Out on the Cutting Edge

by Lawrence Block

Page 6

 

  "I dont know. "

  "Whats this? Very Good Friends. Not a bad title, and where did they do it? At the Cherry Lane? I wonder why I never heard of it. Oh, it was a staged reading, it only had one performance. Not a bad title, Very Good Friends, a little suggestive but hardly naughty. Oh, Gerald Cameron wrote it. Hes quite good. I wonder how she happened to be in this. "

  "Is it unusual?"

  "Well, sort of. You wouldnt have open auditions for this sort of thing, I wouldnt think. You see, the playwright very likely wanted to get a sense of how his work would play, so he or the designated director got hold of some suitable actors and had them walk through it onstage, possibly in front of prospective backers, possibly not. Some staged readings these days are fairly elaborate, with extensive rehearsals and a fair amount of movement onstage. In others the actors just sit in chairs as if they were doing a radio play. And who directed this? Oh, were in luck. "

  "Someone you know?"

  "Indeed," he said. He looked up a number, picked up a phone and dialed it. He said, "David Quantrill, please. David? Aaron Stallworth. How are you? Oh, really? Yes, well I heard about that. " He covered the mouthpiece and rolled his eyes at the ceiling. "David, guess what Ive got in my hand. No, on second thought dont bother. Its a playbill for a staged reading of Very Good Friends. Did that ever get past the staged reading stage, as it were? I see. Yes, I see. I hadnt heard. Oh, thats too bad. " His face clouded, and he listened in silence for a moment. Then he said, "David, why Im calling is theres a fellow with me now whos trying to find one of the actors from the reading. Her names Paula Hoeldtke and it says here that she read Marcy. Yes. Can you tell me how you happened to use her? I see. Well, look, do you suppose my friend could come and have a word with you? Hell have some questions to ask. It seems our Paula has vanished from the face of the earth and her parents are predictably frantic. Would that be all right? Good, Ill send him right over. No, I dont think so. Shall I ask him? Oh, I see. Thank you, David. "

  He put the phone down, pressed the tips of two fingers against the center of his forehead, as if trying to suppress a headache. With his eyes lowered he said, "The play hasnt been performed because Gerald Cameron wanted to revise it after the reading, and he hasnt been able to do so because hes been ill. " He looked at me. "Very ill. "

  "I see. "

  "Everyones dying. Have you noticed? Im sorry, I dont mean to do this. David lives in Chelsea, let me write down the address for you. I assumed youd rather ask him questions yourself than have me try to function as an intermediary. He wanted to know if you were gay. I told him I didnt think so. "

  "Im not. "

  "I suppose he only asked out of habit. After all, what difference could it make? Nobody does anything anymore. And its not as though you have to ask whos gay and who isnt. All you have to do is wait a few years and see whos still alive. " He looked at me. "Have you been reading about the seals?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "You know," he said. "The seals. " He pressed his elbows against his ribs, clapped his hands together like flippers, and tilted his head to mime a seal balancing a ball on its nose. "In the North Sea, and all along the European coastline. The seals are dying and nobody knows why. Oh, theyve isolated a virus, but its been around for ages, its the one that causes distemper in dogs, and its not as though some rott-weilers been racing around biting seals. The best guess seems to be that its pollution. The North Sea is badly polluted, and they think this has weakened the immune systems of the seals, leaving them with no defense against whatever virus comes along. Do you know what I think?"

  "What?"

  "The earth has AIDS. Were all whirling merrily through the void on a dying planet, and gay people are just doing their usual number, being shamelessly trendy as always. Right out in front on the cutting edge of death. "

  David Quantrill had a loft on the ninth floor of a converted industrial building on West Twenty-second Street. It consisted of one enormous high-ceilinged room, the wide board floor painted a glossy white, the walls matte black and sparsely hung with vivid abstract oils. The furniture was white wicker, and there wasnt a great deal of it.

  Quantrill was in his forties, pudgy and mostly bald. What hair remained he wore long, curling over his collar. He fussed with a briar pipe and tried to remember something about Paula Hoeldtke.

  "You have to remember that it was almost a year ago," he said, "and I never laid eyes or ears on her before or since. Now how did she wind up in Friends? Somebody knew her, but who?"

  It took him a few minutes to prod the memory loose. He had cast another actress as Marcy, a woman named Virginia Sutcliffe. "Then Ginny called me, very last minute, to say shed just gotten a call to do two weeks in Seesaw in some goddam place. Baltimore? It doesnt matter. Anyway, much as she loved me, et cetera, et cetera. She said there was a girl in a class with her who she swore was just right for Marcy. I said Id see her, and she came down and read for me, and she was all right. " He picked up the photograph. "Shes pretty, isnt she, but theres nothing genuinely arresting about her face. Or her stage presence, but she was adequate, and I didnt have the time to chase around the kingdom with a glass slipper, searching for Cinderella. I knew I wouldnt be using her in the actual production. Id cast Ginny for that, if she turned out to have the right chemistry with the rest of the cast, and assuming Id forgiven her by then for deserting me and traipsing off to Baltimore. "

  I asked how I could reach Ginny. He had a number for her, and when it didnt answer he called her service and learned that she was in Los Angeles. He called her agent, got a number for her in California, and called it. He chatted with her for a moment or two, then put me on.

  "I barely remember Paula," she said. "I knew her from class, and I just had the thought that shed be right for Marcy. She has this awkward, tentative quality. Do you know Paula?" I said I didnt. "And you probably dont know the play, so you wouldnt know what the hell Im talking about. I never saw her after that, so I didnt even know David had used her. "

  "You were in an acting class with her?"

  "Thats right. And I didnt really know her. It was an improv workshop led by Kelly Greer, two hours every Thursday afternoon in a second-floor studio on upper Broadway. She did a scene, two people waiting for a bus, that I thought was pretty good. "

  "Was she close to anyone in the class? Did she have a boyfriend?"

  "I really dont know any of that. I cant remember ever having an actual conversation with her. "

  "Did you see her after you got back from Baltimore?"

  " Baltimore?"

  "I thought you went there for two weeks to be in a play, and that was why you couldnt do the reading. "

  "Oh, Seesaw," she said. "That wasnt two weeks in Baltimore, it was a week in Louisville and a week in Memphis. At least I got to see Graceland. After that I went home to Michigan for Christmas, and when I got back to New York I fell into three weeks of work in a soap, which was a godsend, but it took care of my Thursday afternoons. By the time I was free again there was an opening in one of Ed Kovenss classes, and Id been wanting to study with him for a long time, and I decided Id rather do that than more improv work. So I never did see Paula again. Is she in some kind of trouble?"

  "Its possible. You said her teacher was Kelly Greer?"

  "Thats right. Kellys numbers in my Rolodex, which is on my desk in New York, so thats no help to you. But Im sure its in the book. Kelly Greer, G-R-E-E-R. "

  "Im sure Ill be able to find him. "

  "Her. Id be surprised if Paulas still studying with her. You dont usually stay in the same improv workshop forever, its usually a few months and out, but maybe Kelly will be able to tell you something. I hope Paulas all right. "

  "So do I. "

  "I can picture her now, groping her way through that scene. She seemed- whats the word I want? Vulnerable. "

  Kelly Greer was an energetic little gnome of a woman. She had a mop of gray curls and enormous brown eyes. I found her in the book an
d reached her at her apartment. Instead of inviting me up she arranged to meet me in a dairy restaurant on Broadway in the low Eighties.

  We sat at a table in front. I had a bagel and coffee. She ate an order of kasha varnishkes and drank two tall glasses of buttermilk.

  She remembered Paula.

  "She wasnt going anyplace," she said. "I think she knew it, which put her ahead of most of them. "

  "She wasnt any good?"

  "She was all right. Most of them are all right. Oh, some of them are hopeless, but most of the ones who get this far have a certain amount of ability. Theyre not bad. They may even be good, they may even be fine. Thats not good enough. "

  "What else do you need?"

  "You need to be terrific. We like to think its a matter of getting the right breaks, or being generally lucky. Or knowing the right people, or sleeping with the right people. But thats not really what does it. The people who succeed are superb. Its not enough to have some talent. You have to be positively bursting with it. You have to light up the stage or the screen or the tube. You have to glow. "

  "And Paula didnt. "

  "No, and I think she knew it, or at least half knew it, and whats more I dont think it broke her heart. Thats another thing, besides the talent you have to have the desire. You have to want it desperately, and I dont think she did. " She thought for a moment. "She wanted something, though. "

  "What?"

  "I dont know. Im not sure she knew. Money? Fame? Thats what draws a lot of them, especially on the West Coast. They think actings a way to get rich. Its about the least likely way I can think of. "

  "Is that what Paula wanted? Money and fame?"

  "Or glamour. Or excitement, adventure. Really, how well did I know her? She started coming to my classes last fall and she kept coming around for five months or so. And she wasnt religious about it. Sometimes she didnt show up. Thats common enough, they have work or an audition or something that comes up. "

  "When did she quit?"

  "She never quit formally, she just ceased to appear. I looked it up. Her last class was in February. "

  She had names and phone numbers for a dozen men and women who had studied with her at the same time as Paula. She couldnt remember if Paula had had a boyfriend, or if anyone had ever picked her up after class. She didnt know if Paula had been especially friendly with any of her classmates. I copied down all the names and numbers except for Virginia Sutcliffe, to whom Id already spoken.

  "Ginny Sutcliffe said Paula did an improvisational scene at a bus stop," I said.

  "Did she? I use that situation a lot. I cant honestly say I recall how Paula did with it. "

  "According to Ginny, she had an awkward, tentative quality. "

  She smiled, but there was no joy in it. " An awkward, tentative quality, " she said. "No kidding. Every year a thousand ingenues descend upon New York, awkward and tentative as all hell, hoping their coltish exuberance will melt the heart of a nation. Sometimes I want to go down to Port Authority and meet the buses and tell them all to go home. "