Me and Orson Welles (11 page)

The words tumbled out from Welles as if they were pure invention. “ ‘When we came to say goodbye we knew we wouldn't see each other for almost a year. I thought I couldn't live through it—and she stood there crying. Well, I don't even know where she lives now, or if she
is
living. If she ever thinks of me at all, she probably imagines I'm still dancing in some ballroom somewhere . . . .' ” Welles's voice had become quiet. “ ‘Life and money both behave like quicksilver in a nest of cracks. And when they're gone we can't tell where—or what the devil we did with 'em . . . ' ” He lifted his script back in front of him. “ ‘Well, Runyon, you've got a tough decision to make. And I guess it all comes down to how much a guy'll do for love. And how much
will
you do, Runyon?' ”

“ ‘Anything I have to,' ” said Tremayne, somehow finding the line in the script.

“ ‘Then call that girl up,' ” said Welles. “ ‘And tell her what your decision just meant to your promising career here.' ”

“ ‘You mean I'm—' ”

“ ‘Yes, I'm
promoting
you, Runyon,
and
giving you two weeks' paid vacation,
and
a one-hundred-dollar bonus to enjoy yourself—now get out of this office before I change my mind. I hope you'll excuse me, but some of us have a
newspaper
to put out!' ”

There was the sound effect of a phone ringing and being answered.

“ ‘Hello! Van Doren here. Yes, I know we're late,' ” said Welles. “ ‘Just tell the boys in the copyroom it's
a late edition for love!' ”

The director threw a hand cue to the orchestra; they played the closing theme, the extras were applauding, augmenting a recording of thunderous applause, and the announcer leaned into the mike. “The audience is giving a standing ovation here at the Little Theatre off Times Square—and I've never seen anything like it. Taking his curtain call now is our special guest star, Mr. Orson Welles!”

The red light went off. Everybody was laughing. “What the hell was that!” said Tremayne.

“I made it all up!”
said Welles, waving his cigar like a magic wand.

“God, I thought you were quoting something famous.”

The director's voice came over the monitor. “Orson, I don't know what it was, but it was brilliant. It was the best thing in the script.”

“You mean it was the best thing
not
in the script!” roared Welles.

“It's exactly what Van Doren needed—
heart.
Can you remember it for the show?”

“The show?”
said Welles. “That
was
the show. Joe, we'll never get that performance again. You know that.”

“Orson, we got some bad line readings early on.”

“Not from me you didn't. You can record the others without me. Then get the engineers to piece it all together. They love doing stuff like that. I've got a rehearsal of
Caesar
I'm late for already.”

“Orson—”

Welles waved his cigar in farewell, put his arm on my shoulder, and headed us out the door.

O
rson gave me money to take a cab back to the Mercury. “Tell them I'm going to be a little late,” he said, and he got into another cab with Lorelei Lathrop.

Back at West 41st Street, Ash, the stage manager, was running the rehearsal. Cotten was standing in for Brutus, and they were blocking the curtain calls.

Extras first, including me, last one on the end, stage left.

“Follow Hoysradt, people,” said Ash. “Look at him when you bow.
Once.”

Then the two women.

Then all the conspirators except Brutus.

Then Holland by himself.

Then Coulouris.

Then Gabel.

And, finally—the Boy Wonder.

Cotten came out as Welles. He stood center stage. “I'd like to thank all the members of the Academy for this wonderful award. I honestly feel that so many others deserve it more than I.”

“Take twenty minutes,” said Ash. “Hopefully Orson'll be back by then. We'll run it again. Looking good.”

“Looking good?”
said Coulouris to the other actors. He shook his head gravely as he rubbed lotion into his hands. “My prediction? The Mercury Theatre will be out of business by Friday. Believe me, people in 1937 will not pay two dollars to see tragedy! They can see it for free in the streets. My advice, fellow Mercurians? Polish thy résumé.”

Out in the lobby Leve was installing a new chandelier. I found Sonja up in the projection room. There the icebox hummed; the radio played
Vic and Sade.
And then the war news:
After a horrific battle of nearly three months, China's valiant defense of Shanghai seems on the brink of total collapse. All day yesterday Japanese tanks rolled up and down the streets of Shanghai, shelling—

She turned off the radio. She was looking tired. “I'm sick of the war. Do you sometimes think these are terrible times to be alive? I keep thinking about that, what it means to be born at a certain time. Every day layoffs, plant closings. People scared of losing their jobs. It
must
do something to you psychologically, don't you think? To live like this every day?”

“I think things are better than they were a couple of years ago.”

“I'm not sure I believe that at all,” she said. “I think that's just New Deal propaganda. Sometimes it seems to me as if the whole world is falling apart. And it couldn't possibly get worse.”

“Well,” I said, “at least we can content ourselves that during these tumultuous times we're doing something really important—typing up subscription lists.”

“It's crazy, isn't it?” she said. “Times as hard as these, and people go right on doing what they've always been doing: putting on plays, getting married, changing jobs—it's kind of
heroic,
isn't it? They go right on looking for apartments, making their big plans for the future.”

“You've got great eyes,” I said.

“What am I going to do with you?” Then she looked at me in a way that seemed to seriously take my measure. “O.K., so tell me who
you
are.”

“Who I am?”

“Yeah. And don't tell me about your high-school sweetheart—or your parents. Tell me who
you
are. What do you
want?”

“That's a hard question.”

“What do you
love?”

She was seriously asking me the question. I felt my answer needed to be equally serious.

“O.K. I was thinking the other morning that the one thing that fundamentally interested me was . . . I don't know . . .
words?
The words of plays, films, songs—all sorts of words. It's the one thing I find consistently compelling.”

She adjusted her hairband braid. “You know, I pegged you right from the jump as a writer. I kept asking myself what's he doing mincing around the stage?”

“Mincing?”

“You know what I mean—all that ego up there.”

“It's exciting,” I said. “I mean, we might have a show that closes on Thursday night, or we might have a show that people will remember for fifty years. Probably neither one of those, but
you never know.
That's what's so exciting.”

“You romanticize everything,” said Sonja. “It's odd being around you. It feels as if you belonged to some earlier, nicer time.”

“And what time do you belong to?”

“The thoroughly corrupt right-this-second.”

“Well, opposites attract—as they say in the divorce court.”

“You're cute,” she said. “My cavalier.”

“Cavaliere,”
I said, pronouncing the word with the five syllables of an elaborate Italian accent.

She sneezed.

We walked together down 41st Street toward the Mercury offices in the Empire. There were newspaper trucks in the streets carrying the late editions.
(A Late Edition for Love!)

“Houseman must be around, what? Thirty?” I asked.

She nodded, her hands in the pockets of her cardigan.

“And you're twenty?”

She nodded.

“What do you want to hang around with such an old guy for?”

She smiled. “And how old are you?”

“Eighteen in December,” I said. “Pushing nineteen. Wouldn't you rather hang around with a vibrant, young
cavaliere
than some old, English, overweight—”

“He's running an entire theatre company single-handedly and offering me a managerial position in it. What are you offering?” she asked.

“Wealth! Travel! Fame! I can take you to movies that have
all
of those things. Provided you pay for the movies, of course. What are you doing tonight?” I asked. I couldn't believe I'd finally found the confidence to speak the way I'd always wished I might speak around a beautiful girl. “After the show? You see, I'm learning to fight for what I want.”

“Good,” she said, and she turned down a corner of her mouth. “I'm seeing John.”

“What are you doing tomorrow night?”

She stared at the sidewalk for a moment. She smiled, then spoke: “Orson's spending tomorrow night out at Sneden's with Virginia . . . . He lets me stay at his place on 14th when I stay late here. I've got a key. So if you want, tomorrow maybe we could go out? Dancing? Maybe stop by Orson's apartment for a drink?” She looked at me playfully. “That too terrifying for you, my young
cavaliere
?”

“Are you kidding?” I said, completely terrified.

“Of course, we've got two previews of
Caesar
the next day, so Orson's probably going to rehearse you 'til three in the morning tomorrow. You might just want to go right to sleep.”

I held open the door of the Empire Building for her. “Oh,” I said, “I think you'll find that we
cavalieri
have considerably more energy than you might imagine.”

She laughed, and I thought: This is the greatest performance of my life.

T
he alarm went off at 6:55. I showered and got dressed with my eyes closed to see what it felt like to be blind.

As I descended the stairs blindly, I could hear my mother from the hall landing. You could tell she'd rehearsed this speech pretty well.

“We've talked about this before. Your father agrees with me. Ten o'clock on a school night is as late as we will allow. Is that understood?”

I opened my eyes.

“Mom,” I said, “I completely agree with you. It's
ridiculous
. It's unfair to you and to Dad. I've been working on my research paper on
Julius Caesar
—I've had to interview these actors—but you're right, the hours I'm keeping are
ludicrous
and disruptive, and certainly not conducive to my schoolwork, which has got to be my most important priority in my life at this point. We're in complete agreement on this. There's just one thing.”

She closed her eyes.

“There's
one
actor I've got to interview this morning at nine o'clock,” I said. “I begged him for this interview, and this is the
only
time he can do it. It's Orson Welles. I'm sure you've heard of him; he plays the Shadow on the radio. Anyway, this is
very
important; my whole grade depends on this; college depends on this; probably my entire life depends on this, and there is
no
other time that Mr. Welles can schedule it. Honestly, Ma, this is going to be the
last
time in my life I'm going to ask you to do anything like this. I promise.” She looked up. “So what you have to do is to
phone
the school this morning, and I promise I am
never
going to ask you to do anything like this again; from now on I'm going to be the perfect son—but I need you to make this
one
call for me, and tell them that I can't come to school today because of some family emergency or something. You know, a death in the family—God forbid. Something like that. And this is the
only
time that I'm ever going to ask you to do anything like this.
I swear to God.”

Her face was getting harder.

“Ma, you can say anything you want to, except ‘absolutely not.' ”

“Absolutely not,” she said. “You've missed too much school already. And I'm tired of you lying to me. I got a call yesterday from the school verifying your proctologist's appointment? I told them it didn't exist. They told me they were giving you three days' detentions. I said fine, I agree with them.”

“Mom—”

“I don't want to hear it.”

“All right, I'm going to have Orson Welles call you himself. Orson Welles, the voice of the Shadow, is going to get on this telephone and tell you himself that everything I've said to you has been the God's honest truth.”

“You're going to school—and that's the God's honest truth.”

“Mom—”

“And Mr. Goldberg called up from the Rialto. To make a
condolence
call. What are you trying to do to me, Richard?”

 

I sat in Mewling's class thinking of nothing for the entire hour except how I could slip out of school. He read page after page of his faded yellow notes. I didn't hear a word.

I was called down to Mr. P.'s office and given three detentions. There was no discussion.

I stood outside his office staring at the pink detention slip, wondering if anything else could possibly go wrong. Welles had called rehearsal at noon—and it was already 9:30. I
had
to get out.