I left after the first act.
Then I came home, listened to the radio. At ten o’clock WEAF broadcast The First-Nighter with Les Tremayne and Barbara Luddy. “Tonight’s special guest,” said the announcer, “is the star of the Mercury Theatre production of Julius Caesar, Orson Welles, in a specially transcribed broadcast of Anthony Wayne’s ‘A Late Edition for Love.’ ”
Saturday, November 13 Twenty Two
I thought I should at least try to put the pieces of my Westfield life back together. I dressed, grabbed an apple, packed my snare drum in my bike basket, and pedaled down to the fieldhouse on Rahway Avenue. I got there so early the place wasn’t open yet, so Korzun, the trumpet player, and I stood outside, and for laughs every time a pretty girl walked by I played a stripper’s drum beat, and Korzun played this really lewd warble with his mute—budubuduwahhwahh!
It was pretty funny.
The bleachers were wet; the turnout was lousy. The rain and wind had intensified by one o’clock. Umbrellas had been blown inside out. The cheerleaders hid in the fieldhouse until they absolutely had to come out.
Skelly and Stefan were both playing, but football didn’t interest me much. It never had. There was a girl on the Plainfield side who looked sort of lonely. She wore a man’s hooded plaid raincoat, and I spent most of the game watching her.
Caroline and Kate Rouilliard and all their girlfriends sat together under their umbrellas. When Westfield finally moved the ball a few yards they all stood up and shouted: ¡Mucho bueno!
My shoes were soaked. I could feel the cold rising up through my feet. People were leaving at halftime to listen to the Yale-Princeton game.
Somewhere near the last quarter, I told Korzun that I had a bad headache and had to leave.
“I don’t blame you,” he said.
I stashed my drum in the fieldhouse, turned up my collar, and bicycled over to the train station.
I knew I was punishing myself, but there I sat, watching the towns roll by, slouched in my seat.
At least the sun was coming out.
I walked up Fifth. There was Saks, Rockefeller Center, the Vanderbilt house.
My sadness seemed to be lifting a little.
Maybe I could write to Welles. Sonja had said I was a writer . . . .
He could still change his mind.
The double-decker buses rode past the embassies; the tourists took pictures of the bronze statue of Atlas.
I ended up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, back with the mummy cases and the Greek vases and the soft light and the water gurgling through the radiators. I thought about maybe never returning to Westfield High School.
Somehow a bluebird had flown into the museum, and it was darting wildly around the ceiling. A museum guard stood frozen in the center of the floor with an upraised broom in his hand, staring up at the bird, and for one crazy second it looked to me as if he belonged in a museum, as frozen as the Greek vases—Security Guard with Broom, late 1930s. I noticed that most of the people in the museum weren’t moving either, and it seemed as if the whole museum were an exhibit itself, and all of us, if you could look at this moment with enough distance, were the enchanting curios of some long-dead time: each of us unique, each worth preserving—fabulous mannequins in our stitched shoes and our white shirts and our pocket handkerchiefs. Just the light and the color and the detail of it all seemed astonishing.
I sat there, quietly thunderstruck, when the security guard broke his pose and ran on, leaving standing behind him the figure of a pale young woman in a floral-print vest, dark hair in a George Washington. She stepped into the pool of sunlight before me, and the sun glinted off her wire-rim glasses. “So you want to go back to that roast chicken place?” she asked, and she touched her fingers to the small of her neck.
I blinked.
“Gretta?”
“Listen, how on earth you’re here today I don’t know,” she was saying. “I came here the last couple of days hoping to find you. But, look, I’m standing here like nothing’s happened, and I’m about to go through the roof. Look at this. God, I was praying you’d be here.” She handed me a business-sized envelope with the New Yorker’s return address. Inside was a letter . . . Dear Miss Adler: We are pleased to inform you that we have read your short story, “Hungry Generations,” and it is very much a story we would like to publish. It’s funny and true and touching. We think that with a little work it will truly be—
I looked up. “A little work?”
“Nothing!” she said. “I called yesterday. A word in; a word out; move a paragraph; nothing major. Of course, if it was anything major, I’d do that, too.”
“Congratulations,” I said.
She was prettier than I remembered.
“Can you believe this?” She took back the letter and read it again. “God, can you believe it? The New Yorker? Do you know what this means to me? This is the first real thing I’ve ever had published. And it’s all because of you.”
“No, it isn’t, Gretta.”
“You gave it to that girl you knew. Do you honestly think they ever even would have read the thing if it just came in over the transom? You did it, Richard. You helped me. I owe you one. God, I don’t know how on earth you came here today. I came to thank you and the Greek vase. Remember? You rubbed the story on the vase!” She laughed.
“Maybe the vase really is lucky.”
“Maybe?” Her cheeks were turning rose-colored with excitement. “Everything I write for the rest of my life I’m coming here to rub on that vase. Listen, I want to take you to lunch or dinner or whatever the hell time it is now. O.K.?”
“O.K.,” I said.
“You know, the last time we were here we had that chicken in the park, and I left and I was thinking to myself: Gretta, here’s this guy who loves music like you do, who loves theatre like you do, who loves the radio like you do. Why are you being so damn aloof? You know, not giving you my telephone number and everything. What was I trying to prove? I’ve been living in the city for half a year, trying to write, trying to meet somebody. My parents are half-crazy I’m not going to college. A girl with your brains! I go home—that’s all I hear. A girl with your brains! You’re as smart as two colleges on one block! Writing fiction she wants; a big nothing she’ll make writing fiction. And here I meet somebody who’s funny and shares the interests I do—and I’m not trying to scare you, don’t worry; I’m just talking about friends— but I don’t even say anything, you know? As if I didn’t care. God, what’s the matter with me?”
I listened while she went on—enjoying her voice, her passion. I thought: Well, Sonja got this girl’s story published. Maybe that was the point of it all. Who knew? That was the intriguing part. No one knew.
Maybe the whole point of it all was to bring Gretta and me together.
“Look, I’m talking a mile a minute,” she said. “Tell me about you. Wait, you want to go to that roast chicken place? I’m forcing you, aren’t I? You don’t really want to.”
“I would love to go to that roast chicken place,” I said.
“How’s the acting?”
“I’ve given up acting,” I said. “Now I’m going to be a writer.”
“A writer!” she laughed. “A guy with your brains!”
“I’m writing a book about Orson Welles.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ve got this great title: Talent Only.”
She considered it a second. “I don’t get it. But, hey, now I can help get you published!”
“That’s an interesting proposition.”
“I mean, I know somebody at the New Yorker now. A real editor. And she’s wonderful. So you wouldn’t have to send a story to just ‘the editor’ anymore. In fact, I could submit it for you! You know, I could even recommend you.”
“Recommend me? And you’ve never read a word I’ve written?”
“Why the hell not?” she said. “You look pretty talented to me.”
“You’re not too bad looking yourself.”
We were heading out the main door when a voice came shouting down the hall. “Hold the doors! Hold the doors!” Gretta held open the inner door; I held open the outer. There was a clatter of footsteps, and the three guards holding brooms aloft came tearing across the floor chasing the bluebird.
The bird made a beeline for the sunlight ahead and soared over us—out into the day and the open sky.
“Hooray for the bird!” cried Gretta.
“I’m glad it didn’t hurt itself,” said the guard.
Gretta and I and the guards stood on the steps of the museum, and we watched the bird disappear into that late afternoon light. I looked around and saw we were all smiling.
“Wouldn’t this make a great ending to a novel?” she asked.
She looked beautiful.
FOR THE BEST IN PAPERBACKS, LOOK FOR THE
In every corner of the world, on every subject under the sun, Penguin represents quality and variety—the very best in publishing today.
For complete information about books available from Penguin—including Penguin Classics, Penguin Compass, and Puffins—and how to order them, write to us at the appropriate address below. Please note that for copyright reasons the selection of books varies from country to country.
In the United States: Please write to Penguin Group (USA), P.O. Box 12289 Dept. B, Newark, New Jersey 07101-5289 or call 1-800-788-6262.
In the United Kingdom: Please write to Dept. EP, Penguin Books Ltd, Bath Road, Harmondsworth,West Drayton, Middlesex UB7 0DA.
In Canada: Please write to Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Suite 300,Toronto, Ontario M4V 3B2.
In Australia: Please write to Penguin Books Australia Ltd, P.O. Box 257, Ringwood,Victoria 3134.
In New Zealand: Please write to Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Private Bag 102902, North Shore Mail Centre, Auckland 10.
In India: Please write to Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Panchsheel Shopping Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi 110 017.
In the Netherlands: Please write to Penguin Books Netherlands bv, Postbus 3507, NL-1001 AH Amsterdam.
In Germany: Please write to Penguin Books Deutschland GmbH, Metzlerstrasse 26, 60594 Frankfurt am Main.
In Spain: Please write to Penguin Books S. A., Bravo Murillo 19, 1º B, 28015 Madrid.
In Italy: Please write to Penguin Italia s.r.l.,Via Benedetto Croce 2, 20094 Corsico, Milano.
In France: Please write to Penguin France, Le Carré Wilson, 62 rue Benjamin Baillaud, 31500 Toulouse.
In Japan: Please write to Penguin Books Japan Ltd, Kaneko Building, 2-3-25 Koraku, Bunkyo-Ku,Tokyo 112.
In South Africa: Please write to Penguin Books South Africa (Pty) Ltd, Private Bag X14, Parkview, 2122 Johannesburg.
Me and Orson Welles Page 18