The Best Revenge

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Previously published in print, 1991.

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This is a work of fiction. The characters, dialogue and events in this book are wholly fictional, and any resemblance to companies and actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Also by Sol Stein and Untreed Reads Publishing

A Deniable Man

The Magician

The Husband

Living Room

The Resort

Touch of Treason

The Childkeeper

http://www.untreedreads.com

The Best Revenge

A Novel of Broadway

Sol Stein

For Ruth Jandreau

and in memory of

Lady Zam and Louie

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

During the decade in which this novel was fashioned, I had the welcome advice of three talented editors in my immediate family: Elizabeth, Patricia, and Toby Stein. The early comments by Renni Browne, David King, and most particularly Saul Bellow steered me toward the rapids and beyond. On certain matters I tapped the expertise of Daniel Chabris and Estelle Schecter. Nick Mayo's long career in the theater proved a gift. I am grateful to all of them.

Hamlet.
My father, methinks I see my father.

Horatio.
Where, my lord?

Hamlet.
In my mind's eye, Horatio.

1979

BOOK I

Ben R
iller

Entering my reception room is like lunging
into a corner of bedlam reserved for people insane enough to be actors. There are always two, three, four of them without appointments waiting, some for hours, energized by aspiration, faces puffed with hope, determined to snare me while I streak, albeit fully dressed, the twenty-two feet to the privacy of my office. Or, as a legend of Broadway would have it, I stop because I am tempted to invite one of them, preferably a woman, preferably striking, in for a chat about her ambitions, a subject she is pleased to talk about as I search her face for the glint of talent that given the right words to speak will cause the central nervous system of an entire audience to tremble. Meryl Streep was not the first or last to sit in that straight-backed chair facing my desk exuding talent not yet recognized by the world.

Today, having combed my freeform hair with my fingers before opening the outer door, I stride in to see Charlotte behind the safety of her desk fending off the insistence of a shabbily dressed man who from the back seems old enough to have retired two decades ago. Charlotte is trying to signal me with her eyes.

Use a semaphore, I don't understand you!

I turn my attention to the worn leather chairs reserved for actor-supplicants, of whom there are three this morning.

Frank Tocia has worked television as a heavy for twenty years and still yearns for the stage. He nods, which from him means, “Hello, do you have anything coming up that might be right for me or should I go to my next sitting place?” To him I say, “Good to see you, Frank,” which will inspire him to gossip well of me until his next visit.

Of course I see her! The young woman sitting next to Frank, exuding innocence, is a living trap for a middle-aged man fond of beauty. She must leave her picture with Charlotte. She must remove her radiance from this room before I invent a play that's perfect for her. “Good morning, Mr. Riller,” she says, “I don't have an appointment.” I want to hug her, tell her, “Child, actors don't have appointments, they have perpetual waits. Why don't you find an occupation you can depend on?” There are a dozen men in this city who would buy a theater in order to put her on its stage, which is not the recognition her pride lusts for. Charlotte will have to deal with her. I am far too vulnerable.

The geriatric who'd been wrangling with Charlotte spots me at last. Some of the best actors in the world are close to eighty. Their age-lined faces exude character. In the movies you can do repeated takes, but in theater the scourges of the body haunt eight performances a week. Old people chip at my heart. I see my father, Louie, in every one of their faces. Though he was only fifty-two when he was swept away, in my demented mind he ages a year every year that I get older because I find intolerable the idea that I am now one year older than my father was when he died. It aches to turn an old man down. I smile as he approaches me. I think he wants to shake my hand.

What he wants to do, it turns out, is to provide me with personal service of a subpoena.

I try to hand it back to him, but he's out the door with a gait a younger man would envy.

The face of the spine-straight woman in the third chair clicks a synapse in my memory bank, but what is her name?

“Hello,” I say, saluting with two fingers, my trademark immortalized by Hirschfeld in a swirl of Ninas on the front page of the theater section of
The New York Times.
“I hope you haven't been waiting long,” I say, as Charlotte, her hand over the mouthpiece of her phone, announces clear across the room, “It's Mr. Glenn calling from Chicago for the fourth time. He doesn't believe you're not in.”

“I'm not in yet,” I say. “I'm still in the reception room.”

“He just said, âGirlie, tell your boss to pick up the phone.'”

“What did you say?”

“I said my name isn't Girlie.”

Charlotte Neville should have been a playwright and not have taken on the most demanding task of the American theater as my personal assistant. As a blackmailer Charlotte could be instantly rich. She knows secrets of mine even I have forgotten.

Now what I'd almost forgotten was the woman with the familiar face. She uncrosses her legs. I see them, I see them. In a single upward movement, she stands. I reach to take both her hands in mine, and she, instead, puts out her cheek for a kiss. I kiss my saluting fingers and touch her cheek. “Safer,” I say, and she dutifully executes a hearty laugh, and says, “The whisper on the street is that Ruth Welch has had it with the play. The moment she leaves I want you to call me, Ben.” She slips me a piece of twice-folded paper. “It's my private number.”

Is this a seduction or a petition? Who is she?

“In fact,” she adds, “if I can borrow a script now, I'd be ready to read for the part if she takes off without notice.”

“Ruth Welch will never leave this production alive,” I say. “Besides, you're much too beautiful for the part.”

I know, I know, she would forgo her beauty for a leading role. Mephistopheles, you need to work the theater district more. Everyone is ready to deal.

In another instant I am inside my office, safe from the innocent ingenue whose precursors warmed and cursed my past. On all four walls posters of plays sing my history.

Thank God for my private john. I lock the door behind me, unzip, and instruct its aim.

Washing up I cannot avoid the mirror. My hand-combed hair is a nest of ripples, spirals, twists, and coils. I succumb to convention and use a comb, thinking, Why has no barber ever found a way of taming this mane? Or at least suggesting that I let him try a little something that will make the gray strands match their neighbors? I ball up the paper towel and arc it toward the basket. Two points! I encourage the mirror to notice the dimple in my right cheek.

At my desk, I reach for the phone to call Ezra. On the back of my left hand I see the wandering shape of a vein, a blue worm under the skin. My right hand seems perfectly normal for a man of fifty-three. The left, sensing my disapproval, lets the phone back down into its
cradle. If I transport that hand to Dr. Heller, he'll say, “There's nothing wrong with you, Ben. Take a vacation.” How does he know God's plans for me? I'm in the business of surprises. Doctors are surprised by surprise. They have no business practicing medicine.

I buzz for Charlotte. I want to know if she can see the difference between my two hands.

Advancing on my desk, she says, “Ben, don't give me anything else to do until I finish the loyalty letters.”

I'd better forget my hands.

“Charlotte, what's the name of that woman?”

“The ingenue?”

“The older one who knows me.”

“Harriet Barnes, she understudied Duse and Bernhardt.”

“You must learn to be kinder, Charlotte. Didn't she star in
Breakway
?”

Heading for the door, Charlotte says, “I'll get rid of both of them. I've got fourteen of those letters to go.”

They were all, of course, to previous investors who'd profited mightily from Ben Riller productions and, afraid of a lion of a play, had passed on
The Best Revenge.

We've shared opportunities in the theater,
the letter said,
that have enriched our cultural heritage and produced a handsome return on investment at the same time. While there's never a guarantee that a particular production will work, my instinct and experience both tell me that
The Best Revenge
is worth my while. Shouldn't it also be worth your while to be a limited partner of mine once again and share the benefits of this production? There are a few units still left, and I'll save one of these for you until I get your phone call. As ever.

As bullshit. Most of the units were left, not a few. And the hard-assed recipients of my loyalty letter probably won't bother to call. No is no. Not this one. Too chancy. Too many problems. See you next time if you're around.

Pick up the phone. Call him.

Get off my back, Pop.

Aldo Manucci always helped me.

I am not you. I can't waste time.

I told you the best way to move is like a duck, calm on the surface, paddling like hell underneath.

Pop, I don't need lectures.

Ben, you're an upside-down duck, paddling against the air and wondering
why you're not getting anywhere. Let Manucci help you the way he helped me.

To an early grave, Pop.