Stages (45 page)

It was David’s Emmy.

“What is it?” Senora Santos asked.

“It’s probably just an old bowling trophy,” Kathy replied. “The former owner must have forgotten it. I left a serving plate in New York when I moved, and I’ve never been able to replace it.”

“We have ‘Bowling for Dollars’ in Caracas,” Senor Santos said.

Little José announced that he had to go again.

75

“All these years of trying to get a new theater built,” Melanie was saying, “and they finally get the money for it from an old lesbian who used to go to the directing class’s one acts in men’s suits.”

“At least the suits had deep pockets,” Mike replied. “Are you really serious about going to this?”

“I sure as hell am,” said Melanie. “And I intend to sit right in back of the seat that has the plaque with my name on it.”

“You could sit in the snack bar,” Mike reminded her. “You donated that too, you know, along with the green room.”

“The old snack bar was where we first met, remember?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“It seems like yesterday, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older that yesterday gets closer and closer.”

“I’m really looking forward to seeing Paula. I wonder what she’ll have to say.”

“Nothing to us, that’s for sure. They’ll whisk her in and out like they do with Reagan.”

“Well, at least we’ll get to talk to Kathy.”

“About what? Real estate? Give her Harry and a diamond pin and she’d be the next Leona Helmsley.”

“Give you a daddy with nice thick wavy dyed hair and you’d be the next Nancy Reagan.”

“Touché, Mel. I guess I should have listened to you way back then, freshman year, when you warned me about the theater.”

“It’s too late now, so we might as well go back to where it all started, and see how everyone has
aged.
Next to legitimate theater, I love the theater of people trying to look younger than they are the best.”

76

David let the invitation sit on his desk for two days. He had no intention of answering it. He didn’t throw it out, either. Half listening to the gabbing of a fabric salesman, David kept noticing the invitation there by the telephone. Boston had changed enormously, he’d heard. There were new hotels all over the place, and that whole redevelopment on the water-front, which they’d modeled South Street Seaport after. Only the one in Boston had worked.

When he finally got rid of the herring of a salesman, David picked up the invitation.
Veronica Simmons.
Jesus.

Calling himself an idiot, but not really caring, David reached for the telephone.
Why not go?
he thought. It had taken awhile, months, before he’d straightened out enough to deal with the fact that in L.A. he’d gotten to the point where he’d actually put a gun to his head. After that, why not anything? If you were willing to die for your own terrible foolishness once, weren’t you entitled to do something stupid but harmless now, just once in a while? You couldn’t redeem yourself with ten-hour workdays alone. There was nothing wrong with a little pointless fun, then.

Unless in some strange way, Veronica Simmons
was
the point.

77

“I don’t know how you can go back there and face your old friends,” Jason said. “You—an ex-con.”

“I didn’t see any of them putting their bodies in front of the Morosco,” Lauren replied haughtily. “And I certainly want to see how my theater in the round came out, if it’s intimate enough.”

“For what that cost you should be one of the guests of honor,” Jason said.

“I am, obviously,” said Lauren. “We are. If only I could persuade you to come along.”

“You know the board’s meeting.”

“You
are
the board.”

“I’m the CEO but I’m not a bully.”

Lauren sighed. She fluffed her Givenchy as she sat there on the sofa of silk brocade, like a little girl feeling restless.

“You know, I’m serious,” she said. “You’re the board. You’re the company. But you’re not the boy I married.”

“I came of age,” Jason said, straightening his
Wall Street Journal
.

“At least Nat is interested in something else than business. I’ve seen to that.”

Jason shifted his glance to the well-worn Monopoly game sitting on a shelf in the bookcase and smiled to himself.

Lauren reached for the television set’s remote control and switched on “Dynasty.” At least three of the characters had in recent weeks reminded her of Jason’s mother. None of them had ever made her think of James Riddiford, though. She wondered if she’d see him when she went up to Blake. Not that it mattered. He was so harmless, and pathetic. You only became dangerous to the happiness of others if you acted like Jason’s mother, if you tried to live like what you saw on TV.

78

They’d even scheduled a wine-tasting party, which was pretty much the same as the one Kathy remembered from graduation week twenty years ago, except that now the red wines had been omitted in favor of Perrier.

“Where is the chianti and spaghetti of our youth?” Melanie lamented.

“You can blame California for the wine,” Kathy said. “But not for the yuppies. “

“I thought the yuppies started in hot tubs in Marin,” Mike said.

“No, they were started in New York,” Kathy said. “By American Express.”

“Did you happen to get a look at Lauren?” Melanie asked.

“The house I grew up in had glass doorknobs the size of her ring,” Mike replied.

“Well, we all knew she married rich,” Kathy said.

“She and her husband were behind that
Vaudeville Revival
that played for two years,” Melanie pointed out. “There are four companies now. One in England, even.”

“Money begets money,” Mike said.

“I wonder what Riddiford thinks,” Melanie said.

“Did you
hear
him last night?” Kathy said. “It was like watching one of those people they give the Lifetime Achievement thing to at the Academy Awards. Your heart’s in your mouth thinking they’re going to drop dead before they can get them offstage.”

“Wasn’t that sad?” Melanie said. “He isn’t all that old, either. Professors never really get out of school so they have to struggle and struggle to rise in the pecking order of the same kind of petty little cliques we used to have in high school. It’s pathetic.”

“Worse now than when we were here, I bet,” Kathy said. “Remember, in the sixties the colleges were where it was at, with the war and all. Now they’re what we used to say some of the courses were—irrelevant. Full of Young Republicans and computers.”

“Sometimes I wonder why I give them money,” Melanie said.

“Subversion,” said Mike. “I know what you’re up to, with your scholarships for drama majors and your green room.”

“A mind is a terrible thing to waste,” said Melanie. “On economics or political science, at any rate.”

“Look, Lauren’s alone,” Kathy said.

“So is Doris Duke sometimes,” said Mike.

“I think I’ll go talk to her,” Kathy said.

“She’s too nouveau riche for me,” Mike said. “I only associate with inherited money.”

“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” Melanie said.

As Kathy started over to where Lauren was standing, Mike began to nibble on Melanie’s rings as if they were corn on the cob.

“Lauren, long time, no see,” said Kathy.

“Oh, my God,” Lauren said, recognizing Kathy. That had been the standard greeting so far this weekend, as if people were popping up out of top hats.

Kathy and Lauren kissed, and Kathy pointed out Melanie and Mike across the way. Melanie held up a single piece of celery like Bette Davis in
All About Eve.

“That’s because you gave more than she did,” Kathy explained.

“It’s appropriate that she gave the green room, then,” Lauren replied. “Actually, I never knew Melanie had that kind of money.”

“Neither did she. Oh, maybe she suspected. But she didn’t want to think about it. Denial, I guess.”

“Denial of money is downright un-American,” Lauren said.

“You must be some kind of superpatriot if that’s the case,” Kathy said.

“There’s no sense having it if you don’t use it,” Lauren replied. “I grew up poor, and I never thought one way or the other about what it would be like to be rich. What it’s like is that you have more of everything, which is nice, and you can also do more, which is nicer. The one thing I’m really, genuinely grateful for is the way I’ve been able to participate in theater. I never would have, otherwise. I would have married, and had my kids, and wondered if I could manage to look like Joan Collins when I was Joan Collins’ age.”

“How many kids do you have?” Kathy asked.

“One. Nathaniel. He’s almost fourteen,”

“I only have one myself. Alison. She’s thirteen.”

“Let’s marry them to each other. That’s what everybody else here seems to want to do with their kids.”

“It’s not a bad idea,” Kathy said. “That’d be one way to get Alison away from my mother. The two of them sit at the kitchen table making up California jokes—at my expense.”

“With Nat married I might even have another baby,” Lauren said. “The ultimate Jane Fonda workout is having a baby at forty.”

“It’s nice you’ve been able to keep your husband,” Kathy said. “That’s more than a lot of us could do.”

“Yeah,” said Lauren. “I guess I have staying power. I’ve been able to do personally what Paula’s done professionally. Should we get some more wine? I’ve already had too much, and I’m enjoying it.”

Kathy was at the bar with Lauren when she spotted David. She drank off the glass she’d just filled and put it back on the tablecloth to be filled again. She’d hoped he’d show up. But she’d convinced herself now that they were into the second day of the celebration that he wasn’t going to.

“Look who’s here,” she said to Lauren.

“Is that
David
?”

Kathy nodded.

“Oh, let’s go talk to him.”

“I’d be careful. He became an agent, you know, and he got into producing, and he lost his shirt, on this project that got just wildly out of hand.”

“Film producing, you mean?” Lauren asked. She seemed to dismiss the idea of anyone losing his shirt as if it were something you just had taken care of by a French dry cleaner.

“Yeah,” Kathy replied. “That can be a very risky business.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Lauren. “You don’t have to hire Michael Cimino to be your director. Look at what that Horton Foote has been doing down in Texas for next to nothing.”

“Texas is one thing,” Kathy said. “David became a captive of L. A.”

“Lately I’ve been t
hin
king about moviemaking myself,” Lauren said.

“You wonder how Paula’s avoided doing shit,” Kathy said, her eye on David, who hadn’t seen her yet.

“She wasn’t stupid,” Lauren said. “She must read the scripts they give her, and she must say no. That’s probably the hardest word there is for an actress to say.”

“Other than yes to a guest slot on ‘Love Boat.’”

“I really would like to try putting together a good, low-budget movie, though. It’d be a challenge. Of course I don’t know Hollywood, but I didn’t know Broadway either, when we first got started.”

Melanie and Mike materialized, each of them holding cubes of cheese with toothpicks in them.

“Now
this,
”
said Melanie, “is a college hors d’oeuvre.”

“David’s here,” Kathy said.

“The prodigal son? You’re kidding,” said Melanie. “I didn’t think he’d have the nerve.”

“He’s in the garment business now,” Kathy said.

“That explains where the nerve came from,” said Mike.

“He actually looks better than I thought he would,” Melanie said to Kathy. “After what you told me, I was expecting something out of
Night of the Living Dead.
”

“Did you know it only cost thirty thousand dollars to make that movie?” Lauren said.

“Hm,” said Melanie. “I never knew that. That’s amazing. Imagine bringing in a movie for less than your dress cost.”

“Some of us haven’t changed a bit, I see,” said Lauren.

“When you find the right Clairol formula, stick with it,” Mike put in.

“
Cats.
The one show we all could’ve been in without makeup,” Kathy reflected.

“Wrong,” Melanie said.
“
Dames at Sea.
That was this group’s chosen vehicle.”

“Try
The Elephant Man.
‘I am not an animal.’ I am an actor with an Equity card.”

“
Follies
was the story of our lives.”

“
Seascape.
Crawling around with lizards.”