Nearby, a playwright complained to his agent that after twenty-four rewrites and seventy-nine backers’ auditions, he appeared to be no closer to a Broadway stage than he’d been when he’d won first prize at the Louisville Festival six years ago. The playwright waved at a black comedienne in jeans, wearing sneakers with little puppets of the president and first lady on the toes, who was wandering around, growling, “Gimme a quarter,” just as she did in her famous television routine. Everyone laughed. It was much funnier than being told, “Gimme a quarter,” by the black panhandlers standing outside the Russian Tea Room.
Theo listened to an austere young woman try to sell a treatment of a story (which was in fact the plot, scene for scene, of Crime and Punishment) to one of the teenaged movie producers, a thin man in a voluminous pink shirt with black piping. The producer did not appear to know the story, and thought it had possibilities. Both of them drank water and nibbled at endive. Theo repeated to Mahan Ford’s description of Hollywoodeans as “small-town shopgirls and bellboys crowned at a Kansas sockhop, whose idea of spending money is still a fucking car! ’Least when I was out there,” Ford had said, “you could get a lot of good booze and beef. Now they’ve given those up for salmon pizza and buddy basketball.”
“You imitate him well.” The publisher smiled.
“I ought to by now,” agreed Theo.
He even was table-hopped himself, when a short, bosomy, tan woman suddenly squeezed into the booth beside him and rasped hoarsely, “My God! Aren’t you Benny and Lorraine’s boy? You don’t remember me.” (It was true; he didn’t.) “Joanie Berlin! I produced O Mistress Mine. What a turkey, my god, but your mother was heaven. Look at you! Shawn, right?”
“Theo.”
“Close enough, for a ditzy broad with Alzheimer’s, liar liar! You were the prettiest little boy anybody ever saw. We told Lorraine, ‘Commercials. He could make a fortune in commercials.’ But she wanted you to have a normal life. My god, Leo, and here you are a grown man. Kiss your mother. Dolly, I adore you. Bye!”
When their coffee arrived, Mahan stirred in a sugar lump with the small silver spoon. “And so Beckett said to me, ‘No, I don’t much care for Tennessee Williams. But I was a very great fancier of Esther Williams. Dangerous When Wet is my particular favorite. Was she Tennessee’s sister?’”
Theo, laughing, “Is that true?”
“Ah, ‘Is it true?’ The biographer’s question.”
And so finally the subject of The Book was opened. Theo charged into it by announcing bluntly, “I should tell you first, Mr. Mahan, that Ford Rexford deserted his fiancée in Tilting Rock in the most callous way, and ran off to England with my graduate student.”
“Ah yes, Miss Harte. Wonderful wide blue eyes.” Mahan’s own blue eyes searched for something in his memory and found it. “‘Jenny kissed me when we met/Jumping from the chair she sat in…Say I’m growing old, but add/Jenny kissed me.’ Leigh Hunt, wasn’t it? ‘Your’ graduate student? She certainly appeared to know more about Ford’s oeuvre than he did. Very knowledgeable about the photos in my office.”
Doubtless, it shouldn’t have been a surprise to hear that Ford Rexford had “dropped by” Mahan and Son with Jenny Harte in tow, nor that while there he had “ruthlessly manipulated an excessive advance” from the publisher for a new play “rather oddly” titled, Principles of Aesthetic Distance.
Theo bit down on his upper lip. “And did he show you this play?”
“Heavens, no. Said his London agent had the only copy. Well, you know Ford…Don’t care for the cheesecake?”
Theo put down the fork with which he was stabbing his dessert. “He said Josef Middendorf had the only copy?”
Nodding, Mahan popped a strawberry past his small perfect teeth. “Typical Ford. Of course, my wife and Morris Schwinn are going mad. As you know, they’re supposed to be producing this whatever-it-is. Buzzy has been behaving oddly, too. Playing cat-and-mouse, pretending not to be there when Amanda calls.”
“Did Middendorf happen to say where in England Ford was?”
“Claimed to have no idea. Amanda thinks Buzzy may be up to something shifty. Theater people! Myself, I’m only a reader. Aesthetic Distance—whatever in heaven’s name does that title mean?—will make an even dozen of Ford’s plays we’ve published individually, plus the collected volumes. A great source of pride to the house.” Mahan sipped delicately at his coffee. “But the best news is, Ford says he’s delighted with your biography! And that you’re really very close to finishing. I know you plan a big push this summer, and that should do it, hmm?” He tapped the large creamy napkin against his mouth, then chose another cigarette from the thin case. “Ford says—”
Theo’s coffee cup clattered from rage as he replaced it in the saucer. “Mr. Mahan—”
“Adolphus.”
“Ford Rexford is a liar. An immoral, irresponsible, manipulative, perverse, and excuse me, but really a shitty liar.”
Mahan smiled. “Ah, but we knew that before you began your research. Is that then the general theme you intend to follow in the book?”
“He’s a bastard.”
Mahan smiled again. “Now, that is news. I’d always understood him to say that his parents were veritable Babbitts of conformity. Suzanne! How wonderful to see you. Yes, much too long.”
Between Mahan’s witticisms and his popularity with the Tea Room’s clientele, quite a bit of time elapsed before Theo could make clear that, far from finished, the Official Life consisted of a crate of index cards, a carton of tapes, and four hundred and fifty pages of draft, all of which covered only the years 1923 to 1949 (when Ford’s first play opened off Broadway), and was probably riddled with lies anyhow. That the Official Subject had vanished. That the Official Biographer, believing as he did that scholarship must be without bias and feeling as he did that he could happily murder Ford Rexford with his bare hands, had come to the conclusion, with apologies, that he could not, and would not, go on with the book.
“Don’t be silly, Theo,” said Mahan. “More coffee?”
Theo charged ahead: That he felt terrible for any inconvenience his (irrevocable) decision would cause Mahan and Son, but that he was willing to turn over the draft and all his (considerable) research to the publishers in recompense for the first half of the advance they’d given him, which he frankly could not hope to repay in any lump sum, as he’d used it as part of the down payment on his house. But, in fairness, there were the four hundred plus pages, and it shouldn’t be hard to find another writer to put it all together—
“Really,” said Mahan, still smiling, though somewhat less agreeably. “Suppose I hired you to build me a house. Suppose you unloaded heaps of lumber in my yard and drove away calling, ‘Just put it all together.’ Hmmm? Would you expect to be paid even partially for that? Now what really seems to be the problem? You’re distressed by Ford’s character? But if biographers wrote only about decent people, who would read their books? Extremity, that’s what we want to hear about—the extravagantly promiscuous, the colossally ruthless, the excessive. Marilyn Monroe. Ernest Hemingway. It’s exorbitant good fortune and catastrophic bad luck that make a life worth reading. Do you think a monogamous J.F.K., declining into a sedate old age, would sell even ten thousand copies? Why, remainder tables are filled with Jimmy Carter’s fidelity to Rosalind. Carter was never a man destined to be shot at.”
“You anticipate Ford’s being gunned down?”
“He’s certainly the type, wouldn’t you say? A dark star. Murder, suicide, overdose. The fascinating type…Don’t change the subject, Theo.”
“Did I?”
“We agree the book’s already overdue?”
Wretched with guilt, Theo struggled with explanations, stumbling over excuses. Inside, he heard Ford’s voice—one of Ford’s “lessons on the world,” given on the porch of the pine chalet one soft summer night. “Kid, you fretting about being lat
e? After that pissant advance of Mahan’s? Why, they’ve thrown me dumb cocktail parties cost more than they gave you. Listen, when dealing with the Mahans and the Shuberts and probably the Buddy Tuppers too, never justify, you hear me? Never apologize. They see a throat, they bare their teeth. You make ’em beg, they lick your hand. So just look ’em in the eye and don’t say a word. Just nod. See—listen up, Rhodora; okay, don’t. You could learn from me, sweet lady, and you and your Dead Indians could stop singing for beer nuts at Cherokee’s. Yeah, likewise to you, babe. Theo, here’s the bulletin; the Mahans of the world think money’s everything, but deep down they’re scared maybe it’s not. Maybe art’s got more mojo than money. ’Specially if it doesn’t seem to give a flying fuck about their money. Indifference makes ’em real nervous. ’Course, money is everything, at least everything the world’s got to offer. And the world’s all they live in, the poor dumb shitkickers.”
Theo could hear Ford’s voice, but he went on thrusting excuses at Adolphus Mahan, who parried them easily with sharp-edged smiles, and then proved the truth of Ford’s lesson by blandly adding that he was sure Theo acknowledged his responsibility; by contract and by conscience, he had an obligation to turn in an acceptable book in September, or to return without delay the full sum of money he’d accepted for it. This was said to Theo, a poor academic!, when by Mahan’s own admission he’d just handed over who knows how much money to Ford for a play he hadn’t seen (and though Mahan didn’t know this, might never see, nor his wife ever produce it). No, the lowly scholar was to be called to account, when the great playwright had never repaid a cent of the huge advance Mahan had given him eight years ago to write his own damn life!
Beside them, a famous film goddess sneaked up and bit the back of a bald man’s neck. The man swatted behind him in terror until he realized who’d assaulted him, then shrieked “you!” with overwrought delight.
Theo’s hands clinched his knees. “Even if I felt I could honestly continue, I wouldn’t be able to work on it this summer. Something’s happened. I’m going to England tomorrow, and I don’t know when I’ll be back. You see, I’ve written a play—”
“You’ve written a play? Oh dear me.” Mahan lowered his glasses to suggest amusement. “Under Ford’s influence? Not exactly what we had in mind. Theo, you’re much too sensible a man to write plays.”
“Possibly so.” From the heat of his ears, Theo suspected they were the color of the banquette. “My point is, he took my only copy to England—”
“Check please, Karl. Thank you. Delicious, everything, yes.”
“—and as a matter of fact, Ford lied to you, because I have the only copy of his play, Principles of Aesthetic Distance. I know it’s the only copy because Bittermann and Middendorf have both been having fits on the phone to me trying to get me to send it to Ford in England, so I’m—”
“You have Ford’s play?” Mahan, whose interest had been visibly waning, now paused while uncapping his distinguished gold pen. “You have it?”
“Yes.”
“Have you read it?”
Theo almost said, “What there is of it,” but he stopped himself suddenly, thought a moment, and instead just nodded yes.
“Is it good?”
He thought of Ford’s advice. Another nod.
Mahan took off his glasses as if to get a different view of the young man across from him. “I’d very much like to see it.”
A pause. “So would a lot of people, including, I imagine, Mrs. Mahan and Morris Schwinn. Including Ford.”
A longer pause. Adolphus Mahan, as might be expected of so eminent an editor, read between the lines. Then he frowned. “Do I gather that you decline to return this manuscript?”
“That’s right.” Theo folded his hands on the table edge. “Not until I find Ford. This is between me and him.”
Mahan put back on his glasses and looked for the first time at Theo Ryan. “Your relationship with Ford appears to have gotten rather intense.”
Theo looked back at Mahan.
“Whatever your personal feelings, Theo, and I can certainly understand them, I can’t believe you of all people would destroy a Rexford play. Possibly the last Rexford play.” Mahan sighed—no doubt dreaming again of the sales that would follow the playwright’s (violent) demise.
Theo said nothing.
Mahan fiddled thoughtfully with his pen. “Has Ford stolen this play of yours? How did he get it?”
“We were working on it together. My computer crashed, and he ran off with the only copy we’d printed.”
Mahan considered. “Just a moment. Is this a play you two collaborated on? We’re talking about two Rexford plays here?”
Theo looked the publisher in the eye and didn’t say a word.
“Well, well, well.” Mahan signed in a quick neat hand the charge slip held out to him. “And Ford took it to England.”
“Yes, and I’m holding on to Aesthetic Distance until I get it back.”
“Well, well, well.”
Theo looked deliberately at his watch as he said, “I’m afraid I have to get going. Thank you very much for listening and for lunch, Mr. Mahan. Please think over what I said. How far is it to Random House from here, walking?”
Mahan told him as he slid his pen back into his dark, smooth jacket. “Business with Random House?”
Theo was in fact going to Random House to meet Steve Weiner, who was doing a book with them, but seeing the concern his question had evoked in Mahan, he simply nodded yes and slid out of the booth.
While Mahan was collecting their raincoats from the cloakroom, the young woman with wild hair suddenly appeared at Theo’s side and thrust an eight-by-ten glossy photo of herself into his hand. Her voice had a trained breathlessness. “I happened to overhear. You’ve written a play with Ford Rexford? Here. In case I’m right for anything. My agent’s on the back.” She showed him the name with a lethal-looking purple fingernail.
“I don’t think—” began Theo.
But she’d floated quickly back into the hubbub of fame.
“So you’re off to England.” Mahan held out the coat politely. “I envy you. Let’s say you’ll call me when you return, shall we? This autumn. And don’t worry about the book. In fact, I’ve had an idea. Send me the four hundred pages—”
“I did send them to you. I mailed them from Rome before I left.”
“Good, good. They’re probably somewhere in the wilderness of my office. I’ll read them with this new idea in mind.” He smiled radiantly at Theo, his eyes twinkling behind the distinguished horn-rimmed spectacles. “A multivolume! How about that? A trilogy. Why not? Ford deserves a trilogy. Call the first one something like, The Early Years. No, that was Churchill. The Texas Years. No. Preacher’s Boy. How’s that? I like that.”
“I just can’t think about it right now.” Theo shook his head.
“Of course you can’t.” The publisher nodded with sympathy. “Not now. Go get this play thing settled first. You and Ford will work it out, I feel sure. Of course, I certainly hope so.” (A warm chuckle.) “Before Amanda has a nervous breakdown. Excuse me. Bill! No, just leaving. Well, all right, I can stay a few minutes. Bill, meet Theo Ryan, one of our prized authors. Doing the Rexford biography. Good-bye then, Theo. Call me from London. I’ll read the manuscript right away. Wonderful to see you!”
In the Russian Tea Room, success glowed in the sheen of famous faces turning from side to side to see and be seen.
Chapter 18
Enter Several Strange Shapes
Let the world slide.
—Beaumont and Fletcher
Theo, Steve Weiner, Bette the interior decorator, and Dan the dull data-processor cousin were in the kitchen taking a break from Theo’s party. Like their cohorts nationwide, they were far less saturnalian than their parents’ generation, and expressed some wonder at the display of frivolity and filthy h
abits now rampant in the living room at one in the morning. Steve was driving Theo at 4:00 a.m. to Newark Airport where they were meeting Jorvelle, who had a stopover on her way from North Carolina to Holland. Later in the day, they’d drop Theo off at the inexpensive charter flight that would take him to Gatwick, England, via Iceland. His bags sat already packed, looking eager to go, on his bed.
As the youngsters lounged about, sedately munching appetizers, Theo’s father burst through the kitchen door, letting in shouts, shrieks, and thumping piano music. “Whole lot of shaking goin’ on!” sang Benny Ryan, lavishly sloshing gin into a glass pitcher. “Whatsa maddah, you bambini? Come out in the living room!” He shook the pitcher at them. “Maybelline, why can’t you be true? Nobody can play the old tunes the way your dad can, Bette. Give Papa Bear a hug.”
Bette, a severely sleek woman of thirty-six, suffered the embrace with unconvincing good humor.
“These boys are morons not to snap you up!” The elder Ryan turned her to face them. “Hey, Stevereeno, how ’bout this lady!” He swung her back. “Steve just had his book accepted by Random House.”
“I know,” said Bette, disentangling herself. “He told me.”
“Serious stuff. Not my bag, but I love you, Steve.” (Steve Weiner also endured a fierce hug from the ebullient Mr. Ryan.) “And my boy Theo’s writing the Ford Rexford story for Mahan and Son. He and Mr. Mahan had lunch today at the Russian Tea Room.”
“I know,” said Bette.
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