Sweet Valley Confidential: Ten Years Later (9 page)

Daily, I like beg myself to do it, to end it, and finally I just shut my eyes and do it. That’s when all the passion turns vicious. It is the only way for me to break away and to eradicate some of my guilt.

I tell him it was a terrible mistake, which is true, and that I don’t love him, never loved him. In fact, now despise him. Which is not true.

He tells me the same, and I believe him.

Not three days after that last meeting, we have a scare. Elizabeth is with me at the bookstore, picking up some textbooks for her psychology course, when we run into Todd and Winston. As usual, Winston is being his goofy self, hopping up on the ladder, pulling erotic titles down from the shelves, and suggesting he read them to me.

“That reminds me, I’m gonna need Thursday night…” he says to Todd in a fake confidential voice, “… alone.”

“No good, man. I have that physics final Friday,” Todd says.

Winston climbs down from the ladder and hands the books to Elizabeth, who starts to put them back on the shelf.

“Come on. Wasn’t I nice to you a few weeks ago?” Winston gives Todd a kind of leering smile. “Remember, San Diego?”

Elizabeth is busy with the books, her back to Winston and not really listening, but the reference to San Diego grabs my attention.

“You probably didn’t even know that I got back Saturday night.” Looking at Elizabeth, he says, “I knocked, but you guys were very busy.”

At that point, I like deflect the action, quickly handing a book to Elizabeth, who automatically takes it and turns to find a place for it on the shelf.

“I had to crash at Bruce’s pad that night. And man, he wasn’t happy. You owe him one. Me, too.”

“What are you talking—” Then it hits Todd what night Winston is referring to, and his face freezes.

I catch his change of expression and know my own face is like registering the same shock. Winston, who is momentarily confused, sees Todd’s expression, then mine, and to my amazement, he seems to read it right immediately. All the while, Elizabeth is busy trying to squeeze a fat edition of Havelock Ellis back onto the shelf.

It is only the strange silence that makes her turn around.

“Huh? What’s up? Something wrong?”

Strangely, it’s Winston, the insensitive clown, who
so
saves the moment for us by doing a really funny bit about mistaking his girlfriend for her dog. He like tells it so fabulously that Elizabeth practically falls off the ladder, and even Todd and I can’t help laughing despite the horror of the situation. Rescued just in time, but too late for their friendship.

When someone knows a terrible secret about you, and you can’t in good conscience kill them, you get them out of your life. And that’s exactly what Todd does that very day. With some clichéd excuse about like needing his own space, Todd moves out and finds an apartment on the other side of town.

Time passes and only a few people notice that the relationship between the best friends has dissolved. Of course, I’m one of them. Elizabeth like sort of notices and I hear her ask Todd a few times where Winston is, but he always has some reasonable-sounding excuse. She even mentions it to me a couple of times, but I say I don’t know anything.

After awhile Winston’s absence becomes as natural as his presence had been and for us, the ex-lovers, the betrayers, senior year, like the longest year of our lives, crawls on toward the relief of graduation.

5

New York

Even on pain of losing the best opportunity she’d had, it still took two days for Elizabeth to work up the courage to come back to the theater. Her return was inauspicious, to say the least; dressed in black, she slipped in, keeping her back against the wall and taking advantage of the darkness. She found a seat on an aisle twenty rows back in the orchestra, well away from the clot of the hierarchy, i.e., producers, director, and, of course, the monster playwright.

During that first week of rehearsals Elizabeth became an unnoticed fixture sitting quietly, silently actually, in the back. She spoke to no one.

Without the warmth and bubble of an audience, the atmosphere in the darkened theater was grim. Its rows of empty seats were outlined only by the dim work lights from the stage, which gave no cheer. Nor was there any cheer from its only occupants: the unfriendly, clannish producers, the angry writer, or the kinglike director. Onstage, nervous actors bumping into new lines lent an unmistakable air of desperation.

No theater magic here. And if there was any hint of the legendary passion, it was not obvious.

Even though Elizabeth had been writing about theater for eight months and seen lots of shows, this empty theater with its unique population made her realize that she had been looking in from the outside. Now she was inside, and even though she wasn’t in the line of fire, she felt nervous and edgy. Everyone was edgy.

By the end of the first week of rehearsals, Elizabeth had mastered the uniform: sneakers, jeans, and a heavy black sweatshirt she could throw over her black T-shirt as soon as she got into the empty theater that, no matter how hot it was outside, never felt above fifty.

She thought it strange that no one else seemed bothered by the constant sharp draft of air-conditioning; these were not people who held back complaints. She’d heard the actors, desperate though they were for the work, stop everything to whine about minor inconveniences like a dressing-room bulb that wasn’t bright enough or a dripping faucet. Ultimately, no matter their age or how valid their complaints, they were infantilized by the director, whom they were encouraged to call Bob but treat like Mr. Ross, and nothing changed.

Except when Mr. Ross himself complained, and he never held back. That’s when everyone listened. It was rare that he wasn’t quietly disappointed, so quiet as to be almost martyred. In the pecking order, he, Bob Ross, was the top, and everyone else stepped gingerly, more than a little careful not to be the cause of his unhappiness. Even the producers cowered under his rule. This show business was nothing like the song. It was scary.

Needless to say, Elizabeth, tucked away in her hiding place, was almost faint at the prospect of being noticed by either the director or, as she thought of him now, the shithead writer, who was no slouch when it came to projecting his own air of discontent.

One couldn’t be certain whether director or writer would come out on top since they hadn’t clashed yet, but it was coming. Elizabeth could see from the hunch of Connolly’s shoulders that he was strung tight and crouched to spring.

Elizabeth wasn’t about to risk the chance that he might spring at her. She hadn’t renewed her request for an interview; she had decided she would just be an observer and write what she wanted. If her subject, Mr. Connolly, didn’t like it, too bad; he shouldn’t have been so rude. All she wanted was an interview. What an asshole.

She’d started off on his side; he was a young, first-time playwright, big chance and all that. At least before he turned around and she saw that face. The shock of the resemblance to Todd was like a whack in the stomach.

That very first day, when the casting session was over, she’d just sat there in a sweat and stared.

Connolly had twisted around to see her. “What?” he’d said in an impatient tone, more comment than question.

He’d waited a couple of seconds, and when she didn’t answer, shrugged and left.

Bala Trent, the nice producer, had tried to make some excuses, but when Elizabeth still didn’t respond, she just smiled and said, “Y’all come back tomorrow and you can have a nice long chat with Will. All right, sugar?”

Elizabeth finally managed to nod and form something like a smile before she picked up her papers, hurried up the aisle, and ran out the door. She didn’t stop running until she got to Seventh Avenue. Instead of going to the office she went straight home.

That night she rehearsed how she would tell David, her editor, that she didn’t want to do the interview. Then she decided she did, and then she didn’t, and by morning she understood she was being ridiculous. The interview was a plum, something she could maybe work into a monthly column. She’d have to be really dumb to give up this chance because Will Connolly looked a little like her ex-boyfriend.

It was probably just the bad lights in the theater. She was definitely doing the interview. That was it.

But all that week, it got worse. Even though she kept her distance she couldn’t miss the resemblance to Todd. It was striking; he even had the same brown hair. At least he didn’t do that awful sweeping-it-back thing, but it was straight, and if it were a little longer it would fall over his eyes. And then he might push it back and she didn’t know how she would handle that.

At the theater, Elizabeth had developed a routine of disappearing just before they called a lunch break. She perfected an exit using the side door into an alley; from there she’d shoot down the street across Seventh and Broadway and up to a small coffee shop on Fifty-second Street a little too far out of the way for anyone from the cast to go.

As she did on all the other days, she’d wait until everyone else was back before slipping into the theater and sliding into her seat.

Today, she was a couple of minutes late, and they had already started working on an early scene where the young James Boswell tries to sell himself as a biographer to Samuel Johnson, who has no interest at all in having his biography written. He has too many things to hide.

“No!” Will Connolly, the playwright, stood and spoke directly to the actor. “There’s no way Johnson’s angry. He’s only playing with Boswell. You are the great Samuel Johnson. With your words and wit, you’re over-armed; there’s no need for anger.”

Everything stopped. Elizabeth could feel the shock in the room, but she didn’t know where it was coming from. It seemed like an insightful criticism.

Obviously the actor knew what was wrong. He panicked and looked to Ross, the director, for help.

Bob Ross didn’t move.

Everyone was looking at the playwright. Will Connolly felt the message and sat down. But he didn’t slink; he sat down with resolve, alert for an attack, without his natural slouch of remove.

Ross walked up to the stage manager, who leaned down at the edge of the stage to hear the director.

The stage manager turned to the cast behind him. “Take ten, everyone.”

A major faux pas had been committed, but Elizabeth couldn’t imagine what it was.

The cast moved reluctantly offstage, unhappy to miss what surely would be an interesting contretemps.

To say that the producers fled would be overstating it, but they did get up almost instantly and move out and up the aisle without a word.

Normally, Elizabeth would have slipped out, but she was baffled and sensed this was an important part of the story that she had to know. She was, after all, a journalist.

Sorta.

Besides, if she slunk down a little lower in her seat, and with the cooperation of the dim lights, no one would see her.

“Hey, Will.” Elizabeth heard Ross, but she couldn’t see him well enough to catch the expression on his face.

But Will could, and it obviously wasn’t warm. It wasn’t even the usual disappointment. It was almost hostile. Something was wrong. Being a novice, he didn’t know what it was, but he did know it was his fault.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“It’s probably better to check with me first if you have any problems with the actors. Then, if I think it has merit, I’ll deal with it.”

“I’m not going to sit here and watch him do it wrong.”

“It’s better my way,” Ross said softly, almost kindly.

“Last time I checked, I was the writer,” Will said, falling right into Ross’s trap.

“And I’m the director.” Ross didn’t wait for Will’s response. Gathering up his papers, he started up the steps to the stage. On the last step he turned to Will. “You might want to check that with Bala before you come back.”

“Thanks. I will,” Will said to an empty stage. Ross had already disappeared into the wings. Will added to no one, “Asshole!”

In a fury, Will swept up his script and charged up the aisle out of the theater. If he saw Elizabeth as he passed, he gave no indication.

Elizabeth waited a couple of minutes to give Will a chance to be gone, got up, and walked out into the lobby. Rich Meaninfeld, an assistant stage manager, was there.