Attack of the Theater People (12 page)

The receptionist looks up. Unlike the high-haired gum chewer at Pinnacle, she has the pretty, self-possessed air of a Miss Porter’s School for Girls grad, her blond—but not too blond—hair pulled back in a severe ballerina bun, as if she were punishing it. Her nameplate reads,
SHANNON RIEKE
, the friendliness of the Irish first name punctuated by the Teutonic officiousness of the last. Trying to remember Milagros’s accent as best I can, I inform the receptionist I have a “letter for Shat Severson.”

“Who?”

“Shat Severson.” I show her the name on the envelope and give her a look like,
Don’t you speak English?

“You can leave that with me,” she says, more Rieke than Shannon.

“I need his signature.”

“Can’t I sign for it?”

“No. I need Shat Severson.”

The fraulein frowns, picks up the phone, and relays the message to Chad, who, judging from her response, isn’t happy about it. I’m forced to wait just long enough to feel I’ve made a horrible, horrible mistake when the object of my affection comes banging through the doors. He has his jacket off, revealing a blue pin-striped shirt with a white collar, his yellow tie knotted tight around his neck. He frowns, his chest heaving against his suspenders. He glances at me, then does a double take.

“Shat Severson?” I say.

He nods, cartoon-eyed.

I hand him the clipboard. As he signs, I flick my eyes at the envelope, which contains a note saying,
I have news. Meet me downstairs in the coffee shop.

I get into the elevator, my shirt clinging to the small of my back. In less than twelve hours I’ve been three different people—four, including myself. Shakespeare was right: All the world
is
a stage.

Once in the lobby, I head into the coffee shop and take a seat at the counter, setting my bag on the stool next to me. I examine the menu, willing myself not to stare at the door like a faithful dog, when a voice behind me says, “What the hell are you up to?”

It’s not Chad.

Sixteen

I whirl around on the stool
and find myself face-to-muffin-face with Natie. He folds up the brim of his fishing hat, making him look like a burlesque comic.

“What are you doing here?” I hiss.

“Me? What about you?”

“I can’t explain. Just go.”

Through the window looking out on the lobby, I see Chad stop to buy a paper. I turn my back on Natie, who decides to make my life a living hell by plopping down on the next stool over. He’s wearing the sweatpants he slept in. “You don’t know me,” I mutter.

I reach for a napkin to wipe the sweat off my forehead. I am the worst spy ever. The waitress approaches and, just as I’m about to order, I hear Chad behind me, demanding a coffee. I move my bag, as if I’m making room for a stranger.

“Thanks,” he says, then whispers, “pretend you’re listening to your Walkman.”

It’s all very cloak-and-dagger. I put my headphones on and bop my head to unheard music. Chad unfolds a copy of the
Times
and starts filling out the crossword puzzle.

“W-H-Y-R-U-H-E-R-E,” he writes in 37 across.

I softly sing my answer, as if I were singing along to a tape. “I wanted to call youuuu, but it was too laaaa-hay-hay-hay-hayaaate.” Natie peers over Chad’s right shoulder, an even more inept spy than I am.

Chad doesn’t notice him, as he’s sort of hunched my way so I can read what he’s writing. “W-H-A-T-H-A-V-E-U-G-O-T.”

I like this game. This time I answer with a real melody, to the tune of Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark.”

You can start a fire;

Your hair can go right up in flames,

If you buy a blow-dryer,

Beau-Sonic 2000 is its name.

It’s not a perfect fit, but it’s pretty good on short notice. Chad writes, “B-O-S-O-N-I-C-2-0-0-0,” in the puzzle, adding, “N-O-T-B-A-D.” Meanwhile, Natie holds up a spoon as if he’s examining it for spots, when it’s perfectly obvious he’s trying to see what Chad’s writing. Chad scrawls a note in the margin:

Next time call me at home,
no matter how late.

I feel a twitch in my groin.

Use a pay phone.

I nod in a bopping manner. Seeing him in his natural habitat makes me want to please him even more. He seems so grown-up, so put-together, with his slick hair, tight pores, and tailored suit, like he’s been assembled in a factory. I don’t think I’ll ever feel the way he looks.

Chad snaps his fingers for the waitress and tells her he wants his coffee to go. He opens his wallet, pulls out two bills, and places them on the counter. One is a dollar he leaves for the waitress. The other is a hundred for me. As he rises, he flicks his eyes downward at my crotch. “Cute tights,” he mutters.

Then he winks. I love people who wink.

Natie and I walk
to the East River, which I’m seriously considering tossing him into. “Why did you follow me?” I cry.

“I had to. You’ve been acting so strange. First you tell me you’re being recruited for the internship program at Sharp, Thornton, and Wiley, which is just a Dumbo ride short of Fantasyland. Then, all of sudden you’ve got shopping phobias and this thirteen-year-old stalker….”

“No, she’s for real.”

He shrugs, the Internationally Recognized Signal for “I don’t believe you, but I’m willing to concede the point.” He continues: “I just figured, since we’re at the age when people can turn schizophrenic…”

“Oh, I see. One psych class and suddenly you’re Carl Jung.”

“Of course not. Jung collaborated with the Nazis.”

“That’s not what—”

“You can’t blame me for being suspicious,” he says. “After all, your mom is kind of a dipsy doodle.”

He’s got a point. This is the woman who moved to Sedona to contact extraterrestrials. Any similarity between her reality and ours is completely coincidental.

We lean on a fence and take in the view of the Brooklyn Bridge, the autumn wind whipping off the water. There’s so much sky down here, as if the world suddenly opened up. I tell Natie everything about my burgeoning career in corporate espionage.

It’s such a relief. What’s more, Natie offers to help. “My friend, with your acting skills and my business know-how, we are gonna get rich.”

“How?”

“Whaddya think Chad’s gonna do with the information you gave him today?”

I have to confess I don’t exactly know.

“He’s gonna trade on it.”

“But the Beau-Sonic 2000 is being recalled. That’ll send the stock price down, won’t it?”

“Yeah, but he can buy options.”

“Options?”

“Meaning he’ll short the stock. It’s kind of like betting it’ll go down.”

“Sounds like gambling.”

Natie claps me on the back. “Welcome to Wall Street.”

“So, what’s that got to do with us?”

“Chad’s not the only one who can trade on that information.”

It never occurred to me that I could buy and sell stocks. That’s for men in suits who work in offices, not for guys in spandex. But if I invest the money I’m earning from Sandra and Chad in the stock market, I won’t have to work in an office. I can make my own way on my own terms. I’d be totally self-sufficient. Then I could show Al once and for all that I don’t need his goddamn money. And maybe once he saw what I’d accomplished, he’d be so proud that he’d offer to pay for Juilliard anyway, so I could use my money for myself. And finally buy some baggy socks. Those suckers are expensive.

When we get back to the apartment, Natie examines the Beautonics
^®
annual reports and business prospectuses that Chad sent me and informs me that the Beau-Sonic 2000 accounts for too little of Beautonics
^®
business to make a huge difference in the stock, and that “we” should keep looking for other information. “We” meaning Eddie Zander.

Being the son of a legend opens doors (an invite to a lake house, several promises to fix me up with single daughters, and, once, an offer of some choice Colombian cocaine), but it doesn’t guarantee information. Reasoning that businessmen have kids, I expand my search to the bash mitzvahs.

Unfortunately, no one wants to talk business with British MTV’s hottest veejay.

Luckily, my commitment to winning friends and influencing people doesn’t escape Sandra’s notice. Overwhelmed by the administrivia of running her burgeoning business, she hires me to do some of the grunt work, providing me a view of the underbelly of the overprivileged. For weeks Sandra’s been fretting about a sweet sixteen thrown by oil and commodities trader Will Owens for his daughter from his first marriage, Windy, so Sandra has spent the better part of her time running interference between the first and second Mrs. Owenses, the former being much embittered because the latter isn’t much older than sweet sixteen herself. Since Owens’s company, Petrolox, is a big woofy deal, the party is only slightly less elaborate than the Radio City Christmas spectacular.

Still, no amount of gossip prepares me for the surrealism of the event, which is held in the backyard of Owens’s estate on Long Island’s oh-so-exclusive North Shore. And by backyard I don’t mean a place where you set up a grill and a few lounge chairs. I mean a state park. The house itself, a stone manor with ten chimneys, is so grand it must require serfs. Even though it could easily accommodate hundreds of tenants, let alone guests, Owens throws the party under a circus-sized tent erected over the tennis courts, which are repainted “Windy Pink.”

This kind of arrangement typifies the decadent logic of party planning. Sandra has produced events where she’s assembled an arbor of wisteria in a hotel ballroom to create the feeling of being outdoors. (Here’s an idea—throw the party outdoors.) Conversely, she’s also used slide projections to replicate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel inside a tent, an odd choice for a bash mitzvah.

The inside of the Owenses’ tent glows with projections of pink clouds, as if a storm system of cotton candy just blew in. Since the birthday girl is a passionate equestrian, life-size horses made of rose petals flank the entrance. Windy herself makes an entrance on a white stallion dyed her signature color for the occasion. With a haughty lift of the tail, the steed expresses our shared opinion that this is horseshit.

Still, the evening is a sparkling success, with the most popular attraction being a booth marked
DADDY’S MONEY
, where guests try to catch dollar bills that are blown around by a fan. I do my usual shtick while trying to avoid the guest entertainment, British singer Robert Palmer, who corners me before he goes on and asks about the plans to launch MTV in Europe. I mumble something about Margaret Thatcher not wanting her MTV before dissolving into a coughing fit, possibly the most convincing part of my performance.

After introducing him, I retreat to the back of the tent, where Sandra is having an Alka-Seltzer-and-vodka. She points at Windy. “You see that tiara on her head? That cost more than I made last year.”

“What does an oil and commodities trader do?”

“You’re asking me?” Sandra says. “I don’t even know what a commodity is.”

I look around at the splendor surrounding us. “How do people afford to live like this?”

Sandra glances around to make sure she’s not overheard. “I might as well tell you. It’s gonna be in Monday’s paper.”

I head into the house
to find a phone, which I discover in a bathroom the size of my apartment, all dusty rose and sea-foam green, like a spa. I’ve never seen a bathroom with a phone, let alone a television, which is mounted from the ceiling, like in hotels or hospitals. I lock the door and call Chad.

He picks up on the third ring, not that I’m counting. I just happen to notice.

“Hello.”

It’s a statement, not a question, which strikes me as ineffably sexy.

“Hi!” I squeal. “It’s Edward!” My voice sounds uncannily like Lizzie Sniderman.

“Hey, I was going to call you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I got a call from someone named Dagmar.”

Seventeen

This is my worst nightmare.
Well, not exactly. My worst nightmare is being chased by an angry mob, falling off a cliff, and hanging on by the tips of my fingers; but being hounded by my stepmother the succubus ranks right up there. Inside my chest, someone starts playing basketball with my heart.

“How did she find you?”

“I don’t know. Someone at Brooks Brothers must have told her you charged the suit to me.”

“What did she say?”

“That you’re a liar and a thief. And an asshole.”

“She’s crazy, you know.” My heart is beating so loudly I can hear it, like the pounding of the drum on a Viking ship to keep the crew rowing.

“She’s just bitter because I told my father she was stealing from him,” I say. “You shouldn’t believe anything she says.”

“I didn’t.”

Actually, that’s not my heart at all. It’s Robert Palmer’s drummer. I pull some toilet paper off the roll to wipe my forehead.

“Are you calling on a pay phone?” Chad asks.

“Uh…yeah,” I say. Imitating Sandra’s adenoidal whine, I add, “Please deposit twenty-five cents,” then tap on the receiver a couple of times.

“Sorry about that,” I say. “So, what did you tell Dagmar?”

“The truth. That you work for
La Vie de la Fête
Productions and I bought you a suit.”

“How’d you explain that?”

“I didn’t. My personal life is my business.”

Let’s pause for a moment to consider this last statement. Buying me a suit was a business decision. A Business Decision. To help him gain information. But that’s not what Chad said. He said, “My
personal life
is my business.” Buying me a suit was part of his personal life. I am a part of his personal life. What’s more, straight people don’t say things like, “My personal life is my business.” That is, unless they have something to hide. Which he does. Me.

In the tent outside, Robert Palmer sings “Addicted to Love.”

Of course, while I’m thinking all this, I’m still talking as fast as I can. Because he asks me, “And who was this girl you brought with you?” and I hear myself saying, “My friend Ziba. You know, the one I told you about, the one who went to the shah of Iran’s wedding. She goes to the Fashion Institute.”

I don’t know why I do this. My brain is like a gumball machine. You put in your nickel and, whoosh, out comes the thought. Too bad if it’s a color you don’t like. But saying Ziba was with me somehow sounds better than, “I’m being stalked by the Bad Seed.”

Chad reminds me to be discreet, and I say, “Of course, of course, of course,” and then hope to redeem myself by telling him what Sandra told me—that Will Owens’s ex-wife said that Owens is about to be indicted for tax evasion and illegally trading with Iran during the hostage crisis. “If he doesn’t flee the country, he’ll probably go to jail,” I say. “Either way, that’d affect the price of the stock, wouldn’t it?”

“Sure,” he says, “if his company was publicly traded.”

“What do you mean?”

“Petrolux is privately held.”

What? Can he do that?
Corporate espionage is so frigging complicated.

“But I like how you’re thinking,” he says. “I’ll mail your hundred bucks tomorrow.”

I’m glad to get the money, but I really wanted him to say,
Oh, Edward, you’re a mastermind. Come right over and we’ll celebrate by wrestling naked.

“Don’t be such a baby,”
Natie says the next night. “Dagmar’s not gonna do anything.”

“But what if she told Chad we stole ten grand from her?”

“She won’t.”

“How do you know that?”

“’Cuz she stole that ten grand from your da—”

He’s cut off as a Persian on roller skates crashes into him.

It was Ziba’s idea to throw a skating party to celebrate Kelly being cast as a swing in
Starlight Express
, which is not, as the name suggests, another anthropomorphized inanimate object but an understudy who covers multiple roles, and a job Kelly didn’t even know existed until she was hired.

“What better way to celebrate?” Ziba asked, a question I hadn’t thought to answer at the time. While I’m not bad on skates, I’d prefer an activity that doesn’t require strapping wheels on Nathan Nudelman. I offer him my hand, but that only lands me on my ass, an apt metaphor for our friendship.

“What if Dagmar contacts Sandra?” I ask as we struggle to our feet. “I could lose my job.”

“Jeez, such a worrier,” Natie says. “We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it.”

We trundle out of the rink, the other skaters swirling around us as Madonna tells her papa not to preach. Ziba circles languorously with her Persian girlfriends, their arms and hands coiling to the music like serpents, as if they were harem girls dancing for the Persian guys, who huddle on the sidelines, smoking and looking hip with their artfully wrinkled linen jackets and carefully cultivated two-day razor stubble. Meanwhile, Kelly and the musical theater people zip around with exuberant abandon, attempting stunts, throwing their heads back with laughter when they fall, and singing along to all the songs. I fall somewhere between the two, while Natie just falls, period. Both groups intimidate me—the former with their effortless cool, the latter with their uninhibited enthusiasm. I tell myself I’m being stupid; when I’m at a bash mitzvah or a corporate party I’m the hippest, happiest guy in the room. I regularly mingle with the city’s elite, for Chrissake, the Life of the Party at parties that make Page Six. (Once again, without mention of me. The Owens sweet sixteen got a lot of ink, right next to a photograph of the ubiquitous Andy Warhol at a fund-raiser for Save the Squirrels. I swear, that man would go to the opening of a tuna can.) But at those parties I’m Eddie Sanders or Eddie Zander. When I have to be Edward Zanni, I feel like a total cheesehead.

I feel even worse when Kelly zips up in front of us and says, “Isn’t it great about Doug?”

“What about Doug?” I haven’t talked to him since the no-pants/fish-killing incident.

“Didn’t he tell you? Almost Bruce got a cruise ship job. They’re going to be in the Bahamas from Thanksgiving until spring break.”

I can’t believe he didn’t call to tell me. I’ve ruined our friendship with my unwanted sexual advances. I repulse him. My only hope is that he can’t face me because he’s tortured and confused by his own repressed homosexual desires. Oh, dear God, please make him tortured and confused by his own repressed homosexual desires, though not so much that he throws himself overboard in a fit of self-loathing.

She dashes off just as Paula arrives, marching in like she’s Mama Rose in
Gypsy
, wagging a pinkie-sized pointer finger in my face. “Where
were
you?” she cries. “You didn’t come see
Earnest
.”

How do I explain? I wanted to go but just the thought of stepping through Juilliard’s glass doors gave me an asthma attack. And I don’t have asthma. Everyone would ask me what I’m doing, and I’d have to explain that I go to work in a shiny shirt and tight pants, a job only slightly more dignified than playing Chuckles the Woodchuck. And then I’d have to watch them onstage, doing what I should be doing myself.

“I had gigs,” I say.

“During
every performance
? I thought bar mitzvahs were only on Saturdays.”

“Yeah, but there’s a lot of…” I make vague motions in the air, as if that explained it.

Paula takes off her coat and thrusts it in my hands. “I thought so.”

She wears her usual outfit for physical activities—an oversize black cotton T-shirt (with shoulder pads, of course) and a pair of black stirrup pants. She’s dressed up the ensemble with a metal Slinky around her waist and a pair of bent forks around her wrists.

She eyes Natie. “What’s your excuse?”

“I had my wisdom teeth out.”

“That was last year.”

“Yeah, but it haunts me still.”

Now, I may have been kicked out of Juilliard, but one thing I learned is that the best way to distract actors is to get them talking about themselves. “So how’d it go?”

“I made a real breakthrough,” Paula says. “You know, Marian thought I was
insane
for speaking like Lady Bracknell offstage, but it really worked, it
really
,
really
did. It’s so difficult to make Wilde organic. He’s like Restoration comedy—you can easily end up playing the style, not the substance. All frosting and no cake. But being epigrammatic is positively
exhausting
. No wonder Wilde died so young.”

She glances down at my skates. “Oh, dear, is brown the only color those come in?”

As we move to the counter, I see Hung round the rink dressed in full 1970s roller-disco duds: tube socks, tight satin shorts, and terry-cloth shirt, with a long silk scarf around his neck. He blows a whistle and shakes his groove thing.

Mama said there’d be gays like this.

Paula gets her skates and plops down on a bench. “I still haven’t forgiven you two,” she says, “but I have a way you can redeem yourselves.”