I get up and go to the bathroom. My clothes are crooked and tangled; my hair is matted to the back of my head. Recently I had seen a book at Barnes & Noble entitled The Sadness of Sex. I sit on the toilet and try to pee, but nothing happens so I turn on the faucet and stare at the wall, humming the opening bars of Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine.”
“Let’s take a time-out and have a beer,” I say, reentering the room. Jack is still lying faceup on the floor, staring at the ceiling.
“Time-out? We didn’t even make it through the first inning.”
“I’m thirsty,” I say as I twist off the top and hand the beer to Jack. I get another one for myself and sit down on the floor next to him.
“So where did you go so bright and early this morning?” I ask.
“I had to check out some apartments.”
“Are you a broker?”
“No, I’m thinking about moving into the city.” Jack cracks the knuckles on his left hand.
“Really? Where do you live now?”
“In Queens.”
“In an apartment?” I sit cross-legged and balance the beer on the inside of my knee.
“No, I live in a house.”
“Wow. That’s great. A whole house to yourself, or do you have a housemate?”
“I guess you could call him that. Usually I call him Dad.”
I take a moment and adjust my preconceptions.
“You live with your parents?” I ask, trying to keep a straight face and a tone free of judgment, but it’s hard. In any other circumstance I would burst out laughing and hit the table a few times. Jack takes a swig of his beer and leans over and runs his hand up my thigh, causing a warm tingle to dance down my spine. Is it really so awful that he lives with his parents? Think of all the money one could save. I do a quick calculation of the amount I could have pocketed if I was still living at home, a small fortune to say the least. What is twenty-some years times twelve months times the average rent? Wow. Of course I knew I’d have ended up locked in some psych ward if I had lived with my parents one second longer than I did, but it’s fun to dream.
“So you must be pretty close with your folks?” I ask, studying the curve of his shoulder as he leans closer into me, his eyes focused with intent.
“I don’t live with my folks. I live with my dad, and yeah, we get along, and how ’bout we not talk about it right now.” His mouth opens on mine. I moan slightly as he pushes me gently down onto the cotton throw rug.
Here we go, I think, here we go again. My hand finds that interesting bump on his thigh.
“Are you wearing a garter belt under these pants?” I ask in a husky tone.
“And nothing else,” he replies as his left hand tweaks my nipple. “Ever consider a nipple ring?”
“Nipple ring?” I ask as nonchalantly as I can.
“Yeah, we’ll get you one. You’ll love it.”
Billy Joel is singing “If I Only Had the Words to Tell You.” Jack doesn’t need any words. His body is communicating just fine.
3
The next morning Jack is gone before eight a.m. Again. He leaves me a note under the hot fudge sundae magnet on the refrigerator: Last night was awesome. Call you later. You need milk. There’s a five-dollar bill with the note and an empty carton of milk in the sink. I guess the five bucks is for the milk. At least I hope it is and not for . . . No, of course not, nobody is that cheap.
So he left me milk money. That’s sweet. I wonder if he leaves his dad money for milk or eggs or whatever he consumes in the morning on the way out of the house they share in Queens. And where, I wonder, is his mother? Is he a product of divorce? Did she abandon him? Is that where I, the older woman, come into the picture? Am I filling some maternal need? Ugh. I look for the slip of paper I jotted his cell phone number on and find it in my bag. I light a cigarette and then punch in the numbers. “Jack here,” he answers.
“Maggie here,” I respond.
“Wassup, Sweet Pea?” he asks.
The “Sweet Pea” catches me by surprise. Boy, it has been a lifetime since someone called me that, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Should a woman my age even respond? Wasn’t Sweet Pea that strange baby in the Popeye cartoon, the little one with no legs?
“I miss you,” Jack continues in his low, sexy voice. “I was thinking about you.”
I decide Sweet Pea isn’t so bad. In fact, I kind of like it. “I just wondered what happened to you,” I say.
“Did you get my note?”
“Yeah, and thanks for the dough. Every bit helps.”
“Listen, I drank all the milk. I didn’t want you to think I was a freeloader.”
“I’m kidding,” I say, feeling awkward. “Where are you? What do you do?”
“I’m on the floor at the dealership. I can’t talk. I have a client coming in a few minutes.”
“What client? What do you deal?”
“Cars. I sell cars.”
“Really? I had a car for a while,” I say.
“Just for a while?” Jack asks.
“It was a red Gremlin. It drove like a truck. I bought it from my brother for a couple thousand dollars. It was fun for a while, but the alternate side of the street parking finally took its toll.”
“So you got rid of it?”
“Yeah, I sold it to my nephew and started spending my mornings at the gym in pursuit of the perfect bicep.”
“And what a perfect bicep that is,” Jack purrs. “I miss you Maggie Mae. Have a good one.”
“Yeah, right, yeah, you too,” I say, but he has already rung off. He misses me. Wow. I disconnect on my end and place the phone back in the cradle. He misses me. Maybe it’s just a line. But the truth is, I miss him too. Shit. I’ll have to ask about the mother some other time.
I glance at the clock. It’s ten fifteen. Damn. I have an audition at eleven. I need to jump in the shower and get dressed. Wait a minute. I need to jump in the shower, dry off, then get dressed, and then get my butt out the door and into a cab if I’m going to make it in time. These things usually run behind schedule, in fact 97 percent of the time they do, but that one time they don’t, if you, the dime-a-dozen-voice-over talent, aren’t there—well, business is supply and demand, and in the world of voice-overs and acting and singing, there is a lot more hungry supply than is ever demanded. So be on time.
At 10:32 I’m walking out the door. The great thing about voice-overs is you don’t have to look good. You just have to show up and sound good—makeup and hair is optional, which cuts about forty-five minutes off my prep time.
I get a cab on the corner. “Forty-ninth and Madison,” I say as I open my compact and put on some lipstick. “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,” I quick-speak out loud a few times. “Toy boat, toy boat, toy boat.” The cabdriver glances in the rearview mirror. “I’m loosening up my lips,” I explain.
“Loose lips sink ships,” he cautions.
“I’ll remember that.” The traffic isn’t too bad, and at 10:52 I am pressing the up button for the elevator. The doors open and Sally James steps out.
“Maggie,” she exclaims in that overly friendly actressy way she has. “How are you?”
“Great, thanks. Love to chat, but I’m running late.” I get onto the elevator.
“Are you here for the voice-over? It’s tricky. Bad grammar and the client’s a bitch. Good luck,” she says, smiling as she waves.
The doors close. Sally is the bitch. We are often sent up for the same things, and if she gets there first she likes to warn me about problems, which makes me nervous and I’m sure she knows that. Someone told me she had a master’s degree in psychology, with a minor (specialty) in mind-fucking. I put my lips together and blow them out in that horse sound a few times.
“B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b. B-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b.”
The man standing next to me winks. “Hi-yo, Silver,” he says as he exits on the fifth floor. I reapply my lipstick and get off on twenty-three. I sign in and am handed th
e copy. It’s for a feminine hygiene product. Oh, boy!
For women on the go in a go-go world.
Easy, comfortable, worry-free.
Let’s you get on with getting on.
Now available in scented or unscented.
And to think I began my career in a high school production of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. I was seventeen and had long hair and a twenty-three-inch waist. Shakespeare was religion to me. I worshipped it. I memorized long passages and repeated them over and over.
Well, that was then and this is now. I look over the copy sheet in my hand: “Women on the go in a go-go world.” I say, changing the emphasis and experimenting with the rhythm. It isn’t Shakespeare, but a good voice-over spot can pay the rent for months. My name is called and I go into the casting office. I put the copy on tape. Marge Megin, the casting director, asks me for another run at it with a more upbeat attitude.
“Women on the go in a go-go world,” I say euphorically into the microphone. Marge nods and I pick up my shoulder bag and make a quick exit.
Don’t linger. That’s a rule of thumb in the world of casting calls. Do your thing and leave. The casting people appreciate you for that, and you certainly want them to appreciate you so they call you again and again. It’s a matter of the odds when booking voice-overs and commercial spots. The more you’re seen for, the better the odds you book. Or in baseball terms—the more at bats the better your chances to hit one out of the park. At least that’s the rationale that keeps me going, but lately the going is getting rougher. How many times can a grown woman say “Now available in scented or unscented” with any real conviction?
I walk out onto Madison Avenue and head toward the New World Coffee Shop on Forty-fifth Street. I get out my cell phone and am relieved to see that the battery is charged and ready to go. The cell phone is new for me. I didn’t think I was a cell phone type. I preferred being a cell phone resenter. I’d roll my eyes and huff and puff when people used them in my vicinity, even though I knew it would make my life a hundred percent easier. I’m stubborn that way. I put it off until my agent said she would drop me if I didn’t get one—and besides, she reminded me, it’s a tax deduction. So I converted and got a pay-as-you-go plan, which is why I don’t give out my number. I call my home machine to check for messages.
“Hi, honey,” Dee-Honey chirps. “I just want to remind you that I have you booked for Snow White tomorrow. Call me back as soon as you get this. Thanks, honey. Oh, the show is in Yonkers, so it’s a short day.”
I call her back and her machine picks up. At the sound of the beep I say, “Dee-Honey, it’s Mags, and yes I have Snow White in my book. Don’t think I always forget shows just because Dorothy slipped my mind the other day. Oh, and please remember, I need the larger costume this time. Thanks.”
Janet Newhouse, who also plays the part, is a dainty size four, which is two sizes smaller than me, a robust size eight, and I sure as hell don’t want to have to struggle into another damn costume. It’s embarrassing. I make a mental note to pick up more pink pretty-girl blush. I’m running low.
In the coffee shop I order a double latte and a blueberry muffin and sit on a stool at the street window. Muffins are really cake—they’re the size of a small Bundt cake and packed with sugar, so let’s stop pretending and call a cake a cake. I know I should lose ten pounds, but not today. Someone has left the Daily News on the counter. I open to the sports page. The Yankees beat the Red Sox three to one. I read down the column. Derek Jeter hit a home run in the fourth and then a sac fly in the sixth and two RBIs. I became a Yankees fan because Goodie was a Yankees fan, though mainly he liked the uniforms, and while Texas Joe was in New York he adopted the Yankees as his team to please Goodie and me. So we watched the games together and talked baseball when it got too hard to talk about anything else. And then the Yankees won the World Series and Goodie rallied for a while and it seemed the cocktail was working, but by the winter Goodie was failing again and failing fast.
I finish my blueberry muffin, aka cake, and decide to walk over to Don’t Tell Mama, my old cabaret hangout, and try to catch Sidney in his office and book a club date. “Just do it,” my Nike cross trainers sing out as I walk west toward Broadway.
“MAGGIE!” I hear screamed across Sixth Avenue. A large man with long blond hair is motioning on the other side of the street. “Stay there! I’ll cross over!”
Bob Strong was the production stage manager for a show I did about ten years ago in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Every time I run into him he acts as if it has been years since we’ve seen each other. Effusive is the word. He’s a dear, but hard to take without a strong shot of scotch. As he crosses the intersection at a gallop, I exaggeratedly look at my wristwatch.
“I only have a second, Bob. Got an appointment a few blocks away.” He wraps me in his arms. I stiffen slightly but then relent. I don’t want to be rude, not really. And, of course, you never know when a production stage manager will have the inside track on a job. “How are you, Bob-a-lou?”
“I’m fantastic,” he says. Bob is always “fantastic.” He puts me at arm’s length. “You look tired, Maggie, are you burning the midnight oil?”
Now, I can think I look tired and even say I look tired, but when someone else says I look tired, I get very untired and very defensive. “I didn’t have time to even wash my face this morning and I just have voice-over things and I feel great actually, in fact, I’m in the pink. But I’ve got to run.” I kiss him quickly on the cheek. “How’s Piper?” Piper is Bob’s teacup poodle.
“Kidney stones.”
“Oh, no.”
“But he’s going to be fine and dandy. So what are you up to?”
“You know, the usual, voice-overs, kiddies’ theater? I have a Snow White coming up.”
“Who do you play? The evil stepmother?”
“No, I’m Snow White,” I say. Bob looks at me and then lets out a huge laugh—a guffaw actually.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking about you as Snow White. I bet you’re great. You must bring quite an edge to the role.”
“I do, and I’m damn good. She’s not just an ingénue, she’s a woman caught in the political machine of autocratic matriarchy. The kids fucking love it.”
“Sounds great,” Bob says, suppressing another guffaw.
“Catch you later, Bob, got to run,” I practically spit at him as I head across the street. A car honks at me. I back up onto the curb.
“Careful, Mags,” Bob says. The light turns and I run to the other side. Ogre is what I would cast Bob as. A big, mean, thoughtless ogre. In spite of the ten million plus people in the New York area, it’s really a small town and you can never get from one end to the other without running into someone you know.
When I arrive at Don’t Tell Mama, three people are sitting at the bar. The place doesn’t officially open until four p.m., but a couple of hangers-on are always lounging on the barstools. I ask Freddie, the bartender, if Sidney is in his office.
“Just arrived.” He tosses the words in my direction, continuing his housecleaning in preparation for the night ahead. Bars are dreary places in the daytime; they look embarrassed, like a middle-aged woman without makeup caught in bad lighting. God, I know the feeling . . . and the look.
Sidney is sitting at his desk eating a turkey and cheese on rye and sipping a large coffee, light and sweet. I know because I used to bring him one whenever I was doing a show. Sidney is a caffeine freak—I’ve never seen him without a cup somewhere within reach.
“Maggie, how are you?” he says when I poke my head in the door. “Come on in. Long time no see.” He stands and extends his hand.
“I’m okay. How about you?”
“Busy. Always busy.”
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“You bet. Idle hands are the devil’s playground or something to that effect.”
“Please don’t let me keep you from your lunch.” I motion to his sandwich. �
�I was wondering about booking a couple of dates. I’ve decided to get back to my old act. Or rather, my new solo act. Anyway, shake my booty again before everything breaks down and my vocal cords retire.
“It’s been a while,” Sidney says.
“Yeah, but I’m still game and I’ve still got my money note, as they say in the biz.” I know I’m smiling too much. “Look, why don’t you finish your lunch and we can talk. I’ll be out at the bar.”
The phone rings.
“Great,” Sidney says, picking up the receiver. “I’ll see you in a few.”
I order a bottle of Rolling Rock from Freddie. I’ve run into Sidney off and on over the years, and he always says that when I feel like it I should come in and book some dates.
“Is anybody in the back room?” I ask.
“I don’t think so. You can take a look.” Freddie is cutting up lemons and limes; a cigarette dangles on his lower lip. Smoking laws don’t apply off hours, thank God.
“Thanks.” I saunter back through the tables, sipping my beer and humming the first few bars of “Get It While You Can,” remembering the other night at the Angry Squire. I hadn’t listened to Janis in years. Of course humming a Joplin song is useless—you’ve got to sing full throttle stoked on about a quart of Southern Comfort.
I pull on the door and enter the cabaret, and the smell of stale cigarettes and Lysol dances up my nostrils. I find my pack of Marlboros and light up. A baby grand piano sits quietly on the stage, waiting for the next ten fingers to bring it to life. A light in the control booth spills onto the tiny stage and the ubiquitous cabaret stool stands off to one corner. I place it next to the piano and sit down. I take a pull on the beer.
The last time I sang with Goodie was in this room. He was still holding his own, but the meds had stopped working and the verdict was in. We did a short show that night. We were the fabulous “soul sisters,” with bumps and grinds and a wonderful medley from Cats in which I did a number of athletic tambourine solos. About forty people were in the audience, including a large group of Icelandic tourists staying at the Howard Johnson’s on Eighth Avenue and, of course, Texas Joe and Charles. For the end of the set we sang “Bridge Over Troubled Waters,” which we usually did tongue-in-cheek. Goodie started playing the first few bars. The Icelanders applauded. I decided to skip the patter and just get to it.
Dorothy on the Rocks Page 3