For a Song

by Morales, Rodney;

  Irony? Coincidence? I was stopped at a red light just across from our own state capitol building. The edifice sat recessed, like a hallucination, a Friday-in-May dream.

  The play had been far from over at that point. The stage again went black for a few seconds and then some creative lighting again turned the outdoors into indoors. Casino surveillance people, all wearing Ray-Bans, grabbed Pierre and accused him of rigging the slots downtown. Jaffeir came to his aid; he too was arrested.

  Pierre couldn’t accept that Aquilina had betrayed him and still professed his love for her when she came to visit him in the “Tower,” which was really a balcony at stage right. Pierre informed her that he was going to be drawn and quartered, but that his love for her would forever remain intact. After she heard his story, overwhelmed by guilt, Aquilina approached Antonio and said she’d marry him if he’d back off and let the two young men go. He agreed, but the order to release them came too late: Pierre had already killed himself.

  Then Belvidera came to visit Jaffeir—balcony, stage left—professing her love, but he was too distressed by the suicide of Pierre to give a rip. He expressed a wish to spend his life in jail (or gaol, as it was spelled in the program). Belvidera then got overly dramatic, at least to my taste. Being more attuned to films, poker-player tics, attenuated gestures, I found her emotional display a bit much. When Belvidera, i.e., Penelope, announced she would drink the poison that she’d conveniently stored in her dress the way an intelligence agent carries cyanide, I thought, I can live with that.

  But the play still wasn’t over.

  As I pulled up in front of the restaurant, surrendering my car to the valet, I relived the wild finish as I stood on the sidewalk, my half-smoked cigarette back in my pocket as I opened and closed the lid of my lighter.

  Souster, the second Earl of Effingham, a cousin of Priuli and the representative from East Inebria, had gone insane and called for an invasion of the Strip. He was easily and expediently removed from power by Antonio, aka Shaftesbury, and replaced by someone named Ethelred, who was even crazier.

  Then a man in a nineteenth-century frock coat and bow tie, who I figured had to be John Wilkes Booth, jumped out from the audience and shot at the Lincoln Memorial. The monument toppled over, taking a few other buildings with it. Booth then faced the audience, expecting praise for his act, and began a soliloquy that echoed that of Brutus, and then was stabbed by everyone in the cast, including some of those who had died previously.

  After he fell, as his battered and bloodied frame lay on the stage, facing upward, he stated, We’re all in the gutter … which cast for me an image of Lino. I couldn’t make out the rest of Booth’s closing words.

  Roses then fell like confetti from the sky/ceiling, blanketing the stage and actors. They then turned on each other with their brutal swords until the only one left standing was Belvidera, who, it turns out, had been temporarily knocked out by the poison. As soon as the lights had gone on I looked at Langham’s list of acting credits in the program. There wasn’t much to it: a couple of community plays and two films, one of them directed by one Les Biden.

  No shit.

  After the play I had stepped outside, took a few puffs off a cigarette, more out of unconscious habit than craving, and after staring at it for a few seconds, put it out, broke off the burned part, then put the remaining portion in a napkin. I reentered from the side door and entered the corridor behind the stage to meet up with the director.

  His thinning blond hair looked like it had been combed back with fingers. He had a few days worth of facial stubble that was clearly white and not brown or blond. He wore a scarf over a well-fitting but untucked shirt, an unbuttoned vest, and plaid slacks. He was barefoot, his callused feet resting on his cluttered desk as he leaned back. His tennis shoes were near the door.

  He looked familiar, but they always do.

  He put the bottle of whatever he was drinking in a desk drawer and greeted me warmly, getting up and shaking my hand. “Just saw the play?”

  “Yeah. Quite the spectacle.”

  “That’s the idea. I’m Gerard.”

  “I know. The director.” I introduced myself as David, and lied about the rest. Taking a page each from Minerva and Brenda, I concocted a story of how a midlife crisis led me to abandon my job and to return to an earlier passion: writing dramatic stories. I told him I was quite impressed by his creative use of the stage, and said if he ever had some time to spare, maybe I could buy him a drink or lunch and we could talk about screen- and playwriting from a director’s point of view.

  “You know, I’ve been holed up here all day and a drink sounds nothing short of perfect. How about now, unless you have other plans?”

  I saw that he had had a head start. More important, I saw an opportunity and said “Sure.” It was 10:20.

  He grabbed his keys and a jacket that seemed unnecessary considering the warm air, slipped into his shoes and led me out, putting his hand on my shoulder. I thought of Pierre and Jaffeir. It was a bold move—his staging of their lovemaking scene, I mean, not his hand on my shoulder.

  I was gambling that I could make him think I really wrote plays. In fact, it was Brenda who had taken classes with the Academy for Creative Media, not to mention every screenwriting workshop the university offered. I had read and reread every one of her romantic comedies and soapy treatments, every attempt to get that lucrative deal. I knew every plot turn, and, if asked, I could recite entire passages from memory. In any case his suggestion that we go for a drink did hit the right spot.

  “Where you wanna go?”

  Gerard suggested Indigo, a place he said served great dry martinis. It was located on Nu‘uanu Street, not far from the Hawai‘i Theatre, the one remaining relic of downtown’s glory days. The theater had in recent years undergone an elaborate and expensive restoration, an attempt to hasten, albeit in some gentrified form, the resurrection of this scummy district.

  I told him sure, since it was near my old Chinatown haunts anyway, yet a world away from anyone who’d recognize me. I didn’t tell him that I wasn’t a martini man, neither shaken nor stirred. Didn’t tell him I needed time to gather my thoughts, think out a way of getting him to talk till he hit on what I needed to know.

  19

  THE THIRD ACT

  Indigo. the name was a good fit. A specious and spacious venue, strings of bulbs fell from the ceilings, emitting subtle light. Up close, everything seemed clear, but anything more than a few feet away became shrouded in semidarkness, deliberately out of focus. The place was perfect for illicit liaisons, yet nice enough to impress a date. It took me a couple of minutes, but I found Gerard sitting on a stool at a high round table, a table too small for dinner, but just right for a clutter of drinks and appetizers. I had caught a glimpse of a guitar player tucked in a corner, and now I heard some delicate strumming.

  Gerard looked at me and nodded. We shook hands.

  I took the other stool. “I like that line about looking up from the gutter.”

  “‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.’ Lovely, isn’t it?”

  “I can appreciate the perspective.”

  “It’s Oscar Wilde. Lady Windermere’s Fan. I was drawing from his relationship with Bosie.”

  Gerard saw my befuddlement.

  “There was a movie about all this. Wilde. Didn’t do too well at the box office.”

  “You were making a statement.”

  “Perhaps. What did you perceive the statement to be?”

  “I’d need a week.”

  “Still digesting?”

  I nodded.

  “Then we should order drinks to wash it down.”

  “Works for me.”

  Gerard caught the eye of a passing waitress, who nodded as she continued to deliver a tray of drinks to another table.

  “Here’s what it is,” I began. “Your play struck me as a kind of organism.”

  “Organism. Hmm.”

  “What I’m tryin
g to say is that—let’s say we’re moving from A to Z, where Z is the end, of course—”

  “Of course.”

  I made like I was stumbling, trying to find my way. Gerard waited patiently. “You’d never think,” I continued, “that that ending would come from what you set in motion at the start. And yet, when you break it down and take it”—I gestured with my index finger—“step by step—am I making any sense?”

  “In a way.” He clasped his hands and smiled. “Let me help you here. I love improvisation. Finding the right cast is crucial. Once skilled actors pick up on their characters, they internalize them in a way that’s highly creative. At some point I let them break free from the script. Consequently they take things in a certain direction. That’s the joie de vivre aspect of creativity, a collective creation, where we feed on one another. You may be surprised to know that it comes out different every night.”

  “I have no doubt.”

  The waitress brought us glasses of water and a couple of menus.

  “Your recasting of Europe,” I continued. “Or Vegas. I couldn’t help but think, Ocean’s 11 meets Hamlet.”

  Gerard laughed out loud, a hearty laugh, then said, “Shakespeare—principal propagandist for Tudor trash.”

  I laughed with him and we toasted with our drinks. This was followed by silence, an uneasy silence broken only by intricate guitar stylings, a soft samba that took me all the way back to Andy’s place.

  Gerard was scrutinizing my face, maybe looking for a tell. Then he nodded, like he had figured out something. After a few fat seconds he said, “The underlying theme is that place is a state of mind. For example—” He was like a conductor, gesturing with his index finger for effect. “—most playgoers haven’t been to Milan or Verona or Venice except through Shakespeare. And I doubt if Shakespeare, let alone Otway, had ever been to Italy, though he loved to set his plays there.”

  “Maybe it’s those Italian outfits? I mean, who can beat codpieces, feathered caps, and bodices?”

  “And cool shirts. Don’t forget the cool shirts.”

  “So much for the look. But what about theme?”

  “What about theme?”

  “I see it as ‘History repeats itself, first as tragedy—’”

  “‘—then as farce’ … hmm, that works.”

  I could have followed with a comment on Bush 41 and Bush 43, but when you don’t know another fella’s politics, and you’re trying to get information from him …

  We were still a bit out of sync. Gerard picked up the menu, took a brief look, then put it down. Then he smiled. “I remember now what I was gonna say. I was gonna point out that Carmen was written by a Frenchman, who set the story in a Spain he had never seen, only imagined.”

  That wasn’t the way I heard it, but he probably knew better.

  “What I’m saying is,” Gerard continued, “that’s what the stage is all about. You wanna be a playwright? Never forget that. The very bareness of a stage allows us, and challenges us, to use our limitless imaginations. When I was studying Otway’s script, trying to find a way to make it relevant, I happened upon a shot of the Las Vegas Strip. I thought, Las Vegas, where we have a quarter-sized Eiffel Tower, the New York cityscape painted on a building, that entire Strip … is it any less a wonder, any less real? Please don’t think I’m suggesting it can replace Prague, or Buenos Aires, or Rome, let alone the most romantic city in the world, but unless you’re a real extensive traveler how can you know all these places?” I shrugged, picturing Andy’s wife visiting some church in a remote Spanish village. Since I didn’t know what she looked like, in my mind I saw her in a veil.

  “Vegas,” Gerard continued, “puts it all under one roof, crass as it is. In the end, there’s no Europe to be faithful to, since it too is a state of mind….”

  “Drinks?” The waitress had returned just in time.

  “I’ll have a Steinlager.”

  “You can’t order beer here,” Gerard interrupted.

  “Can we go to another place then?”

  “What I mean is, it’s offensive not to even try their delicious martinis.”

  “But I’m—” I had no end to my sentence.

  Gerard waved me off. “I’ll have my usual. Get my friend here a lychee, no, get him a sake-tini.” He looked at me.

  “Trust me, you’ll like this.”

  Hmm, trust. I picked up the drinks and desserts menu. It listed the types of martinis that were available: modern bone-dry martini … pomegranate martini … marga-tini … Some were posted in capital letters: SUNBURN, TONY SOPRANO, MANDARIN BLOSSOM COSMOPOLITAN, which sounded eerily like the girl I was looking for.

  “How’d you choose your cast?” I asked Gerard over the menu. “Was it people you knew already, actors with reputations, or was it a casting call?”

  “A little bit of both. You ever tried acting?”

  “No. Not really.”

  “Too bad. Practically no one makes a living writing, so I’m guessing you have a day job? Or a trust fund of some sort?”

  I could have told him that I used to make a living as a writer. I had been a reporter, after all, but then he’d probe more, ask where I’ve published and before you know it I’d be backtracking or simply building upon lie after lie. It was time to give him a bit of truth: “I make my living as a gambler.”

  He chuckled. “A gambler? You? For a living?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Whadaya mean? You mean because I take chances with storylines, or the choice of plays I direct?”

  I nodded. I liked that he answered his own questions.

  “What kind of gambling you do?”

  “Poker, mostly.” I almost said exclusively.

  “And you can make a living that way?”

  “I get by.”

  “And you write screenplays in your spare time. How romantic.”

  Yes, that’s it. Romantic. Touch my knee and you’ll find yourself in a gutter—oh, shut up, Kawika. Let it go. “I hate saying this,” I said, changing the subject to an area of substance, “especially since I loved a lot of the acting. But I thought your lead actress was, well, … a bit over the top.”

  “Over the top? For Penelope, that’s an understatement. I cringe when she turns up that, that … shrill meter. I have to keep reminding her, ‘pull it back, just a little….’”

  “You happen to know of an actress who goes by the name of Caroline Johnson? Sometimes she goes by Kay?”

  “Yes … now she”—he pointed his index finger at my chest—“she would have been great for the part.” He then eyed me askew. A no-table shift in demeanor. “How do you know her?”

  “Oh, I met her at the film festival. You know, the one right here in town. Anyone else you considered? Or was it Penelope’s to begin with?”

  “There were others.”

  “Others? Name some names.”

  “Why?” Suddenly he seemed a bit wary.

  “I dunno. Just curious.”

  He laughed, a low and guttural one-beat laugh, like a subdued cough. “Well, there was Melanie….”

  “Nope. Don’t know any Melanie. She a redhead?”

  “Not quite. A brunette, by my reading.”

  “I did meet another actress type, maybe at the same film festival. Now what was her fucking name.” I was channeling Kurt Lemon and probably sounded as irritating. “Started with an A, I think. Alice? Angie? One of them two syllable names. She could sing the blues like nobody’s business. Know anyone like that? Can rip your heart out singing the blues?”

  “You want a redhead that can sing the blues. How about Bonnie Raitt?”

  “Half her age. Not a big star, just an up-and-coming type. Girl with potential. Wait. I remember. Amber. Yeah, that’s it. Amber. I bet you do know her. She’s part of the local theater community.”

  “Community,” Gerard spat out as he turned to signal our waitress. “That’s a bit of a misnomer….”

  “Amber Kane. Funny, when she told me her name I though
t it sounded like a stage name. That name ring any bells?”

  “No, don’t know any Amber Kane. There’s a few Ambers around. Not the rarest of names.”

  He didn’t know her. If he did he’d be great at poker.

  “Sorry to belabor this but you said earlier that Caroline would have been a great Belvedira—”

  “She can do nuance, something Penelope needs to learn.”

  The cocktail waitress brought our drinks, along with some chips and salsa. “And damn, well you saw her. Pretty as heck, like Lily here, but a bit forlorn. You aren’t forlorn, are you, Lily?”

  Lily wiped sweat off her forehead with her sleeve. “Too busy to be ‘forlorn,’ Gerry. Shall I run a tab?”

  “As always, dear.” Gerard winked at her. When she left, he stood up and said, “She should know not to call me Gerry. I hate that name. Need to pee.” He got up and walked away.

  I sat there looking at the martinis. Judging by the purplish color, I surmised that Gerard’s “usual” was the pomegranate martini. I sipped my sake-tini. It wasn’t bad.

  OK, I thought as I sat there, Amber Kane—not only a fake name, but it looks like she didn’t even try out for the role. Therefore, somebody put her up to this. But who? And for what reason? Something had to have happened in my search for Kay to have set this in motion. Maybe it was Kurt Lemon. Maybe he remembered the name of the blonde, contacted her, got her to color her hair and pay me a visit. Maybe it was that gray sideburned chap, just fucking with me for interrupting his reading session. I couldn’t rule out Mia. She’s dabbled in theater. She may even know Gerard Plotkin. But why would she want me at the theater? In any case, it had to be someone who knew that Kay knew this Gerard guy, right? Wrong? I scanned the restaurant, checking discreetly to see if someone was discretely watching me. No customer seemed to fit the bill. It was time to drink that martini, bid adios, call it a false trail, and go and find the right one in my search for Caroline Johnson.