper.”

“Excuse me,” said Bruce. “Have you got your little speech all written?”

“I have an idea of what I’m going to say,” Veronica replied.

Bruce looked out the window and thought that this Public Garden or whatever they called it looked a lot neater than Central Park. You could probably take the wife’s poodle into it without worrying about the dog coming across decomposing pigeons and rats.

“And what’s that?” Bruce asked. “You going to talk about the sacrifices they’ll have to make, the years of poverty and uncertainty they have to look forward to, the agony, the despair, the depression—”

“Those raps I reserve for you, cookie, whenever you’re trying to get me to work opposite Sylvester Stallone.”

“That was one hell of an offer.”

“So was David Whitman’s.”

“You would have gotten paid for that, no matter what.”

“I would have gotten two million for a picture that was never released. Instead I got three hundred thousand plus five percent, of a movie that made, need I remind you, seventy million.”

“You don’t have to rub it in. So what are you going to say? Work hard and ignore your manager’s advice? Why don’t you come out and admit that you’re a workaholic? That’ll scare ’em away from the business fast enough. People don’t want to work, they just want to be rich and famous.”

“I’m not in the business of destroying illusions, Bruce, I create them. In the end, I guess, it’s as important to them that I be as much an illusion as any of my characters. So I think what I’m going to do…is give them what they want, what they expect. What they imagine I am is what I’ll be. They get enough of reality without my adding to it.”

“Mm, you’re right, I guess. They sort of pin their hopes on people like you, like they do on the lottery. You got to respect people’s dreams.”

“Remember that the next time you come to me with an offer from Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

“You about ready?”

“Just about.”

“I’ll call for the car, then.”

Five minutes later, Veronica Simmons and her manager walked out of their hotel into a sea of outstretched arms and popping flashbulbs. Veronica paused to sign the first five autograph books. Then, smiling brilliantly and waving, she stepped into the waiting limousine.

The Wilson Center was already jammed.

Melanie and Mike were sitting in the fifth row, and Kathy and David were in the seventh row, just behind them.

When Kathy told Melanie about how she’d wound up spending the night with David, Melanie had pretended to take it in stride, saying, “Well, it certainly is true that the more things change, the more they stay the same.” Then, as soon as she had the chance, she’d run off to find Mike and swooned into his arms.

Now the four of them were chatting back and forth over the tops of people’s heads.

“I think it’s a great idea for us all to go back to the Copper Kettle afterward,” Kathy was saying. “I never dreamed it’d still be in business.”

“Only the booths have changed,” Melanie replied. “I don’t think they’ve even dusted that picture of the Parthenon.”

“I’m disappointed,” Mike said. “I was really looking forward to the chicken à la king and canned peas that they’re having here.”

“Lauren’s eating at the president’s house,” Kathy said.

“Big deal,” said Melanie. “I was invited there too.”

“It’d be a big deal to eat at the president’s house,” David said, “only if Veronica Simmons was going to be there. But she isn’t. I heard she’s going straight back to her hotel.”

“Do you blame her?” Mike said.

“Well, I invited her to come along with us,” Melanie said. “I sent a note to her hotel this morning.”

“Maybe you’ll get a Christmas card back from her agent,” Mike said.

The banter continued until almost seven, the hour when Veronica Simmons was supposed to show up. When there were only a few minutes left, the tension in the theater was so palpable that everyone felt compelled to sit down, the way they would in a jetliner taking off.

Lauren, sitting in front with the president’s wife, felt a lump in her throat.

Melanie and Mike agreed that they should have smoked some dope earlier.

David, his hand resting on Kathy’s, stared straight ahead. He wanted to understand more about life, he truly did, and he was going to listen very carefully to what Veronica Simmons had to say.

At five minutes after seven, the president walked onto the stage. The applause for him was mostly to hurry him up, Melanie pointed out in a whisper to Mike.

“It gives me great pleasure…” the president began.

He went on and on about the new theater, and then he went on and on about Veronica Simmons.

“They should have just skipped the building and erected a statue to her,” Mike whispered.

The moment came for the star to be introduced. The president paused for an unconscionably long moment. “Miss Veronica Simmons!” he said.

“Oh, Lord,” said Melanie.

There she was. Nodding to the roar of applause, the shrill whistles, the shouts.

“No doubt about it,” Mike said into Melanie’s ear.
“That
is a
movie star.”

“I bet she does a real Eve Harrington speech,” Melanie replied.

When the applause finally died down, Veronica looked around the mobbed theater, her red lips insinuating more than that she was about to say something. A couple of people hooted.

Veronica eyed the mike that was pointing at her bosom and then adjusted it with her right hand, slowly.

More hoots.

“Thank you for the kind words, President Gilbert,” she began. Surveying her audience again, she added, “And thank you all, for such a lovely reception.” The applause started up again, then died down.

“Isn’t this an occasion, though?” she said. “We’ve been waiting for a new theater here for a long time, haven’t we?”

More applause, and the muttering of agreement.

“We thought we were going to get a new theater when I was a freshman here, but it never seemed to materialize. And then I graduated, and wound up settling for the movies….
”

Still more applause.

“Let me tell you, it was more fun being on a live stage—here—you just felt so much more
creative
working around everybody’s dropped lines.”

“I never dropped a line in my life,” Melanie whispered to Mike.

“Shh,” he replied.

“How many of you are drama majors?” Veronica asked.

There was ferocious applause from a very small group.

Veronica smiled encouragingly at them.

“I’d like to give you some advice,” Veronica said to them. “But I can’t. This business works differently for everyone who’s crazy enough to get into it. It helps if you have conviction, it helps if you have some luck…
”
Veronica shrugged and smiled winningly. “But as for me,” she added, “I fucked my way to the top!”

There was a moment of stunned silence, and then pandemonium. The entire audience was on its feet, applauding wildly, yelling and screaming, stamping their feet, pounding the sides of their seats.

Melanie had swooned again.

An hour later, she was at the Copper Kettle with the others, and they were already on their second pitcher of beer. Veronica Simmons was in her limousine, on her way back to the hotel.

“Couldn’t you have said something that was printable in
People
?”
Bruce was complaining.

“Oh, stop whining,” Veronica replied. “They’ll just change my wording. That whole magazine is a euphemism for
fuck.
Do you have that script William Morris was sending? I wanted to start reading it tonight.”

“It hasn’t come yet,” Bruce replied. “There were these couple of things that were in your box at the hotel.”

He reached into his breast pocket and handed her two envelopes and a phone message slip. Veronica opened one of the envelopes.

*

The four of them were good and drunk.

“You remember years ago,” Melanie said, “the time we sang ‘There’s No Business Like Show Business’?”

Kathy began to sing, in a low, lilting voice, almost as if the song were a lullaby.

The others began to sing along with her.

Outside, on the sidewalk, a young man saw a woman he thought he knew walking up to the front door of the restaurant.

“Hey,” he called out, “you’re Veronica Simmons.”

The woman laughed and said, “I hear that from everybody. My name is Paula Rubin, and I’m from
Queens.
”

A block away, out of sight, Bruce Ward sat in the back of the stretch limo gazing up through the moon roof at the brilliant firmament of June. His neck was aching, so he switched on the Sony and began watching a B movie instead of the night sky. If he’d learned nothing else, he’d learned this much. Don’t look to the stars for explanations.