Stages (41 page)

“
We’ve
got one.”

“Changed your tune, haven’t you?”

He smacked her on her rear end.

“When are they coming in with the cameras and lights and stuff?” she asked.

“Tomorrow,” Johnny replied.

“I just hate the idea of them coming in here, messing up this place. They’ll probably knock holes in the walls.”

“Any damage they do, we’ll get it fixed. They bust up the furniture, we’ll buy more furniture.”

“David doesn’t even know we bought this place. He knows this is where we’re shooting the next couple of weeks, that’s all. It’s amazing he knows that much. He’s on the phone all the time, trying to raise more money.”

“He’s doing a pretty good job of it.”

“What if he ever finds out? Is there anything he could do?”

“Like what? This place is in our names, and you know what they say about possession being nine tenths of the law.”

“What time is it?”

Johnny looked at the gold Rolex that had come out of the costume budget.

“A little after five,” he said.

“He’ll be in the office until eight at least,” Rebecca said. “We got time. You want to go swimming?”

“I didn’t bring a bathing suit.”

“So what?”

“Johnny Carson jogs along this beach.”

“Okay, then let’s not go swimming. Just take off your clothes.”

“Horny little bitch, aren’t you?”

“Why shouldn’t I be? I’ve never had a body to call my own, not even my own body. So I want yours.”

Johnny began to unbutton his shirt.

Smiling, Rebecca pulled her top up.

Out on the beach Ryan O’Neal jogged by.

Two teenage girls who were lying on a blanket turned their binoculars on him, then they turned them back to the window before which Rebecca and Johnny were undressing.

In his office David sat staring at the telephone. He’d just finished one frustrating conversation, and he was about to start another one. He was sweating. He was afraid he smelled. He hadn’t shaved that morning, either. He had a rash on his arms too. He thought,
I
should take a shower.
He went into the bathroom off his office. He began to feel light-headed in the shower. He thought he was going to have to sit down.

He woke up, he didn’t know how many minutes later, curled into a ball, with the shower spray hitting him in the face.

David went back into his office still wet, with only his underwear on, and immediately snorted some more coke.

67

Mike was on the bus, heading up Sixth Avenue. Someone had left a copy of the
Times
on the seat beside him, so he picked it up and began to glance through it. On an inside page he noticed a small article with the word
homosexual
in it. He started to read it. As he read, a chill came over him.

Forty-eight gay men had come down with a mysterious disease. Nobody knew what it was. But they knew that it was incurable. And fatal.

Mike put the paper down. He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew. Something terrible had begun to happen.

68

“My God, then what did you do?” the receptionist in Kathy’s office was asking her.

“I looked right at his
shlong,
” Kathy replied. “And I said to him, ‘Is that going to be reserved like the chandelier in the dining room or does it go with the house, like the draperies?’”

“What’d he say?”

“He didn’t say anything. But his
shlong
went limp, and his face got red as a beet. And I opened the French doors and went on out to the pool.”

“What a terrible experience for you.”

“It’s all part of the job,” Kathy said.

“Are you going to report him to the police?” the receptionist asked.

“What for?” Kathy replied. “Exposing himself in his own bathroom?”

“Oh, yeah. I guess that would be a legal loophole. At least he didn’t take it out in the kitchen, where people eat and all.”

Kathy’s mind was elsewhere. “June,” she said. “Will you do me a favor?”

“Sure, what?”

“See if you can get Roxy Marsh on the phone. I want to see if I can have lunch with her sometime this week.”

Kathy went into her office and began to comb through the recent listings while she was waiting for June to get through.

The phone on her desk rang. Kathy picked it up. It was Roxy.

“Hiya, honey,” Roxy said.

“Hi, Rox,” said Kathy. “Are you free for lunch on Wednesday, say?”

“Sure am.”

“Want to go to the Bel Air?”

“Love to.”

“One o’clock okay?”

“Fine with me.”

Roxy was such an agreeable soul. Kathy could always count on her. But this time, she would be counting on her for more than just an amusing lunch.

Kathy had found Roxy Marsh and her husband their house, and they’d been friends ever since. Roxy was a country and western star with a big blond hairdo. Her life story was as charming as she was. It seemed that at the age of six Roxy had appeared on “Name That Time” and had attracted a lot of attention despite the fact that she’d identified “The William Tell Overture” as “The Lone Ranger on Channel Seven.” When she was seventeen, Roxy had married Steve Marsh, a car salesman from a Lincoln-Mercury dealership in Nashville. Shortly after his marriage to Roxy, Steve had sold a Continental to Elvis Presley, and in terms of Roxy’s recording career, one thing had quickly led to another. Although she’d made it big, Roxy had not become at all spoiled.

She showed up for lunch at the Bel Air in a star-spangled black pants outfit.

“You look like the Cisco Kid,” Kathy told her. “I’m glad you could make it.” Their table was outside, overlooking the hotel’s meandering brook, on which swans serenely glided by.

“So am I,” said Roxy. “I’ll be in the studio recording all day tomorrow. It’s nice to have an afternoon to relax like this. Whoo-ee. I wish I didn’t have to wear these cowboy boots all the time. If I had my way, I’d go onstage in a pair of those sneakers like my mother used to wear doin’ her ironin’. Comfort, that’s what I need. I wonder if Dale Evans had to wear Dr. Scholl’s footpads in her boots like I do.”

“You have to make some sacrifices for the sake of your public image, don’t you?” Kathy said.

“Show business is mostly sacrificing,” Roxy replied. “Anybody who’d see me and Steve and the band on one of those ol’ red-eye flights would think we’re a bunch of losers comin’ back from Vegas. But it’s a living, anyhow.”

“A darned nice living. A lot of people would like to be living in that house of yours.”

“Steve likes it,” Roxy replied. “I think I’d like a hamburger, so long as they don’t make a big deal out of it.” They ordered screwdrivers from the waiter. When the drinks came, Roxy didn’t take the gum out of her mouth.

“My last concert I had three sticks of Beechnut in my mouth all through the second half,” she said, snapping, “and the audience didn’t even know it.”

“It’s always amazed me that you can drink a drink and sing and chew gum,” Kathy said, “all at the same time.”

“It’s an aerobic exercise,” Roxy replied. “Oh, before I forget, I talked to Steve about this David Whitman guy.”

“Did you?” Kathy said, brightening.

“Yeah. You seemed so interested in what was going on with him, I thought I’d ask. You know Steve. Always getting tips, like this place was one big racetrack.”

“It is,” said Kathy. “So what’d Steve find out?”

“Your friend’s movie is way over budget. And the studios’re not exactly jumpin’ up and down over what they’ve seen so far. Steve said they’d be out distributin’ food to the needy before they’d distribute a movie like that—if it’s ever finished, that is.”

“I was afraid of this,” Kathy said.

“Seems like he spends all day every day just try in’ to raise money.”

“I’m not surprised. Roxy, would you be willing to do me a big favor?”

“You know you just have to ask, honey.”

“I want to put up some money for this movie of David’s, but I don’t want him to know that it’s me doing it. I’d like to go through Steve—have him pretend that it’s your money, and I’d be a sort of silent partner.”

“Sure, Steve’d be glad to do that for ya,” Roxy said, “But hon, you’re probably gonna lose whatever you put in.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I’m not talking about a lot of money anyway, just enough to get my foot in the door. I’ve got a feeling that David is being used by somebody, and I think if I play my cards right, I’ll be able to expose them.”

“Who’s using him?” Roxy asked.

“This one,” Kathy said. She pulled the copy of
Penthouse
out of her bag.

“That one don’t need to be exposed any more than she already is,” Roxy said as she looked at the pictures.

“Covering herself isn’t something she particularly thinks about, I’m sure,” said Kathy. “So you see all I have to do is put up a little money, and get David to sign something—I
know
how to write up a contract at this point, Roxy—and then, when nothing has happened within the specified time, as I’m sure it won’t, I waltz right in, along with Herb.”

“Who’s Herb?” Roxy asked.

“My accountant,” said Kathy.

69

The cops were very polite. One even helped Lauren step up into the back of the van, after he’d informed her that she was under arrest. Lauren wasn’t surprised that this had happened; she’d expected it to, she’d even told Jason not to plan on her being home for dinner. Probably this was a futile gesture, but Lauren felt it was one that had to be made. Tearing down two theaters like the Morosco and the Helen Hayes, just to put up one more glitzy hotel, was an assault not only on the theater but on the
history
of the theater. It was the destruction of culture for the sake of commerce. It was an act more brazenly obscene than anything peddled in the smut shops along Forty-second Street. So Lauren had gone to the barricades along with Joe Papp and Colleen Dewhurst and the rest of them. This time—when there was nothing to applaud—she’d finally stepped out of the audience and into the action.

The people riding with Lauren in the police van were mostly young actors. One of them, a guy of around twenty-five, said to her, “This your first time in a paddy wagon?”

“As a matter of fact it is,” Lauren replied.

“They’re not air conditioned, I never knew that,” said the young actor. “Are you in ‘Days of Our Lives,’ by any chance?”

“No,” said Lauren. “I’m not an actress. My husband and I…sometimes put up a little money for a show, if it’s one we like.”

“Really,” said the young actor. “Have I heard of you? What’s your name? I’m Rick Saunders, by the way.”

“Lauren Case. Nice to meet you.”

Rick Saunders’ eyes widened.

“I
have
heard of you,” he said. “Where’s your résumé when you really need it?”

“We’re not producers,” Lauren pointed out.

“No, you’re a lot more important than that,” said Rick. “God, to be a backer. Backers can be choosers.”

“Sometimes it doesn’t seem as though I’ve had a choice,” Lauren said thoughtfully, “but to do this…
backing,
whatever you want to call it. I love the theater. I really do love it. My husband just goes along with my ideas.”

“Lucky for us that he does,” Rick replied.

“Sometimes I wish he could respond to theater,” Lauren said. “More intensely. More personally. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t take
anything
personally. I guess his mother taught him to be that way, although I don’t think she meant to.” The police van passed a nondescript church of an uncertain faith.

“You have to believe in something,” said Lauren. “I guess you could say that the theater’s become my religion.”

70

Herbert Levitt looked like the kind of man who actually used one of those silver, bureau-top comb and brush sets given to him by his wife. He’d begun by saying to David that he knew next to nothing about the movie business, but in taking a quick look at where his client’s money had gone, he’d noticed a few apparent “irregularities” that David might perhaps explain. But the fact was David could not explain why seven thousand dollars had been spent at Mannis Furs on a men’s mink-lined motorcycle jacket, nor could he come up with a reason why costume jewelry should not have been used rather than a pair of twelve-thousand-dollar diamond ear clips from Van Cleef and Arpels. And they were only talking
costumes.

Bluffing his way through the conversation as best he could, David kept thinking,
How am
I
going to get around this guy?
He knew that the picture and his organization were both on the verge of sinking, but they were just a month away, at the most, from wrapping the project, and if he could only keep the creditors at bay a little while longer…

“I think it might have been cheaper, for insurance purposes, to buy that stuff and then think about auctioning it off or whatever later,” David was saying. “A lot of the studios, they’ve made quite a bit of money lately selling off props from movies they made forty years ago. MGM, for instance.”