Foolscap

by Michael Malone

  “Yes, I would.” Theo sipped his beer, rocking.

  The stars all twinkled. “Hey kid. How’d you like Aesthetic Distance?”

  “As good as the best.”

  “I wrote it for you.”

  “I don’t think of it as me. Or Rhodora. I think of it as Billy and Ava.”

  “Whatever. She’s still the one.” The night was quiet. “For you.”

  “Why didn’t you finish it?”

  Quiet. In the high black boughs of the pines, stars hid blinking and starlight sparkled the tips of the dark needles.

  “Ford?”

  No sound.

  “Ford? Do you want me to finish it for you?”

  The pine trees shivered when the soft-blowing wind suddenly moved through them over the mountains.

  Then Theo heard in the wind what the playwright had said to him long ago when Ford had asked for a last line for Foolscap and Theo had answered, “Me?” “Is Marlowe in the kitchen?” the wind said.

  Setting the beer down beside the rocker, Theo leaned out over the porch rail and let the breeze slip inside his shirt. “But which ending? You’ve got all these endings.”

  In the soft soughing sound of the wind, Theo heard the word, “Choose.” The word rushed through the porch and off into the dark woods. “Choose.”

  Theo called out, “Ford, are you there?”

  “So long, kid.”

  “Ford, don’t go.”

  One of the summer’s shooting stars arched out of its sphere and fell through the sky.

  The next day, Theo called Dr. Ko’s office. She wouldn’t be back from vacation for a week. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to hear what she might say about “ghosts” anyhow. The return of the repressed. Projections. Externalized grief, Oedipal guilt, and all the rest.

  That evening he went to check his house in Rome. Rhodora’s things crowded colorfully on shelves and counters in every room: the bright sheen of her clothes in his closet, the mysterious alchemy of her salves and potions in his bathroom. There were pink geraniums on the kitchen table. And there, on the bed, was her blue quilt. And there, in the rocker by the fireplace, solid, palpable flesh, was Ford Rexford, his muddy boots propped on the white bricks. “You’re doing pretty good, kid,” he said. “I knew if I could get you over to England, break the pattern, I could pull you through your stall-out.”

  Theo shouted, “Don’t you dare! You’re claiming you did all those rotten things to me on purpose to save me! Bullshit!” Shaking his finger, he muttered, “Look, you’re not real. You’re just a projection of my grief. Repressed Oedipal guilt.”

  “Repressed?” Ford laughed. “Who are you kidding? Not repressed enough!”

  Theo strode into the kitchen, where he found Ford doing knee bends by the window. “Okay, okay,” the playwright was saying, “maybe I wasn’t thinking of saving you at the time. But it’s like art, kid. It’s like me. It doesn’t have to be real. It just has to be true.”

  Theo jerked a can of beer out of the refrigerator and slammed the door. “You knew I had to go wandering all over England? Sure.”

  Ford appeared to be pretending to do bar exercises in a ballet class. “I knew,” he said, “here was one good-looking, talented, dead person.”

  “You should talk, Ford! You made a hash of your whole life, trashed everybody who loved you, and now you are dead.”

  “Don’t rub it in. Don’t think I like being dead. Believe me, it’s no illusion.”

  Theo sipped his beer. “No,” he agreed, “death’s a fact.”

  “Well, fact’s no excuse for fiction,” the playwright said. “I was always clear about that. What I never quite got straight was: art’s no excuse for life.” He sprang upward in a parody of a flamboyant dancer’s leap, and disappeared.

  To hear Ford out at the lodge walking the night, to be shooting the breeze in his own house with Ford this way, was disturbing to Theo. So disturbing that on Saturday when he was back in Rome at Cavendish on his way to the library and he happened to see Maude Fletcher hurrying up the steps of Wilton Chapel, he followed her inside to talk with her. He found her preparing the altar for the next day’s service, and so he sat waiting until she’d finished. She wore her black clerical collar and blazer, and worked with a solemnity in her face that made Theo realize in a way he hadn’t before that she was someone for whom her vocation, her priesthood, was literally that—a calling.

  “Maude,” he said, as soon as they were seated together in a pew of the empty chapel. “What do you tell people if they say they’re seeing ghosts? I don’t mean the church’s official position, but you, what do you say? What would you tell me if I said, well, that Ford’s been talking to me the past few weeks?” Theo looked carefully at Maude; there was nothing skeptical or bemused in her eyes; she was just listening. “I mean,” he went on, “the voice isn’t inside my head. Well, maybe it is, of course, but it doesn’t sound like it. I’m sure you’ll say I’m all upset about Ford’s death, and I’m just projecting—”

  Maude nodded. “I’m sure you are upset. But maybe that makes it easier for you to hear Ford.”

  “You mean you think I could be hearing him? I don’t just believe I’m hearing him?”

  She pointed at the cross hanging above the altar. “Hey, far be it from me to talk against belief, right? Or life after death. You said you hear his voice. So I guess what I’d ask you is, What’s Ford saying to you? Is he saying helpful things?” Maude smiled. “I have a professional interest in Ford’s spiritual outcome. He and I spent a lot of hours working on his soul. Is he a good ghost, or a bad one?”

  “Ordinarily, I’d feel really stupid talking like this.” Theo looked around the wood-arched chapel. “But I think Ford wants…I think basically he’s trying to help me make some choices.”

  “About what, your work?”

  “Yes, that, and some, well, personal…Oh, never mind.”

  She looked with an earnest thoughtfulness for a long while into Theo’s eyes. Then she said, “My advice is to listen to him.”

  •••

  One month later, when Rhodora returned from Nashville, Theo asked her to come with him to New York. She said yes.

  A week later, when Dr. Theodore Ryan, Rexford’s literary executor, dropped Rhodora off at her new agent’s, he was as happy as he’d ever been. Accompanied by Bernard Bittermann, trustee of Rexford’s estate, he went to show the cover of the manuscript of Principles of Aesthetic Distance to Morris Schwinn and Amanda Mahan, Rexford’s longtime producers, in their Forty-fourth Street offices. At this meeting, Theo let Bernie do the arguing. He’d promised he would. And as Bernie had promised him in the delicatessen before they went up to see those producers, the argument was not especially pleasant. After all, Bernie had been extremely upset himself the night before, after he’d read the letter from Ford that Theo had brought with him to New York. The letter was more in the nature of a contractual obligation, really, neatly typed (by Theo for Ford on Ford’s typewriter) and carelessly signed (by Theo for Ford in Ford’s enormous, uptilted, unreadable signature). In it, the playwright stipulated that the premiere performance of Principles of Aesthetic Distance be directed by Barbara Sanchez, and be staged for a minimum run of two weeks at the Spitz Center for the Performing Arts, Cavendish University, Rome, North Carolina. All subsequent performances elsewhere would note in their programs that the play had premiered there.

  When Theo had called Jenny Harte to tell her he’d found a completed manuscript of Aesthetic Distance that Ford must have finished after she left Cornwall, along with instructions about premiering it at Cavendish, she was happy to hear it, and not at all suspicious.

  But Theo wasn’t surprised to encounter arguments. He had even argued with himself about this letter—about forging it, that is. On the other hand, he’d reminded himself that he was only typing out a verbal contract to which Ford had actu
ally been a party. He was only writing down exactly what Ford had promised him he would do; Ford had, after all, told Theo he could make this pledge to Dean Buddy Tupper Jr. as part of the plan to stop Cavendish from hiring Scottie Smith. Ford did, after all, want Barbara Sanchez to direct. Except for the obstacle of being dead, Ford would have signed the letter himself.

  But it wasn’t especially surprising that the producers did what the business manager had predicted. Exploded. Shouted and pounded. Sulked and spoke ill of the dead. It never occurred to anyone that Ford hadn’t left behind this insane stipulation. It sounded just like him to them. Now, this letter didn’t tell Schwinn and Mahan they weren’t to be the producers, or weren’t to have the profits, or weren’t to move the play anywhere they wanted to after those first two weeks. And it was true that they always tried out plays somewhere beyond the reach of Manhattan critics anyhow, and that they’d always had to fight with Ford about theaters, casts, designers, and directors. The producers didn’t even particularly mind the choice of Barbara Sanchez.

  What they minded was the implication that the choice wasn’t theirs to make. They minded very much being told they had to premiere a play of theirs anywhere, much less the Spitz Center, a place they’d never heard of, much less in North Carolina, a state so far beyond the reach of Manhattan critics that the critics might not even bother sneaking down to see it on the sly. The producers found it hard to say, without popping tendons and gagging on spittle, how very, very much they minded it.

  “Rome’s no farther than Louisville. You’ve done tryouts there,” said Bittermann mildly.

  “Everybody knows Louisville,” shrieked Amanda Mahan. She was as handsome as her husband, Adolphus, or would have been if her face hadn’t been so distorted with rage—something the publisher never allowed to happen to his face.

  “Ford’s out of his mind,” screamed Morris Schwinn, who was as short and ugly as his partner was tall and striking.

  “Nobody knew Louisville ’til somebody did a play there,” Bittermann replied with a calm smile.

  “Ford doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on,” Amanda yelled. Both producers had apparently forgotten that Ford was dead. “I’m sick and tired of these stunts of his.”

  “Let’s look at it this way,” Bittermann suggested. “You’ve never seen the Spitz Center—”

  “Spitz? What is this Spitz?” Schwinn spluttered.

  “Maybe it’s a great space, Morris. You don’t know.”

  “It’s a great space,” Theo said. The producers turned and glowered at the tall young man in his impeccable English suit as if he’d wandered in from Times Square without any clothes on at all.

  Bittermann was soothing. “Theo says Ford loved the space. Now, second thing, you haven’t read the play.”

  Theo held it up; they eyed it greedily.

  “Maybe Barbara Sanchez is perfect for it,” the accountant went on.

  “Ford thought she’d be perfect for it,” Theo said.

  “Third thing.” Bittermann took the manuscript from Theo and splayed open the pages with his thumb. “Who knew for a while there, that there was a play? Who knew you’d ever get it out of Ford?” This much the producers had to admit, and did so with disgusted nods. Bittermann nodded back at them. “I’ll be honest with you, until Theo told me he was coming up here with a completed manuscript, I was figuring Ford had stalled us again.”

  “It certainly wouldn’t be the first time,” Schwinn told his partner: no news to her. He angrily yanked at his belt. “I still think when he told us he had to fly back to Florida to get Act Three of Out of Bounds, he really flew down there and wrote it. I always thought that.”

  “Don’t mention Out of Bounds,” sighed Amanda Mahan. “Eight hundred thousand dollars and poof, over, dead, gone in a night.”

  Bittermann shrugged. “It’ll earn out,” he predicted. “You know how many calls from the West Coast about Ford I took yesterday? Thirty-nine, that’s how many calls, and that’s one day.”

  The producers looked at each other shrewdly. Then they looked at the wall. It was covered with posters of Ford Rexford plays in which they owned a share of the film rights.

  “Now, thanks to Theo, we’ve got a new play.” The accountant waved the manuscript in front of them, then returned it to Theo, who returned it to his briefcase.

  Amanda crossed her jeweled arms tightly across her breasts. “Now we’re on the subject, Theo,” she smiled nastily, “why didn’t you give the script to me a month ago? Buzzy Middendorf told me distinctly—”

  Theo said, “Ford didn’t feel ready to let go of it—”

  Schwinn yelled, “Two years ago, we advanced Ford—”

  Bernie held up a mild hand. “The point is, now we’ve got the play. I read it last night. I say it’s a good play.”

  This stopped both the producers and Theo. The accountant was not an effusive man. “Good” from him was raving hysterics from Frank Rich. He nodded at them that, yes, they’d heard him right. Then he said, “Morris. Amanda. You want to talk legal, we can do that. We can bring in the lawyers. Theo here as literary executor has his say.” Schwinn and Mahan glared at Theo. “As trustee, I’ve got my say. As heir, Pawnee’s got his say. You’ve met Pawnee.”

  The thought of Pawnee Rexford having his say sank Schwinn and Mahan into their leather chairs. They’d been in Sardi’s, opening night of Out of Bounds, when Pawnee had knocked his father into a table crowded with champagne glasses.

  Bittermann let the memory linger. Then he sat down across from them, methodically folding his glasses into their plastic case. “So we can do the lawyers. Or,” he slipped the case into his jacket pocket and tapped it to be sure it was there, “or we can tell ourselves, This is Ford’s last play. This is the way he wants it. Maybe this way isn’t so bad. Maybe we’ll read his play, we’ll go look at this Spitz Center, we’ll go talk to Barbara Sanchez. Maybe we made not such a small amount of money in the past thanks to Ford Rexford, and it wouldn’t maybe kill us to do something he asked us that, could be, it’s a good thing anyhow. Could be, it even makes us some more money. I, for one, would prefer we do things that way, like old friends.”

  Morris Schwinn’s homely face quivered. “I can’t believe Ford’s gone.”

  “Neither can I.” Bittermann patted the producer’s shoulder in sympathy. “Well, I’ve said my say. So. Is it a deal?” He waited with his customary patience.

  The producers looked at each other like bidding bridge partners who’d played together a long time, then they turned as one to Bittermann.

  “The Spitz gets no producing credit,” said Mrs. Mahan.

  “No royalties on first run or subsidiaries,” said Schwinn.

  “No say in production,” said Mahan. “We get 50 percent on ticket sales for the two weeks we’re there.”

  “Twenty-five, off the top. But they won’t ask rent,” said Bittermann. “And the Spitz gets a token on subsidiary. Five percent.”

  schwinn and mahan: Two and a half of the net. College and community—amateur rights only.

  bittermann: Three of the gross. Is it a deal?

  In the end, Schwinn and Mahan and Bittermann and Ryan agreed that it was a deal. Theo opened his briefcase and handed the producers each a neatly bound copy of the manuscript of Principles of Aesthetic Distance. They forced themselves to look up from the pages long enough to say good-bye.

  That afternoon, Theo watched Rhodora rehearse a music video.

  That night, he flew back to England. On the plane, Ford hogged the seat beside him, his elbows greedily spreading over the armrests.

  “Tell you the truth,” Ford said, “I’m jealous as spit. But I didn’t have the guts for her. Hope you do.”

  Theo kept writing on his legal pad. “His art was a kind of salvation for him and a curse. He could turn the human failure into plays, save himself by creating, the way he couldn’t sa
ve himself with people.”

  Ford slapped the page of words. “Biographers!” he snorted. Then he stepped into the aisle, running his hand through Theo’s hair as he crawled past him. “Okay, I’m out of here. I’m history!” He laughed, then gave Theo a slow salute, his hand falling gracefully open beside his tilted head. “Remember me, okay, kid?”

  The shape wavered, faded, was gone.

  “All my life, Ford,” Theo whispered. “All my life.”

  •••

  “Ryan! Wake up! We’re in Honiton.”

  “Poor old chap, quite gone, isn’t he?”

  A door slammed. Theo sat up in terror; he didn’t know why it was dark, where he was, or who was talking to him. “Oh,” he said, gave his face a rub, and looked around him. His hip hurt from where the edge of the attaché case had gouged into it. He was in the back seat of the yellow Bentley. The Bentley was in the inner court of a white Georgian coaching inn called, according to the sign at the archway, the Crown and Mitre. A crunchy noise came from the graveled courtyard. Jonas Marsh was out there doing a brisk set of jumping-jacks. Beside him Mole Fontwell was deliciously stretching his short arms up to the full autumn moon.

  Theo crawled out of the car and rubbed at his thighs. “We’re in Honiton?”

  “Astute as ever, Ryan!” Marsh started jogging in fast erratic little circles. “Let’s check in, let’s eat, and then—” He did a knee bend. “The game’s afoot!”

  “I guess I nodded off,” admitted Theo.

  The affable Mole Fontwell patted his arm. “‘Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?’”

  Jonas Marsh clapped his hands wildly to his ears, and did an odd leaping dance in the moonlight.

  Chapter 29

  Enter Two or Three Lords

  If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.

  —Twelfth Night

  The tides of fortune wax and wane at the whim of a goddess less constant than the moon. Those who paddle furiously after them may find themselves swept out to sea one moment, washed up on shore the next; those who swim against the tides usually drown. But the agile few who can float on the waves are known as fortune’s favorites. Such a one was Sir Francis Stanlow. This Devonshire gentleman, whom Charles the Second was to make first Earl of Newbolt, happened always to be at the right place at the right time with the right people. And when the tide was turning the right place into the wrong one, he always hopped back to dry sand. His serendipitous jumps were never calculated. Francis Stanlow wasn’t shrewd; far brighter men than he had sunk in the depths of their own ambition. Nor was he cautious, or especially decisive, or particularly in the know. He was simply lucky, as his family before him had been. On this natural gift, and the jealousy it wrought in a neighbor of Stanlow’s, hung the whole Foolscap scheme concocted by Fontwell and Marsh, and explained to their fellow conspirator as soon as he’d returned from America.