by Laurie Graff
“You were stunning,” he said, with shock, awe and an almost begrudging tone. “I had never seen you perform. You were in your element. I had to tell you that. I had to give you that. I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”
“Well, it was a one-person play. There wasn’t exactly anyone else on stage to look at.”
“No. You were terrific. I mean that, Karrie. And I wondered—” He stopped. “I just wonder...”
What was he trying to say? And why did I even care? Oh, please, who was I kidding? So what was he trying to say? Had Edward had a revelation? Had my Frogaphobia cured him of his?
“I just wondered,” Edward began again. “How come I wasn’t in your show? Didn’t you think me frog-worthy? I was so disappointed when it got to the very end and I wasn’t in it. How come all those other guys got to be in it and not me? I want to be a frog.”
“Edward, why do you want to be a frog so badly? Why don’t you aspire to something better? Why don’t you want to be a prince?”
“The frog status is so attainable,” he said.
It felt like I’d just been hit! But I was. Right behind me stood Fred, whose enthusiasm produced too strong a tap on my back.
“You’re a genius!” I said, throwing my arms around him. “How can I thank you? This is amazing. I think you’re on to something, Freddy. And not just for me, maybe a directing career for you. I can’t believe how this came together.”
“And in such large portions,” said Fred, basking in the mutual admiration club to which both of us were members.
It all happened within six weeks. The experience a real testament to the words—Just Do It! Once I committed, everything else had followed.
Even without a finished script, Ryan had agreed to give me the slot left open by the loss of Brockman’s play. As MTW’s first solo show, he made Frogaphobia the featured part of the One-Act Fest. Being produced by MTW relieved me of having to pay for a theater rental, lighting designer, stage manager and, apparently, a publicist! The set was sparse. It was Black Box Theater, and I mean that literally. Black boxes created my set of a bed, table and chair.
My show was the only one after the intermission. I was told it could run no more than forty-five minutes. I came in at thirty-six. That was far less daunting than creating a full-length solo show. However, it was still a lot of material. My first concept was to do it as a one-sided conversation—just give me a phone and thirty-six minutes could go by in a flash!
Fred was my director and, at the beginning, my dramaturge. But once I began to adapt my audio tapes into play form it became obvious that while I’d never written, I had analyzed, read and acted in enough plays so that when it came to structure I was surprised to find I actually had a few ideas. Once I got going it was fun, it was mine, and I saw that no matter what happened I’d always have that experience of creating. Ultimately I had nothing to lose.
“So,” said Fred. “You did it, Lulu.”
“I could never have done this without you,” I said in all sincerity. “People say that all the time, but only you and I really know how true that is. I need to start collecting more material. And I think tonight’s party has already given me enough for a whole second act. Hey—when are you free? You want to come over tomorrow? I’ll set up the little tape recorder thingy and we’ll do more. What do you think? What time is good?”
Fred did not answer. I thought, perhaps, he was running his schedule through his mind, but his unsettling silence seemed to indicate something more.
“Fred, did I do something wrong in the show? Did I forget some important direction or...I don’t know, you look a little weird. Are you tired? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” said Fred. Straightening up, opening his eyes wider when he spoke. “And you were fine in the show. I mean you were really good. Don’t be so paranoid, Karrie, it was great. It’s not that. I have something to tell you.”
Who died, was the first thought that came to mind. Who got diagnosed with cancer, was the second. Something terrible had happened, but then suddenly Fred was smiling.
“Babalou, I mean Trey, I should really call him Trey, has decided to give up his philandering ways and he really wants to try.” Fred sort of sang the word try as if it were a couple of syllables. “And,” he said, also stretching that word out to show just how important the additional info would be. “He got this job as the Wardrobe Master for Whistles and Whispers at the Ahmanson. The national tour did such great business in their last stop in L.A., they turned it into a sit-down company and it’s got an open-ended run out there.”
“That’s great,” I said thinking, perhaps, I could work something out with Ryan so Frogaphobia could get an open-ended run. I could do it in the smaller theater, or since it was only thirty-six minutes maybe I could do it as a curtain raiser before the next show! If we could figure something out, I could always be performing. I’d have something I could invite industry people to if they wanted to see my work, and I was so absorbed in my thoughts I had missed the punch line because when Fred asked, “So you’re okay about it?” I had no idea what he was referring to.
“What?” I asked, pulled out of my trance. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
“That I’ve known for a few weeks but I didn’t want anything to upset you before the show. I’m moving to Los Angeles with Trey. I’m leaving in two days.”
“Oh nooooooo!” Tears spurted up in my eyes and involuntarily fell down my cheeks. “You’re my partner in crime. My friend. What will I do without you?” I wrapped my arms around him and started to cry while I felt Fred, who I was never physical with, tentatively pat my hair. I looked up and saw that he was crying, too. “Oh...and I’m not a complete selfish shit. I’m really happy for you, Freddy!” I sobbed.
We stood there for a moment, in a moment we never thought would come, but had to. The point was to work towards these moments that propelled you forward in your life, not to be held back in the comfortable coziness of the same old same old. I didn’t want us to say that everything would stay the same. That he would be back or I’d go out there or anything like that. Life was moving on, and in time we’d know what it would do. Right now it was going to be different and different felt hard, but different was what we were always lobbying for, wasn’t it?
“Well,” I said, using the napkin that had held the cucumber sandwiches to wipe away my tears. “I hope everything will exceed your expectations. You and I are friends. For always. And—” I had to suck the air in quickly before I spoke so my voice would not choke on the sob “—I’ll miss you, Fred.”
“Lulu,” said Fred, holding on to my free hand tightly as I was now using the napkin to blow my nose with the other. “I love you.”
“Well, I finally have a great guy telling me he loves me. I love you, too, Fred. We get to keep that part,” I said, taking in a fresh breath of air. “And that part’s really good.”
Sixteen
When mating, some frogs may emit a release call telling the amorous suitor, essentially, to get lost.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Fwd: Saw You In Frogaphobia! Would Love To Talk!
Hey, KK!
E-mails are still coming in, beauty. From your newest admirer!
Ryan
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Saw You In Frogaphobia! Would Love To Talk!
Would you please be so kind to forward this e-mail to Ms. Kline:
Dear Karrie,
May I call you that? I saw your show last Saturday night. I brought a date from New Jersey and we got into quite a difference of opinion on the ride back to Englewood. She thought men (aka me) don’t really pursue women in a princely fashion, while I tried to explain that what most women don’t realize is that men typically don’t feel that they have the upper hand in these sorts of situations. Most women don’t recognize the potential power that they hold over men.
Of course, every relationship is different, and you
probably know more than I do about this. Perhaps one night after your show I could take you out for a drink and we could exchange dating viewpoints.
Please let me know when I might be able to call to arrange this.
Respectfully,
Harvey Weiner
* * *
I wondered how often Dear Abby got hit on?
Women were writing that I made them laugh. They felt relieved to know they weren’t the only ones who had trouble finding a good frog among their undesirable toads. Men personalized and intellectualized. And some tried to use my how-not-to insight to literally woo me. Had Harvey really paid attention to my show he would have known his e-mail pursuit was on par with the unprincely fashion of which he’d already been accused. I suspected theorizing over a drink with me was meant to lead up to a little more than a new perspective. But for the first time in a long time I had other things on my mind besides dismal dates.
It had been a couple of weeks since the show started. The four weekend run of the one-act fest would soon be coming to its end.
Jay Kohn had managed the miraculous coup of getting Wow Women magazine to agree to see the show this weekend and do a story on me. The magazine scheduled a big photo shoot after the performance Friday night. I was positively ecstatic. Tina, the photographer, called today to get my sizes because they would be supplying wardrobe and a makeup artist, too. I was hopeful when the piece hit the stands it would help drum up business. Ryan, already certain it would, decided to keep me up and running. His idea to hire a publicist for MTW was a good one. Jay Kohn was money well spent. Jay also had a vested interest, but it wasn’t in me.
The combination of being dumped by The Girlfriend, somewhat deservedly as Jay had come to admit, and seeing himself as a frog in my show gave Jay the desire for redemption. He had spent several nights at my kitchen table telling me his tales of woe. To keep it balanced I shot a few frog stories his way. Suddenly in the middle of his third scoop of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough he said, “I’ve got it. I’ve got an angle Wow Women would love. Listen to this! She Kissed So Many Frogs She Did A Show About It!”
I didn’t know how to thank him. Ryan was paying him, so what he wanted from me was advice. But I was without any further insights as to how he might patch it up with The Girlfriend. Not wanting to come up empty, I suggested Jay send her three dozen roses with a sincerely apologetic note. It sounded like a trite move in a soap, but to both our surprise she agreed to meet him for dinner. After all the drama the shift came down to thirty-six red, white and yellow flowers, and one short and honest note.
When that happened I almost wished Jay could call Edward and tell him twelve monochromatic ones with no note would do the trick. But then, without even knowing it, I had a shift. I was so absorbed in my work, my thoughts of Edward were finally appropriate to what he deserved. Without even realizing, they slipped and faded away. It felt peaceful to be free.
Dirk called last night. Dirk had been in Los Angeles all year. Oddly, he called to tell me he was free. That it was coming up on the year anniversary of his breakup with the Internet business woman and he knew he was finally free because he no longer thought about her.
“But you are thinking about her, Dirk,” I said. “You’re thinking about her right now,” I said, lying on the couch with a glass of wine, thinking that I wasn’t thinking about anyone because I was going over that night’s show in my head.
It had been a small, but very responsive, Sunday night house. During the Dissecting Mr. Frogstein section I said while the average frog had four legs, only two species possessed “fingers,” which could be a reason why most frogs could never pick up a phone and call. Right then a woman in the second row stood up and shouted, “You got that right. You go, girl!” Prompting everyone in the audience to cheer and jeer.
“No. I was just thinking about you,” said Dirk, as I pictured him of the species Chiroleptes platicephalus that possessed an opposable thumb. I imagined Dirk swimming in a pond surrounded by palm trees under the Hollywood sign, coming up for air, and using only one webbed limbed digit to make this call. “I just passed the test, Kar, because of you.”
“Okay. Feel free to clue me in anytime, Dirk.”
“The old M.T. The masturbation test. I didn’t think about her at all this time. And guess why? Because I was thinking about you!”
“And this is supposed to make me happy?”
“Well I’m happy for you,” said Dirk. “It’s empowering to do what you’re doing. Hey, man, I would love to find something I could call mine where I didn’t have to feel infantilized by the way these agents treat you in this business. It’s worse for a woman, but it’s not great for a man in our age group, either.”
Neither of us spoke, allowing the harsh reality to settle in in silence. Unlike most other professions we had made a lot more money when we were younger. With the extension of Frogaphobia, Ryan promised me a cut from the door. That would probably cover the subway and my cups of coffee! But my commercials were running, and so was my show! One thing often led to another, and right now I was managing fine.
“Your agent come to see you yet? He must be pretty jazzed you’re making this happen.”
“Jerry’s coming. So he says. It’s weird. I’d thought he’d have been one of the first. But now I’m extended. He’ll come.”
“They all say that and then the show’s over and where were they?”
“He will. I mean, he is, Dirk. He’s away, and Wow Women will be out by the time he’s back so it’ll be perfect. I want to talk to him about getting casting people down to see me. Maybe I’ll even come out next year for pilot season. I want something fantastic to happen.”
“Hmm...I’d like something fantastic to happen, too. What are you wearing?” Dirk murmured into the phone.
Dirk. Why hadn’t I thought of it before? He’d be perfect. He could be it.
“Hey, what are you doing two weeks from today?” I asked.
“Why? You coming out here?”
“No. Will you come here? Be my date for a wedding, Dirk. Okay?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Dirk! Please. It’s Brooke Morgan’s. You know her, right? It’ll be fun. Come to New York. Stay here.” I paused. “With me,” I said, I thought seductively but instead I felt it come out like a whine.
“No.”
“I’ll pay your plane fare. I don’t want to go to the wedding alone.”
“I don’t do weddings, and I don’t do Bar Mitzvahs. What day is it, again? I think I have to get a haircut that day. Oh, wait, that day? I think I have to do something really important that day. I think that day I have to take a shower. Karrie, even if I was back East you know this is not something I do. Even for a great bud like you.”
With all my energy into the show, I had almost forgotten about not having a date for the wedding. But now that I remembered I was less than thrilled. Not quite desperate enough to enlist Harvey Weiner, it seemed I had to go it alone. Wait! Jay Kohn! Yes, he owed me after all those nights kvetching at my kitchen table. Ohhhh, but I remembered we even talked about it because that was the day Jay had bought tickets for the opera with The Girlfriend.
“I don’t know how to thank you, Karrie, but it worked. She talks about those flowers all the time. Especially the colors! She says if they were all red she might not have called, but it was the multicolored theme that got her going.”
The attention I received the following week, the week that Wow Women hit the stands, was as gratifying as anything I had ever known. I felt thrilled to open the magazine and see the beautiful, blown-up glossy shot on the roof of the building that housed MTW, backlit with the lights of Broadway. It was a sexy shot that glittered, just like the gauzy, green spaghetti-strapped dress I wore with shiny beads sewn into the fabric.
I looked at the smile on the face of the actress in the photo. The confident, carefree smile of that single actress who did the show about all her bad dates, and was loving every minute. Then I read the art
icle that spun my life into a fairy-tale happy ending, and I could not believe that the woman in that photo, that actress, that woman, her, me, was stuck going to Brooke and Mitch’s wedding alone.
So the night before the wedding when Jerry and I went out after the show, I decided I would ask him. I decided to ask my agent to escort me to the wedding. It was a little weird, but weirder things have happened.
Jerry and I had been close. I’d been signed with his agency for sixteen years. Jerry’s mom saw me perform in San Francisco. He had visited me when I lived in L.A. He visited me on sets when I worked, and even came to a Passover seder in my apartment. A decade ago Jerry and I had gone away to the Poconos for a weekend at a mutual friend’s house where the three of us made dinner cooking the fish we caught that day. Jerry would come with me to the wedding. It would be another event to remember another decade from now. Brooke said I could call her the day before with a date and it was the day before. And the best part was in the end there would be no confusion with Jerry because Jerry was gay.
“I loved your show,” he squealed with his infectious laugh as we sat down for a beer in the nearby bar everyone always hung out at after the shows. “You were so funny. You totally crack me up, Karrie Kline. It was great!”
“I’m so glad, and I have a ton of stuff to discuss with you about how to promote me with it, but first I need to ask you something.”
“Well, actually before you do that I feel there’s something we need to talk about.”
“Well, this is important. Can I go first?”
“Actually, Karrie, I took you out to do this in person. Would you mind if I went first?”
You wake up in the morning and you always think you know what will happen. You think you know what the day will bring. You have a list on your desk of things to do, and sometimes you may even do them all. But we don’t have a list for the unexpected. The unexpected, that can often bring something better than what you had planned...or not.
So when Jerry, looking at me through the same green eyes that looked at me years and years ago when he had begged me to leave another talent agency to go with his, told me that my contract was up for renewal and put a manila envelope down on the table, it was with great embarrassment to both of us when I took out a pen and opened the envelope to sign the new contract, only to find that Jerry was returning fifty of my unused head shots because the agency had decided not to re-sign me.