The Boy Who Never Grew Up (55 page)

“Be nice, Tommy!” Annabelle ordered, with motherly protectiveness. “Now, Bobby, dear, come meet Hoagy.”

Bobby Ackerman came over to me with his hand stuck out. He had a head of soft, curly blond hair and an innocent, almost angelic face. He looked like a lamb—a really intense lamb. The kid was tightly wrapped. Typical writer in that regard—timid on the outside, simmering on the inside. Most of us are shy egomaniacs, myself excluded. I have never been shy. Bobby wasn’t overly tidy. His blue oxford button-down was frayed at the neck, his gray twill trousers stained and wrinkled, his Rockports scuffed. He needed a shave. He needed a haircut. He needed to stop blinking.

“It’s an honor to m-meet you,” he said to me. Actually, he didn’t so much stammer as he did speak in choked, overheated bursts. “I really admire y-you.”

“You won’t once you get to know me better.” I casually laid my hand on the sofa to air dry. His had been wet as a fresh caught flounder.

“But you do novels,” he said, blinking at me incessantly. “That takes such g-guts. You’re on your own. N-No other writers. No director. No actors. You do it all. J-Just you.”

“There is a down side,” I cautioned.

“W-Which is what?”

“There’s no one else to blame. Just you.”

“Now that must be weird,” said Marty. “Life without Lyle to blame for everything.”

“Now that must be nice,” quipped Tommy.

“Have a seat, Bobster,” said Marty. “We were just about to give Hoagy The Three Rules.”

“Which Three Rules are those?” I asked.

“D-Don’t listen to this shit, Hoagy,” Bobby warned, with great urgency. “This isn’t your kind of d-deal at all. I mean it. You’re m-much too fine a—”

“Feel free
not
to have a seat, Bobby,” Tommy snarled.

“F-Fine,” Bobby retorted angrily. “I’ll be in my office.” And he split.

Annabelle watched him go, sadly.

“Don’t mind Bobby,” Marty said to me. “He’s still living under the illusion that he’s going to be the next Arthur Miller.”

“Or the next Bea Arthur,” added Tommy. “Now then, Hoagy, you’ll want to write these down. Got a pen, pencil, quill?”

“I’ll remember them.”

“Rule Number One,” Marty intoned grandly. “There are no new gags—only new setups.”

“Don’t ever be afraid of a joke just because you’ve heard it before,” explained Tommy. “If it works once, it’ll work again.”

Marty said, “Here’s a joke I heard the other day: Guy gives a Jewish blind man a piece of matzo, and the blind man runs his fingers over it and he says, ‘Who wrote this shit?’ Cute joke, right? I heard the exact same joke fifteen years ago—exact same joke—only it was Stevie Wonder and a cheese grater.”

“And what was the punch line?” asked Annabelle.

“ ‘This is the most violent book I’ve read in years.’ ” Marty grinned at me. “See? Same joke. Different setup. And it’s still funny. Got it?”

“What’s Rule Number Two?” I wasn’t that anxious to hear it. But my head was starting to throb.

“Rule Number Two,” declared Marty. “Attributed to the late Carl Reiner—”

“Wait, Carl Reiner’s still alive,” objected Annabelle.

“I know—but he’s always late,” Marty shot back. “Rule Number Two: Write ’em Yiddish, but make ’em British.”

“All comedy’s Jewish,” Tommy said flatly. “If a character has personality and foibles and quirks—in other words, if he’s funny—he’s Jewish. For television, you gentile him out. You make him black. You make him brown. You make him whatever.” He broke off, narrowing his eyes at me. “This is valuable stuff, Hoagy. Took us years and years to learn. Sure you don’t want to write it down?”

“I’ll remember every word.”

He shrugged his bony shoulders. “Okay. Rule Number Three. The oldest rule of them all, and the most important one to shtickle by … Relax, this isn’t brain surgery.”

Marty turned to him. “I can’t believe I forgot to tell you this—I met my wife’s cousin, Phil, at a family barbecue on Saturday. He’s actually a brain surgeon—”

“Oh, yeah?” Tommy said. “Maybe he should have a look at Lyle.”

“And I was telling him all about Rule Number Three,” Marty continued. “I said to him: Phil, what do
you
guys say when you screw up and can’t figure out which nerve attaches to which? Or whatever the hell it is those guys do …”

“And what did he say?” asked Annabelle, raptly attentive.

Marty replied, “He told me they say, ‘Relax—this isn’t sitcom writing.’ ”

Little Annabelle let out a huge donkey bray of laughter.

There was a brisk tapping at the door. Naomi Leight stuck her head in. “Five minutes to reading, everyone!” the P.A. announced excitedly.

We all got to our feet, Tommy moving like he was three hundred years old. Bobby appeared in the doorway, blinking, blinking, script under his arm.

“One other thing, Hoagy,” said Marty, with evident concern. “Can you fake an orgasm?”

“Excuse me?”

“Can you laugh even when something isn’t funny?”

“No.”

“Learn how,” Tommy advised gravely. “Fast.”

The rehearsal room was at the end of the hall where the actors’ dressing rooms were found. Their doors were open. Not that there was a whole lot to see. Each was small and plain, though this was Sutton Place compared to my own digs. Fiona had a quilt hanging on one wall of hers to give it that homey, Amish feeling. Chad had a Joe Weider pressing bench and a full-size three-way mirror to give his that he-guy, look-at-me feeling. The Munchkins’ own artwork adorned their walls. One watercolor portrait of Lyle made him look like something you’d find half submerged in a pond at the Bronx Zoo. Splendid likeness, actually. Wardrobe and makeup were next to the dressing rooms. Those doors were not open.

The rehearsal room was large and brightly lit and very cold. Conference tables had been set end to end to form a large rectangle with chairs for thirty people or so around it. Naomi was busy laying out scripts and pencils before each of them. Everyone else, some three dozen cast, crew, and production people, was drinking coffee and chatting gaily. The mood was very up. People were genuinely happy to be back working. Bagels and doughnuts and coffee were to be found at one end of the room, as well as a gigantic fruit basket. Lyle and Katrina were not to be found. Nor was Fiona Shrike. Chad Roe was. The actor was speaking urgently to Leo Crimp, who was trying just as urgently to get away from him. Common response.

The writers arrived together. I was to discover that they often moved about the studio as a group. They seemed to feel safer in numbers.

Lulu headed directly for the coffee table. Where there are bagels there are often lox.

Tommy Meyer, not one of your smiling, happy people, stopped cold in the doorway and sniffed the air disagreeably. “Ugh. Actors.”

Marty Muck waded right in, patting backs, cracking jokes, one of the gang. He was the social one. Tommy exchanged only curt greetings as he oozed through to the coffee pot, shoulders hunched. Bobby Ackerman wouldn’t even do that much. He went right for his place at the big table and sat and began studying the script, head down, defiantly standoffish. Annabelle Gamba, meanwhile, was a born schmoozer. She hugged, she kissed, she called everybody honey and darling and I’m, like, sweetheart. Annabelle was the one who introduced me around, clutching me tightly by the arm with her tiny fist. I met Phil, the thirtyish stage manager, who shaved his head. I met Sam, the grizzled old control room rat who was Lyle’s current assistant director. I met Randy, the tubby little art director, who crinkled his nose, and Gwen, a too-fat older woman in a too-tight sailor suit who was, believe it or not, the costumer. It was Gwen whom I was most interested in.

It seemed she was having a real bad morning.

It seemed someone had just stolen Chubby’s famed cardigan out of Wardrobe.

“Any idea who?” I asked her.

“One of the crew, naturally,” she huffed. “If it’s not nailed down they take it.” Gwen had very bad false teeth. They angled outward, like a half-open garage door, and were the color of old piano keys. “Makes my life pure hell, too. I keep a spare, naturally. I have to. But now I have to break in a new spare. Distress it, stain it, unravel it, sew on the patches. And it all has to be just so, or people will notice it’s wrong. , After all, Chubby’s sweater
is
Chubby.”

“Have you had one stolen before?”

“No, never,” she replied, peering out at me from behind a pair of thick glasses. “I keep them locked up tight.”

“I thought Lyle didn’t believe in locks.”

“Lyle doesn’t, but I do. The wardrobe room is
locked.
Has to be. Otherwise it would be like leaving a small fortune lying around.”

“Who has keys?”

“To what, dear?” Gwen fumed impatiently.

“The wardrobe room.”

“Stephen, my assistant,” she replied. “Lyle, of course. And Katrina and Leo. But people are always in and out when we’re in there working. Common pilfering happens all the time. A real pain, but there’s no way to avoid it.”

Annabelle introduced me to six or eight others as well. Too many to remember. All of them hoping that someone, anyone, knew how to turn down the air-conditioning. Leo did, but her departure, I’m sorry to say, freed up Chad Roe. The actor nailed me at the coffee pot.

“Hoagy, nice to see you again, man,” he said warmly and earnestly.

“I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“I did
Streetcar
with Merilee at the Long Wharf,” he reminded me, moving in for the kill. “But, hey, I guess that was years ago, huh? How’s your novel coming?”

Possibly I’m not being fair to Chad Roe. He really wasn’t a terrible guy. He was sincere, decent, politically and environmentally correct, solid, nice. It’s just that he was, well, too much of all of those things. A big oaf. A clod. Early in his career, he had been dubbed the next Redford. Never happened. He didn’t have the talent, just the looks. Still had them. Even at forty-whatever he remained maddeningly perfect looking—big and strapping and boyish in his blue chambray work shirt, faded jeans, and running shoes. The posture was perfect, the tummy flat, the hair still blond. Possibly it was thinning a bit at the temples and crown, but that may just have been my imagination. Or wishful thinking. The camera always liked Chad a lot. He had a jaw you could chop wood with and one of those automatic matinee-idol smiles that was all sparkling white teeth—sixty of them at least—and sincere blue eyes. And then there was his dimple. It was in his right cheek, and it showed whenever he smiled just so. Which he did with calculated regularity.
Working the dimp
was what Merilee had called it. It was a habit with him. So was clinging. He always stood just a little bit too close when he was talking to you, forcing you to back away from him. No use—he’d just keep coming. He was always anxious to talk. He was always needy. He was, let us not forget, an actor.

“Hoagy, I want you to know, straight out, that it’s not me,” he informed me solemnly.

I started backing away. He stayed chest to chest with me. “What’s not you, Chad?”

“I’m not the father. Merilee and I were,
are,
friends. But that’s all we are. Were. I mean, we’ve never—”

“I see.” Chad was married to an actress himself. Brenda something. They had twins. “I appreciate hearing that from you, Chad. Means a lot.”

“Sure, man. Sure.” He moved in closer.

I moved back, until something ugly happened—I hit wall. I was trapped now. Doomed.

Chad worked the dimp. “It changed everything for me when I heard you were joining the show. Lyle kept telling me about all of the serious things he wanted to do this season, but I have to admit I was skeptical—until I heard about you. I was genuinely surprised.”

“As I was.”

“Pleasantly, I mean.”

“As I wasn’t.”

“I mean, you’re … how else can I put this—you’re a
guy.”

“Seem to be, so far.”

“You’re somebody I can
talk
to about Rob. Have lunch with, go to Mets games with—”

“I’m more of a Yankee fan, actually.”

“I have so many ideas for him.” Chad plowed on, undeterred. Nothing could stop this man, short of a sharp blow to the skull from a ball peen hammer. “He needs humanizing. He needs to be, I don’t know, more of a …”

“A guy?” I suggested.

“Exactly. What do you think about rock climbing?”

“I suppose it’s fine for some people. Me, I’ve always preferred the relative safety of the lobby of the Algonquin and a nice glass of—”

A huge cheer interrupted me. The King had arrived, masked and gloved, along with his beloved queen, Katrina, who was decked out in a sleeveless leopard-skin leotard, hot pink tights, and gold-colored spiked heels. Her hair was done up in a rather severe bun and she wore a pair of heavy black-framed glasses. All of which made her look a little like Mamie Van Doren showing up for her first day of law school.

“I meant for Rob,” Chad said doggedly, barely noticing their entrance. “His hobby is rock climbing. It might give him that inner calm those guys have. Guys who stare death in the face. I once played a test pilot on
The Love Boat,
and he was like that.
Calm.
A climber’d have those strong hands, too. And wear the boots and stuff. What do you think, Hoagy?” He worked the dimp. “Want to talk about it over sushi today?”

“I’m afraid Hoagy can’t,” Lyle replied for me. He’d worked his way over to us, and was clearly peeved. “He’ll be in rewrites. Would you excuse us a moment, Chad?”

“Sure, sure,” said Chad pleasantly. “Say, Lyle, I still have some questions about my character.”

“Later,” Lyle blustered. “We’ll talk about it later.”

“But that’s what you said on
the
phone last—”

“We’ll talk about it later!” he roared.

“Okay, Lyle,” said Chad, backing off. “Later.” Mercifully, he moved away.

“You don’t wanna talk to that guy,” Lyle growled at me through his mask.

“Hey, tell me something I don’t already know.”

“I’m serious, pal,” he insisted. “I don’t want you talking to him. I want him speaking to me and me only. Got it?”

“No, I’m afraid not, Lyle. I speak to whomever I want to. Last I heard there was still a Constitution, and this was still American soil.”