Violencia!

by Bruce Jay Friedman

  He paused here, and looked over at the director as if expecting him to take a bow.

  “In any case,” Welles continued, “with all that behind the song, I guarantee you it will be tremendous and stop the goddamned show cold.

  “Take it from the top, Tito, and play your heart out.”

  Welles began to sing a pretty melody. Gurney felt the composer had been much too critical of his voice. Though every bit as thin and reedy as Welles said it would be, it also came across as being authentic-sounding and therefore quite appealing. What troubled Gurney was that the lyric had nothing to do with homicide. It dealt instead with the joys of Paris—“not in the spring, not in the fall, not in the winter, but during the off-season.” How in the world Welles could imagine a tribute to the City of Love being delivered by a stageful of homicide dicks in the detectives’ bullpen was beyond Gurney, experience or no experience. He was certain, however, that Hartog would see immediately that the lyric had absolutely nothing to do with the show.

  When Welles had finished the song, the composer leaned forward expectantly.

  “What did you two guys think of it?”

  Gurney averted his eyes, not daring to express an opinion.

  To his surprise, Clement Hartog was silent for a moment, too, stroking that imaginary beard of his in solemn consideration.

  “Let me hear it again,” he said finally.

  Gurney was startled by the director’s failure to comment on the song’s screamingly obvious lack of appropriateness. Either Hartog, once again, was being overly diplomatic, or else he had some absurdist scheme for the show that he hadn’t discussed with Gurney.

  Welles ran through the song again, and Gurney enjoyed it just as much the second time. It was, no question, a catchy tune, and it was fun listening to Welles’ thin but romantic voice. But at the same time he was certain there was no way on earth it could be wedged into the detectivey musical.

  “Now look,” said Hartog, “I think you’ve written a brilliant number, Norman. But there are a couple of lines I have to seriously question.”

  “Which ones?” asked Welles in what seemed to be genuine shock.

  “Well, quite frankly, the Paris-during-the-off-season reference,” said Hartog. “What do you think, Paul?”

  “I agree,” said Gurney. “I admit I speak from total lack of experience, but I just don’t see how you can imagine a group of homicide dicks—and believe me, I know these guys—giving a thought to Paris in the off-season. I don’t think there’s more than one dick in a bureau who’s been to Paris in any season, and if he was, he’d be chasing a wise guy up the Eiffel tower. So it seems an odd way to get the show off the ground.”

  “I knew they would take that approach, didn’t I, Tito?” Welles said to his assistant in an ominously calm voice. “Didn’t I say they would come down hard on that aspect of the song?”

  “You did, Mr. Welles.”

  “Well, all I can say, fellas, is that you’re dead wrong. Now I’ve played ball with you guys up to now and I think you’ll admit I’ve been a good boy. But when you tell me that song is shit, you really back me to the wall. Fellas, I know that song will score for us. I agree there may be a phrase or two of the lyric that isn’t absolutely on the nose, but those are out-of-town fixes; I can do them in my sleep. Now you guys have just got to trust me. Goddammit, in my last show, Finally, Love, I took the entire chorus into the men’s room and rehearsed a new second-act opening number in stealth, behind the director’s back, and slipped the number by him, and it got healthy applause. The reviews of the show said we were garbage, but several of the critics singled that number out as having merit—and at least I wasn’t completely killed the way the book writer and the director were.

  “Now I’m really angry. You come in here, you listen to the song once, no orchestration, me with my thin, reedy voice—which incidentally has been under a lot of strain lately—and you expect it to sound like fucking Aida. I don’t know what you guys want from me.”

  “What if you were to adjust the lyric,” said Hartog calmly, “so that it referred to Precinct Nineteen in the off-season, instead of Paris? Would that work?”

  Gurney followed the director’s thinking, and although he didn’t consider it an ideal solution, he felt that a song about a precinct in the off-season might just slip by and would have the advantage of an awfully pretty melody behind it.

  “It won’t wash musically,” said Welles. “The entire construction will go down the drain, and I’ll get killed in the reviews. I’d rather yank the entire show off the boards, and have all of us go down the tubes together—even though there’s a chance that no one in the business will ever work with me again.

  “Don’t punch me in the mouth for this, Paul,” he said, turning to Gurney, “but I’m not changing a word of that song. I can’t. I’m just not built that way. I worked too hard on the goddamned thing.”

  Gurney thought that if Welles was really afraid of being smashed in the face, it took a certain amount of courage for him to be speaking this way.

  “I guess that’s it,” Gurney said to Hartog as the two shared a cab uptown.

  “I’m afraid so,” said Hartog. “We could take it to another composer, but I suppose it’s not morally right, since Norman really did originate the project. Besides, he’d sue our asses off. Norman loves to sue. He lives to sue.

  “It’s a damned shame, too,” Hartog continued, “because the sonofabitch really does have ability—that melody, for example— but he obviously hates to work.”

  Gurney suggested that even if Welles made some adjustment in the lyric, the song would continue to be way off target.

  “I disagree with you there,” said Hartog. “Of course, it’s not our precise notion. But I just don’t think people listen that hard to lyrics, and it’s my view that we’d probably get by with it and come in with something highly adequate.”

  Gurney thought back to the few shows he had seen and had to admit that whenever there was a stageful of people with strong voices, singing and dancing, the net effect was pleasing and it didn’t seem to matter what they were singing about.

  Hartog asked the cab to stop at a midtown address and apologized for not inviting Gurney upstairs.

  “Essie is a terrible housekeeper, and quite frankly I’m ashamed to have people visit. But it’s so bloody upsetting. I’m crazy about the material in this show, and no matter how many big commercial hits I have in the future, this is the one I feel America ought to see.”

  Gurney was surprised to find that he wasn’t quite as disappointed about the aborted project as he thought he might be. Of course, there was a chance he would never again get to work on a major musical comedy. In a sense, however, the work on Violencia had been interruptive; he had not quite gotten his fill of the simple, uncluttered bachelor life he had been enjoying. The death of the show meant he could get right back to it.

  That night, he bought a new corduroy bedspread and spent the evening rolling around and luxuriating on it. Just as he was about to fall asleep, he got a call from his ex-wife saying she had heard he was involved in a new musical and insisted on going to the opening night on his arm.

  “I’ve got to have your decision right now as to whether you’ll take me, Paul, because I need a lot of advance time so that I can buy an evening gown. I feel I deserve it for the years I spent with you while you had that shitty job and weren’t working on musicals. Don’t ask me to explain any further. I just want to go, and I don’t need any twenty-year-old bimbo cashing in on the deal.”

  Gurney said that he had not thought that far ahead, and as a matter of fact, there wasn’t going to be a musical anyway.

  “But even if there was—I admire and respect you, Gilda, but truthfully … looking at the whole picture … I’m not entirely sure I’d want to be with you that night.”

  “So there is somebody,” said Gilda. “What’s she like? Big tits, right?”

  “I don’t know what she’s like,” said Gurney, “because
there isn’t anybody at the moment. But there might be, a little further down the line … and I’d probably want to be with her. Would you want to go to an opening with me, knowing I’d prefer to be with someone else?”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “It’s me or no one.”

  Was it his imagination, Gurney wondered, or was everyone suddenly speaking in song lyrics?

  “Well, I can’t give you an answer on the spot.”

  “All right, but you’d better hurry up and decide, one way or the other. I’ve got my eye on a gown, and I need lots of time to get it fitted.

  “And if you decide against me,” she said, altering her tone, “I may very well have to change a few of my own plans.”

  There was a definite threat in her voice as she said goodbye, and although Gurney could not imagine which plans she had in mind, he was concerned as to what they might be. He had always been a little afraid of Gilda, in a curious way, and this apprehension, even after the divorce, was still reflexively there. What could she be threatening him with? A divorce? They’d already had one. Now they’d really get divorced? Could she be hinting that she would fuck every one of his friends at the Bureau? Go down the list methodically, ticking them off one by one? The scenario was an old nightmarish fantasy of his, but the truth was, he had it pretty much under control now. If she did sail right through the list, it would have nothing to do with him. He would feel sorry for her, since obviously the act would have been one of desperation. Although you never knew—possibly she’d enjoy every second of it.

  No doubt what troubled him more than anything was the possibility that she was saying something else: that they would never get together again. Ever. This was a dark thought. Because even though they had gone ahead with the legalities, he had never said a total and complete good-bye to Gilda Gurney. And he had always dreamed that they could, perhaps years later, somehow drift back together.

  He did not know at the moment if he would take her to the opening. And though the whole issue was academic—it looked as if there would be no show to take her to—it bothered him considerably.

  Scene 3

  Hartog called first thing the next morning.

  “I’ve got some good news for you, Paul. Our composer has decided to go along with us and change the lyric to ‘I love Precinct Nineteen, not in summer, not in fall or winter, but in the off-season.’ He has only one condition. At some point in the writing of the libretto, we have to make a change totally on his say, whether we want to or not, and no matter how firmly we are committed to whatever he wants changed. It can be the scene we love most in the show—ideally, he would like it to be the scene we love most. Norman admits this might be just a whim on his part, but he needs it for his ego. Anyway, I agreed to the arrangement on behalf of both of us. Needless to say, I’m thrilled, and I hope you are, too.”

  Gurney was not so sure he was thrilled. But he said he was and then hopped in a cab to join his two collaborators at Undertag’s office. Welles was there, fresh and beaming. Gurney, to his surprise, was truly glad to see him. He was even more surprised to discover that he was caught up in emotion—and mysteriously close to tears— as Welles embraced him with a thin-armed bear hug. All of this was so much different from the Bureau where a dick would rather stick his head in an oven than get caught being sentimental. And where a slight disagreement would often lead to years of hostility and a violent encounter.

  “I’ve decided to go along with you guys,” said Welles. “I just love you both so much and trust and respect your opinions, even though you, Paul, are a complete beginner and must learn that musicals are an entirely different can of peas from any other form. But what the hell, I’ve been wrong before. I happen to think I’m dead right in this case, but I’m going along as an act of good faith.”

  Welles then brought forth his lovely fiancée, Tippy, and said that if it was all right with Hartog and Gurney, he would like to involve her in the production.

  “Even though Tippy is highly educated, she would be willing to work as a gofer. All of us would then have the benefit of her tremendous wit and thinking ability. She’s the first girl I‘ve ever met who can talk about absolutely anything.”

  As Hartog considered the proposal, Gurney looked over at Tippy, who had a nice cashmered softness to her. There was no question he would welcome her as a member of the team. Her style was quite modest, totally contrary to that of Welles. They seemed an odd pair. Yet, when you least expected it, the composer was capable of great on-the-spot sweetness. Perhaps it was this quality that appealed to Tippy.

  Welles then said he had some wonderful news—his brother, Maury, was going to put up fifty thousand dollars for the show, his only condition being that an eleven-year-old Asian girl be included in the cast.

  “My brother swears that his friend Heri is a terrific little dancer,” the composer assured the group.

  Maury Welles soon appeared, along with Heri, who was pudgy, though not unattractive, and had a pair of squat and heavily muscled little legs. Gurney was immediately struck by the tremendous disparity in age between the two brothers, Norman Welles being no older than forty-two or so and his brother seeming to be ancient, perhaps in his nineties.

  A stray thought crossed Gurney’s mind: Was it possible that Maury Welles was really the composer’s father, posing as a brother to somehow cover up his illicit involvement with preteens shipped in from the Far East? If so, it would mean that not only Hartog’s mother, but Welles’ dad, too, would be tied closely to the production. Where would the nepotism end? Gurney thought of his own poor mom, who had spent her last days idling away in a Seattle rooming house. In her youth, Babs Gurney had been a popular dime-a-dance gal. Were she still alive, he might have been able to fly her east to work in the show, ideally in the choreography department, where she would have fit in beautifully.

  Maury Welles, who did not seem to see or hear too well, stumbled toward Heri and tickled her ribs.

  “Kitchy-kitchy-koo,” he said, then fell into a chair and immediately dozed off.

  In a sudden and surprisingly powerful directorial voice, Hartog said he would certainly give the stocky little Asian nubile a tryout.

  “But it must be done in a fair and unbiased manner, since everyone has to be impeccably cast in their roles.”

  Gurney was proud of the director for being so firm, since obviously this tack meant inviting Maury Welles’ disfavor, the possible loss of fifty thousand in cash—and torpedoing the show once again.

  Norman Welles, as though he hadn’t heard Hartog, put his arms around Gurney and the director—perhaps for Tippy’s benefit— and said: “Could you just faint over these two guys! They’re so honest, so imaginative. Paul here is brilliant and can write the hell out of anything. I’ve never been so cooperative in my life, doing things that tear my guts out and which I know in my heart are wrong—but I trust these two fellows, and that’s why I do them.”

  He then asked if Tippy could get started immediately. But Hartog, maintaining his firm stance, said that he didn’t see any way she could help at the moment.

  “Do you need any assistance, Paul?” he asked in his booming, authoritative voice.

  “No, I don’t,” said Paul, even though it broke his heart to do so. He speculated for a moment on all the times he had said no when he meant yes and guessed it came to at least a thousand. No doubt this waffling style accounted for the difference between having a great life and having one that was only so-so.

  Welles gathered up Tippy, his alleged brother Maury, and Heri, the diminutive Asian pepperpot. Before herding them off, he stopped to address his two collaborators.

  “I just have this crazy hunch about the show. I think there’s a cool million in it for each of us. But from time to time, I have the notion that perhaps we ought to do it totally our own way in some small low-grossing off-Broadway house and say fuck the money, let’s shoot for the artistic.

  “Goddammit, I’d be willing to do it that way, too,” he said, his face suddenly grim
, his eyebrows menacing.

  Oddly enough, Gurney felt he was quite sincere in his proposal.

  “You fellows want to go that way?” he asked.

  “I think we can do it our way on Broadway,” said Hartog.

  “I do, too,” said Gurney.

  He felt comfortable following the older man’s lead. And yet he was aware that he had witnessed a curious reversal of roles. Gurney had always marked Welles down as the commercial money-above-all fellow and Hartog as the tower of integrity. The exchange did not exactly make him change his mind, but he took note of the odd turn all the same.

  Gurney and Hartog then set about to work. It was clear that the basic collaboration would involve the two of them, with Welles going off on his own until a conference became necessary on a particular song. Gurney enjoyed the producer’s office, although it unsettled him each morning to have to walk past the almost endless parade of posters for Undertag turkeys, each one shot down by critics virtually the day after it opened. The social side of the project appealed to him as well, particularly the lunches and snacks he and the director ordered up from Jewish delicatessens throughout the day.

  Undertag put not only his offices at their disposal, but also his secretary, a rather drab middle-aged woman whose face might have been featured on one of the grim posters for an Undertag production that had folded after a single performance. The woman, Miss Hottle, had a powerful social conscience and spent her lunch hour carrying banners in parades and rallies for the underprivileged. On weekends, she took nightly walks through the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods, with the result that she was often beaten, mugged, sexually assaulted, or at the minimum, relieved of her valuables. When police came to her aid, her response was to scold them for their lack of understanding toward her attackers’ plight.

  As a former law enforcer of sorts, Gurney had often been present when suspects had been grilled and had seen them beaten and smacked about the head to get confessions, their every right violated at the dicks’ whim. Perhaps out of perversity, perhaps not, he made the mistake one day of telling Miss Hottle something he had never confided to anyone before—that there was a small corner of him that actually enjoyed seeing a confession squeezed out of a defenseless suspect.