The Queen and I (15 page)

Jeffrey desperately wanted to get Saul to confide in him something of his background so that he could know more about him other than that he was a former vaudevillian and that he was once considered the diva among divas in his inner circle.

He decided he would take the knowledge that he had and go with that, but he also knew whatever research he planned on would have to be done away from the house to prevent Saul from throwing another temper tantrum.

They moved into the living room, and Saul brought Jeffrey a glass of brandy to help him relax and to help digest dinner. The night grew late, and Jeffrey had drunk a lot of wine. Fatigue and a full stomach got the better of him, and before he knew it he was asleep where he sat.

Saul smiled and turned the light off next to his new friend and went to the window to close the curtains. He looked outside and saw the faint flicker of what could only be a lit cigarette, and peered deep into the night to see who it was. He was certain that whoever was out there could not see him, but he did not appreciate the unwanted guest.

He made his way outside and smelled the night air. He could distinctly pick up the smell of Jean Nate and alcohol; it was that miserable Abby Tisch.

Saul made a note of the time, and planned on subtly letting Jeffrey know that he would be best served to stay as far away from that woman as possible. But in the here and now, Saul wanted to have some fun with her.

He made his way slowly around her from behind and crept up on her, making quite certain that he did not disrupt the wind as he approached, and after looking to see exactly what she was up to, he realized she was taking notes. He would give her some notes to study.

He blew across the pages of her notebook ever so gently to get the pages to flicker and flip and finally stop on a blank one. There, in bright red ink much like blood, Saul scribbled a warning for Ms. Tisch that would be sure to keep her up at night researching the meaning:

Lign drerd un bak beygel
.

Go to hell and bake bagels there.

He smiled with delight as she screamed a bloodcurdling cry and ran into the woods toward her hidden car.

Chapter Twenty-Four: Strange Bedfellows

Rachel Benjamin woke in the very early hours of the morning and went to her computer. It had been over two weeks since Jeffrey had left to live in that godforsaken cabin, leaving her alone to deal with questions as to his whereabouts and what he had planned next in light of the horrible turn his career had taken.

She was not happy about it and was even more distressed about the message she’d received from Richard Kearney. What was once a mere chance meeting that went too far was quickly turning into a headache that she did not need right now, and what made matters worse, she was afraid that the eccentric writer would open his mouth to the wrong people, leaving Jeffrey in harm’s way.

Every aspect of her life had been meticulously planned, and there was very little that surprised her, but she had not planned on sleeping with Kearney, jeopardizing everything that she had with Jeffrey. To this point, he was totally in the dark about what had happened, but when she had received that message from Kearney, ending with his cries of affection, her heart had skipped a beat and she became certain he would wind up blowing the cover and she would have to explain yet another betrayal to the man whom she loved.

Jeffrey was a very understanding man, but how could any man overlook what she had done? She had invited another man into her bed. It was not just a simple case of getting a hotel room, which she had under a pen name, and it being a onetime fling. It had lingered for a couple of months while Jeffrey was finishing the script to
A Dreidel Spins in Yonkers
and she was not seeing very much of him. She had met Richard at a premier for a play that she, to this day, could not remember the name of since it was so bad, but Richard had been intriguing and had a way about him that Jeffrey lacked.

Where Jeffrey was very serious and focused, Richard was a free spirit who lived by whim and momentum. Where Jeffrey planned everything in his life, Richard didn’t even keep a checking account, his entire life being one check to the next as he flowed with whatever current came his way.

The two of them were introduced at an after-party and struck up a conversation. Richard was very interested in what it was like to be a critic and being the one capable of shattering a person’s life work in a single review. She liked the way he put things and agreed to have drinks with him at a secluded Soho bar not far from the theater.

She woke the next morning in his arms after a night of intensely passionate lovemaking that bordered on obscene. He had done things to her that Jeffrey would never have even thought of or she would allow, but there was something about this man that removed all of her inhibitions and left her helpless to his desires and wants.

They agreed that it would be best to pretend the night had never happened, but she found herself back with him the following night and every other night for the next two weeks, until Jeffrey had finished his script and was back to paying her some attention. She quickly ended it and told Richard it was over and he was to never contact her again.

That was until she had found out he was living in upstate New York and had contacted her to inform her that his real estate agent had told him that Jeffrey was the one who was buying his house.

The news came as quite a surprise to her, since she had heard nothing of the sort from Jeffrey and wondered why he had not told her of such a major move in his life. She asked that he keep in touch and to let her know of anything unusual about the sale. He contacted her to inform her that Jeffrey was being very secretive about the purchase and that he wished to remain anonymous. Rachel took that to mean that Jeffrey was going to disappear and was not going to tell her where he was going.

This was completely unacceptable to her, and she asked Richard to discretely leak the news of the sale and who was buying it to the local gossip columnist in Zion where the house was located. She had hoped that the news would leak quickly enough that she could confront Jeffrey with this information and put a stop to the sale, which would keep her from having to see Richard again. But the news travelled slowly, and Jeffrey beat her to the punch by inviting her to come with him.

Her use for Richard was over, but the reuniting of their relationship was all that he could think of, and he was obsessed with seeing her again, especially since the chance of them being caught was slim to none.

She checked her messages and saw that five of them where from him and that he wanted to come over and see her. Her heart raced at the prospect of another of those evenings, but she knew she could not be with this man again. She had made a mistake, and knew what it would do to Jeffrey would be devastating if he ever found out.

But he would never find out.

He was in his cabin in the country and the serene quiet of the Finger Lakes, while she was in the hustle, shuffle, and grind of New York City. Nobody knew Richard in her close inner circles, and it was not as if she was about to show him off to all of her business associates and contacts.

There had to be a way for the two of them to be together again and to leave no trace of it. She grabbed her phone and sent a text with instructions, and then made a phone call to a number from her contact list.

“Waldorf-Astoria,” the voice on the other end of the line said.

She took a deep breath and answered, “I would like to have my room prepared. This is Zoe Epstein.”

* * *

Sheriff Pitts took a sip of his coffee as he watched his charge enter the station. He had called him three hours earlier and waited patiently for the young man to arrive two and a half hours late. For the life of him, he could not understand this boy, and he had tried over the years. Pitts had so desperately wanted him to think of him as his father, and had gone out of his way to show him a good life, that he was certain it was just a matter of time before the boy warmed up to him. But that had been a long time ago, and the boy was now a man.

Sean Wagner was the son of Zion’s most notorious drunk, who was now serving time in Sing Sing for the murder of Sean’s mother. She had caught his father with another woman and confronted him while he was in one of his more agitated states, and he had beaten her to death with a crow bar while Sean, just six at the time, watched it all.

The sheriff had taken him in and even offered to legally adopt him, but his father refused to sign away parental custody, so Sean had lived with Pitts and his wife ever since as a foster child. He was the son the Pitts’s had always wanted and never had, but the boy had issues of his own and rebelled more and more the older he got. He refused to convert to Judaism like so many others in the town did, and had even gone so far as to become enamored with Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich. Sean even grew a mustache similar to that of the Führer and walked the streets of Zion calling all of his former friends
Juden
.

Pitts had tried everything to get the boy to change his ways, but decided he was troubled enough without having another father figure interfere with his life. As long as he didn’t take this whole neo-Nazi thing too far, Malcolm Pitts was content to let it run its course. His wife had even gone so far as to knit Sean a yarmulke with a swastika on it, in hopes that he could combine his admiration for Hitler with her love of the Jewish people. He had accepted the gift, but used the yarmulke as a coaster instead of a head covering.

Now Sean was here because Malcolm had called for him; he had a job that needed doing, and he wanted to think outside the box, so to ask Sean for that help was as outside the box as any alternative he could think of.

Sean walked into Pitts’s office and sat down, removing his cap and revealing his clean-shaven head.

“Sean,” Pitts said politely.

“Juden,” Sean answered.

“What have I told you about that?”

“That you prefer Mr. Juden?” he smiled obnoxiously.

SheriffPitts took a deep breath and sat back in his chair. He really did not know what to do with this boy, but he had a job for him to do, and Sean appeared to him to be the perfect person to do it.

“Are you still friendly with Carl Thomas?” Pitts asked.

“Of course I am; he’s not a Jew.”

Pitts ignored the remark. “Do you think I can count on the two of you to do me a favor?”

“Why would I want to do a favor for you?”

“For one thing, because I’m the closest thing you have to a father, and I’m asking. For another, I’m the sheriff of this town and need it done.”

Sean smirked at Pitts’s bravado and asked, “Why can’t you get one of your deputies to do it?”

“It’s something that I can’t have done through official channels.”

Sean was intrigued and leaned forward in his seat. “Who is it?”

Pitts smiled. He knew that this would work. He had tried this a few times before with Sean, and it had always been a great success in the past. The boy fancied himself as a bit of a tracker and unofficial lawman, and his friend, Carl, was right on the verge of insanity and was convinced that Zion was the best place to be when the end came. A survivalist by nature, Carl had always liked Sean, and the two of them were the Oscar and Felix of the town.

“I don’t want you to make any contact with him, I just want you to watch him and report back to me. Are we clear on that?” Pitts asked.

Sean shook his head and replied, “I don’t know, Malcolm, these things can get messy sometimes.”

Pitts shot him a stern stare and reiterated, “You are not to touch him in any way. I just want you to report on what he is up to and who he is speaking with.”

“Who is it?” Sean asked.

“Jeffrey David Rothstein.”

“The Broadway faggot?” Sean asked in disgust.

“There is no proof that he is a faggela,” SheriffPitts defended.

“Don’t speak that Hebe talk to me,” Sean spat.

“And you watch your tone with me, you little pisher.”

The two of them eyed one another, and finally Sean stood and turned to leave the office. He paused just long enough to answer, “I promise I won’t touch him.”

Sheriff Pitts watched as his foster son left the police station, and immediately wondered if he had done the right thing.

Chapter Twenty-Five: Vaudeville Origins

Jeffrey woke on his sofa, nursing a slight hangover, and wondered where the hell he actually was. It had been a late night, and the memories slowly flooded back into his brain as he struggled to focus his line of vision across the room. What he remembered was that he and Saul had stayed up late talking about various plays and musicals and entertaining the notion of Saul helping Jeffrey come up with a script to get his revenge.

He looked around and wondered where the large ghost had gotten to and called out for him. After a moment of no response, he brushed it aside, believing that Saul must have gone out again to do God knows what.

The more he thought about his new friend and wonder, he realized that he still had many more questions than he had answers to, and he somehow had to figure out how to get those answers without upsetting Saul.

He gathered that Saul was from somewhere in the early twentieth century, because of the clothing he was wearing the first time he saw him. It was reminiscent of the research he had done on the old vaudevillian legends of the twenties when he was writing a script about a murderer who was hunting down female impersonators on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. That play was never produced, but Jeffrey distinctly remembered that cross-dressing was a big hit at the time and even lived on in the early days of television like when Milton Berle had famously dressed as a woman on
I Love Lucy
.

The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that he was on to something, but he had to be very careful about when and where he was going to do his research. There was no way that he would be able to do it here at the cabin, and so he decided that when Saul finally showed himself again, he would let him know he was going into town for some other business while actually going to the library to play his game of cloak and dagger.

He smelled a pot of fresh coffee and knew it had been Saul who had made it for him, but where was the ghost? It did not seem like him to not leave a note; after all, he was pretty free with the note leaving when it came to critiquing Jeffrey’s work. He washed up and poured himself a cup, when Saul suddenly appeared dressed in a nice pink chiffon number.

“Good morning, maestro,” Saul greeted happily. Jeffrey had to take a moment to process the sight of this large man wearing a dress, but soon found that to be more normal than the fact that he was actually speaking to a ghost. “Did you sleep well?” Saul asked.

“Considering that I slept on the sofa, I would say so.”

Saul waved off the comment and said, “I would have carried you upstairs, but was worried that you would have thought I was overstepping our boundaries.”

This was a very amusing comment to Jeffrey, since he knew for a fact that Saul had watched him bathe and had still not apologized for overstepping that boundary. There was something in Saul’s hand, and Jeffrey did not hide his curiosity and made a gesture with a nod of his head, as he assumed that it had something to do with him.

“I brought you a little something from the attic,” Saul said, smiling. “It used to be mine when I was a young man and thought it could help you.”

Jeffrey opened the package and found a small, leather-bound book with the initials
SM
on the lower right corner. Jeffrey raised an eyebrow and pointed to the initials. Saul shrugged and said sheepishly, “Saul Milick. That’s my real name.” He rolled his eyes and continued, “Can you imagine growing up in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn with a last name like Milick?”

Jeffrey looked in the book and saw that it was a collection of personal notes written in Saul’s handwriting; notes on performances, ideas, and sketch designs.

“I thought it might help,” Saul continued, smiling innocently. “Where are you from?”

“I grew up around a bunch of Irishmen with a name like Rothstein,” Jeffrey added.

“Oy, the black death!” Saul exclaimed. “My bubbe used to tell me that the reason there was a Dark Ages was because they let the Irishmen leave Ireland.”

Jeffrey laughed and said, “My bubbe said that they were the reason Santa Claus hated Jewish kids; they got him drunk, and we were the trade-offfor not telling Mrs. Claus.”

Saul laughed and added, “What is it about bubbe logic that seems so truthful when we are children and so ludicrous once we achieve maturity?”

“They’re bubbe, who are we to think that anything they say is not one hundred percent honest?”

Saul nodded and invited Jeffrey to follow him into the kitchen. After seating, he watched as the ghost happily prepared breakfast for him, all the while regaling him with stories of the way the theater used to be before it became a business for corporate America.

In Saul’s day, the theater was a bastion for creativity and entertainment; it was where the true special people of the world used their talents to entertain the masses for little more than the delight of doing it, and it was where many a career was born for someone from modest and humble beginnings.

“Is that what happened for you?” Jeffrey asked, hoping that he did not ask the wrong question.

Saul smiled and replied, “I was bigger than anything anyone had seen for a time. I was the Esther Williams of the stage, and the crowds loved me.”

“Where did you perform?”

“Mainly on vaudeville,” Saul answered, and Jeffrey was pleasantly surprised that the ghost was being so forthright with his answers. “The Shlomo Theater was a second home for me.”

Jeffrey’s eyes brightened at the mention of the theater where he had run so many of his plays and where Heinrich Schultz had just cancelled his current one. “I know that theater. I’ve had a lot of success there.”

“Ever look in the last stall of the ladies room?”

“Uh no, I haven’t had the chance.”

Saul laughed and continued, “Probably wouldn’t do you any good anyway; by now they’ve probably painted it a few times.”

He served Jeffrey a breakfast of over-easy eggs and some toasted challah bread and sat across from him, watching Jeffrey eat. It appeared that something was on his mind, but Jeffrey decided not to press the issue.

“I was thinking,” Saul said. “This revenge that you want, why don’t you just focus on writing a play that would be so successful it would outshine anything they did?”

Jeffrey shrugged his shoulders and answered, “It’s a bit complicated, Saul. These men went after me personally and tried to ruin everything I’ve worked so hard for. I want to watch them squirm a little for my own gratification.”

“Suit yourself, but this kind of mishegas can blow up in your face if you’re not careful.”

The two of them sat in silence for a time, and Jeffrey wanted to tell Saul that he was going into town, but had a nagging feeling that the ghost would want to come with him. That would pose a major problem when it came to his privacy and the research that Jeffrey needed to do.

He now knew what Saul’s last name was, he knew that he had performed on vaudeville, and he could see every time that he looked at him that his guest was fond of wearing women’s clothing. His search to learn a bit more of the personal information he was afraid to ask should not be too difficult to learn, and he decided he would just state it as a matter of fact that he was going into town. He did not have to tell Saul why, he merely had to say that he would be gone for the better part of the afternoon. Maybe the large ghost would surprise him and say that he had plans of his own.

He finished breakfast and went upstairs to shower and get dressed, making Saul promise that he was not going to follow or spy on him while doing either. He came down and informed the big ghost of his plans to go into Zion, and to his happy surprise, Saul was only too eager for him to get out of the house as he said he was working on a special dinner that he wanted to be a surprise.

Jeffrey left Saul in the house and walked to his car, noticing that there were some scattered pieces of paper strewn around the property with a foreign language written on them; it looked like Yiddish.

Entering Zion again made Jeffrey feel like he was more in Disneyland than he was in upstate New York. The way the town was decorated in all things Jewish had a certain showman’s quality to it that left you expecting to see food carts set up selling latkes and sweet-and-sour meatballs, while finding other booths offering three throws to dunk the rabbi.

Everything about his new home told him that these people led a very sheltered life and that they desperately wanted to feel like they were as important as the outside world. If that meant ingratiating themselves to a pseudo celebrity like Jeffrey David Rothstein, then they were going to see to it that they were successful in their plans and that he would soon come to love the town as much as they did.

He had no problem finding the library and parked about a block away, so that if anyone recognized his car they might be thrown off. He wanted privacy for his research, and the last thing he needed was for word to spread that he was in a centralized setting like the library; he would immediately be swamped with gawkers and such.

He wore sunglasses and a New York Mets baseball cap for disguise and went to the front desk to ask about the computer service they had set up. The librarian did not seem to recognize him and happily escorted him to one of only two computers the library had at its disposal. She informed him that there was an hour time limit for fairness purposes and that he would have to re-up every time his allotted time ran out.

Jeffrey typed in his search on Google and was given a list of people matching the name
Saul Milick.
They ranged in professions from deli owner to butcher, rabbi to lawyer, and even one who was the CEO of a yarmulke manufacturer. He scrolled down the search result list and finally came across the match he was looking for, Saul Milick, the actor.

It gave a brief biography of the man, offered a few black-and-white pictures, gave the years he had been alive, and also when he’d worked in the theater.

Saul had been born in East New York in 1895 and got his first job in the theater at the age of twenty. He served briefly in World War I and returned home after being shot in the buttocks. He got a job at the Shlomo Theater and quickly rose in the ranks of the vaudeville scene due to his hilarious renditions of the Kaiser and his eventual appearances in drag to the delight of the patrons from all over the city.

He was twice nominated for vaudeville awards that Jeffrey had never even heard of, and was named Performer of the Year five consecutive years. He was loved by all of his coworkers and fellow actors, and was one of the few who embraced the popularity of movies being produced with sound. He led a movement of his fellow vaudevillians to encourage the theater owners to begin recording the performances for distribution across the country.

He was the one who had decided that it would go a long way for morale if they visited the troops. This happened before the USO came into existence, and he was the first to encourage fellow performers to give freely of their time for charitable events and the needy.

When films began to take over the industry and Broadway entered its renaissance, there became less and less of a need for vaudeville, and many of its performers were cast aside for more photogenic and box office savvy stars to make their names.

Jeffrey read that Saul had been certain he would reap the rewards of the success of the movie picture with sound since he had been such a proponent for the medium, but once the film industry began to take off, Saul was left out in the cold and quickly forgotten. The belief among the inner circle in the show business industry was that he was not marketable enough, and the rumors of his homosexuality conspired to work against him.

While there were many gay men and women in Hollywood at the time, they were discreet enough to leave their personal lives subject for rumor and speculation, where Saul was very outspoken about his lifestyle and did not care who knew. It was his own arrogance that sparked the fires of his downfall, and he was forced to watch as other, less popular stars went on to bigger and better things and he was left to wallow in mediocrity in theaters that were only frequented by the fringes of society and those looking for cheap tricks and favors from the performers.

He had had enough by 1948 and was found dead by a dear friend, a Ms. Ruby Goldschmidt, also a drag queen in his Gravesend, Brooklyn home. His cause of death was by suicide. He had slit his wrists and drawn a warm bath. The man who had pleased and delighted so many for so many years, who had helped so many in the industry, died alone and broke without so much as an obituary in the local newspapers.

Jeffrey sat back and absorbed all of the information he had just taken in about his new friend, and he was overcome with profound sadness that this very talented man, who had inspired so many, was left out in the cold and shunned by those who he had thought of as his friends. It was not that dissimilar to what Jeffrey was going through. He too was being disavowed by those whom he had made money for and those whose careers were a direct result of his benevolence.

There was much in common between Jeffrey David Rothstein and Saul Milick. The two of them had given everything to the theater and to entertaining people, and when they experienced hard times, they were cast aside by those same people who had taken advantage of their talents for so long.

Jeffrey was beginning to get a new understanding as to why Saul was so eager to become friends with him and why he was so passionate about helping Jeffrey. It was who Saul was; he had been a very giving person in life and that had only carried over to his afterlife as well. And what made Saul happiest was helping a struggling actor or anyone who was involved with the theater.

His purpose in life had been performing, and now in death he had been given a second chance to rewrite history and get the satisfaction of reclaiming his rightful place among the greats throughout the history of the theater. This was his time, and Jeffrey was the way he would find this success.

Jeffrey knew that he was assuming a great deal about what motivated Saul, but considering everything that he just read, he was certain he was on the right path. It was time for Jeffrey to get back to work, and it was obvious now that fate had thrown him the bone that he needed to reclaim what was his.