Acts of Love (15 page)

When the lighting director left, Monte pushed back his chair and stretched. “I feel deprived; only one meal today. Gladys would be thrilled. I'll tell her I planned it that way. You ready for a drink?”

“In a minute. Marilyn wants to do costumes, Monte. I told her it was all right with me.”

“Fine with me. She's dressed a lot of shows. She's good. Classy, too.”

Luke was looking at his schedule. “Sketches of costumes by the end of next week. By then Marilyn should have the new model to Sprowell for set construction. He's slow; I like to give him plenty of time. When are you seeing Aiken?”

“Tomorrow before I come over here. Luke, has he ever managed a theater before?”

“In San Francisco. Why?”

“He's too calm. He makes me nervous.”

Luke chuckled. “If you're nervous enough, he'll catch it from you, and then you'll feel better. He's good, Monte. When you get a schedule for ticket sales and theater posters, let me have a copy. And you'll talk to him about theater parties?”

“Right.”

“Okay, then, the budget. Did you talk to Tracy?”

“I thought you were going to do that. It doesn't matter; I should have done it. I'll call her when I get home. Five o'clock tomorrow, assuming she can make it?”

“Fine.”

“Anything else?”

“No, that's it.” Luke walked around the room, gazing at his tape on the floor, the chairs and boxes the cast was using for furniture, the table where he and Monte sat, heaped with everyone's cups, leftover food and Styrofoam containers that would all be cleaned up before they arrived the next morning.

“Luke, let's go.”

He nodded and forced himself to walk away. Once rehearsals began, he was always reluctant to leave. They all were like that as the play sprang to life. In another month it would seem as if, for them, there was no city, no climate, no families: only the theater. But Monte was waiting, one hand on the doorknob. “I don't mean to rush you; it's just that I invited somebody to join us for a drink and she's always on time.”

Luke looked at him. It had been a long day, heavy on drama. “Why?”

“Why did I invite her? Because you're always looking for new ideas and she's got some terrific ones. Because you'll like her. Because
I
like her.”

“I'm not looking for new ideas when I'm just beginning a new play.”

“I just met her, Luke; I got enthusiastic. Humor me.”

Luke strode ahead and Monte puffed, barely keeping pace, as they walked crosstown on 44th Street. As they neared the Algonquin, Luke at last slowed down. “One short drink,” he said. “I'll give you that much.”

“It won't be punishment, Luke; you'll like her.”

Amid the clusters of fringed velvet couches and armchairs in the Algonquin's inner lobby, an attractive woman waited. “Luke Cameron, Sondra Murphy,” Monte said. “You haven't ordered?” he asked Sondra.

“I waited for you.”

Monte hailed a waiter and they ordered drinks and then sat for a moment in silence. Sondra, serene and assured, seemed content to wait indefinitely, but Monte began to fidget. “I've got this idea about adapting some of Sondra's books for the stage,” he said to Luke. “Children's books, about a bear named Abbey. Of course, we'd have to change the name.”

Sondra was contemplating Luke's impassive face. “I don't think it will work,” she said to him. “When I met Monte at a dinner party it seemed cruel to clamp down on his enthusiasm—it's so refreshing—but I don't think my books have anything for adults, and certainly not for the theater.”

Luke looked at her with interest. She was blond and attractive, with strikingly vivid features; confident, and not captivated by Monte's vision. “Why does Monte think it would work for adults?”

“I don't like to speak for him—”

“Go right ahead,” Monte said.

“Abbey has a lot to say about the world through her adventures. She tours Japan, she meets the American president at his inaugural ball, she goes to Paris for a Fourth of July party at the American embassy, all the time commenting on people and politics. Monte thought that could be the core of a play or a musical.”

“You're right, it wouldn't work,” Luke said, and they smiled together, as if Monte had temporarily disappeared. “But is all that firsthand?” he asked. “You've done all the things your bear has done?”

“All of them. I've been involved in politics for a long time. But I don't write political books; these were fun projects with my daughter.”

They talked on, with Monte listening, and when they parted, Luke said that he hoped to see her again. It probably would not happen; they both were too busy and their lives were too far apart, but he was drawn to her, partly because of her attractiveness and the clear way she spoke about herself and the political and social worlds she inhabited, but also because she reminded him of Jessica. They both were women who created their own reality without waiting for others to do it for them.
The kind of woman I could stay with. The kind of woman my grandmother would approve of

“You were right,” Monte grumbled when they turned to walk up Seventh Avenue. “Waste of time.”

Luke laughed. “I had a better time than you did. Just don't have any more ideas about new shows until we've taken care of this one. Keep a diary. I'll read it in a few months.”

His step was light as he walked toward home. Sondra Murphy had been a good tonic: someone who had nothing to do with the world of make-believe or gossip, someone whose life was rooted in gritty realism. Maybe that was why Jessica left the stage, he thought. No, of course not. Sondra and Jessica were not really alike. It was just that his thoughts these days, wherever they started, had a way of ending up with Jessica.

And I need to get back to her letters; it's been a long time.

*  *  *

But
The Magician
was in its fourth week of rehearsals before Luke had a chance to return to Jessica's letters. Every night, coming home from an evening out, he would sit at the desk in his library, working on his notes for the play and on the script itself. And often there was a midnight call from Claudia. “I miss you, Luke. Tell me how you are. Tell me about the play.”

“What have you been doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Monte told me he talked to you the other day and said you should call Gladys, that she could find things for you to do.”

“She's unbearably dull, Luke, even if she is Monte's wife. And I'm not sure he likes her, either. Do you know what he called her? The volunteer queen of the eastern seaboard, always knocking herself out for some good cause or other. God, can you imagine anyone describing me that way?”

Luke let that pass. “Why not call her? You don't know what to do with yourself and she has jobs that need doing.”

“Washing the feet of poor people.”

“I think the only one who still does that is the pope. Look, damn it, she and her friends do a lot of good things that wouldn't get done if they weren't around. And it makes them feel good. It might make you feel good, too. Call her, Claudia. Give it a chance.”

“Well, I may get to it one of these days. I'm not excited about it, you know, Luke; I really don't think I'm a good works kind of person.”

There seemed to be no answer to that, so Luke made none. He looked down at the fanned-out sheets of Marilyn's watercolor paintings; one of the dresses for Lena bothered him and he was trying to figure out what was wrong with it.

“Luke, tell me about the play,” Claudia said. “Please, you know I love to hear about it. Is Cort still complaining?”

It was against his better judgement, but it seemed to keep her happy and away from rehearsals, and so he told her more than he ever told an outsider about what went on within their small group. “Not as vociferously. He's discovered how powerful his part is in the third act.”

“But you said Kent was rewriting something for him? You made him do it?”

“I asked him to try it, that we could always change back, that nothing was written in stone. And he agreed, but what he really thought was that stone was too common; he thinks of his pages as cast in bronze, hammered to perfection for posterity, so my comments weren't exactly welcome.”

Claudia laughed, a long merry laugh that coiled around him, and Luke found himself wanting her close; he could feel his arms around her. He needed someone outside the theater to listen to him, to laugh with him, to share the dramas, small and large, that filled his life. Then he caught himself. Not Claudia. Not ever again.

But he'd been working too hard. He'd seen Tricia only three times in the past month and had been distracted when they were together, and Claudia's voice was warm, her laughter intimate.

A
nd I'm lonely.

No.
He backed away from it; it contradicted his image of himself.
Not lonely. Just a little low. And tired.

“So then what happened?” Claudia asked.

Luke stared at the drawings, his head resting on his hand, and pictured Claudia, sitting at her telephone, making small circles with her right foot as she always did, wrapping a strand of hair around her finger, slipping it off, wrapping it again, gazing into space.

“Well, Kent actually rewrote parts of the first and second acts, but then Abby would charge in like the cavalry, her chin up—I don't know how a cavalry has its chin up, but if anyone could figure it out, Abby could—saying, ‘It does not
work.
Luke, I will not tolerate this . . . it is
wrong, wrong, wrong!' ”

“Oh, perfect.” Claudia was laughing again. “I can just hear her. And everybody shuts up as soon as she does that.”

“Exactly. Even Cort. But the first act is weak because he's not putting himself into it; he really doesn't like it—”

“Luke, why don't I come over for a while? Just to have a visit, much nicer than a telephone call. You could even offer me a drink. Please, Luke, wouldn't you like that?”

He would. He wanted companionship, and Claudia knew the people and the vocabulary of the theater as Tricia did not; that was one thing—perhaps the only thing—she had learned in their marriage. But not Claudia, he thought again. It never worked. Within an hour of their coming together, she slipped from companion to dependent, looking to him to provide her with activities to fill her hours, ideas to fill her thoughts, a structure for her life. Luke knew that there were people who seemed unable to organize their life in a way that was meaningful and productive, but he did not intend to spend time with them. Even—especially—an ex-wife.

So it would not be Claudia to whom he would turn for companionship.

Well, who, then? Who's going to come along to fill this gap that seems to be bigger and more noticeable than ever before?

“Luke? Did you hear me?”

Probably no one. If it hasn't happened yet, the chances are . . .

“Luke!”

“No, you can't come over. I'm exhausted, Claudia; I have a few more notes to finish and then I'm going to bed. I'll call you.”

“When?”

“When I have time.”

“No, that's no good, you have to be more definite. Oh, why do you make me go through this every time? I need you, Luke. You're the only one I can talk to, the only one who understands me. I need to know when I'll see you. If I know we'll have dinner on Tuesday or Monday or whatever, I feel better.”

“You have hundreds of friends. I've never known you to be without a string of men ready to take you wherever you want to go or do whatever you—”

“I have acquaintances. Hundreds, thousands. This city is full of acquaintances who don't want to listen; they just want to talk and preen because they're with a beautiful woman. The Phelans are the only people who truly are friends, who really listen to me, and you don't want me to see them.”

“They're friends as long as you spend money at their gambling tables. Can't you understand that?”

“They're friends because they care about me!”

“Damn it, we go over the same things, time and again. Can't you look at them and see what they are?”

“If I don't know when I'm going to see you, I'll look at them a lot!”

“Then you're on your own. You know how I feel.” Angry and frustrated, he slammed down the telephone. What made her think he would find her childishness attractive or desirable? Probably the fact that once he had married her and had stayed with her for five years. And still agreed to see her, still paid her gambling debts, still called now and then to see how she was. And as angry as he was now, he knew he would call her in the next few days and take her to dinner and listen to her complaints, and that he would do it as often as she demanded, because, though no one knew this, Constance had told him to.

Not in so many words. But after listening sympathetically on the rare occasions when he brought his frustrations with Claudia to her, she nodded when he told her he was getting a divorce and then said, “So now you plan to shut the door in her face and walk off. Can you do that?”

He had sat in silence, feeling like a boy again, wrapped round by that sense of being pinned down that boys have when they are on the verge of manhood and can no longer hide behind fecklessness. “Probably not. I'll do what I can for her.”

Forget it, Luke told himself. He tried to concentrate on Marilyn's drawings, but in a moment he knew he was too tired to analyze whatever it was that was bothering him about them. He went to his armchair. On the round table, Martin had arranged a thermos and a bottle of burgundy beside sandwiches under a bell-shaped cover, slices of chocolate cake, and a silver bowl of glazed apricots. Martin has an exaggerated sense of my appetite, Luke thought, but when he tasted an apricot he realized how hungry he was and remembered that he had not eaten dinner. He had canceled a date with Monte and Gladys to stay home and make notes for Kent on the last scene of the play and had told Martin to leave something for him. Well, here it was, and he was ravenous. He found a newscast on television, poured a glass of wine, and ate two sandwiches while his thoughts roamed from the newscast to the notes he had just finished, then to Claudia, then to his grandmother, and, from her, to Jessica.