Attack of the Theater People

by Marc Acito

  Boos.

  My heart lurches in my chest like I’ve popped the clutch. Instantly I’m covered in sweat. I’ve performed for audiences that were indifferent (in high school I sang at a nursing home while a man had a stroke), but boos? I don’t know what to do. For some reason the kids have turned on me. The parents murmur to one another, as confused as I am.

  Sandra sticks her head out through the curtain.

  “Edwid!” she hisses. “Get off!”

  I jump off the trunk and hurry offstage to jeers that give new meaning to the term catcalls. Sandra grabs my mike and hands it to Javier, who hastily introduces Mr. and Mrs. Katz. The crowd applauds, and the evening continues as planned. Without me.

  “What’s going on?” Sandra says. “Why did they react like that?”

  As if on cue, the reason steps through the curtain.

  Twenty-three

  “Lizzie!” I shout. “What the hell’s going on?”

  She crosses her arms and gives a smug smile. “I just thought my friends would want to know that you’re a pervert.”

  “What are you talkin’ about?” Sandra says.

  “I saw his diary in his apartment,” Lizzie sneers. “It’s disgusting.”

  Sandra turns to me. “What was she doing in your apartment?”

  “She broke in. With these little tools,” I say. “And that’s not my diary, you little crook.”

  Lizzie narrows her eyes. “Liar. It has your name on it. You’re not even English. You’re from Ohio. That’s why you were talking so strange that night at the Waldorf.”

  Sandra shrieks like a pterodactyl. “YOU TOOK HER TO THE WALDORF?”

  “I-I did not take her to the Waldorf,” I stammer. “She met me there.”

  Sandra grips her forehead. “Oh, Gawd…”

  I grab Lizzie by the shoulders. “Tell her what happened.”

  “Let go of me!”

  “Tell her!”

  Lizzie knees me in the nuts, then reaches into her bodice and blows a whistle. “RAAAAPE!” she screams. “RAAAAPE!”

  People spill backstage, led by an hysterical woman screaming, “LIZZIE, MY BABY, LIZZIE!”

  I look up from my crumpled vantage point on the floor and see Lizzie’s mother for the first time. Make that the second time, because I’ve met her before. At the party for Hibbert & Howard. In the Temple of Dendur.

  It’s Judith Utzinger, the psycho boss.

  “Are you all right?” she cries. “What happened?”

  Lizzie points at me. “He touched me!”

  “Where? Show Mommy where.”

  Lizzie reaches up and touches her shoulders.

  “Your breasts?” Judith says. “Did he touch your breasts? C’mon, baby, use your words.”

  Lizzie responds by sobbing. Judith turns to me.

  “YOU MONSTER!”

  She advances toward me, smacking my head with her beaded clutch bag, which, from the feel of it, contains a lead weight. Within moments I’m seeing stars. No, not stars, flashbulbs. The fucking photographer is documenting my assault. Good. I’ll have a record.

  “I want those pictures,” I shout. “I want those pictures!”

  The photographer lowers her camera. “Tsey are all yours.”

  No, it can’t be. I must be hallucinating. It’s my ex-stepmonster, the villainous Valkyrie.

  This is my worst nightmare. Well, actually, my worst nightmare is still being chased by an angry mob, falling off a cliff, and hanging on by the tips of my fingers, but something tells me I’m just a few steps away from that.

  “Get the cops,” Judith screams. “This man molested my little girl.”

  “Wait a sec,” Sandra says. “He didn’t—”

  “It’s true,” Dagmar says. “I saw tsem shopping at Brooks Brothers. He’s a tsief. And a liar. And an azzhuuuuull.”

  “MONSTER!” Judith screams, kicking me in the ribs.

  “I didn’t touch her,” I shout. “I’m gay! I’m gay! I’m gay!”

  It’s the first time I’ve been glad to say it.

  I’m waiting for Natie when he comes through the door Monday afternoon. He has that strange tan you get from ski goggles, making him look like a marmoset.

  “Where have you been?” I cry.

  He struggles with the zipper on his jacket, which still has his lift pass attached.

  “Our flight got in late,” he says, “so I stayed at Fran and—Jesus, what the hell happened to you?”

  He’s referring to my black eye.

  “You can read all about it,” I say, holding up a copy of today’s Post. There, on the front page, is a picture of me dressed as a cat while fending off an attack by an unseen assailant. The headline reads: PARTY MONSTER.

  “Holy shit.” He pulls off his jacket. “Read it to me. I’ve had to pee since Newark.”

  “The city’s elite got a big surprise—”

  “Louder.”

  “The city’s elite got a big surprise at the Saturday-night party celebrating the bat mitzvah of thirteen-year-old Tamara Katz when they discovered that their star ‘party motivator’ is a fraud. Passing himself off as Eddie Sanders, a supposed veejay for British MTV, twenty-one-year-old Edward Zanni has charmed enthusiastic teens and their parents at such glittering events as financier Joel Schlonsky’s legendary party aboard the Europa for his son’s bar mitzvah, and disgraced oil and commodities trader William Owens’s blowout for his daughter’s sweet sixteen just before he fled the country.”

  “Makes you sound pretty important,” Natie shouts from the bathroom.

  “Just wait.”

  “‘I’m as surprised as anyone else,’ said Sandra Pecorino, owner of La Vie de la Fête Productions, the event planning company that employed Zanni. ‘Anyone who’s met him can tell you he’s a very convincing con artist. I feel so betrayed.’”

  Natie flushes. “That’s bullshit.”

  “I told the cops she knew who I was. My name is on the friggin’ W-9.”

  “The cops?”

  “Hang on; there’s more.

  “Zanni, a Juilliard drama school dropout, was identified by one of the young partygoers with whom he’s allegedly formed a friendship. Witnesses say the girl’s mother confronted Zanni at the Katz event, but no charges have been filed against him as yet.

  “‘He’s a pervert,’ said thirteen-year-old Marcy Glickman. ‘I can’t believe we ever liked him.’”

  “Jeez,” Natie says, emerging from the bathroom. “You okay?”

  “Sure. If throwing up six times a day is okay.” I flop into Sweeney Todd’s Chair of Death and put my head between my knees.

  “How about some tea? I’ll mix Mint Magic with Tension Tamer. You’ll be magically relaxed.” While he clanks around the kitchen, I tell him the rest of the story, from the assault with a deadly purse to the police interrogation.

  “Hang on,” Natie says, handing me a cup of warm brew. “Tell me exactly what you said. Did you have a lawyer?”

  “No.”

  “Jeez. I go away for two weeks…” He sits across from me on the coffee table. “What did you say?”

  “I told them that Lizzie was stalking me.”

  “Did you tell ’em she broke into our apartment? I can testify to that.”

  I nod, blowing on my cup. “I also told them to check with Spy City.”

  “Good thinking. So they let you go?”

  I sip at the tea, but it’s too hot. “Yeah, but the cop made a report.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means the complaint won’t appear on my record because no charge was made.”

  “That’s good.”

  “But there’s a seven-year statute of limitations. If Lizzie changes her story, I could go to jail for child molestation.”

  “That’s not so good.”

  I hand Natie the newspaper. “It gets worse. Look at the photo credit.”

  There, in tiny print, it says, D. Teufel.

  He drops it like it’s contaminated. “H
ow’d she find you?”

  “I’ve been going over and over it in my mind. All I can think is that when Chad told her I worked for La Vie de la Fête Productions she must have sought out a job there.”

  “Just to sabotage you?”

  “I did cost her a job at Brooks Brothers.”

  “And ten grand.”

  “And her marriage.”

  “It’s too coincidental to be random.” Natie puts his cup down, spilling some, then claps his hands together, all business. “Okay, let’s review. You’ve been fired, accused of child abuse, beaten with a handbag, pursued by a mad Austrian, and humiliated in the press. Anything else?”

  “Yeah. Pharmicare.”

  “Oh, that.”

  I follow him as he carries his suitcase into the bedroom.

  “‘Oh, that’?” I yell. “You told me I’d earn twenty grand and now I’m out fifteen hundred. I’m no math whiz, but I would say that’s significantly less.”

  He tosses his suitcase on the futon underneath my loft bed. “Eddie, money’s like the tide: It flows in; it flows out. Trust me: It’ll flow in again.”

  “How? I just lost my job, you cheesehead.”

  He ducks to avoid the book I throw at him.

  “Violence doesn’t solve anything.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one who lost $1,500.”

  “That’s not true,” he says, opening his suitcase. “I invested just as much as you did.”

  “Plus Paula’s money.”

  He takes out a full set of embroidered towels reading TELLURIDE INN. “She told you, huh?”

  “Natie, that five hundred bucks is probably all she has.”

  “You mean had.”

  It’s a good thing I believe in gun control.

  “You’re paying her back,” I say.

  “Sure, as soon as I pay off my credit card from this trip.”

  “Natie.”

  “Hey, you try keeping up with a bunch of rich Persians. Those guys order $200 bottles of wine. I could get a hundred bottles for that much.”

  Silence. Itchy, scabby silence.

  “Has Paula said anything about it?” Natie asks.

  I shake my head. “She’s too busy being Miss Corn Bread of 1987.”

  “Good. That gives us five or six weeks to figure out what to do.”

  I suppose a more dispassionate person might ask, Us? Who’s us? This is your problem. But I am not a dispassionate person. I am a desperate, unemployed pariah who is breaking out in hives. Natie’s all I’ve got. That is, assuming I let him live.

  Messages on my answering machine pile up, particularly after the article in the Daily News (“Bizarre Mitzvah”) and a reference in the New York Times about Manhattan’s elite not realizing there isn’t any British MTV. My first appearance in the Arts section and it’s as a duplicitous drama school dud.

  (Beep) “Eddie, it’s your father. What the hell is goin’ on? Call me.”

  (Beep) “Edward, Ziba. How dare you do something illicit without telling me? Let’s have lunch.”

  (Beep) “Hello, gorgeous. It’s your future ex-lover. I hear those bitches at Cats are furious. Call me and I’ll give you all the dish.”

  (Beep) “Hiyeee, it’s Kells. Oh, my God, I can’t believe it. I’m so sorry. I’d say call me but I’m being held hostage at rehearsals. So, um, I’ll try you again. Or stop by! The theater’s, like, practically around the corner. I love yooooou.”

  (Beep) “Oh, honey chile, what on God’s green earth is going on? Marcus, Willow, and I are just sick with vexation about chew. What? I’m not going to say that. Give me back that phone.”

  “Edward? Marcus. Great job of stickin’ it to the ruling class. Oh, Willow says hi.”

  (Beep) “Am I taping? I hate these machines. Baby doll, it’s Aunt Glo. I had no idea you were in Cats. I’m gonna get tickets even though I already saw it.”

  The one person who doesn’t call is the one I want to hear from most. I leave Chad a couple of messages—okay, six—but he doesn’t respond, which sends a message all by itself. I am on my own. There will be no more clandestine meetings, no envelopes with cash. There will be no frottage in the Cayman Islands.

  I’m such a cheesehead.

  Mercifully, the gods arrange for everyone’s answering machines to be on when I return calls, partly because I call at times I’m pretty certain they’ll be out. I can’t bear being an object of pity yet again. So I leave chipper messages, giving the performance of my life as I say everything’s fine and it was all a misunderstanding and don’t believe everything you read in the papers, ha-ha-ha. By the fourth or fifth call I sense the beginnings of a party piece, an amusing anecdote we can laugh about for years to come. (Remember when you almost got arrested for child molestation? That was hilarious!) In fact, I feel so much better I’m tempted to open the phone book and start calling strangers. (Hello, is this Adam Aalberg? This is Edward Zanni. Just wanted to let you know I’m not a crook or a pedophile.) After a few days the hives fade and I start to feel like I can move on with my life.

  Then I get a letter from something called the Securities and Exchange Commission.

  Twenty-four

  I’ve never visited Columbia University, and I gasp when I see its sprawling, snow-covered lawns and col umned Neoclassical buildings. It’s like someone plunked down the Washington Mall in the middle of Harlem.

  I bolt into the Parthenon-like library and up to the second floor, where Natie regularly meets with his study group. The room is a temple to learning, with soaring ceilings and a stained-glass window depicting New York’s Dutch settlers. Natie sits at a table in the corner with the Indian and Asian versions of himself. If they were puppies, they’d be the runts their mothers threw away.

  I toss the letter down on the table. “We need to talk.”

  The Indian runt reaches for it. “Is that from the SEC?”

  Natie snatches the letter. “It’s not the SEC you’re thinking of,” he says, folding the paper.

  “There’s another?”

  “Of course. The, uh, Saudi…Electric Company.”

  The Asian guy looks at me, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Why did you get a letter from the Saudi Electric Company?”

  “Don’t you guys read the news?” Natie says. “The Arabs are taking over everything.” He turns to me and, enunciating very clearly, asks, “Abdul, Do You Need Help Understanding Your Bill?”

  “Yes, thank you,” I say. “Uh, praise Allah.”

  “Sorry, guys,” Natie says, gathering his books. “But if he doesn’t pay, they’ll cut off more than his electricity.”

  My panic is too enormous to be contained indoors. I need air, I need space, I need a place to throw up. As Natie reads the summons, we walk over to Morningside Park, where I feel reasonably sure I won’t get mugged because I’m ranting like a lunatic.

  “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME INSIDER TRADING WAS ILLEGAL?”

  “Calm down,” Natie says. “It’s only illegal if you get caught.”

  I seriously consider adding homicide to my expanding dossier of crimes.

  “Everyone does it,” Natie explains. “It’s practically an industry standard.”

  I see. Almost Legal.

  I start to hyperventilate, my breath making clouds. “Then why did I get a letter requesting…What is it again?”

  Natie looks at the page. “‘A voluntary production of information.’”

  “Yeah, that.”

  “Well, the government believes—and I disagree—that trading on information the public doesn’t know about destroys a level playing field.”

  “Then why’d you let me do it? Never mind, I know the answer to that question.”

  “C’mon, Eddie. Where in life is there a level playing field? Most people get ahead because of who they know or what they know.”

  “And hard work.”

  He looks at me over his glasses. “Don’t be naive.”

  I gaze at the park. The low afternoo
n sun casts long shadows, while the dome of an immense Gothic cathedral rises above the bare trees. I’ve never seen a church that big.

  “What’s the punishment for insider trading?” I say.

  “Usually a couple of years in jail.”

  An industrious Boy Scout ties a knot in my colon. “WHAT? It’s not like we robbed a convenience store.”

  “Calm down. The SEC’s not interested in locking up a little pisher like you. They want you to finger Mr. Big in bed.”

  “What?” I thought the Supreme Court outlawed that kind of thing.

  “They want to know who you’re working for,” he says. “I bet if you tell ’em about Chad trading on the Hibbert and Howard merger they’ll grant you immunity and overlook our little Pharmicare trade.”

  “Which. We. Lost. Money. On,” I say, punctuating each word by hitting him with my hat. I flop down on a bench. “Why are they coming after me? Why don’t they just go after Chad?”

  “I dunno,” Natie says, pacing. “Someone probably got suspicious and reported you. I’m guessing it’s the psycho lawyer who thinks you’re molesting her kid. Hey, don’t lie down on that bench; it’s filthy.”

  I pinch my eyes shut, hoping the nightmare will end. “So now what?”

  “We’ve gotta act fast. First one to squeal gets the best deal.”

  “Is that what you and the Geek Patrol are studying?”

  “Hey, those guys are sharp. I’m gonna have a helluva time explaining the Saudi Electric Company, Abdul.”

  I sit up again, resting my head in my hands. “I don’t know, Natie. I mean, ratting Chad out to protect myself. It’s so slimy.”

  “Don’t get sentimental,” he says, wiping his nose with the back of his ski glove. “You think he wouldn’t do the same? Why do you think he didn’t want you to call at his office? And always sent you cash in an envelope with no return address? He wanted to make sure there was nothing linking you to him, in case you got caught.” He sits down next to me. “Jeez, how can you sit here? This thing’s an iceberg.”

  “He promised to take me to the Cayman Islands.”

  Natie’s button eyes go wide. “The Cayman Islands?”