West of Paradise (21 page)

Someplace that seemed friendly, but where no one worth their salt would go. Maybe the bench by the lake in Central Park donated by Leona Helmsley.

Incidental Music

The minute Norman Jessup got to New York, he felt restless. It was a part of the city's consciousness, he understood that, a factor in what made the place so high energy. New York was crowded with events, as in other places cemeteries were with the dead. There were the museums, theaters, galleries, church programs, constant concerts. Even the homeless ranting in front of Lincoln Center were more articulate than many politicians in less fevered locales. So there was always something happening, and the feeling you might be missing it. It was an angst that was different from the loneliness or alienation you might experience anywhere else, the sense that life might be passing you by. In New York, it was. In parades, on skateboards, in marathons, on billboards, on the sides of buses, a constant stream of reminders that you were missing something, if only the ability to be still.

He felt lonely now, sorry he hadn't brought Carina. He was shrouded with nostalgia for the vanished Paulo, the laughter they had shared, the magical way the boy had of quieting him down, at the same time making the romantic adventure, which it had been, more intense.

Sarah Nash was out for the evening according to the switchboard at the hotel. Without Tyler's being there to alert him where she might have been or gone, Norman, for all his sense of command, had no idea what to do with himself.

So he went to the theater. It was, he decided by the end of the evening, like Columbus's heading for India and coming across America by accident. The play was a musical. He knew instantly who should star in the movie version, got it in a flash that made Madonna as Evita seem uninspired, which maybe it really was. Taking the world by storm in the movie version of
Pilgrims!,
a musicalization of Geoffrey Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales,
according to the program, playing the Wife of Bath.

Helen Manning. He could see her lusting and remarrying around the medieval sets, bruiting about her bawdy philosophy, taking on all comers spread-legged, in a manner of speaking, while still retaining the love of an audience. As unexpected as the sweetness of the voice that had come out of her at Drayco's funeral was the predictability of the fans' rooting for her, knowing it was not her fault but her virtue that she'd been fucked, this time in song.

“Has anyone got the movie rights?” he asked the director, cornering him backstage the minute the curtain went down, already halfway down the alley as he'd been with the first tap of handclapping applause. The man was strictly a New York type,
The-ah-tre,
so did not instantly react to Norman's name, something Jessup would find a subtle way of punishing him for, giving him the hope of a say-so in the movie, and then cutting him out of it abruptly, with not so much as a good-bye. Just an unreturned call to his agent.

“Well, there's talks going on with Disney and Fox…” the director, Lars Bernstein, said.

“But no deal yet?”

“No deal.”

“Who can make the deal with me, now, this minute?”

“I can try and get hold of Ed Korbin, the producer—”

“Do it.” Jessup handed him his cellular phone. “What kind of name is Lars Bernstein?” he asked, while the man hit the numbers, dialing.

“My mother was moved by Marlon Brando in
I Remember Mama.
How do I get it to ring?”

“Press send,” Jessup said. “What about Jeff Chaucer. Can I talk to him?”

Bernstein looked at him blankly, then smiled. “Oh, I get it,” he said. “Funny. Hello, Kit? Can I speak to Ed?”

The deal was made in as much time as it took to have the conversation. Norman felt elated, the way he always did when he knew he'd had an inspiration and closed it, even though he was a little bit quashed by the slip he'd made about the author. But what the hell. He'd seen the contracts on the first remake of
Hunchback of Notre Dame,
and they'd put a healthy per diem in for Victor Hugo.

He believed in destiny. Everything happened for a reason. Although it was Sarah Nash's darkness that had brought him to New York, the musical was the light at the end of the Midtown Tunnel.

And just in case he had any doubt in the world, when he got back to his hotel, too juiced up to sleep, he went into the Bemelmans bar, and there sat Helen Manning. “You won't believe this,” he said, and sat down with her.

“Of course I won't,” she said, downing the last of what appeared to be a stinger.

He snapped his fingers for the waiter. “A black Russian,” he said. “And another of whatever it is for the lady.”

She snickered. Apparently she'd had a little to drink, because it came out a snort. “Lady,” she repeated, when she'd caught her breath.

“I've just bought something for you,” said Norman.

“I hope it isn't jewelry,” she said. “My insurance is
so
high.”

“I've bought you a gem beyond price.” He felt so warmed by his action that obviously drunk as she was, he touched her arm in a gesture that was as close as he could come to affection for the opposite sex, which in her case could not have been more opposite. “It's a musical.”

“What?” Her eyes looked very nearly crossed.

“Pilgrims,”
he said, leaving out the exclamation point in his intonation. “It's the musical version of
The Canterbury Tales,
by Geoffrey Chaucer. You'll be the Wife of Bath.”

“Who's playing Bath?” she asked, lids half shut now.

“It's a town,” said Norman. “
Tales
is the first true classic of English literature.” He'd called his researcher on his cellular phone in the taxi back to the hotel, and was now up to speed. “A ribald, rollicking tale,” he said, quoting the logo outside the theater. “And the Wife, or as it was then, Wyf, is a lovable bawd who takes to sex like…” He hesitated.

“A fuck to water,” Helen said.

“I guess you could say that. The songs are wonderful. Ribald. Rollicking. You'll be dynamite in the part.”

The waiter brought their drinks. She looked up through heavy lids, mouthed “Thank you,” and drank without tasting.

“Are you upset about something?” Norman said.

“How perceptive you are,” she said, slurring the sibilance.

“Well, whatever it is, this will heal you. It will be a new beginning for you. Helen Manning, musical comedy star.”

“I don't sing,” she said.

“Of course you do. I heard you at Larry's funeral.”

“That was a weird moment.”

“Unforgettable,” he said. “You'll be fantastic in the part.”

“I'm too old to make a fool of myself,” she said. “On screen anyway.”

“I'll pay you anything you want. Highest salary ever paid to a woman. Female Sylvester Stallone.”

“Spare me.”

“Name your price.”

“I don't need money,” she said. “I have more money than I'll ever be able to spend.”

“There must be something you want.”

She looked up slowly. “Well, there
is
one thing…” She seemed to jolt herself into sobriety. “You have in your employ a certain young man. Young, young man,” she said poignantly, as Blanche DuBois would have said it if they ever made
her
into a musical.

*   *   *

Actually, the idea of a picnic on Leona's bench, as appealing as it had seemed to Bunyan the night before, appeared ludicrous in the light of day. Especially with the homeless person stretched out on the bench, the paper bag with his beer bottle acting as his pillow, yesterday's
Daily News
warming his rather shapely ass. Bunyan called Sarah from the pay phone on the corner.

“We must relocate our assignation,” he said. “Someone's taken our table.”

“But I've already bought the sandwiches.”

“Bring them with you,” he said. “I have the perfect recipient.”

They settled on a restaurant near the Algonquin, but not so close that they would run into anybody literary. Bunyan asked for a table in the corner, and sat with his back to the wall, like a mafioso, something he had learned from Mario Puzo. He signaled to Sarah when she came in, carrying her smart little sack from EAT, wearing her spikey hair.

“Have you considered hats?” he said, as she came to the table.

“No fashion commentary.” She sat down.

“I didn't know there were ground rules.”

“I said you didn't have to talk about anything you didn't want to. And I would appreciate it if you didn't comment on my hair.”

“It's actually hair?” Bunyan marveled. “I thought it was a piece. Something Burt Reynolds might wear in
Jurassic Park Three.
The skull version of dentatum.”

“I don't know what dentatum is.”

“It's when men fear a woman's vagina has teeth in it. I thought that might be your way of offering head.”

“Very witty,” she said.

“Thank you. That's what I do.”

The waiter gave them menus. Bunyan ordered wine, and Sarah asked for a Fanta.

“Tell me about Paulo,” she said.

“Paulo who? Neruda? A great sense of humanity and horniness.”

“That's Pablo. I mean the dancer Paulo. Norman Jessup's Paulo.”

“Exquisite boy. Great talent, really. Not just another pretty face. Not just a dancer, either. He could have been a great musical star on Broadway. This is not gossip. I'm not telling you anything that would impact badly on Norman,” he said, a little too quickly. “Norman's taste was flawless.”

“Why didn't Paulo do musical comedy?”

“Paulo himself had esoteric taste. He worked out an audition piece to ‘The World Is Your Balloon.' That was his favorite Harburg lyric. I mean, consider that English was his second language, that he didn't even start to speak it until he was maybe thirteen, yet he had the subtlety to appreciate Yip Harburg. The song was from a show of Yipper's called
Flahooley
that I don't think anyone ever saw. But Paulo loved the song, and he thought the writers he auditioned for would be touched that he'd prepared an obscure song from a failed show.

“But they didn't have the class or the style to know what the hell it was, so they talked all during his singing. Didn't even call him back. He was so disheartened, he never went to another Broadway audition.”

At that moment a noted English actress recognized Bunyan, got up from her table, and swept over to greet him. She was one of the great standard bearers of British cinema, but Sarah couldn't call up her name, as she was neither Emma Thompson nor Helena Bonham-Carter, the only two Sarah had ever met personally, and so the only ones whose identities she could actually label, as the rest of them all sounded alike to her.

“Bunyan!” cried the actress, kissing the air a few feet away from him.

“What? Still alive, my Lady Disdain?” Bunyan said.

“I thought…” She smiled wickedly, revealing teeth that were bad, Swiss-cheesy, with little gray stains on them that looked like holes, a dead giveaway that she'd never done a film in Hollywood. “I thought
you
were Lady Disdain.”

“I am Lord,” Bunyan said.

“Of all you survey?”

“Why not? Are the Hesseltines in town with you?”

“Of course. Staying at the Plaza. Will we see you?”

“Here I am, now.”

“He's brought Evelyn Waugh's grandnephew. You'd like him. A chip off the old block.”

“Old, old block. The chip would have had to petrify by now.” He turned to Sarah. “That's Roger Hesseltine's only claim to fame, long ago Evelyn. I'll never forget his tale of being with him in the steam-bath, and how red Evelyn's willy was.”

“Red willies are always in fashion,” said the actress.

“Apparently so are the grandspawn of literary figures,” said Sarah, longing to be more conspicuous than her hair apparently made her. Bunyan had shown no inclination to introduce her. “There's a young woman just arrived in L.A. who's Fitzgerald's granddaughter.”

“Geraldine's?”

“F. Scott's,” said Sarah.

“American writers are greatly overrated,” said the Brit. “Present company included.”

“You've read Miss Nash's book, then?” asked Bunyan.

“I'm afraid not. Only yours. None of those boys, not Hemingway, not Fitzgerald could hold a candle to who we had. Huxley. Forster.”

“Waugh with his willy,” Bunyan said. “We'd better order.”

“Please call.” The actress stooped to kiss him.

It was only then that Sarah realized he'd never gotten up. “It was a pleasure to almost meet you,” she said.

The actress minced away. “I would've introduced you,” Bunyan said, “but I couldn't think of her name.”

“Why didn't you stand up?” Sarah asked, as the waiter came to take their order.

“That would have been a sign of respect.”

“I see,” said Sarah.

“There's hope for you, then. I'll have the seared Ahi Niçoise,” he told the waiter. “Rare.”

“Same,” said Sarah. “What was that about Evelyn Waugh's willy?”

“A hilarious tale. One I shall tell you if we become friends, which won't happen. But that's the kind of thing you should focus on, not personal, emotional history. Your book was a bore, really, because it told everything from your point of view, all your hurt feelings, which you tried to cover with bitchiness and gossip that was bloody around the edges because you were so wounded. Great gossip is detached, dispassionate. Like recipes. What good stories do you have to recount if you're ever invited to a truly sophisticated dinner party?”

“Well, maybe you could tell me the one about Evelyn Waugh's willy.”