Me and Orson Welles (13 page)

The pipes creaked and shuddered again, and I hoped maybe it was over, but the water just seemed to increase in pressure. It was falling on the floor, the newspapers, the ashtrays—four fountains pouring down like lawn sprinklers nailed upside down on the ceiling.

I looked around for some kind of shutoff valve. There was nothing. The pipes simply disappeared into the masonry.

I ran into the hallway looking for a shutoff.
Nothing.

Now the sprinkler on the
staircase
was sputtering and firing.

I headed downstairs at a run.

It was raining on the second floor as well.

People were hurling by me on the stairs.

“What the hell's happening?” somebody shouted.

“I don't know!” I yelled. “I'm soaked!”

I hit the stage still running.

It looked like some Radio City extravaganza!

Huge ballooning fountains of water were cascading down from the ceiling. The stage, the wings.

Hot light bulbs were exploding overhead.

“ ‘I'm Cinna the poet!' ” shouted Lloyd, who was already soaked.

Somebody screamed and fell through one of the open traps.

“I'm Cinna the
wet
poet!” shouted Lloyd.

“Cut the power!”

“Cut the goddamn power!”

More bulbs hit the stage in an explosion of glass and water. Pools of water were already forming on the floor.

“Keep the water away from the board!” somebody was screaming.

Suddenly every light in the place went out. But the water kept on coming. You could hear it. You could
feel
it.

“Somebody shut it off!” yelled Welles. “Shut the goddamn water off!”

Another scream—somebody else went down a hole.

I could hear Leve yelling in his thick Jewish accent. “I think there's a cutoff in the basement! But I can't
see
anything!”

“Turn it the hell off!” Welles shouted.
“Turn it off!
And put the goddamn lights back on!”

“We'll blow the board!”

“I'm not touching the board!”

“The board's gonna blow, Orson!”

Still it rained.

“I can't find it!”

I could hear ropes creaking. Lights lowering.

Somebody cracked his head against something hard and cried out.

Then someone had opened the steel fire doors out to the alleyway, and there was finally some light.

Then there was a great creaking and shaking of the pipes, and air bubbles sputtered through the sprinklers.

The deluge ended.

The sprinklers hung dripping over the shattered lights. The soaked floor. The back wall darkened with running water. The actors stood with their hair and costumes soaked.

“Look at this shithouse!”
yelled Welles.
“How in goddamn hell are we going to open Thursday?”

Leve came up from the basement, dripping in his white shirt. “I found the shutoff,” he said.

I stepped out into the alley, where some of the actors were trying to dry themselves off with their handkerchiefs.
Don't say anything, Richard,
I kept repeating to myself.
You can't tell even one person on earth about this. This had nothing to do with you.

I commiserated and laughed with the others. I made a great show of drying myself. Inside you could hear Welles screaming: “Clean this toilet up!”

“Welcome to the Mercury pool party,” said Cotten.

“Buckets and rags!” came Welles's voice from the stage.

And I could hear the actors around me:

“Who started it?”

“Leve says the lights were hanging too close to the sprinklers—we've got to lower the whole light bar by two feet.”

“And re-aim all the lights?”

“We'll
never
open on time,” said Coulouris. He wiped his face with his handkerchief.

Now lights were coming back on inside.

“The only way we can clean this up is if everybody gets on his knees!” Welles was shouting. “Anyone not on the ground with a rag in his hand in two minutes will be fired. We're under martial law! Clean the theatre seats first! Come on, you no-acting sons-of-bitches! The first two rows got wet. Jesus, that's all we need—a dozen critics with wet asses! And somebody get more goddamn rags.”

I grabbed a rag and disappeared under the first-row seats.

Suddenly Hoysradt was standing center stage calling for Welles, holding something in his hand. “There was a chair pulled under the sprinkler on the third floor,” he announced loudly, grandly.
“These
were on the floor next to it.”

In his hand was a box of matches.

The place went silent.

Drip. Drip.

“Sabotage!”
spat out Welles. He walked center stage, his face red with fury. Of course, with Welles you never knew how much was genuine emotion and how much was just an actor relishing a star turn. “It's not enough that I work without sleep in this theatre, pour every dollar I make into it! But now this.
Sabotage!
Someone deliberately and maliciously attempting to wreck my show. All right, I want to know who is responsible! Whoever did this—front and center!” He pointed to the stage. “Front and center, right this second!”

No one moved.

“Treachery!”
shouted Welles. He pointed out into the darkness. “Whoever did this will never work in New York again.
Never!
I will call police detectives. I will fingerprint this box of matches. I will fingerprint every single person in this company. I want his name, and I want it now!”

No one moved.

My hands were shaking so hard I stuffed them in my pockets.

“It couldn't have been us,” said Cotten. “We were all onstage. It can't be anybody who was in the Cinna-the-poet scene. And that's everybody.”

“Who else uses that dressing room?” asked Welles.

“Nobody except . . . .”

“Nobody.”

“Anybody could have gone up there,” said Lloyd.

“Sure,” said Cotten. “There are chairs and matches all over this goddamn theatre, Orson.”

“Leve says it's the lights,” said Vakhtangov. “We've got to lower the light bar.”

“This is sabotage!”
insisted Welles.

“Leve says it's the lights.”

“What the hell does
he
know!” said Welles. He was storming toward his dressing room when his gaze fell on me. He nailed me with his finger. “And where were
you
during all of this, Junior?”

I couldn't speak.

“You
weren't onstage.
You
weren't in the scene.
You
use that dressing room up there, don't you?
You
did this! Confess it or I'll beat it out of you!”

“I was outside.”

“You did it!”

“No, I was outside . . . ”

I searched blankly around, my heart hammering.

Then I met his eyes. “Maybe . . . ,” I said, “maybe this is just the Bad Luck Thing.”

Silence.

Drip. Drip.

Welles lowered his finger. I could actually hear him breathing. “Wait a minute,” he said. He looked around at the dripping stage. The lights. The platforms. The soaked actors standing almost frozen where they stood. “The Bad Luck Thing,” he repeated softly.

Then he nodded as if convincing himself of something.

“Thank you,” he said.

W
elles was shouting. “Faster. Jump on your cues, for Christ's sake!” Blackout. Music. Duthie calling out from the back of the house: “ ‘Caesar!' ”

“ ‘Peace! Bid every noise be still . . . I hear a tongue shriller than all the music cry—' ”

“Faster!”
yelled Welles.

 

“ ‘Goodnight, my lord,' ” said Gabel—his last line in the show. He made a gentle bow of departure.

“Lose the bow,” said Welles, “ ‘and goodnight, good brother.' ”

“I like the bow.”

“This scene is too faggy already. Lose it.
Lucius!
Faster.”

I was leaping out of the trap. “ ‘Here, my good lord.' ”

“ ‘What, thou speak'st drowsily?' ” Welles stared at me. “Where is thy ukulele, boy?”

“I think some asshole doth stole it.”

“Jesus Christ, this is some rehearsal,” said Welles. “Skip this scene.
Cue the finale!”

Anthony delivered his eulogy with the finale music rising behind him, the lights shooting straight up from the floor. “ ‘. . . His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the world:
This was a man.' ”

Finale music up. Curtain calls. I looked over to see Lloyd at the other end of the extras. He had my ukulele in his hand. I gave him the finger as we bowed.

Then Muriel and Evelyn.

Then all the conspirators.

Then George Coulouris.

Then Martin Gabel.

Then, finally, the Mighty Orson.

“Ninety-four minutes,” called out Ash.

“Rough,” said Welles. “The big scenes are working pretty well—but we have to move them faster and watch the transitions; they're endless. Jeannie Rosenthal, please stay; we need to redo all the early light cues. We're using our best effects too early. George Coulouris, start the oration
lower;
you've got nowhere to go. Martin Gabel—tent scene—slow the hell down; we're pushing the river. Let the
scene
carry the baggage. Joe Holland, when you play that last bit, ‘I am as constant as the Northern star.'
More.
And step closer to the audience. They've really got to
hate
you. Evelyn Allen, you look beautiful, my angel, but I can't hear
one
word you're saying. I don't know what else to tell you except that if you refuse to project on Thursday night, your theatrical career is over. And thunderdrum man? Much too loud; you're fighting the actors. Other than that, boys and girls, we're closing in on the son-of-a-bitch! Now, let's take the whole goddamn thing from the top.”

 

We performed the show early that evening to about fifty friends of the cast. It was getting better. There was still trouble with the one hundred and seventeen light cues; the funeral oration was sloppy: Coulouris had tried to start lower, but his change threw off the extras, and we lost the intensity of the crowd scene. I had stood in the wings as Coulouris finished his last big line: “ ‘Here was a Caesar! When comes such another!' ” Then he stormed past me.
“Down the toilet!”
he said. “Whole scene down the toilet!”

“I thought you were fine,” I said.

“I
was
fine,” he said. “The
audience
was off!”

I sat next to Welles, played my song about Orpheus and his lute, looked out at the house, and I thought: Wait 'til my friends see this: Caroline and Stefan and Skelly and Kate Rouilliard and Kristina Stakuna and every other good-looking girl in Westfield High School. I imagined them all. And my parents and my grandparents. Wait 'til they see this! I'm onstage with Orson Welles; I can feel the body heat from his shoulder.

The cast lingered around the stage, and their friends all told them how wonderful they were. Muriel Brassler complained that her costume made her look too tall. Evelyn Allen sat looking lonely, holding her rust-colored book. Cotten was talking about how he was going to nail Evelyn before the week was out. “She's putting out signals,” he explained. “Very explicit signals.”

Then the back door opened, and Sonja and Houseman were coming down the aisle together, laughing. She was wearing a burgundy cashmere coat, dressed for going out somewhere nice.

I felt foolish to have hoped she'd really wanted to see me after the show. To go dancing. Another daydream. The truth was, I told myself, that the Sonjas of the world didn't end up with the Richards of the world. That's just not the way the play was written. The beautiful people ended up with the beautiful people.

Suddenly Welles was gathering everybody center stage. His manner had returned to that of an affectionate teacher. “Now, all right, everybody, front and center! I'm not done yet! Front and center, Uncle Orson's got a little game for us all. It's coming together, ladies and gentlemen, but we still don't feel like a family.”

“Good. I hate my family,” said Lloyd.

“Come on now,” said Welles. “I've got a game I want us all to play.”

“At this hour?”

“I know what's coming,” said Cotten.

“I still think it's a good idea, Joe,” said Welles. “Right now. Right this second, before you go home to your warm beds, every single person in this company is going to take somebody out for a drink. My treat. A
coffee
for you, Junior. Or whatever the hell it is you kids drink.” He laughed. “Anyway, my treat. Five dollars a couple. This is the advantage of radio; they pay you in cash.”

“Do we have to do this?” groaned Coulouris. “I'm exhausted.”