The Ravine (16 page)

Perhaps. Certainly I had insight into him, and when he sidled up beside Veronica and cooed, “That’s not quite on, beauty,” I knew what he was doing. (Incidentally, he wasn’t British, although that sentence might suggest he was. He was from Sarnia, Ontario, although very few people were in on that little secret.)

“Sorry, beauty, that’s not quite what we need.”

“How so?”

“This woman, this Hester, I feel she should discover this, this, you know, this
thing
, within her, something she little suspected she had, this rare, rare…”

“Rare what?”

“Right, right.” I didn’t know if George Gordon was being an idiot due to his proximity to Veronica, or simply because he was one. “Her attitude.”

“A rare attitude?”

“No, darling, no. Her attitude when she,
when you
, attend the fellows. She seems strong.”

I was sitting in the seats, in the shadows, a battered and splotchy copy of the script on my lap. I spent hours so, waiting for someone on the stage to ask for clarification. The most I ever got was Gordon shouting toward the loges, “Dropping that line! Too wordy!”

“I don’t think she’s all
that
strong, George,” Veronica said, which made me wonder whether she ’d ever ended a sentence with
my
name; I decided she hadn’t, because it surely would have made me faint.

George lowered his voice then; he also lowered his head so that it practically rested upon Ronnie’s chest. He spoke, hushed but urgent, causing various reactions on her part. Her brow furrowed, then smoothed with understanding. She bit on her bottom lip, and then she
laughed. She stared at the floor and suddenly lifted her eyes until they met Gordon’s. She touched him on the shoulder and nodded. I was beside myself with grief.

George Gordon spun around, hollering, “Let’s run it from when Hester comes in!”

Hester/Veronica made her entrance, with an arm cocked upwards and her palm flat, because when props got her act together there would be a salver covered with draft glasses there. She stopped by the table of braying regulars, and I saw what change Gordon had effected; Hester was timid now, timorous, to the extent that her free hand floated about her nether regions as though on guard, ready to land and shield her most private self. This lent an interesting tone to her lines; I had crafted them with some wit (I thought), which now served as a huge defence. It struck me that Gordon was gearing Veronica’s entire performance toward the final moment; he wanted the audience to think that Hester was perpetually, eternally, a victim, and therefore incapable of the decisive act that was to come. That was how Ronnie played it all that day. I watched the two confer between run-throughs; they had begun to touch each other by way of punctuation, resting fingertips on shoulders, elbows, cheeks(!), and once, as Ronnie turned away, Gordon passed a hand across her perfect backside.

This was danger, big danger. George Gordon was a Lothario, and although he was in some ways an ill-looking fellow (pale and rail-thin, his fingers so nicotine-stained that they glowed orange), I thought Ronnie was falling under his influence.

After rehearsal that day, many people gathered at the Pig’s Snout. Veronica sat down beside me, which cheered me momentarily, until I realized that it was the only seat available. Across from us George Gordon held court, drinking too much (in apparent victory) and telling tales of squalor and scandal. Hooper came in, poor lost Hooper,
and although he grabbed a chair and tried to ram it in between me and Ronnie, he couldn’t (I didn’t budge), and eventually he ended up sitting beside Bob Hamel, the most boring man in the universe.

As drinks were consumed, everything became louder, a cloud of confusion descended upon the table, and at some point in the midst of all that, Veronica tilted her body toward mine and said quietly, “What do you think of George?”

What would Rommel or Patton do under the circumstances? They wouldn’t pussyfoot around, that’s for sure, and neither did I. Screwing up my face with what I intended to pass for considered reflection (but no doubt looked like exactly what it was, a goatish, hormone-addled grimace of sexual longing), I pronounced, “I think he’s an asshole.”

Ronnie patted my leg, or squeezed my knee, or did some damn thing underneath the table that involved my limb and her hand, flick-eringly brief but chubb-producing. “I think you’re right,” she said quietly. “This Hester business, don’t you think it’s wrong?”

“I think it couldn’t be wronger.”

“There’s a word for it.”

I panicked briefly: a word for what? A word for my expression—
stupefied?
A word for what was happening to me underneath the table—
engorgement?

“Madonna complex,” Ronnie recalled. “That’s what George has. It’s like women are saints, you know. Hester is this timid little virgin. I want to play her, you know,
bolder.
More real. Like a woman who’s done a few things. Laughed, had a drink, fucked. That way it means—jeez, Phil, you’ve gone really pale.”

“You’re right.”

“Sorry?”

“Muwahhh …” (Which was me sucking in air, my lungs popping apart with an audible shudder.) “You’re absolutely right. Gordon
doesn’t really understand women.” Please don’t ask if I do, please don’t ask if I do, let this pass as the truth. How could Gordon understand women, how could any of us?

“What are you two prattling on about?” Because George’s ears stood at right angles to his skull, they were very powerful.

“Just stuff,” said Veronica. “Just, you know, man/woman stuff.”

“Oh, really?”

John Hooper stood up from his seat and pretended to yawn. Actually, as he had been sitting beside Bob Hamel, the yawn may have been genuine, but it certainly didn’t look that way. It looked as if an alien, perhaps an invader from the Dog Star, Sirius, had occupied Hooper’s body and was controlling motion with some crude internal block and pulley. “Come on, Ron,” he said. “Let’s go.”

“You go on, Johnny,” said Ronnie. She said these words in a very friendly fashion. Too damn friendly, so friendly that the Hooper/ Lear relationship was instantly defined as one of camaraderie. They were done as a couple, and Hooper stumbled out of the bar in utter despair. And although there has been a certain consistency in John’s attitude toward Veronica since then (you may recall his remark beginning “There is no man alive …”), I know that really he has never gotten over her. But I had no time, then, to reflect on this victory, because my potential happiness was being besieged by George Gordon. “The playwright and the leading lady,” he said authoritatively, as though quoting Sir John Gielgud or somebody, “shouldn’t be talking to each other.”

“But I enjoy talking to the playwright,” said Ronnie.

“I’m sure you do, beauty,” George Gordon said with a knowing smile. I will say this—he was right, the playwright and the leading lady probably shouldn’t have been talking. They certainly shouldn’t have been discussing an interpretation of the role that was at odds with the director’s vision. But we continued to do so over the course
of the rehearsals. We were crafty—Ronnie’s Hester continued to be cowed and subservient. Occasionally, though, she would signal to me as I sat in the tiers—subtly, a small shrug or a short glance—and the more assertive Hester would make an appearance. George Gordon would stop the proceedings immediately. “Beauty, darling, what the
fuck
was that?” But I would smile, and the corners of Ronnie’s mouth would flicker. There is nothing like collusion to bring two people together. Why do you think the milieu of the French Resistance is romantic, why do we imagine ourselves wearing scarves and berets and rutting like bush-babies as the storm troopers patrol the streets?

Opening night was a triumph. Indeed, it was probably the best evening of my life, and I would claim it as such unreservedly if I had not spent a certain portion of it wanting to throw up. I wanted to throw up for several pre-curtain hours, although when Ronnie/ Hester wheeled on, carrying a tray of draft and looking as though she ’d lived a full and
very
active life, the butterflies landed. And when the curtain descended, the audience members sprang to their feet and roared. Backstage there was pandemonium, much of it created by the irate George Gordon, who wanted to tear a strip off Ronnie’s hide. By this point, he knew he was out of the sweetheart stakes, and was legitimately angry over artistic matters, but every time he tried to blast Veronica, someone would stop in front of her and gush. In a few minutes George was beaming, pocketing a few free-floating kudos. They gushed over me as well, friends and strangers alike. I remember a young fellow with wild hair that was already peppered with grey. “My god, that was a fine bit of writing,” this man said. “Lambent” was the word he used, over and over again. “Positively lambent.” He gave me his card, which I threw on my dresser and never thought about again. Mind you, it had no information embossed upon it, not
profession nor address nor phone number, other than the man’s name:
WILLIAM BECKETT
.

The post-play celebration was, where else? at the Pig’s Snout, but we didn’t stay long.
We didn’t stay long
, christ it stings me to type that, to remember that we once operated as a single entity. We didn’t stay long, we only had one drink and then we disappeared without any fare-thee-wells. We went back to her place, because we thought mine was a filthy pigsty. (Ronnie had never seen my place, but she’s always had good instincts.) We made love.

I will supply no details. It’s not that I’m being genteel, but I can’t really remember the event. All of my Ronnie-related lovemaking memories tend to blur, although that word has connotations of indis-tinction, and that’s not at all the case. I can remember details, oh brother, can I remember details. I can recall precise shades of coral, I can summon to mind exact constellations of goosebumps. But it is hard for me to remember any individual act.

Excuse me, that’s not so. I can remember very clearly the
last
time I made love to my wife.

“For what city, please?”

“Ah.”

“Ah?”

“Mmm. Ah. What city.”

“Yes. What city?”

“
That
… is a very good question.”

“Ah.” “Ah?”

“A bottle call.”

“Sorry?”

“A lot of people, when they have a few drinks, they start making phone calls.”

“Really. Well, I can assure you, young lady, that I am very definitely one of those people.”

“For what city, please?”

“Let’s put our heads together on this, Watson.”

“Leslie.”

“Leslie. I’m looking for a fellow named Peter Paul Mendicott.”

“Two tees?”

“I’m sorry.”

“At the end of
Mendicott?
Two tees?”

“Yes! Two tees.”

“And what do we know about Mr. Mendicott?”

“He wrote a movie that has had a profound influence on my life.”

“If he’s in the movie business, shouldn’t we try Los Angeles, California?”

“Spot on. Give it a go, Les.”

“All right, let me take a look here … mmm… nope.”

“Mind you, this movie was based on a novel he wrote. So, perhaps New York City.”

“One should always check New York City. And there I have a, um, a Michael Mendicott. And a J and a G. No Peter Paul.”

“I’m not sure what I’m going to say to him, Leslie. I’m afraid I have to confess to what, at least at first blush, looks like plagiarism. But there is a sense in which the movie
happened to
me.”

“Do you mean that he stole your life story?”

“No, I don’t mean that. You see, I was just a kid when I saw the film, and I was very affected—”

“Excuse me, Mister—?”

“Phil.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Phil, but may I ask how old you are now?”

“Yes, you may. Forty-eight.”

“I see.”

“How old are you, Leslie?”

“I’m twenty-one.”

“
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty. Youth’s a stuff will not endure.”

“But I’m twenty-
one
.”

“That was poetic licence, dear.”

“Besides, I’m … here’s what I was thinking, Mr. Phil. It seems as though you saw this film approximately forty years ago.”

“Besides, you’re what?”

“We are not supposed to get involved in personal discussions.”

“Who’s going to know?”

“The supervisors listen in every so often. Clandestinely.”

“Besides, you’re
married?”

“Oh, no. My gosh, no, Mr. Phil.”

“Besides, you’re what?”

“Well, the thing is, you know, it happens from time to time that men will, um,
respond
to something in my voice.”

“Well, yeah. I would think so. You have a very sexy voice.”

“Mm-hmm. And then they find out I’m young, and single …”

“Do you field a lot of bottle calls?”

“I get my fair share, Mr. Phil. The telephone traffic is mostly bottle calls after a certain time of night.”

“Really.”

“Really.”

“And so these men, these somewhat pathetic men, fall in love with you…?”

“It has happened.”

“Yes. I can see that. I have some insight into pathos. Not to take anything away from the sexiness of your voice. Or your pleasant manner.”