Yvonne
Yvette, the actress and director, was the woman under the marquee of the
Paradise Theatre. And soon it was her turn to shudder.
Perhaps it was the atomic
fission that marbled the phrase "frisson metaphysique." Perhaps it was that a
good part of the meeting with Felix Lord in the Paradise Theatre had been spent
discussing Adam Adamsky whom she now recognized from old newspaper clippings
that rolled through her brain as if on microfilm. Perhaps it was that Adam was
so apparently a delicate, frayed lace of nerves. Perhaps it was only the March
wind. Whatever it was, it involved Yvonne's spine in a fast series of whipping
shivers.
Adam more twitched than jerked his head in her direction in response to her
movements, then he twitched an inquiring look. "Frisson
metaphysique," she told him.
"Ah!" Adam said. And they
laughed. Her laugh was like Chinese windchimes. His was like rusted farm
machinery. He could hear the crazy croak of his laugh and thought the sound of
it was growing so loud that the whole street was going mad. That that street had
become the insane laughing mouth of the city. But there were screeching tires
rounding the corner, and then brakes jammed down in front of the theater. These
noises came from the armpits of a black Jaguar. Adam was relieved to know that
it hadn't been his laugh making all the sound. But he was saddened when the
woman got into the Jag and disappeared into traffic, taking the windchime
laughter with her.
Greg drove the Jag
spasmatically. Now he drove as if the fine vehicle were an arthritic mule. Now
he drove as if it were a fine thoroughbred in an easy workout. Yvonne ignored
the Cubist rhythms of the ride and mused. Musing was her great resource, her
best friend.
"What'd Felix Lord want?" demanded Greg, after a mile of waiting and
driving.
"He
wants me to direct Adam Adamsky's new play."
"Adam Adamsky! Jesus Christ!
Is that what Lord's doing in that cruddy old theater? Jesus Christ! Adamsky
hasn't written a play in what? Ten or twelve years? Not even a bad play. Y'know
they say Felix Lord wrote those plays anyway," said Greg, managing to be petty
and ominous all at once.
"I never heard that version,"
murmured Yvonne.
"Adamsky was only nineteen or
something. How could he write those plays? And if he was that good how come he
hasn't written anything since then? How can he write now?" demanded Greg.
It was true, Yvonne
thought. When Roses and Horses went to Broadway, and Cut and Dried
Dreams opened off-Broadway, was a hit and went to Broadway, that was it for
Adamsky. A two play, two hit author. And nothing.
"Come on, Yvonne," said Greg,
"what's the story? Is there a part for me?"
Astonished as ever at his
blatant duplicity, Yvonne answered after a mouth-agape moment. "I can't say. I
haven't seen the play. I don't even know what it's about."
"Do you think there even is a
play? Maybe Lord's senile."
"Maybe, but that would only
diminish his prowess to something somewhat above us mere mortals," Yvonne
said.
"Shi-it," said Greg.
"Oh, brilliant rejoinder,"
thought Yvonne. And she also thought dark thoughts that weren't new to her about
herself. She was anything but pleased with herself that she had been maintaining
ties with Greg for two years just for the sake of an ongoing sexual
relationship.
"Come on, what's the story?"
Greg repeated, and then jerked forth at the first note of a green light.
"Just try to take
it at face value for once, Greg. Listen. it's a trip. Lord's bought the theater
especially for Adamsky. Adamsky was drunk at some party and threw down the
gauntlet. Lord picked it up. He came out of retirement, bought the theater,
commissioned Adamsky to write a play, and is having the theater refurbished. You
really ought to see it. It's absolutely beautiful."
"Jesus Christ! I love it!
It's the perfect fairy tale for you! An eighty-year-old producer and a washed-up
prodigy playwright and Yvonne Yvette, the last of the romantics. Tell me, is the
theater being done in gingerbread?" Yvonne was stung. But she'd have her revenge
later some way, she decided. In the meantime she was stung again. "I mean, it
just the thing for a power-crazed mother hen. You are prepared to write the play
and produce and direct? And, of course, you'll take the female lead."
"What's wrong with
you? My god. I mean, you're cutting deeper than usual even, aren't you?" she
asked.
Greg
was stopped by a red light. He fully looked at Yvonne for the first time since
she had gotten in the car. She was surprised by a frightened animal look in his
eyes. "Zezex isn't renewing my contract. i was really counting on it. I haven't
had a part in a play in three years, you know. I got spoiled by the Zezex money.
They're pulling all the commercials and changing their whole image. I won't even
get residuals. I can't do other commercials. You know, my agent says I'm the
Zezex man through and through, and no one else wants me. I've got to get a play.
Is there a part for me in this Adamsky thing?"
"The light's changed, Greg."
He drove on. "I'm sorry about Zezex. I told you to do some plays. I don't know
about a part. Felix hasn't even seen the play. Mostly he just wanted to show me
what he's done on the theater today." And when Greg merely grunted in response,
Yvonne could drift to her musings.
The cocktail party Felix had
described. She could imagine it, direct it on the stage of her mind. Adam in his
corduroys, no doubt. Drunk. Just drunk enough to be un-neurotic. Enough to
galvanize himself into a calculated accident of magnitude. An accident with a
fine repercussion or two. Just drunk enough to martial his intelligence and
bitterness and creativity and childishness. Drunk enough to tell the elegant old
man to buy the Paradise and conjure by commission a play out of the miasma of
epic writer's block.
It was silly. Greg was right.
But it had its drama. It was melodrama, surely, but with a fine edge, a fine
point. Felix gave the scenario gravity and texture. In her version, she had
Felix Lord throw back his head and laugh with great delight in the midst of the
tinkling glass and bloodthirsty patter of the theater party. All in all, Felix
had called Adamsky's bluff, and had refined it by his lovely workings upon the
Paradise.
The anecdote fit the profile. There was another fairy tale or two featuring Lord
and Adamsky. 1969. Lord is a washed-up producer-director. Never knew how to
bring himself to play long-lasting theater politics. Smart lawyers buy failing
Paradise to cultivate as a tax write-off. Hire eclipsed Felix Lord to manage
theater, not realizing he is first and last a great and scrupulous artist. The
politics Lord will not play are too esoteric for even smart bevy of lawyers to
comprehend. So lawyers believe Lord will keep theater profitably in the red. But
on a trip to Cambridge to meet with lawyers, Lord stops in at a drama department
of a university. Hears Adam Adamsky reading aloud from Roses and Horses.
Lord is enchanted. Lord produces and directs the play at the Paradise. He's
fired by the corporation of lawyers for making the theater pay. Felix Lord
laughs all the way to Broadway where he has a late-blooming career producing
and/or directing five successive hits, including both of Adamsky's plays. And
then he retires. Until now.
The other branch of
fairytaledom involving Lord and Adamsky is a dark story. It is the one about
Adam and the fifteen years in which he has written nothing. Lack of story is the
story, the fairy tale. Lack of story is the darkness. "But perhaps darkness is
only the middle of the story. Perhaps just as the beginning was so bright with
those two dazzling plays, maybe the end of the fairy tale will be full of
light," hoped Yvonne. But she raced back in her mind and ran the gaps she had
made of Adam in front of the Paradise. No, the tapes showed, Adamsky'd had
nothing in his hands when they'd stood in front of the theater. No sheaf of
papers, no clip board, no notebook, no briefcase, nor satchel. Playwrights with
plays-in-progress always have their works with them. at least, it is a
fundamental, immutable law of the universe that they carry their work with them
when they arrive for meetings with their producers. "So, Greg is right on that
count, too. It's all silly, and there is no play," Yvonne thought. And she
shivered.
Greg pulled into the alley behind her apartment building. With mild wryness she
let him gingerly and laboriously negotiate the several pillars, sit through a
three-car traffic jam, and attempt three times to get the angle just right to
pull into her parking space in the basement garage. Only when he had parked did
she say, "Greg I have to be alone tonight. I have a headache."
"Boy, that's lousy
dialogue."
"I know. But I couldn't resist. One usually doesn't get to have a dialogue with
one's own headache. Usually a headache, being so close to the brain and all, is
smart enough to know that it is a headache," Yvonne said, ashamed already at
being so glib before she was finished with this glibness.
"Still lousy dialogue. And,
goddamnit, I need to talk tonight. I've lost Zezex. I've let goddamn Zezex
hairspray become my whole life. And now they've dumped me. And now you're going
to be a goddamn bitch just to make my day perfect."
"Call me later when you're
not so abusive," said Yvonne, and she started to get out of the car.
But Greg grabbed
her arm and pinned her to the seat. "Is there a part in the play for me?" he
hissed.
"Let go of me." It was important to look him in the
eyes unwaveringly at these moments and to underline each word. And guilty, if
not guilt-ridden, coward that he was, Greg let go of her arm, dropped his gaze
and stared at the steering wheel.
Shaking, Yvonne got out of
the car, crossed the concrete garage and pushed the button at the elevator. She
was both furious with Greg and yet imbued with remorse for having pettily played
with him. He wasn't up to it even in the best of times. And Yvonne was not
particularly skilled at follow-through after spates of bitchiness. She should
have had Greg drop her in front of her building, she lamented. She was sure of
it a moment later when the Jag wheeled up beside where she stood waiting for the
elevator. She knew she was about to pay the price over again for her
improprieties.
She turned and looked at
Greg, who was shaking and crazed looking. His Zezex hairspray was beaded with
sweat, his canned tan hovered over a pallid organism. "Is there a part for me?"
he pleaded, he whined, he insisted.
"Greg, I do not know," she
enunciated, her tones of regret, apology and sympathy being wasted on this
man.
"There
is no play, you know. He hasn't got a play." As the Jag screeched off, hideously
amplified and sustained in effect in the concrete structure, Yvonne broke into a
sweat. It was very odd. Even klieg lights never caused her to perspire
much.
But
Yvonne was a great empath. Power-crazed mother hens, the consummate ones, the
ones who reach the heights of these skills, ascend because of other traits.
Sometimes they are great empaths. It is not enough to give orders, bring order,
manipulate; it is not enough to prod and suggest and cajole and plan and
structure ambition and orchestrate the ambitious and inspire the petty. No. One
has to feel the steel fears and the hollow-but-firmly-bound agonies of others.
Too, one has to enter into the glorious contracts of emotions. It wasn't Greg
she sweated for, but he was a writ-small recapitulation of the subject. Drenched
in sweat, she rode the elevator up to her floor, mourning and fretting the sure
lack of a play. She mourned and fretted not only for and with Adamsky, but also
for the world.