Me and Orson Welles (20 page)

Cotten looked at him as if to say:
Do you believe I have to put up with this idiot?
“Apologize, Richard,” he said.

“I can't. I don't have anything to apologize for.”

“Apologize for giving Welles the clap,” said Lloyd. “God, I hope you did. Can you imagine that son-of-a-bitch with the clap?” He threw himself into Brutus' funeral speech—stopping every few seconds to madly attack his groin. “ ‘As Caesar loved me
(scratch, scratch)
I weep for him. As he was fortunate
(scratch, scratch)
I rejoice at it. As he was valiant I—
(two-fisted punching of groin)
Ooahhhh!' ”

“Apologize,” said Cotten.

“Let me think about it,” I said.

“You don't have
time
to think about it.”

“I finally stood up for myself. I finally
fought
for something. It's what you told me to do!”

“Holy Christ,” said Lloyd. “You're taking advice from
him
?”

Cotten said: “Let me talk to him for you.”

“He told me I was a
talentless little shit.
Now I'm supposed to apologize to him?”

“I don't think
talentless little shit
is so bad,” said Lloyd. “I mean, it's better than
unemployed
talentless little shit. Now
that's
bad.”

“Will you shut up?” said Cotten.

“I'm explaining to him how the world works! Welles is the boss, so you tell him any goddamn crap he wants to hear. Who cares if you believe it? Kid, every boss in America is being told, ‘Boss, that's a great idea. Boss, you're smart. I don't know how this place would be running without you,' and meantime every employee is really thinking: ‘You stupid son-of-a-bitch, I hope you get run over by a truck, you dumb schmuck.' ”

“Richard, I'm pleading with you,” said Cotten. “Do it for me. I want you in the show. Orson's in his dressing room. He's expecting you.”

I headed down the stairs unsure of what I was going to do.

In the second-floor dressing rooms a radio played Latin music. Then Evelyn Allen was on the stairs: her sneakers, her white short-sleeved T-shirt, bee-stung lips. In her hand was the rust-colored hardback book she was always reading.

“I was afraid you'd left already.” She lowered her eyes.

“I haven't quite disappeared completely yet.”

“Richard, I wanted you to have this,” she said, and she pressed the book into my hands. “I hope someday you might read it. And remember me.”

“Thank you.”

“I've got to get changed.” She retreated into the dressing rooms.

I stood there a little bewildered.

The book was some ancient thing: Monadology by Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz. On the first blank page she'd written:

 

I read it over three times. Holy Christ, I thought. This woman hasn't said two words to me the entire show, and now she's telling me she's in love with me.

The world was feeling more and more like a madhouse.

 

Bryant Park. The leaves fell around me.

I looked down at my carton: my shoes, my
Caesar
script, and
Monadology.
I read the inscription again.
Richard—I have no right to say this, but I love you.

Oh, Evelyn, I thought. You're even more lost than I am.

I closed my eyes.

My neck and shoulder throbbed in tension.

I breathed slowly—tried to let the city pour into me.

I flipped through
Monadology
. I liked the inscription, crazy as it was. I read a sentence at random.
Every particle of matter in the universe experiences everything else in the universe, so much so that anyone who perceives accurately enough might read in any particle of matter what is happening everywhere, and even what has happened or will happen . . . . Thus every particle of matter can be perceived as a forest of living things, or a river of abundant fish . . . . There is nothing lifeless in the universe, no chaos, no disorder, though this may not be immediately clear to us.”

This was the stuff Evelyn thought about? She was reading philosophy as she sat alone on the Mercury staircase? I read the passage a few more times.
There is nothing lifeless in the universe, no chaos, no disorder, though this may not be immediately clear to us.
She's standing onstage, enduring Joe Holland's paint-peeling breath, and she's thinking that there is nothing lifeless in the universe, no chaos, no disorder.

And if you believed that philosophy, didn't it mean you could never really do
anything
wrong? Never be out of grace? Even if you
wanted
to, there was no disorder possible . . . .

I looked up into the trees.

Maybe there was nothing else to trust.

Then I thought for a moment about Orson Welles. And I thought about myself.

I took my billfold from my pocket and found the back of my driver's license where I'd filled out the change-of-information card. There, in my handwriting, it read Richard Orson Samuels.

I laughed at my own absurdity.

“Richard Kenneth Samuels,” I said out loud.

Then I repeated my name.

Terrible, but mine.

Walking toward me, in a black overcoat, and smoking a cigar, was Orson Welles.

He laughed warmly. “Richard, old man, Joe said I might find you here.” He shook my hand humbly, expansively. “What can I tell you? That I'm sorry? That we need you? Those words are paltry and inadequate to describe the depth of friendship that you and I share.” He put his gloved hand on my shoulder, as if he were going to walk me toward Fifth, but I pulled away and faced him.

“Why don't you skip all the bunk about the depth of our friendship,” I said, and for the first time I felt the power shifting to my side of the table. The son-of-a-bitch needed me.

“Whatever you say.”

“All I wanted was to be treated as a human being—deserving of
some
dignity.”

“It was never my intention to treat you any other way, Junior.”

“Don't call me Junior.”

“Sorry. I use the term affectionately.”

“It diminishes me.”

“Then no more.” He gave me a Boy Scout salute. “Word of honor.”

“Why do I want so much to believe you?”

Now we were walking down Fifth.

“Because you really
are
a God-created actor, Richard. Those weren't just words; you see, I recognized the look.”

“The look?”

“The bone-deep understanding that your life is so utterly without meaning that simply to
survive
you have to reinvent yourself. Because if people can't
find
you, they can't dislike you. You see, if I can be Brutus for ninety minutes tonight—I mean, really
be
him from the inside out—then for ninety minutes I get this miraculous reprieve from being myself. That's what you see in every great actor's eyes, you know. You see someone weeping at the broken thing that he knows himself to be: that every gesture is affectation, that every stirring of the heart is instantly stuck dead into the performance book. And I don't mean to insult you with all this—I just sense it inside you, as it's inside me.”

“I don't know what I feel anymore,” I said. “In the last twenty-four hours I seem to have run the entire possible range of human emotions. I'm exhausted.”

“Cigar? Cuban.”

“Sure.”

We stood on the steps of the library and I lit my cigar off his. We watched a businessman in an expensive-looking suit flirting with a much younger woman. He was offering her a cupful of hot chestnuts.

“Tonight I'm Brutus,” said Welles. “And I want you to be Lucius.” He touched my shoulder. “You may not like me, Richard—and, frankly, it's irrelevant to me whether or not you do. Our business together is to create the best art we can. That's all that matters. But I am asking you to give me this opening night. After tonight you can do whatever you want. But, Richard, give me this opening. I need you. Don't think about it; say
yes, Orson.
Say
yes, Orson,
right now.”

“And Sam Leve gets his credit in the
Playbill
starting tomorrow?”

He looked at me sourly. “I've arranged that already.”

“Promise it to me. He's my friend.”

“I promise you. He'll get his credit.”

“And you'll call my mother and tell her that I'm an important part of this show—and that it's urgent I miss some school?”

He smiled. “All right.”

“And you'll call my principal and explain to him that all my absences are excused.”

“All right.”

“And the cast party tonight at Tony's? I want an invitation.”

“Christ, you're underage!”

“Cover for me.”

“Jesus, what an operator. All right, you can come to the cast party. Is there anything else you want? You want a position in the Roosevelt cabinet? Will you tell me we have a deal already?”

“Deal,” I said.

We shook hands.

“And you better be brilliant,” said Welles. “Because if you stink the whole deal is off!”

“
N
oel Coward, I believe, once said a hit smells like oysters,” Coulouris announced loftily. “Well, it certainly smells like fish in here,” said Muriel. “My effing clothes stink from it. How do these look?” She flashed him her earrings.

A small notecard had been left for me backstage, and I opened it, imagining it might be a love letter from some stage-struck young woman whose heart had melted
(Oh, God!)
at my ukulele playing.

It was a white card with two hearts drawn on it. The hearts were joined by an arrow. Beneath the hearts was simply the signature:
Orson
.

Swell
, I thought.

If it was meant as an apology, I accepted it.

The curtain went up at nine that night, but by eight you could feel the energy humming in the walls of the theatre: in the beams and the floorboards. The pure
noise
of it was thrilling. A sign outside the box office read: OPENS TONIGHT-SOLD OUT, but still people were standing on line, and the phones were ringing in the ticket office, and the phones were ringing in the projection room, and the phone backstage was flashing its “ring” light.

Welles had decided late that afternoon that he wanted still more music in the play, and as the wellwishers hurried out the stage door, he and Epstein continued to work out music cues.

“Now X means a fanfare.”

“For Christ's sake, Orson, don't tell me X means a fanfare; if you want a fanfare then write the goddamn word ‘fanfare' in the script. Why are we doing this forty minutes before curtain?”

An imposing-looking man pushed past me: tweed coat, Tartan scarf, curly black hair, rimless round eyeglasses.

“Clifford Odets!” said Welles. “Was this the face that launched a thousand hits!”

“Me? I'm just a tramp from Newark!” said Odets. “I think you know Luise.” He gestured to a soulful-looking dark-haired starlet.

Luise pulled Odets's hand into Welles's. “Golden Boy, meet Wonder Boy.”

Odets then gestured to a rumpled-looking man standing behind him, a man whose long graying hair stood out in massive disarray. “Orson, I'd like you to meet Dr. Albert Einstein.”

“Honored,” said Welles.

“I'm working with him to help the Jewish refugees in Europe.”

Einstein curled his nostrils, “Is it my imagination or does it smell from fish in here?” he said.

There was a shouting from upstage left, and somebody was yelling
You can't come in here!
and then an enormous Negro man in full African witch-doctor regalia, clutching a staff topped with a skull, came swooping across the stage.

“Meesta Whales! Meesta Whales!”

“Abdul!” shouted Orson. “You made it! Wonderful!” Welles hugged him. He turned to Einstein. “Abdul, this is Dr. Albert Einstein. You two probably have a lot in common; you're both doctors.”

Houseman had come up from behind me. “Orson, Joe Holland says he can't go on, says he's having a heart attack. I think it's nerves, but I sent for an ambulance just in case. He's in your dressing room.”

“This is just what I need.”

A boy now edged himself onstage; he wore a white kitchen suit stenciled
Longchamps.
He held a covered silver tray. “Two steaks!” he called out. “One pineapple and a bottle of Scotch for Mr. Welles!”

“Junior, take that for me.”

“Richard,”
I said.

“I don't have time for this now. Did you tune the uke?”

I ran behind Welles carrying the tray as we headed through the remaining press people and the girlfriends. Welles turned to me. “Now let's see what the Christ
this
is about.”

Holland was sitting in a chair in the center of Welles's dressing room. He was dressed in his Caesar uniform: green double-breasted military coat, brass buttons, black leather boots and gloves. He was breathing shallowly. The tiny hairs of his closely shaved face stood out against the unnatural paleness in his cheeks. “Can't do it, Orson; can't do it,” he whispered between breaths. His eyes were open, and he was shaking his head
no.