The Boy Who Never Grew Up (56 page)

“You’re not on American soil. You’re on
my
soil.”

“I may have to quote you on that one.”

“Help yourself,” he snapped.

“I generally do.” I couldn’t believe it—I was actually standing there fighting for my inalienable right to speak with Chad Roe.

Lyle’s chest rose and fell. “Look, I want you involved. I do. I just want your input filtered through me, that’s all. So he gets one clear signal.” Lyle glanced around at the others, then edged in closer to me. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to get close to me that morning. “What do you think about my sweater, huh?” he asked, his voice hushed.

“Gwen figures one of the crew took it. Big collector’s item.”

Lyle shook his huge, round head. “Don’t kid yourself, man. That was no robbery.”

“What was it then?”

“A warning,” he replied, with total certainty. “I’m right and this proves it.”

“Proves what, Lyle?”

“Somebody in this fucking room wants me off the air. And they aren’t giving up.” He stabbed himself in the chest with a fat, gloved thumb. “Well, neither am I, Hoagy. They
aren’t
gonna win. I won’t let ’em, ya hear me? I
won’t
give ’em the satisfaction. They’ll never, ever—”

“I need you, Lyle,” Leo broke in gruffly. “I have a problem—with Chad.”

Lyle rolled his eyes. “Now what?”

“It’s about the john in his dressing room,” she replied.

Lyle stared at her. “He hasn’t
got
a john in his dressing room.”

“Exactly,” she responded wearily. “He has to use the same men’s room out by the stairs that the crew uses. He says it’s filthy. Actually, the word he used was revolting. Plus all of the extras dress in there on tape day and he’s really uncomfortable about that, because he’ll be spending a lot of time in there.” She lowered her voice. “It seems the man has a … nervous colon.”

“Why is Chad Roe’s colon my problem?”

“He claims it’ll affect his performance,” she said. “He needs privacy to collect himself before he goes on. If he has to share a bathroom with everyone he won’t get it.”

Lyle ran a gloved hand through his red curls, exasperated. “I can’t do anything about that. No one has their own john.”

“Fiona has her own,” Leo pointed out.

“Fiona’s been here three seasons.”

“You have your own.”

“Well, I’m not installing one for him.”

“You installed one for Katrina.”

“Katrina’s different,” fumed Lyle. “She’s an executive.”

“Then how about sharing yours with him?” she asked.

“What?!”

“You won’t even see him,” she pressed. “He can use the outside door—it opens right out into the main office. He won’t have to go inside your dressing room at all.”

“It’s
my
john!” Lyle raged. “Mine! I don’t want
his
germs all over it. Why would I want that, huh?” He shuddered.
“No!
I forbid it!”

“Fine,” Leo said shortly. “I’ll tell him.”

“Wait,” he commanded, glancing at the breakfast buffet. “Who sent that fruit basket?”

“God did,” she replied.

“Get rid of it—microbe city.”

“Yes, Lyle.” She carried it off.

Lyle shook his head in disgust. “Totally unreal. Where does it stop, huh? What next?” He shot me a cold look. “Remember what I told you, Hoagy. Don’t talk to him.”

“What if we run into each other in the men’s room?”

He didn’t answer me. Annabelle was right—whatever Lyle didn’t want to hear he didn’t hear. He wandered off.

Katrina was busy playing hostess. Each and every person got a hug, a kiss; and a squeaky “We’re gonna have
so
much fun!” Randy, the art director, also got a paper napkin with a drawing on it. “My ideas for the set of Rob’s apartment,” she informed him. “Just in case we ever build one.” She left him staring at it in wide-eyed horror.

When she got over to the writers she steered around Tommy, who was busy curling his lip at her. Not a major fan. Bobby, on the other hand, was a goner. He gaped at Katrina Tingle like a lovestruck fourteen-year-old. She dragged him to his feet and hugged him and squeaked, “God, you’re so cute!” All he could do was give her a feeble grin. And blush.

“Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom,” Tommy muttered as she went ootsie-fooing off, hooters heaving. Then he turned to Bobby and said, “That a yardstick in your pocket, Bobster, or are you just glad to see me?”

Bobby dove back into his script, blinking furiously.

Katrina carefully sidestepped Leo Crimp, refusing to so much as make eye contact with her former boss. When she got to me she lit up and cried, “It’s Hoagy!”

Hugging her was somewhat like running smack into a pair of leopard-skin water balloons. I practically bounced off the woman.

“Lyle is so glad you’re here,” she whispered. “He’s incredibly nervous about this episode. It’s
so
personal.” She deposited a wet kiss on my neck. “And I’m glad you’re here, too.”

There was another big cheer when The Munchkins, Casey and Caitlin, arrived with Amber. They were an impossibly cute little pair of moppets with soft blond hair, tiny noses, and huge brown eyes. Casey was six, his sister five. Both reacted with pure delight at the sight of Lulu. She let out a low moan when she spotted them scampering her way, and skittered under the table. They went under there with her, tugging at her ears and making a big fuss, all of which she suffered in stoic silence. Amber, a taut, toothy Park Avenue blonde in her early forties, came over, too. Amber wore her hair back in a ponytail and no makeup or nail polish. Her face and hands were weathered by the outdoors, nearly leathery. But it was good leather, the kind that ages well. And there were strong bones underneath. She was dressed in jodhpurs and gleaming black riding boots and a white silk blouse buttoned at the throat. I wasn’t sure if she was affecting the severe Claremont Riding Academy look or the severe Erich von Stroheim look. I do know she carried herself with great authority and confidence, and wore no monocle. And I felt quite certain she owned a Range Rover.

“You used to play squash at the Racquet Club with Niles,” she informed me, gripping my hand. Hers was firm and a helluva lot drier than Bobby’s. “Niles Walloon. I was married to him. I’m not anymore.”

“That makes us even,” I said. “I’m not a member of the Racquet Club anymore.” Largely because of dullards just like Niles Walloon, a stiff-necked commodities trader, very old money. Everyone called him Walloon the buffoon.

“Do you belong anywhere now?” she asked, faintly condescendingly.

“I try not to.”

Amber nodded her approval. “Tony, my new husband, isn’t a club sort of person at all. He sculpts. Couldn’t care less about the social world.” She glanced down at her kids, who were still playing with Lulu. “I’ve never been lucky enough to work with Merilee, but I admire her work enormously.”

“Are you working on anything now?” I asked.

She flared her nostrils at me slightly. “No, I’m afraid a lot of the money for good, innovative theater has dried up recently.”

“I understand you’d like to direct TV.”

“If I could get the opportunity. The sitcom form is so full of potential, such a marvelous, marvelous platform. My kids love it here. They have a wonderful time.” She gazed around at the staff with an air of fond, patrician benevolence, the same kind of look she might get while observing a busload of welfare kids on their first trip to a petting zoo. “These are not very mature people. I sometimes think Casey and Caitlin are the two oldest people here. But they absolutely adore Lyle.”

“And you?”

She raised an eyebrow at me. “I think Lyle Hudnut is a genius. Don’t you?”

I left that one alone. When I hear the word genius I tend to think of Edison, Picasso, Gershwin, me. Not Lyle Hudnut.

My silence made Amber uncomfortable. She poured herself coffee. “Don’t believe what you hear about me. I’m completely over Lyle. Unlike someone else around this place.”

“Meaning who?”

She let that one slide on by. “I was at sea after Niles and I split up. Lyle was, for a time, a life preserver. But I’ve taken control of my own life now. I have Tony. I have the kids. I have
me.”
She forced a smile. “Everything is fine now.”

“I see.” People who keep trying to convince you that everything is fine are trying even harder to convince themselves. And failing. “That must be nice,” I added.

“Oh, it is. It most definitely is.” And with that she went off to chat with Gwen, the costumer. They seemed to be good pals.

Fiona Shrike showed up last. Leading ladies always do, so they can make an entrance. They have to cause a fuss. Have to be noticed. Don’t believe what you read—aging isn’t what actresses fear most in life. Being ignored is. Fiona made a great show of greeting Chad first so as to let him—and everyone else—know just how thrilled she was that he was on board. Then she made her way over toward me. Fiona was a small, extremely slender woman. I doubt she weighed more than ninety-five pounds. Her
Uncle Chubby
character, Deirdre, was demanding and fierce. Much of the show’s comedy came from her ability to intimidate Chubby, even though Lyle was a foot taller and outweighed her by two hundred pounds. In so-called real life, Fiona was no toughie. She was quite dithery and otherworldly, the kind of woman who would keep pet snakes and paint her fingernails black. If she had any. She didn’t. What she had were ten chewed stumps. Also an amazing repertoire of involuntary shudders and gurgles. The woman was as squirmy as a chihuahua. Remarkably, she was able to shut it all off when she performed. Her face was delicate and fine-boned. Without makeup she looked fragile and a great deal older, the lines in her face etched deep. She was, after all, no kid. She was a twenty-year veteran of improv, Broadway, and television. Most recently, she had spent the summer touring in a much-publicized all-girl
Odd Couple
with Delta Burke. She had on a white silk camp shirt, flowered linen vest, jeans, and bedroom slippers. Her hair, which was henna-colored, fell to her chin in a sort of blunt pageboy.

“You’re the new feelings writer,” she said to me softly, tipping her head forward so that her hair shielded her face, rather like a curtain. She didn’t do that on camera, either.

“Feelings,” I affirmed. “Nothing more than feelings.”

“They’re so very important.” She shuddered, as if someone had just dropped something very cold or very alive down her bare back. “We all have to find our emotional cores.” She began to claw at the cuticles of her left hand with the nails of her right. They were already puffy and red, and she wore Band-Aids on two of them. “Noble believes that’s what’s wrong with us. That we haven’t.”

“So that’s it,” I said. She had recently married her spiritual advisor, a touchy-feely yogi-to-the-stars named Noble Gesture, who previously had developed condos in Arizona under the name Sherman Finkel. “Have you found yours?”

“I have. And it’s ugly. I’m selfish. A total bitch.” She paused, clawing at herself. “You seem very … spiritual.”

“I’m not, and your hand is bleeding.”

She had drawn blood. A vampire would go crazy around this woman. “Oh, it always does that,” she said casually, ignoring it. “No, you
do,
Hoagy. You have a strong aura. You’re so …
you.”

“Better me than some guy with an inferior wardrobe.”

“A piece of advice about Lyle.” She tipped her hair in front of her face. “The line between performer and character has been erased. Lyle
is
Chubby—a big lonely slob who desperately wants to belong. A failure.”

“I’d hardly call Lyle a failure.”

“In his own eyes he is.” Fiona glanced over at him. He was talking to Sam, his A.D. “Believe me, that is not a happy man.”

“You know him better than anyone.” And what a fun, relaxing couple they must have been to hang out with.

“I know him too well,” Fiona said. “And I hate him.”

“Yet you stick around.”

“I’m also very fond of the man. Is that so strange?”

“I guess I’m old-fashioned. I believe in not liking the people I hate. I hope you and I will be able to talk about his past for the book.”

She frowned. “That’s not in my contract.”

“It would make Lyle happy.”

“That’s not in my contract either.” She gurgled. Not pleasant. Sounded like a death rattle. “Will you listen to me? What a bitch. Let me ask Noble about it, okay? He’s
so
evolved. I clear everything with him. This morning, for instance, he said today was a really good day for me to release my spontaneous side. Which is
so
perfect, being that it’s the first day of rehearsal. Amazing timing, isn’t it?”

“Amazing. And how do you feel about Deirdre getting herself a boyfriend?”

“Thrilled,” she answered, without hesitation. “I’ve been after Lyle to let her date for the past two seasons. She never, ever dates. She’s this weird, pent-up nun. But he wouldn’t do it because it would take attention away from him. For me, Rob is a godsend. I can show Deirdre vulnerable. Show her girlish. I can
stretch.
”

“And how do you feel about Chad?”

“I love Chad. We were in
The Ritz
together on Broadway ages ago. He’s solid as can be, as long as he stays within himself. Y’know, doesn’t try to do too much.” She leaned in to me, voice hushed. “Just remember to throw me the funny lines and him the straight ones. He’s death when he tries to get a laugh.”

“ALL RIGHT EVERYBODY!”
Lyle called out, clapping his gloved hands together.
“LET’S GET STARTED!”

“Marjorie’s not here yet, Lyle,” Leo pointed out.

“Hey, I’m not holding up my rehearsal for some lousy network,” he grumbled. “C’mon, let’s take our places.”

It was like taking your place at a huge dining table. Lyle sat at one end, his bulk occupying space for three. His two lieutenants, Leo and Katrina, sat on either side of him. His writing staff—The Boys, The Kids, and the first major new literary voice of the 1980’s—sat at the opposite end, Lulu under me with her head on my right foot. Fiona, Chad, and The Munchkins were seated across from each other so they could make eye contact while they read. The assorted guest players, including the guy from the singing muffler commercial, were grouped around them. Production people filled the remaining seats at the table, as well as a row of folding chairs that had been set up against one wall. Naomi closed the door.