Lives of the Circus Animals (14 page)

O
nce upon a time, Monday nights were dark nights. Every theater was closed, everyone stayed home: actors, audience, and critics. But Kenneth Prager found that no nights were completely dark anymore, certainly not Off-Broadway.

He put in a full day at the
Times
on Monday, writing the final drafts of two reviews that would not run until later in the week. One described CSC's uneven revival of
The Rivals,
the other a vanity musical about New Yorkers and their dogs. “Imagine
Rent
with dog biscuits, or
Hair
with mange, and you get some idea of
Dog Run
.” He tried to be kind to the actors.

It was going to be a slow week. He wanted to review the new Richard Foreman and explore his thoughts about that strange avant-garde dreamer whose performance pieces hadn't changed in thirty years. Repetition became a kind of integrity. But Ted Bickle, the first reviewer, had put dibs in on the Foreman. Bickle was being very piggy with assignments since his return from the hospital.

The copyeditor routed
The Rivals
back into Kenneth's computer decorated like a Christmas cookie with red corrections and green queries, including one asking him to explain, “for our few readers who might not know,” what century Sheridan had lived in. Kenneth could have worked at home, but he needed his office in the Times Building. He felt solid here, grounded, safe in his fourth-floor cubbyhole. Other
Times
men and
Times
women softly milled outside his open door. Kenneth was not the boogeyman here, not the Buzzard of Off-Broadway, but a good journalist, a disciplined writer who never missed a deadline. He liked most of the people he worked with, and they seemed to like him—except maybe Bickle.

He went home by cab. He used to take the subway but couldn't anymore. Too many theater people traveled underground.

He ate dinner with his family that night, munching the macaroni and cheese—Rosalind's favorite—that Gretchen had picked up at Gourmet Garage on her way home from the office. He listened to Gretchen ask Rosalind about a boy she was sweet on, Tony, who'd been in
Show Boat
with her. He was startled to learn that Rosalind could be sweet on anyone. Wasn't she too young?

“Does this mean I'll have to start meeting boys at the door with a shotgun?” he teased.

“Oh, Daddy,” said Rosalind, baring her braces at him in a grimace of humiliating pity.

Around the time when most family men were thinking about going to bed and enjoying nice long chats with their wives—he wanted to ask Gretchen about this Tony—Kenneth had to go out again. He was expected at Cafe Fez tonight for something called “Leopold and Lois.” It wasn't a play, it was—God knows what it would be. The music reviewer had seen it and said it wasn't music. So they were sending Kenneth.

“Good luck, dear,” said Gretchen when he kissed the top of her head—she did not get up from the sofa. “Who knows?” she timidly hoped. “Maybe it'll be fun?”

He could only make a pained face and produce a pained noise. “I'll try not to wake you when I come in,” he told her. “Good night.”

Cafe Fez was just over in the East Village. Kenneth decided to walk. The night was lovely, the air mild and fragrant. A man could be safely anonymous in the bosky shadows of the tree-lined streets.

Fez was in the basement of a large, trendy restaurant near the Public Theater. Reviewers were supposed to be incognito, but the management knew him. “The
Times,
right? We got a table for you.” The room was set up like a nightclub, but the crowd was hardly café society. They were all in their twenties, with an extreme sampling of shaved heads and stapled faces. Kenneth had left his necktie at home but feared he still stuck out like a Secret Service agent.

They led him to a table where a man was already seated, a plump young man in a seersucker suit. “Kenneth
Prager
! What a surprise! Never thought I'd see
you
here!”

He held out his hand and Kenneth shook it: a damp, pudgy hand. “Hello, Cameron.”

Cameron Ditchley wrote for the
Post.
He wasn't their theater reviewer or music critic, just a renaissance hack whose beat was “Downtown.” A florid dandy of another era, he was not yet thirty but looked straight out of
Sweet Smell of Success.
He wore a display handkerchief in the pocket of his jacket. He spoke in an exuberant whine full of random italics.

“I hear this is
fabulous.
But you must have heard
too,
or the Paper of Record wouldn't be sending a man of
your
credentials.”

They made shop talk for ten excruciating minutes. Ditchley loved anything he hadn't seen, and hated only shows that had closed. Whenever Kenneth feared he'd become a sell-out, a hack, a whore, he often told himself, Well, at least I'm not Cameron Ditchley.

Finally, the show began.

An old man and old woman stumbled up onstage, or rather, two boys in their twenties, one of them in drag. Leopold and Lois were a lounge act: Leopold played the piano, Lois sang. Leopold wore the bad, sooty makeup of a child playing Grampa in a school play. Lois was more convincing in her blue-rinse wig and teal blue evening gown. Kenneth was not averse to drag; he could appreciate camp. He loved the late Charles Ludlam.

Lois kicked off the act by singing “All of Me”—in the coarse croak of a sick crow. No, it wasn't music. Kenneth scribbled the song title on his notepad. He noticed Ditchley noticing; Ditchley took out his own pen and wrote something on a cocktail napkin. Sitting with other reviewers often made Kenneth feel like they were all taking a test and he should keep his answers covered.

“Good evening,” Lois croaked. “Welcome to the musical stylings of Leopold and Lois. Lucky you.” Leopold tinkled the intro for a song. But instead of singing, Lois growled, “That reminds me—” and fell into a boozy ramble about her life in music, starting with her childhood. She had a wonderful drunken mother and an even drunker father, who raped her when she was twelve. “Oh, but I got my revenge on him,” she said sweetly. “Next time he visited me in bed, I was holding a straight razor under the covers. Ha! Improved his vocal range by a whole octave. Mom, of course, never forgave me. So I left home and went into show business.”

It was supposed to be funny, or funny for being so unfunny. The kids around him roared. At the next table, a young woman with brown lipstick and a face full of rings—she was armored like a stag beetle—applauded by pounding the table with her fist.

The show continued in this vein, with more monologues than songs, Lois tossing back drinks and laughing as she told stories about her first husband the junkie, her second husband the cross-dresser, and how Leopold was beat up in grade school, then in high school, then in college, then was thrown off a roof by his boyfriend, “a very nice schizophrenic named—Mike.”

“So here we are,” she concluded and reached across the piano to clutch Leopold's hand. “Together forever. The way it was meant to be. Isn't life a kick?”

It was a parody, of course, a riff on all the smiling-through-the-tears schtick of a million lounge acts. But the ugliness and pain outweighed the comedy. There was no sympathy here, no pity, only contempt for an old woman's delusions. And there was no love of showbiz either. Kenneth worked hard to find some affection for junk, the poetry of trash. There was nothing but anger.

Lois began to sing “Hey, Jude”—“For the kids,” she explained—turning the elegiac Beatles song into a bitter, angry rant.

“Isn't this
fabulous
?” cooed Ditchley.

Once Kenneth caught the note of anger, he could notice nothing else. And the audience ate it up, enjoying the cruelty as if it were bold truth-telling. You'd think the show were an attack on Ronald Reagan or the Vietnam War, not the mocking of two old entertainers.

What were the performers and audience so angry about? Their parents' lives? Getting old? The vicious world of celebrity and entertainment? Whatever the cause, Kenneth felt he'd fallen into something fierce and ugly. It made
him
angry.

When the show ended, Kenneth hurried outside. He needed the meaningless noise of the city at night. But it was late, the city was quiet. He walked home on West Ninth Street, a silent corridor of tall apartment buildings that suggested a high empty room like a deserted theater. Kenneth hated the empty quiet. He walked more quickly. He could hear nothing here except his own sorry footsteps.

Y
ou: Hello.

ME: Oh!

YOU: What?

ME: You scared me.

YOU: Sorry.

ME: Where are you?

YOU: Right in front of you. Can't you see me?

ME: No. It's too dark.

YOU: Never mind. You don't need to see me. We can just talk.

ME: Who are you?

YOU: Don't you know?

ME: You sound like—Oh my God.

YOU: What?

ME: Words fail me.

YOU: They always did.

ME: But it can't be you. You're dead.

YOU: Thoroughly dead. There's nobody deader.

ME: What's it like?

YOU: Death? It's not like anything.

ME: Are there bodies? Or are you only voices?

YOU: We have bodies. We can't touch the living, but we can touch each other.

ME: You're not alone?

YOU: No. There's other dead people here. Many, many other dead people. Which makes me glad. Whoever said “Hell is other people” was an idiot. Can you imagine the opposite? An eternity
of solitude? Without company or conversation? With no words but your own. Nobody to tell you other people's stories? Forever and ever.

ME: The dead like to hear stories?

YOU: Oh yes. We tell each other stories all the time.

ME: Do you follow our stories too?

YOU: The living? You mean, do we watch you? Like television?

ME: Yes. Do the dead still care about the living?

YOU: Enough-about-me? What-do-
you
-think-about-me?

ME: I didn't mean it like that. I meant—I think about you all the time, Ben. Selfishly, yes. I admit it. But I
do
think about you. Do you ever think about me?

YOU: Why else would I be here?

ME:——

YOU: What're you doing, Cal? What's that noise?

ME: I'm crying. Don't you remember crying?

YOU: Oh yes. Crying. What the living do.

ME: I'm just so happy to have you here and be able to talk to you again. So this is real. I'm not just imagining you?

YOU: Oh no. You
are
imagining me. But that doesn't make it any less real.

 

Caleb set his pencil down, blinked a few bright needles of tears from his eyes, and read over his words. You're a funny guy, he told himself. A very strange and funny guy.

T
he buzzer loudly buzzed. “It's me, doll,” Irene sang over the intercom. Caleb buzzed her in and returned to the kitchen. He heard the elevator humming in the wall while he finished fixing the coffee.

“Knock knock!” she called out through the open door.

“In here.”

Irene Jacobs sailed around the corner, tall and athletic and grinning, a huge macramé bag hung from her shoulder. “Good morning, doll.” She kissed him hello and shook a white sack at him. “Not only does your agent make house calls, but she also brings almond croissants.”

“Great. I thought we'd go out on the terrace. It's too pretty a morning to waste indoors.”

“Fine by me. I love your terrace.”

Caleb stacked everything on a tray—plates, cups, the hourglass of coffee—and carried it outside. Irene led the way, peering into his rooms. Caleb wondered if she were adding up costs and figuring out how much longer he could afford to live here.

He set everything on the table in the prow of the terrace. The fieldstone building across the street towered over them like a sunlit slice of granite cake. A whole flock of pigeons spilled softly from the roof, swooped downward, then clapped hands and rose up again. A crow croaked in the park around the corner—the city had begun to attract the loud, black, solitary birds. The billboard for
Tom and Gerry
still stood across the way but was less conspicuous by daylight, blending into the jumble of walls and rooftops.

“Nice,” said Irene as Caleb poured the coffee. “Gritty but pretty.”

She was an entertainment lawyer, not an agent, but acted as agent
and manager for a handful of theater people. A former hippie with frizzy hair and copper freckles, she wore jeans and thrift-shop peasant blouses with her Armani jackets and Fifty-seventh Street haircuts. She was a fierce liberal and tough businesswoman, facing the world of politics and the world of showbiz with the same fuck-you grin.

“You don't look like you been sleeping well.” She ran a finger under her own eyes. “Using insomnia to start something new?”

“Nope.”

“Really? When I walked by your office, I thought I saw an open notebook next to your computer.”

“Must be my address book. I haven't written a word in months.”

“In that case”—she scooted her chair up to the table—“you might be interested in this. I got a call. Andras Konrad. Hungarian producer. He just bought the option on
Fear of Flying
. They're looking for a screenwriter. And somebody recommended you.”

“
Fear of Flying
?” said Caleb. “That must be twenty years old.”

“More like thirty. It's been knocking around forever, one of those jinxed projects that never gets made. It's lost its edge over the years. But the Hungarians don't know that. They think they got a hot, sexy property on their hands.”

“No, Irene. Sorry. I can't.”

“Why? You said you're not working on anything. And here's something you don't have to take too seriously.”

“It's not this project. It's all projects.” He took a deep breath. “I'm seriously thinking about giving up writing altogether.”

She didn't even blink. “Then this is perfect. You get paid eighty thousand up front. It'll never get made. It's the next best thing to
not
writing—except you get paid.”

“Didn't you hear me? I want to stop. I want to give up writing.”

She looked him in the eye. “For how long?”

“Forever.”

She smiled—her sweetest, you-are-so-full-of-shit grin. “I have a better idea. Give it up for a year. If you can give it up for that long. Then see what happens.”

“Why can't anyone take me seriously on this? My sister doesn't. My therapist doesn't.”

“Are you still seeing Chin?”

“Yes.”

“Isn't she amazing?”

Caleb frowned. “This is just a joke to all of you. Right? Just more neurotic-artist shit.”

“Sorry,” said Irene. “But I hear it from clients all the time. I hear it from
myself
. ‘Oh I shouldn't do this anymore. Oh I should do something real with my life. Oh but there are whales being killed.' Or dolphins. Or owls. Or I should work for world peace. Blah blah blah. We
all
talk like this. But talk is cheap. When you stop writing, you just stop. You don't announce it. It's over and done with. The end.”

“But I'm not writing. The end is here.”

“Caleb, dear. If this were two years after
Chaos,
I'd believe you. But it's been two crummy months. Give yourself a vacation. You deserve it. You got creamed. It happens to the best. Although I still think you could've given the play a happy ending. And not just for commercial reasons.”

“A happy ending would've been dishonest.”

She wasn't listening—they'd had
that
talk many times. She hoisted her bag into her lap. “Next bit of business: the party on Friday.” She pulled out a heavy manila envelope. “The caterer dropped these off. It's the guest list with the RSVPs.”

“How many are coming?”

“Who knows? Theater people never RSVP. They're too busy living in the moment.”

Irene had done the dirty work, or rather, hired people who did the dirty work: the caterer and the invitation senders. It went forward with a momentum that had nothing to do with Caleb.

“But they also sent this.” She passed him the bill. “Which they want paid in full up front.”

Caleb was looking over the guest list, searching out the names that had sent regrets. “Huh. Mary Louise won't be coming? Or David. Or Joe.” Nobody involved in
Chaos
was coming, not even the director.

“They probably feel guilty.”

“We
all
want to avoid each other,” said Caleb. “Like a bunch of kids caught playing strip poker.” There was no need to mention the obvious: they blamed him for this flop.

Irene tapped the bill in his hand. “So?” she said. “What do you want to do about this?”

He looked at the amount: twelve thousand and change. It was what they'd agreed on, but seemed much larger printed out.

“They want it all now. By tomorrow. The original deal was half now, half next month.”

He began to laugh. “They're afraid I might not be good for it? Broadway bomb and all?”

“I know Jack and his partner. They're being jerks.”

“If I don't pay, I might have to cancel the party?”

“What? You want to call their bluff?”

He thought about it, wondering if he really could pull the plug. “Oh, let's pay the jerks,” he said. “I want to go out in style. One last bash. While I can still afford it. And I'm still able to live in this cottage in the sky.”

“You'll be fine. Unless you radically change your lifestyle, develop a taste for lobster. Or crack. You're solvent—until the end of the year. But I wouldn't turn up my nose at screenwriting jobs, no matter how bogus.” She tapped her watch with her index finger. “I should be going. I'm seeing my trainer at eleven-thirty. She'll be so proud. I had an almond croissant in front of me and ate only half.”

Caleb walked her back into his apartment.

“So,” she said. “
I
pay the gangster caterers.
You
think about
Fear of Flying
. And we see each other on Friday. Trust me on the other stuff, doll. You'll feel better in time. Every writer or actor or director goes through this kind of funk.”

“I know. I'm not alone. Which doesn't make it easier.”

“Besides, if you give up writing, what else would you do with your life?”

“There's always drugs.” He smiled. “Or maybe I could become a Buddhist and join a monastery.”

“Oh no. You don't want that. I was in an ashram for six months. Twenty-five years ago and my bowels still haven't recovered. Good-bye, doll.” She kissed his cheek and walked downstairs to the next floor, where the elevator was.

Caleb went back out to the terrace and began to load the tray.
Irene is right, he thought. If I
say
I'm going to quit, I'll never quit. I should just stop writing, cold turkey. See if anyone even notices?

There was a loud knock at the front door, a jokey shave-and-a-haircut rap-rap. It must be Irene. Nobody had buzzed downstairs. Caleb walked back inside and opened the door.

“Did you forget some—?”

A large, pale, beefy shape filled the doorway. Toby.