Celebrity Chekhov (10 page)

“And he did not officially ask her out; he kept putting it off, to the great vexation of Alice and all our girlfriends; he went on weighing his future duties and responsibilities, and meanwhile he went for a walk with Polly almost every day—possibly he thought that this was necessary in his position—and came to see me to talk about how it might work if he had a girlfriend or a wife. And in all probability in the end he would have gone for her, and proposed, and she would have said yes, and the earth would have welcomed yet another unnecessary, stupid marriage that exists only as a barrier against boredom, if it had not been for a huge scandal. Oh, I should mention that Chris Kattan detested Jon Lovitz from the first day they met. He could not endure him.

“ ‘I don't understand,' he used to say to us, shrugging his shoulders—‘I don't understand how you can put up with that guy, that killjoy. How can you deal with him? He's more of a drag than a bag of sand tied behind a bicycle. I will be here for a few seasons, and then I'll be off making movies, and you can stay here with Jon Lovitz. It'll be so much fun for you.'

“Or Chris Kattan would laugh a shrill, thin laugh, and ask me, waving his hands, ‘What does he sit here for? What does he want? He sits and stares.'

“He even gave Jon Lovitz a nickname, ‘the Snail' We didn't talk much to him about the possibility that his sister might get involved with the Snail. Once, at a party, Alice said something about how she thought that Polly and Jon Lovitz would make a good couple. He frowned and muttered, ‘It's not my business. Let her marry that if she likes. I can't be bothered with other people's affairs.' ”

“Other people's affairs is all there is,” Jack Nicholson said.

“You're getting ahead of me,” Adam Sandler said. “Listen to what happened next. Someone drew a caricature of a tiny Jon Lovitz, bearing a shell on his back, moving slowly across a landscape that turned out, upon inspection, to be a close-up of Polly's bare belly. He was going downward from her navel, and there was a caption beneath the picture: ‘The Snail Trail.' ”

“I like that,” Jack Nicholson said. “Classy. Though when I go down from the navel I like to go faster than a snail.”

Adam Sandler ignored him and went on. “The face of the snail was a perfect likeness of Jon Lovitz's face. The artist must have worked on it for hours. Copies got put in all our mailboxes, even Jon Lovitz's. It made a very painful impression on him.

“The group went out together. It was spring, and Lorne Michaels had arranged for us to take a hike just outside of the city.”

“A group hike?” Jack Nicholson said. “Count me out.”

“It wasn't so bad,” Adam Sandler said. “Well, not for most of us. Jon Lovitz was gloomier than a storm cloud. ‘People are horrible!' he said, and his lips quivered. I felt sorry for him. We drove out to the beginning of the hiking trail, and we were piling out of the car and all of a sudden—would you believe it?—Chris Kattan drove up, dressed in tiny brown shorts and an undersized red vest and a green Tirolean hat with a yellow feather. With him was Polly, dressed the same way, though much sexier; the shirt was unbuttoned low enough to show that she wasn't wearing a bra, the shorts hardly covered anything, and she wore a long blond wig over her hair. Each of them carried a giant alphorn. ‘Ready for some mountain climbing,
meine schwester
?' Chris said.

“ ‘I love to blow the horn!' Polly said.

“We all laughed. Jon Lovitz now turned white and seemed petrified. He let the rest of the group start off on the hike, and when they were a few paces ahead of us, he came and tugged at the sleeve of my jacket.

“ ‘What just happened? Tell me!' he asked. ‘Is it proper for a young woman to dress that way, and to make those kinds of comments?'

“ ‘Hey, look,' I said. ‘We're taking a weekend hike. She can do anything she wants.'

“ ‘But how can that be?' he cried, amazed at my calm. ‘What are you saying?' He was so shocked that he was unwilling to go on, and made me drive him home.

“The next day he was continually twitching and nervously rubbing his hands, and I could tell from his face that he was unwell. And he left before rehearsal was over, for the first time in his life. In the evening, he came by my house, sat silently for a few minutes, and then announced that he was going over to the Kattans. He was wrapped warmly, even though the weather was warm. Polly was out but Chris was there.

“ ‘Come in,' Chris said with a frown.

“Jon Lovitz sat in silence for five minutes, and then began: ‘I have come to see you to relieve my mind. I am very, very much upset. First of all, someone drew a rude caricature of me and another person, someone we both care about. I regard it as my responsibility to assure you that I have had no hand in it, not just the drawings but the implication behind it. I have done nothing that would warrant that. On the contrary, I have always behaved in every way like a gentleman.' Chris Kattan sat sulking, saying nothing. Jon Lovitz waited a little, and went on slowly in a mournful voice: ‘And I have something else to say to you. I have been on the show for ten years, while you have only come recently, and I consider it my duty as an older colleague to give you a warning. What happened in today's hike was shameful.'

“ ‘Shameful?' said Chris Kattan.

“ ‘The whole show is about getting attention, and there are times that it's just not appropriate. Especially for Polly. That shirt and those shorts—it's awful.'

“ ‘What is it you want exactly?'

“ ‘All I want is to warn you. You are a young man, you have a future before you, you must be very, very careful in your behavior, and you are so careless! You come late to rehearsal. There are whispers about drinking and drugs. And now this costume stunt. I'm just happy Lorne didn't see it.'

“ ‘It's no business of Lorne's if I want to dress that way on a Saturday!' said Chris Kattan, and he turned crimson. ‘And trust me, he doesn't care. He's not the kind of dummy who goes around meddling in people's private affairs.'

“Jon Lovitz turned pale and got up.

“ ‘If you speak to me in that tone I cannot continue,' he said. ‘And please never speak that way about Lorne in my presence.'

“ ‘What did I say about Lorne?' asked Chris Kattan, looking at him wrathfully. ‘Leave me alone.'

“Jon Lovitz flew into a nervous flutter, and began hurriedly putting on his coat, with an expression of horror on his face. It was the first time in his life he had been spoken to so rudely.

“ ‘You can say what you want,' he said, as he went out from the entry to the landing on the staircase. ‘I ought only to warn you: someone might have overheard us, and so our conversation isn't misunderstood, I have to tell Lorne about it so that he does not misunderstand.'

“Chris Kattan went to where Jon Lovitz was standing, just outside his apartment, and shoved him, and Jon Lovitz rolled down a half flight of stairs, his umbrella clattering down alongside him. He landed in a heap on the next landing and his umbrella came to rest right across his face. He was unhurt but lay there a moment, contemplating what had just occurred. Just then Polly came up the stairs with a friend. When she rounded the corner of the stairs, she stopped and took in the scene. She looked at his face, his crumpled coat, and his rain boots. Not understanding what had happened and supposing that he had slipped down by accident, she could not restrain herself, and laughed loud enough to be heard up and down the staircase: ‘Ha-ha-ha!'

“To Jon Lovitz this was more terrible than anything. I believe he would rather have broken his neck or both legs than have been an object of ridicule. This pealing, ringing laugh was the last straw that put an end to everything. He did not hear Polly calling after him. On reaching home, the first thing he did was to remove her portrait from the table; then he went to bed, and he never got up again.

“Three days later Clive came to me and asked if we should not send for the doctor, as there was something wrong with Jon Lovitz. I went in to see him. He lay silent behind the curtain, covered with a quilt. When I asked him a question, he said only ‘Yes' or ‘No.'

“A month later Jon Lovitz died. Everyone from the show went to his funeral. When he was lying in his coffin his expression was mild, agreeable, even cheerful, as though he were glad that he had at last been put into a case that he would never leave again. As though in his honor, it was dull, rainy weather on the day of his funeral, and we all wore rain boots and took our umbrellas. Polly, too, was at the funeral, and when the coffin was lowered into the grave she burst into tears.”

“You always want a woman to cry over you,” Jack Nicholson said. “Especially a beautiful one.”

“I have to say,” said Adam Sandler, “that to bury a man like Jon Lovitz is a great pleasure. As we were returning from the cemetery we wore hard faces; no one wanted to display this feeling of pleasure—a feeling like that we had experienced long, long ago as children when our parents had gone out and we ran around the house for an hour or so, enjoying complete freedom. We returned from the cemetery in a good humor. But not more than a week had passed before life went on, as gloomy, oppressive, and senseless as before. We weren't prohibited from enjoying it, but we weren't fully permitted either. It was no better. Though we had buried Jon Lovitz, how many such men in cases were left, how many more of them there will be!”

“That's just how it is,” said Jack Nicholson, and lit another cigarette. “I was kind of hoping that he'd get together with her. Call me a romantic.”

“How many more of them there will be!” repeated Adam Sandler.

Adam Sandler got up out of bed and went onto the porch. He was a tall man with short, cropped hair, and he was less thin than he had been in the years of the story. “What a moon!” he said, looking upward.

It was midnight. On the right could be seen the ocean, stretching for miles. All was buried in deep silent slumber; one could hardly believe that nature could be so still. When on a moonlight night you see the sea, and you can't detect its movement, a feeling of calm comes over the soul; in this peace, wrapped away from care, protected from sadness by the darkness of night, it seems as though the stars look down upon you with tenderness, and as though there were no evil on earth. On the left was forest, also stretching to the horizon in the darkness.

“Yes, that is just how it is,” repeated Jack Nicholson; “and isn't our living in the city, running from project to project, worrying about billing and box office, isn't that all a sort of case for us? And our spending our whole lives among trivial men and silly women, our talking and our listening to all sorts of nonsense—isn't that a case for us, too? I think I know the problem. I have a story for you.”

“No; it's time to sleep,” said Adam Sandler. “Tell it tomorrow.”

They went into the house and lay down on their beds. And they were both covered up and beginning to doze when they suddenly heard light footsteps—patter, patter. . . . Someone was walking not far from the lodge, walking a little and stopping, and a minute later, patter, patter again. The footsteps died away.

“I'll say one thing about people,” said Jack Nicholson, turning over on the other side. “They lie to your face, and they secretly think that you're a fool for putting up with their lying. You endure insult and humiliation, and can't say anything honest or true; and all that for the sake of this film or that one, or for a wretched little mention in the papers, or a nice review. It wasn't always this way. There are times I think it's not worth going on living like this.”

“Well, you are off on another tack now,” said Adam Sandler. “I'm hitting the hay.”

And ten minutes later Adam Sandler was asleep. But Jack Nicholson kept sighing and turning over from side to side; then he got up, went outside again, and, sitting in the doorway, lit a cigarette.

G
OOSEBERRIES

The whole sky had been overcast with rain clouds from early morning; it was a still day, not hot, but heavy, as it is in gray dull weather when the clouds have been hanging over the country for a long while, when one expects rain and it does not come. Jack Nicholson and Adam Sandler had been fishing and were on their way back for lunch, a trip that seemed endless. Far ahead of them they could just see the outline of the lodge, and beyond it the bank of the river. Beyond that there were meadows, clusters of trees, homes in the woods, and if you went to the top of a hill and looked out over the countryside, you could see a train that in the distance looked like a crawling caterpillar, and in clear weather even the next town. Now, in still weather, when all nature seemed mild and dreamy, Jack Nicholson and Adam Sandler were filled with love of that countryside, and both thought how great, how beautiful, a land it was.

“Last night,” said Adam Sandler, “you were about to tell me a story.”

“Yes; I meant to tell you about my friend Jim.”

Jack Nicholson heaved a deep sigh and lit a cigarette to begin to tell his story, but just at that moment the rain began. And five minutes later heavy rain came down, covering the sky, and it was hard to tell when it would be over. Jack Nicholson and Adam Sandler pulled their jackets over their heads.

“Let's get inside somewhere,” said Adam Sandler. “Let us go to the Foxx Inn; it's close by.”

“Okay.”

They turned aside and walked through mown fields, sometimes going straight forward, sometimes turning to the right, till they came out on the road. Soon they saw the red roofs of barns; there was a gleam of pond, and the view opened onto a large white building with a miniature golf course in front and a giant oval-shaped pool behind. This was the Foxx Inn.

The miniature golf course had a windmill on the final hole, and it was spinning in the rain. The inn was under construction, and mostly empty, though now and then a man or woman would dart across the lawn or run from the miniature golf clubhouse. It was damp, muddy, and desolate; the water looked cold and malignant. Jack Nicholson and Adam Sandler were already conscious of a feeling of wetness, messiness, and discomfort all over; their feet were heavy with mud, and when crossing the street to get to the Foxx Inn, they were silent, as though they were angry with one another.