The Confessions of Edward Day (12 page)

One really must admire the persistence and imagination of women when it comes to approximating their ideal self-image. Beatrice was an artist and the challenge I presented excited her. She laid swatch after swatch of fake hair against my cheek, from champagne blond through honey to strawberry, with variations in between so numerous and slight I couldn’t detect a difference.
“This one’s a little cooler,” she said, or “This is pushing toward red.” She kept returning to a panel of haystack yellow. “With your eyes and skin, I’m thinking we can go Scandinavian and get a real natural look.”

The process was horrific, toxic, vile smelling, with a long stint under a dryer so hot I thought my scalp would fry. But when it was over and Beatrice pulled the towel away with a flourish, I gasped at the rakish fellow in the mirror. “I’ll be damned,” I said. “It’s fantastic.”

Beatrice beamed at me, drawing a few damp curls over my forehead. “There’s a blond in all of us,” she said. “We just let him out.”

Back at the theater my colleagues were agog. “I didn’t recognize you,” Eve exclaimed. “It makes your face look bigger.”

“You’re standing different,” Gary Santos observed. “Are you conscious of that?”

Then a rich, theatrical voice called from the stage. “Is that Chance? Is that my driver, Chance Wayne?”

“At your service, Princess,” I said, turning to Marlene who looked me up and down so ravenously I felt a blush rising to my cheeks. “I have such a weakness for blonds,” she said. “I fear it will be the death of me.”

I pressed my fingertips to my lips, regarding her coolly. “You could be right about that, Princess.” She shook her hair over her shoulders, reminding me of the photo she’d tantalized me with at our first meeting. It was then I decided I would have sex with her and soon. Chance Wayne wasn’t a guy who would wait around for the prize to fall from the tree and I was,
at that moment, feeling just as useless, hungry, stupid, hot, and blond as Chance Wayne.

A
s everyone knows, in my profession we go around screwing each other as much as possible, mostly to see ourselves do it. Narcissists are always making love to number one. Eve was a perfect example. I asked her to my room to share a bottle of wine and she was in the bed and down to her lacy underwear before she finished the first glass. She disported herself charmingly, wiggling around to present her various assets as if there was a paying audience seated on the dresser. She made interesting noises and urged me on with cries of “Oh my God” and “Do it.” Afterward she wanted a cigarette, but I didn’t have one. She pouted her pouty lips. “Eddie, I really need a cigarette,” she said. So I got up, put my clothes on, and walked down to the general store to buy a pack. On the walk back, I found myself thinking of sex in general and Madeleine in particular, definitely a different ball game from Eve. More inhibited but, oddly, more intense. Eve had no shame, which wasn’t as much fun as it should have been. It struck me that she might wind up in porno films, and in fact, this turned out to be an accurate prediction.

Eve was entertaining, but my real goal in the sexual stakes game was Marlene Webern. Marlene wasn’t just a different ball game, she was a different planet, and one not easy of access. In public she flirted and teased, it was part of her role as Alexandra del Lago, and we enjoyed bantering in a familiar way, as if we
had actually driven into town from the Gulf Coast, stopping over at chic hotels where we took drugs and she was serviced by me at considerable expense to her pocketbook and my self-esteem. It was tantalizing, but we were never alone. After a week of rehearsals I noticed that she contrived to keep it that way and I resolved to break her will.

This wasn’t easy. As the star she received special perks and was much in demand. She was lodged in a private guesthouse tucked into a garden behind a mansion on the green in town. The owner, a patron of our theater, occasionally sent a chauffeured car to pick her up after rehearsal and whisk her off to private dinner parties with the local elite. When she was reduced to dining with the rest of us, she was seated next to the producer or the director, both of whom were clearly in love with her. I couldn’t get next to her, except onstage, where we were very close indeed. We spent the whole first scene sparring in a hotel room. I held her in my arms, she examined my bare torso, I picked her up when she fell on the floor, and at the end, after we agreed that we were both ashamed of our degraded connection, I got in the bed with her and tried to make her believe, as she put it, “that we’re a pair of young lovers without any shame.”

In the Broadway production Chance closes the hotel shutter on this line and the stage goes dark, but that was in the ’50s and this was the ’70s. Audiences wanted to see actors making out. It was fine with me. All I had to do was call up the photo I’d seen in her wallet and I was eager to clamber on top of her and try to remove her blouse. The look she gave me as
she held her arms out to me was such a combination of fragility and appetite that it touched my heart and my groin at the same time; who wouldn’t want to make love to such a look as that.

We weren’t exactly the people we were playing, a washed-up star and a boastful neophyte, but we could certainly imagine the desperation that would drive these two together. Marlene opened her lips beneath mine and arched her spine as I slipped one hand around her back and pressed her thighs apart with the other. She was wearing a cotton T-shirt and jeans, so it wasn’t as if I could really get anywhere, and the director always interrupted too soon with his “Good, that’s it, that’s hot.” We sat up on the bed, side by side, disheveled and overstimulated. Marlene came back to herself in an instant, patting down her hair, blowing out a puff of air as she lifted and lowered her shoulders. It wasn’t so easy for me. I tried not to listen to the riot in my senses as the director droned his notes for the scene.

Scene I was fine, it’s well written, lots for the actors to do, but after that the play is pretty much downhill. Nothing fazed Marlene; her character was entirely in place and she was convincing no matter how bizarre or nonsensical the requirements of the role. She made it easy for me; she let me act around her solid interpretation and if I came up with anything new, some little insight into my character, she followed me like a willing dance partner. We searched for Chance Wayne together. I couldn’t decide how dishonest he actually was. When he said he’d slept “in the social register” in New York, was that true? Was he in the chorus of
Oklahoma!
as he bragged he had
been, or was even that small distinction beyond him? Did he have an Equity card? One day when the director told me my “YIPEEEE” sounded like a death knell I spoke up. “I don’t get it,” I said. “Why would I brag to this famous film star that I was in the chorus of
Oklahoma!?
Am I so stupid I think that’s a big deal? Did I actually do it, or did I just try out for the chorus and didn’t even do that? I know I’m a loser, I’ve got that, but just how big a loser am I?”

Marlene, lounging on the divan, her arms stretched out over her head, flipped one of her red sandals to the floor. “Big,” she said.

I turned on her. “That’s what you think, Miss Has-been,” I said.

She narrowed her eyes at me as if she was looking into my brain. “It’s what I know, Chance darling,” she said.

That’s it, I thought. It’s all a lie. From start to finish. I’m a complete fraud. I was never on the stage in New York. I never made it out of Florida.
I sang in the chorus of the biggest show in New York
, I proclaimed to her and to the world.
In
Oklahoma!,
and had pictures in
Life
in a cowboy outfit, tossin’ a ten-gallon hat in the air! YIPEEEE
.

“That’s more like it,” the director said.

The rest of the rehearsal went well. I hardly thought about who I was, I just concentrated on being a liar. Everything I said could be proved false; therefore I was always in danger of being unmasked. This gave me an edge I hadn’t been able to find. I appreciated the peril of my situation. At the end of the day the director’s notes were distinctly upbeat. “Ed,” he said,
“you’re getting there.” I glanced at Marlene for confirmation, but she was fully concentrated on every word issuing from the lips of our director.

T
hat night we had a cookout on the plush green lawn behind the boardinghouse. Tubs of ice sprouting beer and wine bottlenecks dotted a multicolored carpet of blankets and towels upon which we actors preened ourselves in mocking rivalry. Near the house a smoldering charcoal grill, lovingly tended by our prop man turned grill master, pumped into the warm night air the tantalizing fragrance of burning flesh. I was poking a wiener mischievously at the appreciative Eve when I spotted Marlene strolling across the lawn. She was relaxed and oblivious to the palpable alteration in the atmosphere occasioned by her presence among us. She’s like the queen stopping in at the local pub, I thought. She will never know what it’s like when she’s not there.

“It’s Marlene,” Eve sighed beside me. “She’s so fantastic.” I got to my feet and weaved my way among the blankets. Gary Santos was pouring wine into a plastic cup while the prop man pointed out to our unexpected guest the choicest bits sizzling above the coals. I popped into the space beside her. “Princess,” I said. “What are you doing out among the hoi polloi?”

She was wearing dark sunglasses, her hair was loose, and her smile was at its most enigmatic. “Oh Ed,” she said, dismissing the charade of our characters. “Here you are. Advise me. What is a tofu pup?”

“It’s a perfectly tasteless wad of soy cheese.”

“Oh,” she said. “That sounds appetizing. I’ll have one of those.”

“Are you a vegetarian?”

“No. I don’t think so. Are you?”

“No,” I said. “At least put some mustard on it.” I led her away to the condiments table, snatching a beer from a tub as I passed, acutely conscious of all eyes upon us. I had her, I had her, and I didn’t want to share her. I particularly didn’t want to share her with Eve, who looked on with slack-jawed amazement, but no sooner had Marlene buried her pup beneath a blanket of relish and mustard than she looked out over the field of players and said, “Let’s sit with Eve.”

“Sure,” I said. “Of course.” As we settled on the blanket, Eve gushed like an overflowing bathtub. “Miss Webern,” she said. “I can’t tell you what an honor it is to be on the stage with you. I’ve admired your work for so long. I saw you in
Tiny Alice
when I was in high school and that’s when I decided I wanted to be an actress.”

“Was that a long time ago?” Marlene said, fiddling with her tofu pup, which had slipped out of its bun.

“Well, I was fifteen.”

“Best not to tell me how old you are now. Ed, darling, how am I to eat this?”

Eve closed her mouth and sent me a troubled look.

“It’s a disgusting thing,” I said.

“No, no,” she laughed, pressing it back into the limp folder of bread with her bloodred fingernail. “I’m sure it’s delicious.” As she lifted one end, mustard and relish poured out the other.

“Let me have it,” I said, taking the plate from her. “It’s going to squirt all over you.”

“That would be discouraging,” she said.

“Hold a napkin under your chin.”

“I had no idea you would take such command,” she said, unfolding a napkin and cupping it beneath her chin. I grasped the sandwich gingerly and brought it to her lips. “Just bite it,” I said.

She obeyed, baring her teeth and taking a sharp bite, neatly catching the dripping condiments in her napkin.

“Ed,” Eve whispered anxiously.

“Be quiet,” I snapped. “Let this woman eat her pup.”

Marlene was convulsed with laughter, but she managed to swallow what she’d taken and opened her mouth for another go.

“It’s awful, isn’t it?” I said.

“Completely,” she agreed, chewing thoughtfully.

“Let me throw it away.”

“Definitely,” she said.

I got to my feet folding the plate over the soggy mess. “Do you want some corn? Or a burger?” I asked.

“No, thank you.”

“More wine?”

“Yes,” she said. “That would be nice. Tell me, Eve, are you a vegetarian.”

“No ma’am,” Eve replied as I ambled off to the nearest trash can. I was working out a plan. If Marlene wouldn’t eat what we ate, I might persuade her to go somewhere alone with me. I had very little money; I certainly couldn’t afford any of the chic restaurants in the town center. The only place I’d been
inside was the pub and I couldn’t picture Marlene tucked into a leather booth with a plate of fries and a beer in front of her. I filled a plastic cup with wine and turned back to our blanket. Eve was blathering about something while Marlene bent upon her a look of fascinated concentration, such as you might give an overturned beetle struggling to right itself next to your bare foot on the bathroom floor.

“Yale is an excellent program,” Marlene was saying as I rejoined the conversation.

“Yes,” Eve said. “I’m so lucky to be there.”

“I’m sure luck had nothing to do with it.”

I agreed. I thought Eve had probably gotten into Yale by fucking someone on the admissions committee. Perhaps the whole committee. She was a wretched actress, empty as a kettledrum.

“Now what will you do?” I said to Marlene. “You’ve had no dinner.”

“I have plenty of food in my little cottage,” she said. “It’s a lovely evening. I’ll just sit here a bit and then go back and fix myself something. Frankly it will be nice to be on my own.”

“I can understand that,” I sympathized, my spirits rebuffed. She was slumming, we were a distraction, but what she really wanted to be was alone. After a few more exchanges she got up and wandered over to the grill where she chatted with the prop man and the lighting designer. I looked on woefully, sucking at my beer while Eve told me Marlene had pronounced her horrible fake Southern accent “charming.”

“You know,” I said, “I think I’ll get a burger while they still
have some left.” I got back to my feet and slunk along the edge of the blanket patch until I came up behind Marlene.

“I’m using a blue filter for that whole scene,” the lighting designer was saying. “It makes the palm trees black, very spooky.” Marlene drained her cup and turned to me as if I’d arrived on cue. “Perfect,” she said. “Here’s my driver. I think I’m ready to leave now. Ed, will you walk with me?”