Violencia!

by Bruce Jay Friedman

  On occasion, the chorus kids, too, came into the restaurant after work, but they took seperate tables, the protocol being that they did not sit with “management.” Gurney wanted to be in their outsiders’ group, too, which was peripheral to a group that was outside to begin with—and consequently had a certain mystique to it.

  “We’re just chorus kids,” they would say, implying that they were unimportant and not to be taken seriously. But there was a reverse snobbery in their attitude.

  One of them was a slender blonde girl named Holly who was something of a contortionist. She never stopped maneuvering and manipulating her body, even after work, twisting it into odd and somewhat inviting postures, sometimes in the restaurant. Norman Welles’ friend, Tippy, as production assistant, was now a full-fledged member of the team; as such, she was aware of every bit of backstage intrigue, particularly the various romantic entanglements involving members of the cast. Taking Gurney aside one day, she confided that Holly was insane about him.

  “She almost faints every time you walk by, or even when you enter a room.”

  Gurney had no idea the dancer/contortionist had such feelings about him, but he was pleased to hear that she did. He thought of calling her after work, but decided to hold off, for fear of throwing off the rehearsals and starting an affair that might distract her from her work and make the other girls jealous. There would be plenty of time out of town to scoop up the delightful and flexible little dancer.

  On occasion, Essie Hartog would join the cast at the restaurant and, much to her son’s displeasure, quickly get pissed to the gills. She became quite coarse and vulgar, reverting to her old Berlin cabaret style, insulting members of the company without discrimination. Han Nihsu was a favorite target.

  “So you think you’re going to make a dancer out of me, do you?” said Essie Hartog. “That’ll be the day, you slant-eyed cunt.”

  Although Clement Hartog was the master of his mom on the stage, he seemed unable to handle her when she was in this condition. He would merely slump over pathetically and get quietly pissed along with her.

  At one point, she seemed to sober up for a moment, gripping Gurney’s leg and giving it a squeeze of encouragement.

  “Don’t worry, darling. I know how hard you’ve worked on this show. And if it kills me, I‘m going to see to it that your precious lines are delivered with all the pain and agony and truth with which you wrote them.”

  She topped this off by kissing him on the cheek and crying into his neck and generally making him feel awful, since he hadn’t worked on Violencia with any of the agony she referred to. As a matter of fact, quite to the contrary, he had done a pretty good job of goofing off, at least since rehearsals began.

  He loved the tightness and fraternity of the little band. Only in one sense did he feel injured by it. There was no way to work in an outsider, and this held true for Angela, even though he felt closer to her than ever. When she came to the restaurant, the theatre people cleared a small space for her, but they weren’t really making room for her at all. She had little to say and when she did speak, her brave remarks such as “I bought a great dress today” were out of joint and more or less special in the wrong way, as though a spotlight had been pointed at her. Still, she was very good and understanding about the way she was treated, taking whatever crumbs of attention that were available and happy enough simply to be with Gurney.

  Only late at night, when he slept with her, was Gurney entirely comfortable with Angela. She took exquisite care of him, so much so that he began to think of her as a member of some tribe whose women are famed for never allowing their men to suffer erotic deprival. At the slightest sign of it, they would jump forth to drain it away in a single hawklike draft. At times, he would awaken to find her inches from him, cross-legged, sharp-eyed, watching his body for the slightest quiver of need, guarding him like a gypsy fire, her sacred, devotional duty being to see to it that he never got the least bit overhorny.

  Occasionally, during rehearsals, she would take a seat in the extreme rear of the Pokerino. Now and then, Gurney, who every so often helped Hartog with the scene interpretations, would wander back to Angela and stroke her arm. Each time he did this, he had the odd and preposterous notion that his ex-wife had marched in to catch him at it; he would wheel around to make sure it wasn’t true.

  But one evening, Gilda Gurney actually did show up.

  “I was just passing by,” she said, “and I thought I’d say hello.”

  He let her watch some of the rehearsal, not introducing her to any of the cast and, to his discredit, feeling smug. It was as if he were saying: “See what you missed? See what you could have had if you’d been a devoted wife and not kept flirting with other dicks? Tough luck, Gilda. And I may not even take you to the opening, either. What do you think of that?”

  The appearance in the theatre of Gurney’s ex-wife made him think of his poor mother and what a thrill she would have had knowing that her son was involved in a Broadway show. Babs Gurney had become a heavy drinker in her last years. Barely able to get a coherent sentence out of her, he had finally thrown up his hands and stayed away from her. One night, after weeks of not speaking to her, he had called, and sure enough, she was totally out of it, babbling a lot of what he felt was nonsense. He hung up in a fury. What a waste, he’d thought. She had an excellent mind; they could have been such good friends if she hadn’t spent all that time knocking them back. That was the night she died.

  A neighbor reported that she’d been sober for a week and had been waiting for Gurney to call, to tell him what a “good girl” she’d been. But on the night of his call, Babs Gurney had begun to gasp for air; what Gurney had taken to be nonsensical blather had actually been the short-of-breath start of a heart attack and a desperate cry for help. That was a difficult time for Gurney. If the episode had come about at an earlier period of his life, he might have ended up in an institution, blanketed with guilt. But he pulled himself through, arguing that if she was sober on this particular night, she was in a stupor on a thousand others. He wasn’t going to whip himself for a lifetime because he had chosen Babs Gurney’s one good night to hang up on her.

  It was slippery going, but he talked himself into all of this. And it was probably a lucky thing that he did.

  For all of Gurney’s cynical detachment from the actual work, and despite Hartog’s many concerns, the show seemed to be coming together and marching forward on its own. Essie Hartog, who’d had some early difficulty picking up the beat and rhythm of the Homicide Chief’s style, finally got the hang of it; both on and off the stage, she was the Chief, and in many ways, more tough and pigheaded than the character Gurney had contrived. Once Hobie Hancock made peace with the essential blackness of his role, and its importance to Black America, he too settled into his role. Matt Tanker took on the firm demeanor of the Homicide Chief’s detective son, drawing, quite candidly, from his days as a vice dick who knew that the best way to get around a dangerous sexual weirdo was to treat the individual with some dignity.

  Each member of the cast, in turn, began to settle into his or her homicidal role.

  For Gurney, rehearsals were like being around a homicide bureau again, but one that was much more murderous and violent than any he had ever known. Each day, in the theatre, he heard the whine of bullets, the hiss of switchblades, the thwack of hard rubber coming down on heads. There was a constant scream of night sirens, coming from ambulances filled with bleeding hoods and wounded dicks.

  One day, he could have sworn he heard police dogs barking savagely in the wings. He tracked down the sound and found its source in a small dressing room in the Pokerino basement. Though he opened the door cautiously, he almost had his throat torn out by three chained-up rottweilers.

  “Why didn’t someone tell me about this?” he asked an assistant stage manager.

  “Mr. Hartog wants them in there,” said the man. “He feels their presence helps the rehearsals and is thinking of turning them loose on stage.”
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  Once Gurney recovered from his fright, he began to see what the director was up to. And he agreed it would be a bold idea to have the bloodthirsty hounds in full view throughout the performance. The device would keep the audience tense, never knowing whether the rottweilers might break loose and tear people in the front rows to pieces—a neat way to keep viewers totally involved.

  Each member of the tight-knit cast pitched in with a will, totally embracing the life of his or her role. In the final week of rehearsal, two minor players, cast as homicide dicks, were picked up by Broadway police for yanking a derelict into a deserted alley and working him over until he was close to death. Clement Hartog thought he would see what he could do to arrange for their release, but Philip Undertag had already interceded, using his influence to get the charges dropped. When they turned up at rehearsals the next day, the cast cheered them lustily.

  It surprised Gurney that they were completely remorseless.

  “I’d do it again,” said one of them. “The cocksucker mouthed off to us in public.”

  “I’d like to know what happened to respect for the badge,” said the other with a look of disgust.

  “It’s all right,” said Hartog softly, speculatively. “I don’t know if I would have gone as far as you fellows did, but I fully approve. I like that in an actor. It’s good for the show.”

  Loving the rehearsals as he did, Gurney wished they could continue forever. But the out-of-town opening date rushed toward them as though it was an express train and they were strapped to the tracks.

  The approaching date stimulated the cast, making them so unruly and violent they virtually foamed at the mouth. But it bothered Clement Hartog.

  “I just wish we had more time,” he said. “With breathing room, I always felt I could do anything.”

  Prior to the Broadway opening, there were to be two out-of-town tryout cities—the first, Winslow in the Pacific Northwest, and the second the larger town of Holliman in one of the Southern border states. Hartog much preferred the traditional tryout cities of Boston, New Haven, and Philadelphia, trusting the critics in these venues, who were tough but fair, and whose comments could be useful in gearing a show for its Broadway opening. He was frankly baffled by the Undertag office’s choice of the little-known cities in far-flung parts of the United States.

  “Don’t sell Winslow and Holliman short,” said Undertag. “I’ll concede that the theatre is a little foreign to Winslow. But Holliman has real roots in drama and some awfully sound critics who understand the growing pains of an incoming musical. Not only that, but Winslow has a university nearby, and both have fine little subscription lists that will help us make back all that money I’m laying out.”

  Undertag then admitted that the incoming-show traffic had tied up the three major tryout towns and that he simply could not get Violencia booked into them.

  “But I’m far from displeased with Winslow and Holliman.”

  Hartog was upset by these choices, but not devastated.

  “Finally,” he said, “an audience is an audience. Our show is a little special, but if you’ve got something going for you, you can kill them in either Paris or Toledo. Actually, I’m more concerned about the show itself. I feel we’re underrehearsed and a good week behind schedule. It’s a bloody crime to be opening in this condition.”

  “I agree with you on that,” said Norman Welles. “Why don’t we grab Undertag by the neck and get the little sonofabitch to postpone for a week? We need every possible advantage for the show and for my songs to realize their full potential.”

  They checked with Mr. Mortimer, who said it would cost the producers a fortune to postpone.

  “But I think you fellows are going to be surprised at the way your show pulls together,” he said with a pixieish grin.

  Mr. Mortimer had done more shows than anyone could count. Thus, even Hartog was heartened by his attitude. But Welles still insisted they fight for more time.

  “My numbers are so underdrilled it’s pathetic. And I’m positive I’m going to be destroyed in the notices. I’ve never taken a show on the road in this kind of shape.”

  But Clement Hartog seemed defeated and lacked the heart for this particular battle.

  The night before he left for Winslow, Gurney had a sad farewell dinner with Angela, who accepted the news of his departure without a murmur. She simply lowered her great eyes and kissed him good-bye. At times he wished she would give him more of a fight on things. Gilda Gurney would have made him feel awful about leaving and not taking her along, even though he was making the trip for his work, which demanded total monklike concentration. He was not used to Angela’s gentle and submissive ways, and could not get over his good fortune in having teamed up with her. But he had a way of sabotaging terrific situations, and he felt confident he would find a way to undermine this one, too.

  For the trip out to Winslow, Gurney, in an extravagant mood, rented a large car that fell just short of being a limousine. He felt carefree and heady as he hit the road; it was the first time he had ever taken a trip and left nothing of importance behind. There was Angela, of course, but their future was far from being firm. And he could always call and ask her to shoot out for a visit.

  Aside from Angela, there was really nothing—no home in particular, no kids, no job at the Bureau. For all anyone cared, he might just as well remain in Winslow; no one would know the difference.

  He took the tricky-bodied chorus girl, Holly, and her Indian roommate along for company. Nothing much happened on the road, the girls sleeping in a separate cabin when they stopped over at motels. Gurney figured that Holly simply wanted to take her time and be discreet, not tip off her roommate about the strength of her feelings for him. In truth, Gurney didn’t particularly lust after Holly, although he wouldn’t have minded a brief tumble or two with the comely dancer. Actually, he was a little concerned about that tricky body of hers, perhaps afraid that he might get tied up in one of her contortions.

  At a filling station about halfway along in the trip, Holly’s Indian roommate, who had been pushing for a speaking part in the show, took Gurney aside.

  “You know,” she said with a mischievous twinkle, “Holly and I do ‘sandwiches.’”

  “Thanks, Jhumpa,” Gurney had said, “but I’m not hungry at the moment.”

  It was only later, when they’d arrived in Winslow, that Gurney realized he’d been given an invitation to three-way sex. And he certainly would not have minded being in that type of sandwich.

  Just as Clement Hartog suspected, Winslow proved to be a curious choice for an out-of-town opening. The streets of the small town were almost deserted and the city had a barren windswept look—as though whatever might have been there had been swept farther west by a storm. Gurney dropped the chorus kids off at the motel that had been reserved for them and then drove to his own hotel, which was in the center of town. It was a huge, shambling building that seemed out of place in tiny Winslow. Its lobby was somewhat deserted, too, causing Gurney to wonder if he had been the first one to arrive. He had a hard time getting the desk clerk’s attention, ringing his head off until she finally appeared, a scholarly-looking woman with her hair in tight ringlets and a perfect square of a grin on her face.

  “You’re Mr. Gurney, of course,” she said. “You’ll probably want these.”

  She handed him some advance clippings related to the show that had evidently been published in the local newspaper. One had a picture of Gurney, which he felt was a good likeness, except for the goatee. This was curious, since he had not worn one for many years. He’d had the minibeard in college and shaved it off, just before applying for a job at Homicide.

  Gurney thanked the woman, who summoned a quartet of bellhops—a captain and three assistants, to be precise. Gurney did not feel he needed all those bellhops for his one small suitcase, but he thought perhaps it was the custom for writers of tryout shows to have that many—so he allowed them all to help him, handing one an umbrella, another his newspaper, an
d a third a bag of potato chips he’d bought along the way.

  “I hope you enjoy your stay with us,” the desk clerk said as Gurney was leaving, “and that your show isn’t a flop.”

  A suite of rooms had been prepared for him. It was nowhere near as lavish as his quarters in Beverly Hills, but it had much more room than he required, all the same. There was very little furniture in the suite, however. Gurney could not figure out whether the monster hotel was still being built or was being torn down. He called Clement Hartog, who said he had checked in many hours before and had been trying all the while to get room service, but to no avail.

  “I have a feeling that another director would be able to convey, on the phone, just how important he is—and be able to get whatever it is he wanted in no time. I would feel awkward doing that, Paul. What do I say, that I am Clement Hartog, director of dozens of first-rate films and shows and that I insist on having some aspirins straightaway? How would that sound? And what would it mean in Winslow?”

  Gurney said that he would be happy to call room service on Hartog’s behalf and to lay out his powerful credentials, but the director insisted it wasn’t necessary. He then told Gurney that the most thrilling part of doing a musical, any musical, was coming up in an hour.

  “We will all congregate and hear the song orchestrations for the first time. Ty Sabatini has been up here for three days working with the twenty-seven musicians. He’s assembled the finest people in the Winslow area—and I know, I know, that’s a big laugh. But he says that frankly they’re not all that bad. In any event, I want you to be there, Paul, along with the full cast, to hear them strike up that first note. If it doesn’t give you goose bumps, I miss my guess. That one moment is probably why we are all in show business.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world, Clement.”

  Gurney unpacked, looked around, and speculated for a moment on what it would be like to have a party for selected members of the chorus, one that might, with luck, casually turn into an orgy. He imagined it concluding with him twisted up in one of Holly’s contortions, maybe with Jhumpa thrown in as a sexual hors d’oeuvre. And he would get to have his sandwich after all.