Sacred Monster

Flashback 8

The dressing room was windowless and small but elegantly and expensively appointed. The style might have been just a bit too masculine, protesting just that shade too much in its elkhorn ashtray and brown leather sofa with discreet brass nailheads around its bottom and the Remington reproduction (cavalry charge) on the wall. When the makeup lights flanking the mirrored dressing table were off, as now, the indirect lighting made the room softly mellow and cozy, like some underwater grotto where Captain Nemo might relax, the rich browns and creams a pleasant relief from that infernal eternal blue.

Seated on the sofa, in passionate but still-clothed embrace, were the two stars of the show, Jack Pine and Marcia Callahan, she a forthright brunette of twenty-eight, tall and slender, whose seventh starring role in a Broadway show — and seventh affair with her leading man — this was. Or would be. Or might be.

Jack found himself kissing Marcia’s eyebrow, and then her forehead, and then the top of her head, realizing her lips and hands were working their way down the front of his body, destination unmistakable. With a little surprised smile, the visual equivalent of Jeepers! he shifted to a position more comfortable for them both, relaxed, smiled more lazily, then all at once sat up again, pulling up the bewildered woman by the shoulders, saying, “Marcia, no. Better not.”

She gazed at him with bewilderment in her forthright eyes. “Are you kidding?”

Embarrassed, his less-than-forthright gaze slipping away from her, he mumbled, “George.”

“George?”

“He’s due here any minute,” Jack said, unhappy but trapped. “He’ll want me to be pleased to see him, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh.” Understanding made her back away along the sofa, adjusting her clothing. Glancing down at him with dismissive scorn, she said, “That’s right. I was forgetting where it’s been.”

They both got to their feet, as a knock sounded at the door and a voice called, “Ten minutes to curtain. Ten minutes to curtain.”

“I heard you, I heard you,” Jack snapped at the closed door. Turning to Marcia, he said, “George made this whole thing possible for me. I owe him... I owe him everything, Marcia. There’ll be time for us.”

“I think maybe our time is all used up,” Marcia said.

“Don’t say that. You know how I feel about—”

Another knock sounded at the door. “I heard you!”

Marcia laughed, lightly. The doorknob rattled. Marcia said, “It isn’t the warning, it’s your playmate. See you on stage, lover.”

She opened the door, fixing her face into the false smile to be presented to the author of the play, but it was Buddy who entered instead, in his uniform and carrying his duffel bag over his shoulder, saying happily to Marcia, “Well, look at you, will you.”

“My mistake,” Marcia said. “The rough trade is here.”

Easy and amused with her, Buddy said, “Don’t be misled, doll. I can be very gentle.”

“Buddy!” Jack cried. “You’re here!”

“Sure I am,” Buddy said. “How you doin’, Dad?”

Jack embraced his friend, holding tight. Buddy returned the embrace but looked over Jack’s shoulder to grin at Marcia, who watched with some uncertainty, not exactly sure what was going on here.

It was Buddy who ended the clinch at last, saying, “Let me breathe, Dad.”

“Oh, sure, Buddy, sure!” Turning to Marcia, grinning in delight, holding Buddy’s elbow, Jack said, “Marcia, this is my oldest friend in the whole world, Buddy Pal. We grew up together.”

“That’s nice,” Marcia said.

“Buddy,” Jack said, pride and pleasure in his every atom, “this is Marcia Callahan, my co-star in the show.”

“I recognized her from the pictures out front,” Buddy said. Grinning at Marcia, looking her up and down, he said, “In person, you don’t have too much on top, do you?”

“On top of what?” Marcia asked him.

They’d left the dressing room door open, and now George Castleberry appeared in the doorway, melting face in a loving smile at first, but then becoming immediately irritable as he looked around the room. “Well,” he said. “A crowd.”

“I’m just going, George,” Marcia said.

But George’s mood had changed again; he gazed with amused pleasure on Buddy in his marine uniform, saying, “Be still, my heart. Is that real?”

“Sure is,” Buddy told him. “Just got out of the marines two days ago. Don’t have my civvies yet.”

“Well, never change, that’s my advice,” George told him.

Turning to Jack, Buddy said, “In fact, Dad, that’s why I came by. If you could tide me over...”

“Oh, sure, Buddy,” Jack said, his smile suddenly nervous, uneasy. “How much do you need?”

“A hundred or so.”

“No problem, Buddy,” Jack said. Taking his wallet from his hip pocket, his movements and expressions awkward and clumsy, he made introductions while counting money into Buddy’s waiting palm: “George Castleberry, our playwright, I’d like you to meet my old friend Buddy Pal.”

Dryly, Marcia said, “They grew each other up together.”

“Doll, it’s you for me,” Buddy told her. Linking his arm with hers, he said, “Would you like to see my old war wound?”

Amused by him, intrigued by him, she permitted him to lead her from the room, saying as she went, “I don’t know. Would I?”

George closed the door after them, then turned to Jack with arms outstretched. “Dear boy,” he said.

Jack performed a boyish smile. “Hi, George.”

A knock sounded at the door, and a voice called, “Five minutes to curtain. Five minutes to curtain.”

Jack took George’s hands, held them in his, a movement that seemed to suggest togetherness but which nevertheless subtly kept George at a little distance. “I’m sorry, George,” Jack said. “It’s too late.”

Petulant, George said, “Traffic was terrible. I hate this city, I really do.”

Jack did truly like his benefactor, and his sympathy showed through his nervousness and reluctance. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I have to go.”

“Later,” George told him. “I’ll see you here later. After the performance.”

His smile wan, Jack said, “After the performance, the performance.”

George leaned forward to kiss Jack’s cheek. Jack awkwardly patted the older man’s back, then moved gracefully around him and left the room, closing the door behind himself.

George roved the tiny room, wringing his hands, a series of agonized expressions on his face, small moaning sounds rising from his throat. At last he flung himself into the chair in front of the dressing table and stared desperately at his own reflection. “You fool, you,” he cried, and put his head down onto his folded arms and wept.

How it all comes back to me now, those wonderful days of first success, when I was still young and naive and hopeful and caring. I had such genius in those days! I could do anything. And with Buddy again at my side... Buddy would always save me, protect me, keep me from harm. He’d been doing it from the beginning. (We don’t — we never — talk about that.)

I sit smiling at the patio, under God’s sun (the high clouds have cleared away, but I’m not even afraid of that anymore), and I bask in my memories of those glorious days, until I notice the interviewer frowning at me again. Now what’s his problem? “Something wrong?” I ask.

He says, “Wait a minute. That last part. Where George Castleberry looked at himself in the mirror and said, ‘You fool, you,’ and put his head down on his folded arms and wept.”

I nod, agreeing. “A lovely scene, isn’t it? Touching, dramatic, full of pathos and understanding and deep revelation.”

“But,” he says, “you didn’t see that part. That happened after you left the room.”

“One knows these things,” I say, and Hoskins rolls into view like a giant passenger ship, possibly the QEII, bearing a tall, shimmering glass on a silver tray. “Ah, Hoskins,” I say.

“Your fuzzy drink, sir.”

“Thank you, Hoskins.”

Hoskins recedes, like one of those literary ghosts — Scrooge’s father, Hamlet’s Christmas — and I raise the shimmering glass. “To Marcia Callahan,” I say.

“Your first wife, I believe,” the interviewer says. They love to show how they’ve researched you, how they’ve studied up on you, how they’ve done their homework. There are times when I hate being other people’s homework.

I taste the shimmer in the glass, and it is like all the finest things of our planet gathered together into one foamy tube. The clean chill of Antarctica, the breezy pure sweetness of the Caribbean, the tang of giant cities everywhere. Oh, my goodness me!

“Marcia Callahan,” I say, and pause to lick ambrosia from my upper lip. “I guess you could call it love-hate at first sight. We never had any illusions about each other, Marcia and me, but maybe that was why we were so drawn together. We were naked for each other. I was certainly naked for her.”

I smile, thinking back, reliving again our most famous scene from the play: Marcia, in various shawls and laces, sits on a park bench. I, in T-shirt and jeans and heavy workboots, roam the stage, circling her, ranting and raging. She replies in soft but compelling counterpoint, fighting back with tattered dignity. And night after night, alone in the forwardmost box to stage left, his marine uniform replaced by a gleaming new tux I’d bought him, Buddy Pal sat and watched. In my pacing of the stage, flinging my arms about, roaring, letting it all out, I would sometimes look up and see him there, a faint smile on his face as he watched Marcia. And from time to time, in her self-defense, Marcia would look bravely up past me at that box high on the theater’s side wall, where Buddy sat concealed from the rest of the audience by plush drapes. I sigh and smile, and the shimmery glass trembles in my trembling hand.

“After Buddy got out of the marines,” I say, “the three of us were inseparable. It was like old times, but even better. We were going to be together forever.”

“But you weren’t,” the interviewer says.

“The show closed. They made a movie out of it, and they hired Marcia to what they call re-create the role. But they didn’t want me.”

“I’m surprised,” the interviewer says.

“Are you? Well, you don’t know shit about showbiz, do you? No,” I say quickly, “forget that, sorry, that was just this drink talking, nice fuzzy drink.”

“I imagine,” he says, gently, forgiving me, “I imagine the memory of that can still hurt.”

“Most memories still hurt,” I say, and laugh, and catch myself before I spill this wonderful fuzzy drink. “The thing is,” I say, “they had some guy under contract, some guy they were grooming. Marcia was already a star, and I was just some guy that was in her last play. So they put in this fucking twerp they were grooming. Eventually, the critics told them they were crazy, but by then it was too late.”

The interviewer nods. I have his sympathy back, all right; there’s nothing they hate more than success, and nothing they love more than failure. Feed them great fat shovelfuls of humility and abasement and defeat, and they’ll feed you more and more success. Love it!

He says, with his new sympathetic voice, “What did you do then?”

“Nothing,” I say. “Marcia moved out to the Coast, of course, to make the movie. George and I broke up as soon as the play closed — funny thing, it was as much his doing as mine — and Buddy and I went on living together in a little place I had on East 18th Street.”

Wide-eyed, about to call back his sympathy vote, my interviewer said, “You were having an affair with Buddy Pal?”

I stare at him, truly shocked and outraged. “Are you crazy? I’m not that way! Buddy isn’t — for God’s sake, man, we’re both straight!”

Confused, abashed, the interviewer leans back in his chair, nodding agreement with me, saying, “Sorry, sorry, I just got a little confused there, you know, after George Castleberry and all that kind of—”

“That, fella,” I say, “is what we in the biz call a career move. It has nothing to do with the inner man, you see what I mean?”

“It’s cynical, you mean,” he says.

I beam at him. Dear fuzzy drink, fuzzing around through all my suburbs, turning me on like neons at nighttime. “My friend,” I say, “you just used a word that has no meaning.”

His face is blank. “I did?”

“Cynical. You see, my friend, it’s a spectrum,” I say, and spread my hands like a fisherman lying, and very nearly, very nearly, very damn nearly spill the remains of my fuzzy drink, but recover in time and continue: “It’s a spectrum,” I say. “Here at this end is the romantic, and over here at this end is the cynic. So wherever you are on this here spectrum here, you’re the realist, and everybody on that side is too much of a romantic, and everybody on that side is too much of a cynic.”

“Is that right?”

“That’s right,” I say, seeing no need to disagree with myself. “More examples. You take a normal interest in your job. Everybody on this side of you is lazy, and everybody on that side of you is a workaholic. Or everybody on one side is frigid, and everybody on the other side’s a nymphomaniac. Or everybody over here’s—”

“I get the idea,” he assures me loudly, interrupting a fine flow, a fine fuzzy-drink-induced flow, and then he hurries on to keep that fine flow from starting up again, asking me, “Did you get another part in a play after Last Seen in Tupelo closed?”

“No,” I tell him, clouding over slightly, the fuzzy drink beginning to curdle within me at the memory of that empty time in my life, Buddy pressing me to bring in some money, the great lethargy creeping over me, all my troubles and woes, the memories I hadn’t learned how to jam... “Jack Schullmann’s blackball against me was still alive then,” I explain to this button-eyed interviewer, “and during that time I was with George I did more drinking than maybe I should have at such a tender age — not like now! Hah!” And I finish the fuzzy drink!

“So what did you do?” this dull fellow asks me.

I radiate pleasure in his direction. “I got married,” I say simply.