The Fourth Wall (31 page)

“He'd put his finger on something that had bothered me—I never mentioned it to anyone because it sounded so callous. I thought Sylvia should have coped better than she did. Loren Keith is worse off than Sylvia, but he still counts himself among the living. Her withdrawal was so absolute, so total. And now here I was contemplating withdrawing even further than Sylvia. Was I that empty too? It made me hesitate. What stopped me, Abby, was nothing more than sheer, selfish pride.”

“Then thank God for selfish pride,” I said.

“Nothing was settled,” he went on. “I'd have periods when I wouldn't think about suicide at all. Then, without any warning, that'd be all I
could
think of. I kept wavering back and forth—yes, no, I'd do it, I'd wait a little longer. Waiting. I'd wait to see if I could decide, if it would be decided for me, if I'd be hit by a truck, something, anything. Just waiting. That's where I was when you found me in the park.”

I asked, “Can you see your future now?”

“In a way. I see no solutions—but I can admit possibilities where I couldn't before. I see you. I can almost see the day I'll pick up the phone and call my agent. I don't know whether I can ever act again or not, Abby. The thought of facing an audience terrifies me—I break out in a cold sweat whenever I think of standing up in front of that many-headed monster and being judged. But the possibility is real;
you
're real. My God, Abby, are you real! I don't know what will happen if I can't act any more. I may end up like Sylvia after all. But I do know one thing now—I don't want to retreat. Doesn't sound like much, does it? But for me it's everything. I don't want to retreat any more.”

3

It's not easy to write in New York; the city keeps calling you. I finished my two articles and decided to play hooky for a while. Ian and I took advantage of the mild, beautiful summer; we planned nothing in advance, simply enjoying whatever came our way.

We received a joint invitation to an in-honor-of-somebody party at The Hermitage, but facing hordes of people who'd feel obligated to offer condolences was something Ian didn't feel up to. So we said no. Then the host offered Ian five thousand dollars to put in an appearance. Ian looked as if he wanted to throw up.

One day I said, “You know, Ian, your way back into acting might be through television instead of the stage. It would be a short stint—only a week. People would be watching you work, but they'd be co-workers instead of a paying audience. It might be easier that way.” Not to mention the fact he could just walk through his role and nobody would notice the difference.

“I've been thinking about that,” he admitted. “Baby steps before giant steps.” But he didn't call his agent.

Then a revival of
The Way of the World
opened, and we both perked up. Congreve's acrid comedy was special to both of us; years ago it had been a surprise hit for Manhattan Rep.

We'd decided on a low-key production, avoiding those grotesque gimmicks that have sprung up in modern productions of period pieces. Such as having the fops wear glitter on their eyelids. Preston Scott had directed; the acting was crisp but cool, and Ian—then in his early thirties—had turned in a polished, stylish performance as Mirabell.

So on opening night Ian and I were sitting in a shabby East Side theater trying to read the program by the dim house lights. But the first set, exposed to the entering audience, was sassy and bright.

“Well, well,” said Ian. “Look who's playing Witwoud. Jay Berringer.”

That little man certainly got around. In a profession that annually posts the highest unemployment rate of any work group in the country—eighty per cent—Jay was doing well for himself.

Actors
hate
being compared to other actors, but it was impossible to sit there and watch this
Way of the World
without thinking of Manhattan Rep's production eight or nine years ago. Manners acting is difficult; it calls for a special comic timing and vocal grace and body awareness that American actors simply aren't trained for. A couple of young girls in the play couldn't manage their heavy trains much less their sophisticated dialogue. But Jay Berringer surprised me; the director had evidently sat on him, hard. Instead of doing his usual prancing and arm waving, Jay was, well, not exactly subdued, but he did show a restraint I'd not seen in him before. Toward the end of the play he started sliding back into his usual overacting, but on the whole he turned in a good performance. He wore glitter on his eyelids.

But the shocker of the evening was the actor who played Mirabell, Ian's role in the Manhattan Rep production. He played the whole thing as
camp
—the only member of the cast to do so. This I found unforgivable; any director who could make Jay Berringer behave on stage should have been able to put a stop to
that
. Ian had looked as if he'd lived all his life in a Restoration drawing room; the new Mirabell looked like a West Village guitar player got up for a costume party.

Ian and I went backstage afterward to congratulate the cast. Jay Berringer pranced up to me, his elfin face grinning from ear to ear.

“Oh, Abby, Abby, Abby—Abigail James! Thank you for coming!” All this in a voice loud enough to attract the attention of everyone still in the theater. “How did you like it? Oh, I didn't want it to end!”

“Jay, that's the best performance I've ever seen you give,” I said truthfully. “It's a good role for you and you're good for the role,” not quite so truthfully.

“Really? Do you
really
think so?”

“You gave pleasure, Jay.”

And then this funny little second-rate talent took hold of my hand and—still in character?—kissed it. “Thank you, Abby,” he said quietly.

“How's your advance? In for a good run?”

“Fair to middling. If that asshole playing Mirabell doesn't shut us down. What did Ian Cavanaugh think?”

“He didn't say.” He didn't have to say. He'd sat there and steamed through the entire performance.

I watched the two Mirabells come face-to-face. “Congratulations,” said Ian. “You looked good up there.”

The new Mirabell's eyelids dropped a fraction of an inch; he'd recognized the dodge. (If you can't bring yourself to lie to an actor about a bad performance, you tell him he looked good on the stage.) The Mirabell said, “We were trying for something a little different.”

“You succeeded,” Ian smiled.

I had to turn away to keep from laughing. Most of Ian's time with me had been quiet, recuperative—and I'd somehow lost sight of that single defining trait of every stage performer: the actor's ego. If there was anything that could get Ian functioning again, it wouldn't be the passing of time, or the dulling of pain, or heroic endurance, or me—it would be his actor's ego.

Before long Ian wanted to leave. All the way to the restaurant, he talked about acting. He talked all through supper and for an hour at the bar where we stopped for a nightcap. He talked all the way home, up the stairs, in the shower, and into bed. When I fell asleep around four o'clock, he was still talking.

The next day he called his agent.

Leo Gunn was working again. It was kind of harrowing for him, testing his claw in one backstage situation after another. He was managing a show in the Village, something that advertised itself as a “post-mod fulfillment.”

“You should see the stage equipment in that theater,” Leo said. “Junk! Nothing but junk! Podunk Corners Elementary School has a better-equipped stage. The lighting instruments ought to be in a museum—I know they've got historical value. I figure if I can manage there, I can manage anywhere.”

Ian listened to this with open admiration. “You deliberately took a show that's hard to work?”

“The hardest I could find.” Good stage managers, unlike actors, can pick and choose. “It was time to take the plunge. Come watch me do my stuff.”

Leo slipped us backstage after the first act one night, and we watched him. Thank God for the Leo Gunns of the world: they adapt, they control their lives, they make things work. The only mishap Leo suffered backstage that night was the dropping of a pencil.

I was back to working on The New Play again (still no title). Gene Ramsay had called and nudged me a little, so vacation was over. Then one day Ian said, “Abby, I know you don't like to talk about your work until it's finished and I swore I'd never ask you this—but do you have a part for me in your play?”

I smiled and handed him Act I.

There was a part in it for him, all right. Especially for him. I'd never written a part for an individual performer before, and it was a challenge—tailoring the role to take advantage of Ian's particular talents. I'd not said anything to him about it because I didn't want to push him. But once he asked me, we were halfway home.

Ian read the script and jumped out of his chair when he realized the lead was being written for him. We talked over what I'd written so far. Then Ian began reading the dialogue aloud, experimenting with interpretation, testing cadences. The way he read some of the speeches suggested certain things to me, and I began doing the kind of rewriting that usually doesn't get done until the rehearsal-and-tryout stage. We were making a new play come to life and we were both excited about it.

Ian's agent called; he'd gotten Ian a role in a TV movie to be shot in California.

“Another villain,” said Ian, grinning as he hung up the phone. “This time I mastermind a caper that … that's … you …” He was laughing so hard he couldn't finish.

“What? What?”

He finally calmed down enough to tell me. “You know how the past few years we've been swamped with stories about a group of people who capture something—an airplane, a bridge, an institution of some sort—and hold it for ransom?”

“Um.”

“Well, each time it's done, whatever it is that's captured has to be a little bigger and a little more dramatic than the last time. Remember the one about the group of terrorists who held the entire U. N. General Assembly for ransom?”

“Didn't see it.”

“You're lucky. This time, I play the leader of a group that captures and holds—are you ready?—
an entire city
. A
city
, for Christ's sake! Is that what's meant by municipal bonds?” He waited for my groan. “Right now they're arguing about whether to make it a fictional city or a real place. Denver is under consideration—‘the mile-high city in the grip of a band of criminals who'll stop at nothing!'” Ian snorted. “Liver in my ear.”

I shook my head in amazement.

“But I suspect it won't be Denver,” he went on. “That'd mean location shots in Colorado as well as the main shooting in studios in California, and it's not that big-budget a project. It'll probably be a California city. Don't you get sick of looking at southern California every time you turn on the TV?”

Just then the phone rang again.

It was Hugh Odell. “Turn on your television, Abby—don't stop to talk, go turn it on.”

I dropped the receiver into its cradle and turned on the set. Ian and I stood there and listened to a newscaster say that Jake Steiner, husband of actress Sylvia Markey, had been found with his throat cut.

So it wasn't over.

The threat of maiming and death, the fear that shrivels up the insides and paralyzes the mind, the despoiling of human life—it was all still happening. All our precarious rebuilding of livable lives was just so much wasted effort, pitiful attempts at picking up the pieces that could be wiped out by one cold-blooded stroke. One stroke by one invisible, invulnerable, invincible madman, and we'd be finished. Erased. Never even there.

Ian and I couldn't talk about it right away. We lay in bed like two zombies, waiting away the long night. Toward morning we turned to each other, but couldn't make love. The day finally came, with its lying promise of hope and resolution.

“You realize, don't you,” Ian said over coffee, “that he's going around again? He's not satisfied with what he did the first time—he'll hit all of us again. All of us.”

I nodded. “Poor Sylvia. First her career and then the one person she depended on to keep her safe. Poor Jake. Poor innocent, warped, unknowing Jake. At any rate, Sylvia's safe now.
He
'll never be able to touch her again. She hasn't anything left to lose.”

Sylvia Markey had made the ultimate retreat. She was catatonic. The newscaster had said she was under the care of an unnamed doctor in an unnamed clinic. Location permanently unknown.
Where is Sylvia, what is she
.

“What price safety,” Ian muttered. “He's mad, whoever he is. Madder than Sylvia.”

“Ian, remember Vendice?”

“Who? Vendice—oh.
Revenger's Tragedy
?”

“That's the one. Remember he started out to avenge the death of someone he loved but ended up turning into a bloody, unthinking executioner.”

“Yes,” Ian mused. “He fell in love with vengeance, instead of keeping it a tool to help balance things out. You think that's what's happening now?”

I spread my hands. “He can no longer be claiming to balance the scales of justice—he's getting pleasure out of it now.”

“Jesus Christ, I can't believe this is happening,” said Ian. “What does he want? How much do we have to pay? This is insane, totally insane. How do you deal with a madman? How?”

I didn't know. I did know what lay ahead of us as surely as if I were writing the script myself. Ian still had his looks; a splash of acid would take care of that. Leo Gunn had another hand that could be hacked off.

“Ian,” I said, “you're in more danger than the rest of us.”

“How do you figure?”

“First, you're a target in your own right. Second, you're now a way of hurting me.”