Theo muttered, “Guy in a leather jacket?”
But Rexford turned to Jenny, pressed her hand in both of his. “Jenny Harte, you are the heart of this beautiful country. I look at you, I see Midwestern wheat and big white clouds, blue sky on gold hills.”
She laughed cheerfully. “Ford, you can lay it on.”
“I sure can,” he agreed, and invited her to come have a beer with everybody at the Bomb Shelter. Theo was surprised that she appeared to know Rexford fairly well; but her dissertation was about the endings of modern plays, including Ford Rexford’s, and no doubt she’d interviewed him. Not that you had to know the man well to call him by his first name. Thousands of people did.
The Bomb Shelter was Rome’s (in Steve Weiner’s phrase) “artfart hangout,” as opposed to its “upscale New South” and “down-home white trash” hangouts. It was lined with vinyl booths and crammed with fifties’ memorabilia—from nude mannequins wearing “I Like Ike” buttons as pasties to posters of Ronald Reagan advertising Arrow shirts. Cajoling the deejay there into playing only solid fifties gold, Ford Rexford led onto the dance floor a Stroll line of all the drama club members he’d invited along. They did old dances that Jenny Harte had never heard of: the Hully-Gully, the Hokie-Pokie, the Shag. Jorvelle Wakefield then tried to get Theo to teach them all how to Do the Duck, but by then he had burned out the surge that had carried him through his audition. Suddenly exhausted, he begged off, saying he felt like taking a walk alone.
After Theo left, the group drank more pitchers of beer, and when the Bomb Shelter evicted them, they bunny-hopped out into the silent streets of Rome, where at 2:00 a.m., Steve Weiner and Jorvelle Wakefield were given a warning by the police for creating a public disturbance. They’d actually been trying to rescue Ford Rexford, who, after swilling a pint of bourbon hidden in his glove compartment, had drag-raced his grimy gold Lincoln down Main Street, smacked it into a telephone pole, and socked Steve when he tried to help him out of the car.
•••
At 2:00 a.m., Thayer Iddesleigh was also in trouble. In bed beside his wife (as she tried to sleep with the covers over her head), he asked her one too many times if she thought it would offend people in Rome to have a black woman pretend to be in love with a white man, and vice versa, even if Jorvelle Wakefield had a comedy role and, according to his source, Bill Robey was a homosexual anyhow.
“Thayer, please! I honestly just don’t give a shit,” snapped Mrs. Iddesleigh, burrowing under her pillow.
Iddy sprang out of the canopied bed in his Chorus Line nightshirt. “Doris, I won’t listen to you talk like that!” Maybe a famous playwright could speak to him obscenely, but not his own wife!
“Then leave,” was the mutinous muffled response.
So, back at the kitchen table (alone and lonely, as all leaders must ultimately be), the director sat studying his Guys and Dolls cast list. Montemaggio for Big Julie, easy. Jenny Harte could dance in the Hot Box Club and march in the Salvation Army both; she was the hardest worker he had. Iddy put an arrow here, scratched a hopeful there, and finally, feeling proud of himself, drew interlocking circles around the names Jorvelle Wakefield and Bill Robey. If the Jaycees boycotted them, they’d sell out the house! Then he had a glass of warm milk. Then he stared at the words Theo Ryan. And the words Maude Fletcher.
It should be said, to the credit of Dr. Iddesleigh, that in struggling toward a decision, he was not swayed by the fame of Ford Rexford (if anything, that man’s dirty-mouthed recommendation of “the big guy” was further ammunition—if any were needed—in his animosity toward Ryan), nor by the flirtatious friendship of Tara Bridges (a friendship probably about to come to an end once she learned that she was playing a Hot Box Club hoofer when she’d always played a lead—and that she’d lost Miss Adelaide to someone much younger, a black woman hired by her own husband, and paid—according to Iddy’s source—as much as her husband was). No, Dr. Iddesleigh was swayed only by his addiction to that intoxicant, the Stage. He wanted to do the best Guys and Dolls he possibly could. When he played his recording of the original Broadway cast, he wanted that. He wanted the show to go on right.
Maude Fletcher. He tapped her audition sheet. New member, Religion Department, acting chaplain while the real one was on leave. Some tap and jazz. Divinity school lead in Godspell. It wasn’t much. Nice voice though. Nice face. But too tall. Good gimmick, though, to have the college chaplain play a Salvation Army goodie-two-shoes. But with Joel Elliott (Sociology) penciled in as Sky Masterson, much too tall.
Theo Ryan: college, grad school leads. Come on, what was this supposed to mean? “Small parts, professional stock, national tours, off-Broadway, etc.,” and then over two dozen shows scrawled out in odd abbreviations—Okla., Call Madam, Sound Music, H. Dolly, S. Pacific, P.J. Game. Sure! Where, when? The creature was an academic. He’d spent his life in college (Yale!); he’d been here at Cavendish seven years. What had he done, crawled onto those professional stages in his diapers? “Voice, tap, little piano, guitar, juggling”! Come on! “Some ventriloquism, fencing, and card tricks”? What a preposterous liar the creature was. And yet, he was handsome, that had to be admitted. And he could certainly carry a tune; in fact, he had a definite take on that song already; you’d have to say, he gave it his all tonight. And you could hear him—more than was always true with Joel Elliott. He could dance; despite the ridiculous size of his feet. “Six-three; one-eighty-two.” God, he was big. Even barefoot, Maude Fletcher would tower over Joel Elliott. Why did people have to be so tall?
And wouldn’t there be a sweet kind of noblesse oblige in casting his rival? In directing his rival? Telling his rival, do this, do that, no good, again, again. “Director’s the boss.” The great Ford Rexford himself had said it, and surely Ryan must take that man’s word as gospel. Iddy sipped his milk, tapped his pencil.
•••
As Theo’s fate was being decided in the country kitchen of that raised ranch a mile away from campus, and while the reveling thespians downtown were dancing out of the Bomb Shelter and into the arms of the Rome police, the tall tawny-haired drama professor was standing on the sidewalk beside Wilton Chapel looking at a light high up in the rounded bay window of a white-framed Victorian house that stood bristling back at him with pointed peaks and latticed turrets. He leaned against its crooked iron gate and waited.
But the Reverend Maude Fletcher failed to open her window, if indeed that was her window where the light still burned. Unlike Juliet, she declined to appear and call down to him her thoughts about Echo’s cave and birds on silken threads, or her ideas about parting being any kind of sorrow at all. Theo waited until he heard the clock bells of the chapel chime two deep, sonorous peals. Then he started home, so preoccupied with his thoughts that, while he heard a motor’s roar and even hurried across the street at the sound, he failed to notice that the car thundering past him toward the chapel was a black BMW convertible. He certainly didn’t see the man and the woman inside it, nor realize that the car was slowing to a stop in front of the crooked iron gate, that the Cavendish chaplain Maude Fletcher was getting out, leaning over to give Herbert Crawford, superstar professor of history, one last long kiss.
On Vance Walk, Theo stopped and listened to the night. It was so quiet he felt as if he could hear the petals of white cherry blossoms floating down in moonlight onto the glinting stone path. Then he jogged on through the streets of Rome—where Steve Weiner, staggering down Main Street, said to Jorvelle Wakefield, whose shoulder he was holding on to, “That looked like Theo wandering across the intersection up there!”
An hour later, Dr. Thayer Iddesleigh finally made his decision. Bob Fosse, Gower Champion, Hal Prince would have been proud of him. He was proud of him. Maude Fletcher for Sergeant Sarah Brown. Joel Elliott for Nicely-Nicely. And Theo Ryan, whom he hated the sight of, for the leading role of Sky Masterson. He’d make the phone calls tomorrow morning before he changed his mind. Iddy
put down his pencil and tiptoed upstairs. He checked the bunk beds of his sleeping sons and the twin beds of his sleeping daughters, and then he rejoined his wife, removing the pillow from her rumpled hair.
•••
At dawn, Rhodora Potts returned from Gatlinburg and listened to Ford’s phone message to come get him out of jail. She called Theo, and then she drove to Rome in her brother T.W.’s truck, still wearing her fringed sequined cowgirl skirt from her gig with the Dead Indians. As Theo was phoning Bernie Bittermann for the bail, Rhodora slapped the playwright through the bars of his cell. She then left him there with instructions to grow up before he died, predictions that he didn’t have long to do it in, and vows not to marry him even if he did. He asked her why, with his best lopsided grin.
“You’re an asshole, that’s why,” said Rhodora. She flung her long ebony hair back off her shoulder, gave her lover a well-known gesture with one long scarlet-nailed finger, told the sheriff, “Throw the goddamn book at him,” grabbed Theo’s arm, and left.
As they stood beside the truck, the sky indigo blue against the mountains, Theo leaned over to kiss Rhodora goodnight. He meant to kiss her cheek, but somehow his lips were against hers, and somehow she was kissing him back. They kissed a long time. Then they both pulled away, alarmed.
“Goddammit,” said Rhodora, angrily shaking back her hair. “I’ve got enough problems without adding this on. Let’s just forget about this right now. All right?”
“All right,” Theo said, but his body wasn’t forgetting at all.
Chapter 9
Enter Disguised
Hamlet: You played once i’ th’ university, you say?
Polonius: That I did, my lord.
—Hamlet
On a crisp May morning two weeks after Theo Ryan had accepted his new role as a leading man, he was on his way to see Dean Buddy Tupper Jr. Despite a grueling rehearsal last night and little sleep after that, he swung his briefcase as he strode along Vance Walk; he tapped, kicked, paused, corrected his footwork, strode on.
Here came the ancient English professors, Dum and Dee, both—despite the season—in tartan plaid hunting caps with the flaps lowered, scurrying toward him, out for their early-morning constitutional; Dum in the lead, Dee hobbling after him, shouting, “Slow down, gawddammit, Fred! Slow down!”
“Morning, Dr. Lovell. Morning, Dr. Mortimer,” called Theo cheerfully.
“Humf!” said Dum, his nostrils flared.
“Mawnin’, young man, lovely mawnin’,” said Dee.
Dum stopped to pinch his old friend’s arm spitefully. “What are you being so nice to him for?”
“Stop that, Fred! Who?”
“That was that Theo Ryan!”
“No, it wasn’t!” Dee pushed disgustedly past his old friend into the lead, and they hurried on.
Theo smiled benevolently after them, twirled the briefcase by its handle, hopped back, tapped forward, strode on.
He wasn’t really surprised that old Mortimer failed to recognize him. For one thing, he wasn’t wearing corduroys; he had on the new white pleated trousers and the new white linen sports jacket he’d just bought, and the new leather loafers with which he’d replaced his scruffed sneakers. That high roller Sky Masterson was such a flamboyant dresser that after his first costume fitting, Theo had begun to feel a little drab even in his Pretty New corduroys, and had secretly traveled to Asheville to make these purchases. Despite his horror at the obvious rise in the cost of clothes since he’d last been forced to buy any, he’d proved a large lump of malleable clay in the fluttering hands of an artistic sales clerk who’d worked on him for hours before finally sighing, “There now! Look in the mirror.”
For another thing, Theo had been ordered by Iddesleigh to shave off his mustache and to wear contact lenses instead of his black-rimmed glasses. “Director’s the boss,” Iddy had smugly quoted Ford Rexford at him. So far, the new performer had declined Iddy’s advice that he carry a pair of dice in his pocket in order to “feel his way into the characterization,” but Sky Masterson, on his own, was feeling his way into Theo Ryan.
His friends Jorvelle and Steve, of course, had noticed that he walked faster, hummed when he walked, and smiled at everyone he saw, sometimes to their alarm. They told him so enthusiastically what a great improvement it all was, from—in their blithely heartless phrase—“Theo the Moper,” that he was quite hurt. Jorvelle commented frequently on his improved appearance. “Now you can see ’em, you got the thickest eyelashes I ever saw on a white man,” she said on one evening out. And, “Honkie, you are getting better-looking by the day,” she said on another. “Don’t overdo it,” said Steve. But apart from them, his delighted therapist Dr. Ko, and now old Mortimer, no one else had said anything about the difference in Theo the Singing, Dancing Guy of Guys and Dolls, and the apparently drab shadow of a self who’d bumbled by in the past months. Maude Fletcher certainly hadn’t made any observations about his eyelashes.
Not that he had seen Maude Fletcher anywhere but on the stage of the Spitz Center during rehearsals; every night as Sergeant Sarah Brown she acted as if she were falling in love with him; every night as Maude Fletcher she pleasantly declined all invitations to coffee or anything else as soon as the rehearsals ended. There was, Theo noticed, a black convertible that occasionally drove slowly past the theater, and there was a shadowy man in black leather driving it, but so far, Theo had no idea who the man was. To him, Maude Fletcher was always pleasant, friendly, and in a hurry.
Perhaps in her theological sessions with Ford Rexford she was saving the playwright’s soul, but if so, neither had confided in Theo. Rexford hadn’t mentioned her when he called to give Theo the “poop” about Scottie Smith, or when he’d called to admit that he hadn’t gotten around yet to reading Foolscap. (No surprise there.) That Rexford was back in Rhodora’s good graces after signing up with a chaplain, Theo had learned from Rhodora herself when they’d met a few days ago at the deli in the Super Winn-Dixie (the only place in the county that sold pastrami). He’d been avoiding her since the unexpected kiss outside the police station, and when they met he was both relieved and disappointed that she acted as if it hadn’t happened.
“Ford,” she said, holding her long black hair off the back of her neck to cool it, “Ford just might be gittin’ his shit together, ’stead of tryin’ to kill his dumb self,” leaving her to make the travel arrangements for shipping his “used-up carcass on home to that dump, Bowie, Texas,” where apparently in a maudlin moment he’d begged her, and she’d promised, to bury him. “Nobody,” said Rhodora, “can be that mad at God without a whole lot of faith. The asshole’s just got God mixed up with his daddy.” (This was precisely, if more bluntly phrased, the gist of the Nash-Gantz essay, “Phallocentric Feud.”)
Theo continued to find Rhodora’s own faith in the power of religion peculiar, given her contempt for the rest of civilization, but she was apparently determined to marry in a church in June or not at all. Asked why, she said frankly, “When Ford says, ‘I do,’ I want him paying attention; I want him scared shitless of a lie. And I don’t know anybody mean enough to scare that snake but me and Almighty God. You know he’s scared of me, don’t you, Theo?”
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised.” He held up his hands in surrender.
She laughed. “You look real good today. Those dumbass glasses didn’t do a thing for you. And that mustache looked like something off a dead fox.”
“Gee, thanks, Rhodora.”
“Well, I said you look good now. I’m an honest woman, Theo Ryan. You know where you stand. That’s what scares that fucker Ford; he’s so used to evahbody lickin’ his butt.”
She added, when they bumped into each other again at organic vegetables, “Your preacher friend better not try haulin’ Ford’s ashes, you tell her that, hear? I’ll rip her goddamn head off and beat him to death with it.”
“I hardly
think Maude’s likely to do that!” Theo snapped, glaring at Rhodora through mist sprayed so thickly down on the lettuce that they might have been chatting in a rain forest.
“You’re real sweet, sugar,” was Miss Potts’s cryptic reply, as she dumped a bunch of kale into her cart and rattled off in tight shorts and an electric-blue tank top.
“Ford loves you,” he yelled after her. “He’s serious.”
“I guess,” Rhodora called over her bare shoulder.
Theo stared at those shoulders until she disappeared around a corner. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and squeezed his nails into his palms. As he stood there, a thin woman in a pink pantsuit abruptly thrust a tomato in his face. “Look here!” she exclaimed. “Somebody ate a little teeny bite out of half a dozen of these tomatoes, and then put them back with the teeth holes facing down. Burns me to bits. Doesn’t it you?”
“It certainly does,” Theo agreed, only recognizing Tara Bridges when she shook her hands in front of his eyes and shouted, “Theo! Where are you?” (Very much as his mother had so often done in the past.) “I swear, you’re as bad as Norman. Now listen. Are you doing anything to stop Marcus from taking over the department like he’s always wanted to?”
Theo pulled himself into focus. “I’m telling everybody Steve would be a better chairman. All Marcus wants is the title and the props, not the job.”
“I’m mad at Steve. He encouraged that Jorvelle to push her way into C.F.D.C. and hog one of the leads.”
Ever since Tara Bridges had lost the part of Miss Adelaide, she’d been referring to the youngest Ludd Chair as “that Jorvelle.” “Oh, Tara, she didn’t,” said Theo. “That’s the whole fun of amateur theater to me, that people don’t push and hog.”
Mrs. Bridges’s laugh was caustic. “Honey, you and my husband are nothing but little babies in the woods.” With that contemptuous appraisal, she waved good-bye, swerving her cart deftly around him; it was filled with dozens of gourmet microwave meals. Theo walked on, annoyed by all these accusations of naïveté, angered by Rhodora’s suspicions of Maude Fletcher and her lack of faith in Rexford, whom presumably she intended to marry in a month.
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