Acts of Love (44 page)

Angela Crown was a large woman, a trifle overweight, with masses of blond hair. A faint coarseness in her features kept her from being beautiful, but she was attractive, and audiences found her easy to remember, in part because of her size. She wore a red sundress with thin straps and a plunging neckline and Jessica found all that skin quite imposing in a woman almost six feet tall. “Annoyed, curious, threatened,” Angela repeated in a well-modulated voice. “Well, maybe all three, but probably mostly curious. I mean, I don't know yet if he knew I lived here or if it's just an accident that he's moved in.”

“But if you think he might have known you lived there, and deliberately chose that apartment, do you think you might feel invaded?”

“Invaded. Oh, you mean, what the hell is this guy from my childhood doing on my grown-up turf? I like that.”

“Then would you think about that when you read those lines again? And go on from there, both of you.”

“Oh, much more interesting,” said Hermione as Angela began again. “She's quick, and that's all we need, besides talent.”

 . . . so we cast her,

Jessica wrote to Luke,

and Whitbread, too. I thought of asking him to change his name (telling him if it was shorter it would be easier for audiences to remember), but I was pretty sure that would get me nowhere and I'd rather ask only for things I have a good chance of getting. He'll be very good as Rex, once we loosen him up. One of his problems could be that he's never had women as both director and producer and, poor fellow, he probably feels as if his mother is sitting here, doubled, and he's torn between rebelling and being a dutiful son. I've asked Dan Clanagh, our stage manager, to pay attention to him so he has at least one man to talk to. Once we cast the other two parts, he'll have another man, and that should help him feel he's not outnumbered; the two of them can whisper together like boys sneaking a cigarette behind the barn. We hope to finish the casting tomorrow and have our first run-through no later than Monday. Oh, how familiar it is! But how strange, too. Do you know how it feels when you look through an airplane window at your neighborhood in New York and you can't identify half the buildings from that weird perspective? That's how I feel now and sometimes it's so unnerving I begin to feel disoriented, as if I'm not sure who I am. But that will pass, I'll get used to all of it, and most of the time I enjoy my view from the plane a lot. I hope you got the play; did you like it? Jessica.

Getting a little warm, she thought, reading it over. What happened to that cool distance I was so good at, no emotions, just facts? Maybe I should rewrite it; change a few sentences  . . . it wouldn't take long.

Oh, but it's so good to be able to tell him these things.

And she mailed the letter.

Dearest Jessica, do you have a fax machine? Love, Luke.

“I have one,” Hermione said when Jessica asked her the next morning. “But you ought to have your own. I'll have my secretary bring you one tonight. Is that okay?”

“Yes. Thank you.” A man and woman walked into the rehearsal room and introduced themselves. “Let's begin in the second act,” Jessica said, “where you first arrive to visit your son and you discover that Helen lives next door.”

She was restless that morning and no one pleased her. They were in their third day of casting and she was increasingly impatient to get to rehearsals so that they could get to opening night. She wanted to discover how good she was, and she wanted to discover it right away. Now that she had let herself come back, all the years on Lopez seemed like marking time, and suddenly she wanted everything at once: challenge, achievement, success, acclaim. She wanted people to say she was wonderful, that in spite of all that had happened to her, in spite of what she looked like, she deserved admiration and praise and love.

I love you. What does the way you look have to do with that?

She brushed his voice away. It wasn't enough. She had to prove herself in other ways, stand on her own, become whatever person Jessica Fontaine would be from now on.

“Thank you,” she said curtly to the two who had just read. “We'll let you know.” Though of course they would not, because there would be nothing to say.

“Lunch,” Hermione said, and they walked upstairs to the cafe. It was airy and open, with glass walls and open glass doors so that it seemed to flow into the terrace and then to the harbor and on to the farther shore, where a face painted on a Ferris wheel grinned at them from an abandoned amusement park. They ate quickly, saying little, both of them frustrated and anxious and worn down by the heat. “Well, I apologize,” Hermione said as they walked back downstairs. “Can't seem to do a damn bit of good around here.”

“You found Angela and Whitbread; that was wonderful. How many do we have this afternoon?”

“Four. One of the women might be okay. I haven't heard of the men; they came from the management agency.”

Jessica took her seat again, feeling hot and sticky and vaguely annoyed. There ought to be a better way to do this, she thought. She looked idly around the rehearsal room, her gaze passing over Dan Clanagh's perspiring baldness, a technician's shirt stained with sweat, and then up, to a group of people crowding onto the tiny balcony. They were all students except for a gray-haired man, and she found herself staring at his sad face, long and gaunt, and deep-set, shadowed eyes. She touched Hermione's arm. “Who is that man?”

Hermione turned to look. “Director of the drama department at the University of New South Wales. Just got here a few months ago. God, he looks unhappy.”

“He looks like Stan.”

Hermione stared openly at him. “He does indeed. I wonder if he can act.”

“He's head of the drama department.”

“Not a guarantee. Dan,” she said, leaning over, “could you run upstairs and ask that guy, the tragic one, to come talk to us?”

When Dan led him to them, Hermione thrust out her hand and introduced herself. “I'm bad at names and yours has slipped out of my head.”

“Edward Smith.”

“Not much excuse for forgetting that one. I apologize. This is Jessica Fontaine. We'd like to talk to you; can you leave your students alone for a few minutes?”

“They've taken over the cafe upstairs. What can I do for you?”

“We're staging a new play,” Jessica said. “I'm directing it; Hermione is the producer. We'd like you to read for one of the parts.”

“You've acted, of course,” Hermione said.

“In Canada,” he replied. “I never got very far. Why do you want me to read for this part?”

“Because you look like this guy,” Hermione said. “His name is Stan, he's about your age, with a forty-two-year-old son, and he and his wife have had a rough time because twenty years earlier someone took them for everything they had and he's never found a way back.”

“A loser.”

“A victim. But he comes back, they both do, and in a way they're the ones who triumph in the end. It's more complicated than that and more interesting, but if you don't mind trying a scene with just that much and a quick read-through, we'd like to hear you.”

He turned to Jessica. “Have you ever known anyone picked out of a crowd to be just what you're looking for?”

“No. It would be a first.”

He gave her a long look. “Give me ten minutes.”

He went outside, to the broad walkway that ran the length of the building, and stood in a shaded corner, reading the section Jessica had marked. When he returned, he said, “Who will read with me?”

“Nora Thomas,” Hermione said. “Our last hope for Doris, at least for today. Nora? We're ready.”

A stocky woman with steel-gray hair, a pug nose and full rosy cheeks closed her book and came to them from her chair in the corner. She took the script Jessica handed her, glanced at it and nodded.

She and Edward Smith shook hands, eyed each other, then sat on facing chairs some distance from Jessica and Hermione, and began to read a dialogue between Stan and Doris. Jessica clasped her hands in her lap, listening for what could be drawn out in the future, as well as for what was there now. When the voices stopped, she said, “Thank you. Would you please wait outside?” As they left, she turned to Hermione. “Well?”

“Neither one of them. Damn, this is taking forever. He's got a good voice and a couple of times I almost thought he had it, but he left me cold. No fire, no passion. He's so
down.
As for Nora, she's not bad, but I don't like her looks.”

“What does that mean?” Jessica asked evenly.

“Nothing personal. She looks small-town. We want somebody who looks like she knows what it is to be rich even though she isn't anymore.”

Jessica nodded thoughtfully. “I'd like to use both of them.”

“You're joking.”

“No, I like them. Give them a couple of weeks of rehearsal and you'll be agreeing with me.”

“No way. You know how many times I've done this, Jessie? More than you can shake a—” She stopped. “Okay, I promised I'd never do that. I'm not holding it against you that you've never directed before; I'm just questioning your judgement in this one case.”

“Two cases. They're better than you think, Hermione. I'm not guessing; I know it.”

There was a silence. “Well,” Hermione said. “A little conflict here. And everything's been so sweetness-and-light. What if I said absolutely not?”

“I don't answer hypothetical questions. You won't say it because you do trust my judgement. We wouldn't have gotten this far if you didn't.”

“Well, God knows that's true.” Hermione tapped her pencil on the table. “You know there's a lot of money at stake.”

“A third of which is mine. I don't intend to lose it.”

“Okay.” She dropped the pencil and slammed the table with her palm. “Done. I hope to God you're right. I'll go get them.”

When they returned and Jessica told them they had the parts of Doris and Stan, Edward Smith looked at Jessica. She was startled at his intensity. He was better looking than she had thought, and he was gazing at her with a kind of brooding interest she found attractive and intriguing.

“Can you take a leave of absence?” she asked him. “From now until at least the end of April. And if we continue the run at another theater, even beyond that.”

“I'll find out.” He went to the telephone on the wall. Nothing tentative about him, Jessica thought.

“I want to thank you,” Nora was saying. “I'm so excited about this play, so incredibly excited, I've been praying for a week—”

“Have you ever been rich?” Hermione asked bluntly.

“What? Rich? Well, we had plenty of money when I was growing up. Why?”

Jessica let them talk, her thoughts wandering. When Edward hung up and turned and saw her looking at him, he smiled, the first smile Jessica had seen from him. “It's a little difficult, since I just took this position, but I think we can work it out. Summer vacation helps. I haven't thanked you for your trust. It means a great deal to me that you of all people think I have some ability on the stage.”

Jessica's eyebrows rose. “ ‘Of all people'?”

“I went to New York from Toronto several times to see you on stage. I never dared hope we would meet. I'd like to ask you to dinner; is that improper, now that we're going to be working together?”

Jessica smiled. “I don't think so.”

“Tonight, then?”

His eyes were gray; she had not noticed that. “I have a meeting with our stage manager at five; can we make it eight o'clock?”

“I'll come by for you. If you'll give me your address . . .”

Jessica wrote it down and handed him the slip of paper. “We have to know definitely about the leave of absence. If there's any doubt, we'll have to find someone else.”

“There is no doubt,” he said quietly. “I will play this part.”

When he and Nora left, Hermione said, “He perked up. There might be something there after all. When are you going out with him?”

Jessica shook her head. “It always amazes me that you can be carrying on a conversation and listening to another one at the same time.”

“I couldn't hear all of it; Nora talks nonstop, without commas, periods or paragraphs. We're going to have to slow down her metabolism. Which night?”

“Tonight.”

“Fast work. Have you thought about it? It might not be a good idea. First of all there's something about him that bothers the hell out of me. Don't ask me what; I don't know yet. But I wouldn't trust him.”

“Hermione, you don't know anything about him.”

“Instinct, pure and simple. But my instinct and I don't usually let each other down. And there's something else. If you're his director, don't you think that's really all you ought to be? At least while you're directing. One thing at a time, one set of complications at a time.”

“I don't see a problem.”

“I do, Jessie. I don't think you should go out with him.”

“One dinner. Then I'll rethink it.”

After a moment, Hermione shrugged. “You're a big girl; I can't tell you what to do. You'll still be at the meeting with Dan at five?”

“Hermione.”

“Well, yes, that was a stupid thing to say. I do know this play comes first with you. And second, third and fourth, too. What are you doing until then?”

“You and I are going to sit here and make plans. I'd like to have the read-through on Monday, if that's all right with you. Then we'll start rehearsals on Wednesday. I need to go back to the Drama Theater to make measurements, and I'd like to photograph the backstage: dressing rooms, prop room, everything. Could you arrange that? And you said you'd have scene and lighting designers for me to talk to this week.”