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Attack of the Theater People

Page 23

by Marc Acito


  “Mamacita?” I say, trying to sound casual. “That’s cute.”

  “Well, she’s moved in for a while.”

  “I should hope so, being your wife and all.”

  “Huh? No, that was Milagros’s mother. She’s come to help out now that she’s on bed rest.”

  Natie shuts the door, another thunk.

  “What? How can she help if she’s on bed rest?”

  “No, Milagros is on bed rest. On account of the twins.”

  “Jeez,” Natie says, “it’s like an oven in here.”

  I snap my fingers to get him quiet. “Milagros is having twins?”

  “Didn’t I tell you? Sorry, it’s been crazy here, what with…Hey, Fernando, turn up the news, will ya’? There’s gonna be una cosa sobre Ollie North. I tell ya’, Eddie, it’s criminal what those fuckers in Washington did. Since the Nicaraguans went to war with the contras, wages have gone down ninety percent.”

  “What’s Fernando doing there?”

  Al pops his gum. “I got him a job at the plant. The kid was an engineering student in Nicaragua and he was mopping floors in Miami. But that Fernando, he ain’t afraid of hard work.”

  I flap the letter in the air for Natie, who grabs it while trying to unzip his parka.

  “So,” Al says. “You got a job yet?”

  I’m no Gavin, but I can read Natie’s lips when he mouths, Shit.

  “Eddie? You there?”

  “I’m sorry, what, Pop?”

  “Everything work out with that stuff in the papers?”

  “Sure, sure. I told you, it was all a misunderstanding.” Where do I even begin? Why can’t I tell him?

  “You got a new job yet?”

  At least I’ve got good news there. “Yeah, I’m ushering.”

  My father backfires a laugh. “Finally made it to Broadway, huh, kid?”

  I cringe. “Yeah. Something like that.”

  Why do I talk to this man? Why do I keep setting myself up? I don’t care how much therapy he gets, how many Nicaraguan refugees he takes in; he will never understand me. He doesn’t know who I am. My whole life I’ve tap-danced as fast as I can to win his approval, and all he’s ever said is, “Cut out that racket, will ya’?”

  Al.

  “Oh, hey, my thing’s on,” he says. “Can we talk later?”

  “Sure.”

  “All right. Stay outta trouble.”

  I hang up the phone, swallowing the teeth he kicked in.

  “Son of a bitch,” Natie says.

  “I know, can you believe it?”

  “No, my jacket. The zipper’s stuck.”

  “Natie, I’m going to jail.”

  “One thing at a time. Right now I’m dyin’ of heatstroke.” He pulls out of his sleeves and tries to shimmy out of his parka, but it gets caught on his hips. “Dammit.”

  “Here, let me help you.” I kneel down in front of him and try to pull the waistband away from his crotch so I can jimmy the zipper. Because it’s twisted, I have to reach around inside, my knuckles pressing against him.

  “What is this thing?” I ask.

  “I hope you’re talking about my ski pass.”

  “Why are you still wearing it?”

  “I thought it made me look cool.”

  I pull the pass around and grab it in my teeth to keep it out of the way. Outside, I hear the clanking of keys and the thunk of the door.

  “Come on, come on, come on!” Natie says, beads of sweat dripping off his face.

  Out of the corner of my eye I see Willow.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ll come back later.”

  No amount of explaining seems to help when she returns. (“It’s okay, guys,” she says. “I’m from Berkeley.”) By then, at least, Natie has come up with another plan to finger Chad before my SEC appearance.

  “All you need to do is get a job for the janitorial company that cleans Chad’s building, then go through his desk,” he says. “Ya’ see it in the movies all the time.”

  I didn’t say it was a good plan. Because not only would I have to get assigned to the exact building and exact floor, I would also have to get hired. Which I don’t.

  You know you’ve come down in the world when you can’t even get a job as a janitor.

  Natie promises to come up with plan D. Or are we up to E? Whichever it is, we have to work fast, because the March twentieth deadline is just a few weeks away. Meanwhile, I continue ushering at the Gershwin. Since Kelly covers six roles, I end up watching Starlight Express more times than any person should ever have to. But even I’m not petty or bitter enough not to enjoy her performance as Dinah, the dining car, an Ado Annie/Miss Adelaide hybrid who performs one of the only decent numbers, a country-western takeoff on Tammy Wynette’s “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” called “U.N.C.O.U.P.L.E.D.” Kelly’s adorable and funny and sounds great, and I’m so proud of her I could cry, if I were capable of such a thing. Watching her take bows to the cheers of the crowd, I remind myself that her success has nothing to do with me. She’s worked hard for this and deserves it.

  She deserves better, in fact.

  Meanwhile, Natie gets to usher Les Misérables, the one show worth seeing this season, although he denies it to make me feel better. (“Two words,” he says. “Dow. Ner.”) But watching the chorus of desperate homeless people gives him the idea of how to infiltrate Chad’s apartment, which, at this point, seems to be our only chance of finding evidence to take him down. Natie gathers our growing crime syndicate—Ziba, Hung, and now Willow—to plan a little guerrilla theater of our own.

  It’s a collaborative effort. Willow and I coach Ziba and Hung in their roles (apparently I can explain to someone else how to act; I just can’t do it myself); Hung teaches us how to distress costumes (“You’re ugly,” Natie says to a pile of clothes. “I hate you. Your aunt Gladys is dead.”), while Natie shows Hung how to use the lock-picking set we bought from Spy City on Fourteenth Street. It’s fun, in a Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland backyard-musical kind of way—that is, if Mickey and Judy embarked on a life of disorganized crime:

  “Hey, kids, let’s commit a felony!”

  Actually, if our latest scheme were a musical, it would begin with one of those ensemble numbers that establish the community, like “Tradition” in Fiddler on the Roof or “Iowa Stubborn” from The Music Man.

  The curtain rises on the entrance to a luxury building on Sutton Place, with an awning extending over the sidewalk. A uniformed DOORMAN enters, sweeping the sidewalk. He addresses the audience.

  DOORMAN: Oh, good mornin’! You’re up early. Usually I’m the only one out here at this time of day. But you’re just in time to see the mornin’ rush. (He sings.)

  Oh, there’s nuttin’

  Like Sutton…Place.

  From there, various tenants of the building appear: men in suits, their shiny shoes gleaming like sports cars, skinny women in workout clothes walking children to school.

  The music switches to a calypso beat for “The March of the Caribbean Nannies,” followed by a contrapuntal duet for “The Ladies Who Lunch and the Ladies Who Clean Their Apartments.” Delivery guys and dog walkers come and go, taxis and Town Cars pull up, and soon the entire cast is singing:

  There’s nuttin’,

  Like Suh! Ton! Plaaaaaaaaaaaace!

  The stage clears and a spotlight picks up a homeless man, one of the many mad vagrants who wander New York’s streets every day. Grizzled and prematurely old, he wears a baggy overcoat and a colander on his head. He sings one of those plaintive, “somebody, somewhere” songs.

  Somebody please help me,

  Even though I smell like pee…

  In real life that vagrant is me, weaving along the sidewalk in the late morning, moaning, “Will you help me? Won’t someone help me?” I approach the doorman, who doesn’t respond in the cheery manner of someone who just performed the opening number of a Broadway musical.

  “Okay, buddy, keep it movin’,” he says.

  I’m amazed at
how comfortable I feel playing this role. Even though we’re plotting to illegally enter Chad’s apartment, I can’t help but luxuriate in the pleasure of losing myself in a character. I know this guy. I see him every day.

  I hold up a bank deposit envelope. “But I-I-I found this, and I don’t know what to do.”

  “Neither do I. Now get the hell outta here.”

  An Asian woman of indeterminate age approaches. She’s in china-doll slippers with white socks, and wears leggings with a worn-out down coat, a plastic rain bonnet on her head. She could be any of the number of housekeepers who come and go: conspicuously Not White, yet, paradoxically, almost invisible because she isn’t. I slump down on the sidewalk, pressing my hands to my head like I’m trying to silence the people who live there. “No! No! No! No! No!”

  “That’s it,” the doorman says, “I’m callin’ the cops.” He makes a move to turn, but I reach up and grab his forearms because I don’t want him to see the Asian woman. I start singing “Camptown Races.”

  Camptown ladies sing this song,

  Doo-dah, doo-dah.

  “Let go of me,” he shouts. “Let go of me.”

  Behind him the Asian woman slips in the front door, and I wrestle with the doorman until I feel certain she’s gotten in the elevator. Then I let go, dashing down the street yelling, “Wait for me, Jesus! Wait for me!”

  If this were a musical, the Asian lady would remove her disguise and Hung would perform a comic showstopper called “All in a Gay’s Work.”

  While Hung breaks into Chad’s apartment, I ditch my homeless duds, wipe off the residual dust I have on my suit underneath, and head to the pay phone on the corner of First Avenue, standing behind a fashionable woman with one of those fur wraps around her head.

  “Any word?” I ask.

  “Nothing yet,” Ziba says.

  I look across First Avenue, where Natie is stationed at another pay phone. He, too, appears to be talking, although that could just be for show. Or perhaps he’s already talking to Hung, coaching him as he goes through Chad’s apartment, explaining to him what he’s looking at. That is, if there’s anything to look at. If he’s even gotten in. So many ifs. Once they’re done, Hung will call this phone, and Ziba will cross the street to distract the doorman in the way that only an exotic five-foot-twelve beauty in a slit skirt can.

  If this were a musical, she’d do a big femme fatale number called “I Love a Man in Uniform,” dancing on the doorman’s desk in the lobby, stealing his hat and wearing it at a rakish angle.

  But this isn’t a musical. This is real life. Where a real taxi pulls up in front of the building. And out steps Chad.

  Thirty-two

  I look across First Avenue, where Natie’s still on the phone, or appears to be. Traffic zooms past. I wave my arms at him, pointing to the building, and making a series of gestures I hope communicates that Chad has come home and Hung needs to get out now. Natie waves back in a way I cannot interpret.

  The light changes and I dash across the street in time to see Natie hang up the phone.

  “Were you talking to Hung?” I ask.

  “Yeah, he—”

  “Did you tell him to get out?”

  “No, why?”

  “Chad’s back.”

  “What?” Natie says. “Why’d you tell me to hang up?”

  “I wasn’t—Never mind.”

  I grab the phone and dial Chad’s apartment, praying that the volume on his answering machine is turned up.

  “Hung’s not going to answer,” Natie says. “I told him to call back in five minutes.”

  “Shut up. I’ve got to think.” Chad’s answering machine message finishes and I say, “Chad, uh, hey, it’s Edward. I just called your office and they said YOU WEREN’T THERE so I figured I’D CATCH YOU AT HOME. So give me a call when you get there WHICH SHOULD BE ANY SECOND NOW.”

  I dash across First Avenue again to rejoin Ziba at her phone booth. She sucks on a cigarette with unaccustomed energy.

  “Any sign of him?” I ask.

  “No.”

  Five impossibly long minutes drip by. Any second I expect a squad car to pull up and Hung to be led away in handcuffs, which will lead inexorably to my being arrested and sent to jail, where I’ll be gang-raped in the group shower until my asshole becomes Moon River, which is to say, wider than a mile.

  Ten minutes. What will I do if I go to jail? I can’t even pee in front of other people. I’ll die of a burst bladder. Or some awful urinary tract disease that comes from not peeing. Or else suffer the pain and indignity of forced catheterization.

  Both Ziba and I are staring so intently at the building we don’t notice someone coming up behind us. That is, until we hear a voice say, “You’re under arrest.”

  I take back what I said about peeing. I nearly wet my pants. Gritting my teeth, I turn around and there they are: Natie and Hung.

  We all start talking at once:

  “Jesus, you scared me.”

  “You shoulda seen your face.”

  “You boyzzz.”

  “What happened? Did you hear my message?”

  “You were like, ‘Waaaaah.’”

  “Let’s get out of here before someone sees us.”

  We flee the scene in a cab as Hung explains what happened.

  “Whell,” he says, “it appears Miss Chad is packing up.”

  “No,” I say. “That’s just the way he lives.”

  “With moving boxes?”

  “Moving boxes?”

  “With a Swiss address.”

  “A Swiss address?”

  “Is there an echo in here?” Hung says.

  “I don’t unders—”

  “Ssh,” he says, placing a finger to my lips. “All will be revealed.” He goes on to explain that he did a quick scout around—Chad leaves whiskers in the sink and doesn’t lift the toilet seat when he pees—then started sifting through papers on the coffee table.

  “What were they?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” he says. Motioning to Natie, he adds, “I was just asking him when you told him to get off the phone.”

  “I didn’t tell him to—”

  “You went like this,” Natie says, making a cutting gesture across his throat. “That’s the Internationally Recognized Signal for ‘Cut it short.’”

  “Yes, but then I pointed to the building and mimed Hung walking out.”

  “Oh, I thought you were being a drum majorette.”

  “Why would I be a drum majorette?”

  “I wondered the same thing.”

  “Hello?” Hung says, pointing to himself. “Attention must be paid.”

  “Sorry.”

  He continues. “Imagine the scene: I’m standing in the middle of the apartment when I hear a key in the lock….”

  “Didn’t you hear my message?” I say.

  “Shaddap. I work alone.”

  “Sorry.”

  “There I am, trapped like a…well, like something small and defenseless that gets trapped….”

  “Mice?”

  “Rats?”

  “Bugs?”

  “Forget it,” Hung says. “I’m not telling the story.”

  We cajole him with repentant entreaties until he finally relents, like an opera diva who has to be talked into singing a little something at a party, then performs “The Ride of the Valkyries.”

  “So there I am,” he says, “helpless, mere seconds to spare, and nowhere to hide but the closet, which, as you undoubtedly realize, I haven’t been in since I got caught blowing Conrad Birdie backstage at my high school production of Bye, Bye, Birdie. Anyway, I hop in, wrap myself in a yummy cashmere coat while you squawk on the answering machine. Then Chad picks up the phone and calls his travel agent to book a red-eye to Geneva on April eleventh.”

  “That’s the night of my cousin’s party,” Ziba says.

  Hung explains how he sneaked out when Chad went to the bathroom, taking the stairs to the basement, where a door led him o
ut the back of the building, but I’m already playing chess in my mind. I’ve got no evidence to implicate Chad, and he’s preparing to flee the country.

  Checkmate.

  Luckily, Natie was the president of our high school chess club, such a Nudelman thing to do. By the time we’ve arrived at Sanderland and ordered pizza, he’s already devised a characteristically risky solution.

  Based on the fact that I can’t get near Chad, Natie decides we need to lure him to us. And he wants to use Bruce Springsteen as bait. Not the real Bruce, of course—Almost Bruce. Since Ziba’s uncle has already hired Doug to convince a roomful of unsuspecting Persians he’s the real thing, Natie suggests we invite Chad to the party, telling him that Bruce needs a new broker. Then, while Doug is interviewing Chad (in a suitably dim room), he’ll get Chad to admit on tape that he’s used insider trading to get ahead. Hopefully without playing “Corner of the Sky.”

  Hung and Ziba think it’s a terrific idea, despite its depending on Chad both accepting the invitation and admitting to a rock ’n’ roll legend that he broke the law. What’s more, we’re not even sure Doug is willing or able. I mean, Lucky McPuddles and the Caribbean Destiny are one thing, but this stunt requires some real acting. Still, it’s the only plan we’ve got.

  Since Doug only receives his mail once a week when the ship returns to port, we agree not to call Chad until we confirm that Doug’s on board, so to speak. Plus, we don’t want to give Chad too much time to think about it. Unfortunately, that leaves me plenty of time.

  Worse still, I get another letter from the SEC saying that they’re subpoenaing my bank account. My bank account! I don’t even know how to balance my checkbook, depending as I do on the bank machine to tell me what I’ve got. Anytime I’m overdrawn, I just close the account and start over again.

  If the SEC knows where I bank, they must know where I work. So, once the March twentieth deadline passes, I simply stop ushering, choosing instead to sit at home with the shades drawn, leaping out of my skin every time I hear a rat in the wall. Which, in my apartment, is often. Willow tries to engage me in her usual late-night musings from her hammock in the living room (“What do the Chinese call Chinese food?” “Do you think Daffy Duck and Donald Duck are related?” “Why do we say ‘tuna fish’? We don’t say ‘chicken bird’”), but she might as well be a thousand miles away.

 

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