The Man Who Couldn't Miss

by David Handler

  “Nice to see you again, Mrs. Hawes,” I said, tipping my fedora.

  “I sure do wish you’d call me Glenda, Mr. Hoag.”

  “In that case make it Hoagy.”

  “As in Carmichael?”

  “As in the cheesesteak.”

  Her blue eyes narrowed at me suspiciously. “Are you one of those New York City smart alecks that I hear about down in Siler City?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “I’ve never much cared for smart alecks.”

  “Then it’s my mission to change your mind.”

  Glenda sighed fretfully. “I sure do wish we were all finished here and on our way to Savannah.”

  “Why, is something wrong?”

  “Dini’s running a fever and feels all achy and tired. Mimi knows a Doctor Orr here in town. He was kind enough to examine her last evening. Thinks she may have picked up a virus that’s been going around.”

  “There’s a virus going around?”

  “Hoagy, I was a school nurse in Chatham County for twenty-seven years. Trust me, there’s always a virus going around. What worries me is that she might have contracted that Lyme disease of yours from a tick bite when we were walking in the woods last week,” she said accusingly, as if I were personally responsible for it. “The doctor didn’t find the bull’s-eye rash you hear about, but he said you don’t always get them. He took a blood sample and said he’d put her on antibiotics if she gets any worse. For now, she’s just supposed to get some rest.” Glenda let out a humorless laugh. “I guess he’s never met an actress before. That girl works fifteen hours a day. Greg does, too. I wish those two would take some time off to enjoy their success. But they’re not giving themselves so much as a day off in between jobs.”

  “When you’re in demand there’s no such thing as time off.”

  “Merilee takes time off now and then, doesn’t she?”

  “Merilee’s rather unusual that way. She also avoids L.A. as much as humanly possible.”

  Glenda shook a chubby finger at me. “You two ought to get married again and have yourself some kids. A man’s not a real man unless he has a wife and children. Listen to what I’m telling you. I know a few things.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you do,” I said, sighing inwardly. This would be one of the downsides of being one-half of a famous couple. People with whom you are barely acquainted feel they know you intimately and are entitled to offer unsolicited personal advice and criticism. Especially criticism.

  I excused myself and moseyed off. Lulu ambled along next to me, grateful to be rid of the bothersome twins. I worked my way past a row of trucks toward the red brick carriage barn that was across a courtyard from the playhouse. The barn was where the sets were built and the props stored. The crew chief, an aging, silver-ponytailed hippie named Cyril Cooper—better known as Coop—was calling out orders to his crew of high school volunteers who were toting paint cans, drop cloths and props across the courtyard to the stage. I looked to see if anyone was paying close attention to what was going on. Possibly a trucker who was standing around doing nothing. I spotted no one. Nor did I see anyone checking out the action through the windows of the proudly tattered Backstage Tavern, which was directly across the narrow street from the playhouse’s stage door.

  I did, however, attract the attention of one of the crew members who was lugging paint cans—a round rubber ball of a young woman in a tank top and shorts whose long, shiny black hair was held in place with a headband. “My God, you’re Stewart Hoag,” she said, staring at me wide-eyed.

  “That’s the rumor. And you are . . . ?”

  “Nona. Nona Peachy. I’m a drama major at Brown. Home for the summer with the fam and thought I’d pitch in. I just love this old playhouse. My dad, Doug, appeared here a couple of times when he was a young performer. He desperately wanted to be an actor. He and my mom lived in a basement apartment in Greenwich Village when I was little, and he was in a couple of off-Broadway shows, but when my mom got pregnant with my little brother he gave it all up to become a venture capitalist. Don’t ask me what that is.”

  “Wasn’t planning to.”

  “Now I’m the one who has the dream.” Nona’s eyes gleamed as she gazed at the ramshackle playhouse. “I’ll cry my head off if they tear this place down, I swear,” she said. Then off she went to join the others.

  Me, I did a full lap around the town green. Checked out every shop window and parked car as well as the terrace and lush, manicured rose gardens of the Sherbourne Inn. I saw no one. If R. J. Romero was watching the theater he was pretty damned good at being invisible.

  I returned to the theater and went in the stage entrance. The tiny playhouse had almost no backstage area. Just a few steps after I’d walked in the door my face was practically flush up against the backside of the stage set’s backdrop. I also ran into a pair of narrow, cast iron spiral staircases. One led downstairs to the dressing rooms, the other up to a catwalk in the rafters where the lighting man operated. Flanking the stage, in the wings, were the lighting and sound consoles, which looked as if they’d been installed by a young Tom Edison. A service corridor ran along the outside wall of the building to the front of the house. A door opened into the lobby, where Mimi’s office was located.

  There was a small desk by the stage door where Dini’s husband, Greg Farber, was having a heated discussion on the phone with Eugene, his personal assistant, who was dog-sitting the family’s golden retrievers at their apartment on Riverside Drive.

  “Eugene, you can’t let Steve off of his leash, remember? He’s super protective of Eydie and gets aggressive . . . Hey, now, don’t freak out. It’s okay. No one got hurt.” This was Greg being soothing and kind. He was very good at being soothing and kind. “Listen, I have to go into rehearsal now. I’ll check in later, okay?” He hung up, flashing a grin at me. “Greetings, Hoagster.”

  “Back at you. Trouble on the home front?”

  “Steve got loose in Riverside Park and almost made a snack of someone’s Chihuahua,” Greg answered, standing there in a white oxford cloth button-down shirt and jeans. He had a big square head, neatly combed sandy hair, granite jaw and broad shoulders. The screen made him look tall. He wasn’t. He was three inches shy of six feet tall, which made him six inches shorter than I am. He had an open, honest face and a reassuring demeanor. On-screen, he came across as a man whom the audience was sure would always do the right thing, no matter whether he was playing the president of the United States or a saddle tramp. In my opinion, he was not nearly as gifted as his classmate Marty Miller. But he was very, very solid at playing the Good Guy. Solid enough to win an Oscar a few years back for The Tall T, a remake of a 1950s Elmore Leonard western that had originally starred Randolph Scott, an actor who’d known a thing or two himself about a reassuring demeanor.

  “So how goes the writing thing?” he asked me as he gave Lulu a pat.

  “Shockingly well. I’m working on something I really like.”

  “I’m so happy to hear that, man. Can’t wait to read it.”

  Greg and I became drinking buddies when he and Merilee were shooting a movie together in Maine. This was back during my season in the sun, before everything fell apart. He and I drank single malt together, took long walks in the woods and told each other stuff we didn’t tell anyone else. I told him I had no idea for a second novel and was convinced that my career as a novelist was over, which thus far had proven to be eerily prophetic. He told me that he woke up every morning consumed by the terrifying certainty that he was a total fraud.

  “I’m super excited myself,” he informed me. “At this very moment Mr. Clint fucking Eastwood is hanging around in Death Valley waiting for me so that the cameras can start rolling. Hey, did you hear how I got the gig?”

  “I did not.”

  “I walk into his Malpaso office on the Warner’s lot, okay? He’s sitting there behind his desk with that Dirty Harry deadpan on his face. Stands up, sticks out his hand and says, ‘Hi, I’m Clint.’ I punch
him in the jaw and knock him flat. He gets up, rubs his jaw and says, ‘Okay, you’re hired.’”

  Dini joined us now, looking pale, wilted and not at all well. Dini Hawes was barely five feet tall, extremely slender and partial to vintage clothing and accessories, the zanier the better. Today she wore an oversize Hawaiian shirt with a pair of extremely loud madras shorts. Nestled in her strawberry blond hair was a pair of pink cat’s-eye sunglasses from the Fabulous Fifties. Dini had slightly pop-eyed blue eyes, a bunny rabbit nose and a fetching little twist to her mouth. No one was better at playing offbeat southern crazies than she was, but she also excelled at gutsy crusading reporters and public defenders. She could also be very funny if the role called for it. “Hey, Hoagy,” she said in that soft, Siler City accent of hers.

  “Hey, back at you, Dini.”

  “Did you get through to Eugene?” she asked Greg.

  “Steve got in a fight,” he answered curtly. “Dogs get in fights. It was nothing.”

  “Hon, if he can’t control Steve and Eydie then that’s not nothing.”

  There was an edge to both of their voices. No wonder Merilee was having a problem with them—they weren’t getting along. I wondered if it was the sensory overload of working together plus having the twins and her mom around or if something more was going on. Then again, maybe they were just scared shitless about walking out on that stage tomorrow night in front of Broadway royalty.

  “There were no photographers around. The dog’s owner isn’t talking about suing us. So just let it go, okay? Everything’s under control.”

  “Your mom told me you’re running a fever,” I said to Dini. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine. Just some bitty bug. I wish she’d stop talking about it.”

  “Any idea where your illustrious director is?” I asked.

  “In her posh dressing room,” Dini answered. “Our posh dressing room. All of the actresses in the cast have to share.”

  “Hey, at least you don’t have to share a dressing room with Marty,” Greg pointed out. “His B.O. makes me gag, I swear.”

  “Is he here yet?” Dini asked him.

  “Of course not. Late as usual.”

  I took the spiral staircase down to the dressing rooms, which were in the basement underneath the stage. There was a narrow corridor dimly lit by one bare lightbulb that made an alarming sizzling noise. It smelled damp and moldy, possibly because of the numerous puddles of water in the low spots in the concrete floor. The doors to the actors’ and actresses’ dressing rooms were adjacent to each other on one side of the corridor. Directly across the corridor from the dressing rooms were the doors to the His and Hers bathrooms.

  The actresses’ dressing room was a full step down from the corridor. It was also flooded, which I gathered was a regular state of affairs. The makeshift flooring of planks stretched across cinder blocks kind of gave it away. A sump pump was running, which made it sound as if a motorbike were idling in there, yet at least two inches of water remained on the basement floor beneath the planks. The bottom three or four inches of the dressing room’s particleboard walls were rotted out because of repeated water damage, which meant—insofar as rats were concerned—that nothing separated the dressing room from the basement under the theater. Which explained why Lulu cowered between my feet, trembling, as I stood there in the doorway. She could hear them scurrying around. There were two tiny dressing tables and mirrors. In lieu of a wardrobe rack there were hooks on the walls for the performers’ costumes, which were on hangers inside of protective plastic garment bags because the exposed overhead pipes dripped.

  Merilee sat at one of the dressing tables in a denim shirt and khaki shorts scribbling notes on her copy of Private Lives.

  “My God, Merilee, this place is a total dump.”

  “Nonsense. It reminds me of the old days when I used to play the Keith Orpheum circuit.”

  “Merilee Gilbert Nash, you never played the Keith Orpheum circuit.”

  “I know, but I love saying it.”

  “Seriously, I’m surprised it hasn’t been condemned.”

  “It has been, remember? That’s why we’re trying to raise this money.” She gazed up at me. “You really didn’t have to come here today.”

  “No, I really did.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve seen Marty, have you?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “I’d better have someone call the inn to rouse him.”

  I heard footsteps behind me, turned and found myself face-to-face in the dressing room doorway with Sabrina Meyer, the young actress who was playing Louise, the maid. She was strikingly beautiful—tall, slender and olive-complexioned, with slanted, smoldering brown eyes and a head of cascading golden ringlets. The perfume she was wearing smelled like vanilla.

  “Sabrina, say hello to Hoagy,” Merilee said. “Officially known as Stewart Hoag.”

  “The Stewart Hoag?” Sabrina dumped her shoulder bag on one of the dressing tables. “It’s an honor to meet you. I’m such a fan of your book. My modern lit class read it when I was an undergrad in New Jersey.”

  New Jersey, for those of you west of the Rockies, is Ivy-speak for Princeton. “Was it a large class?”

  “A small seminar. Why?”

  “Just calculating my royalties.”

  She let out a delicious laugh. “Brilliant and funny.” Which prompted Lulu to bare her teeth at her. “Why is your dog . . . ?”

  “She’s very protective of me.”

  “Do you need protecting?”

  “Twenty-four hours a day,” I said as Merilee watched us spar, one eyebrow arched mockingly.

  “Are you sticking around for rehearsal?” Sabrina asked me.

  “If the director doesn’t mind.”

  “The director would be thrilled,” Merilee assured me.

  “Then I’ll see you upstairs in five,” Sabrina said, heading out the door.

  “If Marty ever shows up,” Merilee called after her. To me she said, “So are you planning to?”

  “Planning to what?”

  “Sleep with her?”

  “How would I know? I’ve just met her. Besides, she’s not my type.”

  “You have a type?”

  “Oh, most definitely. Tall, strapping blondes with high foreheads and a strong territorial streak.”

  “Was I being territorial?”

  “Little bit.”

  “I apologize. Honestly, darling, you’re a free agent. If you really, truly want to ‘hit’ that, go right ahead.”

  “Thank you, I will. How is she in the show?”

  “Terrific. Hollywood will be snatching her up. The only thing that might hold her back is she’s extremely fragile. Has a history of self-medicating.”

  “Self-medicating as in . . . ?”

  “Heroin. She did a stint at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts last year. But she’s clean right now. Alert and eager, as I believe you can attest to.”

  Dini came in now and flopped down wearily at her dressing table, her face flushed.

  “How are you feeling?” Merilee’s brow was furrowed with concern.

  “God, I wish people would stop asking me that.”

  “You don’t have to bite my head off, Dini.”

  Dini reached over and patted her hand. “Sorry. It’s not easy having my mother here. She keeps hovering and clucking. Forgive me?”

  “Of course.”

  “I wanted to ask you about my attitude at the opening of act two. I’m still not sure I understand where Amanda’s coming from.”

  “Let’s have a look,” Merilee said, leafing through the play.

  I left them to it. Went back up the spiral staircase with Lulu just in time to see a chubby, balding, supremely disheveled Marty Miller stagger through the stage door, reeking of tequila, cigarette smoke and, yes, curried mutton. His rumpled polo shirt and baggy seersucker shorts looked as if he’d slept in them—facedown on the floor of his room. He wore rubber flip-flops in lieu of shoes, which was highly
unfortunate because the smell of his bare feet was strong enough to make my eyes water. Hungover, disheveled and unwashed qualified as normal for Marty, a self-destructive loner who took such terrible care of himself that he looked ten years older than his classmates.

  “Good morning, Marty,” I said as he squinted at me, his gaze slightly out of focus. “Are you aware that your right hand is bleeding?” It was a soft, pudgy hand, and he had quite a gash on the back of it. “What happened?”

  He studied the hand with bewildered detachment, as if it were someone else’s. “I . . . don’t remember.”

  “I’ll fetch the first aid kit from Mimi’s office,” Glenda said briskly as she stood there with Durango and Cheyenne, who were whispering to each other and giggling. Mimi’s office was up front off of the lobby. “Come with me, Marty. We’ll wash that in her bathroom. The ones downstairs are filthy.”

  “Yes, matron,” he intoned, holding his hands out like a convict being led off to a jail cell. “Actually, I’m growing quite fond of the palatial digs that Greg and I share in the bowels of this playhouse. Girls, did you know that this playhouse has bowels?”

  “Does not,” Durango said, giggling.

  “Does, too,” he assured her. “All theaters have bowels.”

  “Do not,” Cheyenne shot back, giggling.

  “I hardly think this is an appropriate topic of conversation, Marty,” Glenda said reproachfully as they headed up the corridor to the lobby with the girls tagging along.

  “Yes, matron,” he intoned once again. “I humbly apologize, matron.”

  Greg was still parked at the small desk by the stage door. Sabrina was seated outside on a bench under a sycamore tree in the courtyard studying her lines.

  “Does Marty ever bathe or change his clothes?” I asked him.

  “Not as far as I can tell,” Greg said. “I blame it on Dini. He had a huge thing for her back when we were at Yale and I swear he’s been on a personal hygiene strike ever since they broke up. He’s still sweet on her. I guarantee you he’ll be on her in a flash if we ever split up.”