Lives of the Circus Animals (4 page)

J
essie came out on Forty-fifth Street and turned right. Shows were letting out. The street was glossy orange with taxis picking up well-dressed old ladies and their hat-wearing husbands, old-school playgoers who'd come to Midtown for an expensive treat. They were smiling, most of them, but with relief rather than joy: they'd had their fun and could go home. The block was lined with unkillable, long-running dogs:
Jekyll and Hyde, Les Miz, Footloose,
and Jackie Mason. Only the McAuliffe Theater was dark, a sad hole in this gaudy carnival midway.

Chaos Theory
had closed over a month ago, but the name still hung in the dead marquee. A poster remained in the gloom underneath. “An Important New Play by Caleb Doyle.”

The producers had been idiots to open it on Broadway. Jessie liked the play—she
did
. A young woman marries a brilliant physicist, not for love but because she thinks he'll become famous. She wants to share his greatness. But the man's abstraction turns out to be a cover for schizophrenia. He gets crazier and crazier; the marriage is spent in police stations and mental hospitals. But she does not abandon him. Out of a love that is part guilt, part duty, she takes up the burden. Which was where the curtain fell. There was no cure, no happy ending—no tragic ending either. The playwright offered the audience nothing except damage control in the hell of mental illness.

All right,
Chaos Theory
was bleak stuff, pure spinach. And the production didn't help: actors standing like zombies on a bare stage covered in numbers. Jessie couldn't imagine many people wanting to sit through it, but the play might have succeeded Off-Broadway. Here it needed raves to survive. The producers pulled the plug the morning of Prager's pan.

There are few things sadder than a dark theater, but Jessie continued to loiter, enjoying this pocket of peace. Poor Caleb, she thought. Foolish, earnest, pigheaded Caleb.

Her pity was sincere. Failure made her brother human again. She'd never resented his success, although it sometimes made
her
feel like a failure. If he could succeed, why couldn't she? Jessie blamed herself for being too stupid, scattered, lazy, and flaky.

But Caleb had discipline. He had drive. He'd been writing constantly since high school: stories, poems, one-acts, even a novel. Jessie was seven years younger. Back when she was a kid, she loved it when her brother came home from college and she could hear the tap dance of the manual typewriter in the next room, a soothing sound like rain on a roof. He would call her in and read what he'd written, or better, when he began writing plays, they'd read it together. Jessie already loved theater, but Caleb fed that love, made it worse. Then he would send her away, shut the door, and the rain of words resumed. Later he disappeared behind the closed door of life with his boyfriend, Ben, just as Jessie disappeared behind the closed door of a marriage. Now they were both single again.

Caleb moved to Manhattan after college and began to write nothing but plays. One was produced at Playwrights' Workshop. Then another. Both got decent reviews, good enough to encourage him to write a third play. Nobody expected anything different from
Venus in Furs.
It wasn't an adaptation of the novel by Sacher-Masoch, but a chamber drama about Sacher-Masoch himself and his marriage to a woman who loved his novel and wanted to live it, a philosophical comedy about writers and readers, fantasy and reality, sex in the head and sex in life. A rave from the
Times
turned
Venus
into a surprise hit. The female lead became a star, the show moved to Broadway, and Fox bought the movie rights for a million bucks. My brother, the millionaire, Jessie had thought, which was hard to believe even after he moved from his dinky studio in Hell's Kitchen to a swank apartment overlooking Sheridan Square.

That was four years ago. The movie had never been made; a new play had come and gone. “The
Times
giveth and the
Times
taketh away.” The joke was Caleb's.

Jessie resumed walking. Beyond the gloom of the McAuliffe, just
down the street, was the bright oasis of the Booth. Up above, on the corner facing Broadway, art deco letters trimmed in white lights declared:
Tom and Gerry.
Canvas banners suspended below added “Gorgeous entertainment!” and “Smash Hit!” and “Five Tony Nominations!” On street level, under glass, Henry and the rest of the cast struck happy attitudes in the display cases, their nifty 1930s costumes promising glamour, wit, magic.

Jessie turned the corner into Shubert Alley and the stage door, behind the magic. It was like visiting the back of a fancy restaurant and seeing the trash cans. Which should have burned away the romance. But knowing the reality behind the illusion only added to the romance for Jessie. She felt deep inside the thing itself.

The doorman knew her and nodded her through. The white-brick hallway upstairs was deserted. The cast was all in the wings awaiting the curtain call. The play played in the PA system, miked backstage so actors could hear their cues. They were singing the elaborate closing quartet, celebrating the double marriage of Hackensacker and his sister, the Princess Centimillia, to Tom and Geraldine's identical twins. She caught Henry's voice declaring his love to his bride.

 

I know not who you are, my dear,
But my love is the best kind.
Ignorance is bliss, I fear,
And romance should be blind.

 

There is no justice, thought Jessie. Here was Henry Lewse, a genius whose real home was Shakespeare, Chekhov, Shaw, reduced to chattering bad rhymes on Broadway.
T & G
wasn't trash, especially compared with the current crop of techno-musicals. Based on the old Preston Sturges movie
The Palm Beach Story,
the book made up in cleverness for what the music lacked. Still, Jessie couldn't understand why Henry chose to do such piffle. He wasn't even the lead, but the Other Man, Hackensacker, an American millionaire of the 1930s, back when a million dollars was a million dollars. He couldn't sing, but he recited his songs, one a patter song, “How Awful to Be Rich,” which was the hit of the show. Everyone assumed he'd win a Tony next month.

The loudspeakers filled with the crackly static of applause that
grew into the usual standing ovation. Then the actors poured backstage, led by a wedge of beagles. The dogs of the Ale and Quail Club strained on their leashes, snorting and drooling, poking ice-cold noses against Jessie's legs. She pressed herself to the wall. Human actors followed, a long sigh of performers who stank of sweat and makeup, a harsh smell like wet fertilizer. Henry came last, in top hat, tails, and pince-nez, grousing loudly to the Princess.

“What a ghastly audience! Who were those people on the right? They chattered even during the songs. I wanted to call out, ‘Excuse me, are we disturbing you?'” He saw her. “Ah! Jessica,
mon amie.
So good of you to come. Please. Join me in my dressing room. Later, Marge,” he told the Princess.

Jessie followed him inside and crowded herself into a corner.

Henry sat at his mirror. “What a night. What an audience. Half the laughs were missing. My timing was all over the place. I felt like an elephant on roller skates.”

He didn't offer her a chair—there was no chair to offer. Like most actors, Henry understood the concept of Other People but forgot the physical consequences. Jessie didn't mind. To see Henry Lewse in an undershirt, his face buttered with cold cream, gave her the same romantic antiromance as her image of trash cans behind the fancy restaurant. She took the Mickey Mouse bag from her briefcase and set it on his table.

“You got the goods. Excellent. And what did it set you back?”

“Uh, five hundred dollars.”

“Hmp. As bad as London. Yet we persist in calling it a nickel bag. Nostalgia, I suppose.” Henry still carried traces of Hackensacker, the character's humorous humorlessness. “You sure you don't want a commission? As middle-woman? You spoil me. My wallet's in my trousers. Go ahead and—Oh drat. Nothing in there but a twenty. I know, because I stiffed the delicatessen delivery boy on his tip. The look he gave me. Do you mind terribly walking me to the cash machine? I do have the money in my account, don't I?”

“You got paid on Monday.” Jessie deposited his paychecks, paid his bills, and managed his U.S. bank accounts. She also answered his mail, sent out his laundry, picked up his groceries, and arranged to have his apartment cleaned. And tonight she was his connection.

“So sorry, my dear. I am such a ditz when I work. Even this deep into the run, when I could do the show in my sleep. Only I can't sleep, which is why I need this.” He patted Mickey Mouse.

There was a knock on the door. Miranda, the dresser, was here for his costume.

“Jessie, darling?” He stood up, holding out hands still covered with cold cream. “Could you?”

She stood behind him, reached around his waist, undid his buckle, and unzipped his zipper. For a moment,
she
was Henry Lewse, taking off his/her trousers. Jessie often forgot how short Henry was, only half a head taller than she.

“What did you think, Miranda?” he asked as he/she/they stepped from Hackensacker's pants. “Was the audience as bad tonight as I thought? These Friday-night people from New Jersey. They think they're still at home in front of the telly.”

Henry was in his early fifties, or maybe later, but he had the muscular legs of a younger man, nicer legs, in fact, than Frank. Henry wore the same brand of boxer briefs as the model over Times Square, which disappointed Jessie. She wanted him to be more exotic.

She handed his trousers, shirt, and the rest to Miranda, then returned to her corner.

“Well, no good crying over spilt milk,” he said as he sat back down and took out a handful of tissues. “I'll put this fucking night behind me and find my feet again over the weekend. Maybe that's why I was off tonight. The testicles know that we have to do this again tomorrow night and twice on Sunday.”

That he could say “fucking” and “testicles” indicated he was shaking off Hackensacker. He wiped away the cold cream. The muddy beige mask gave way to a longish, solemn, masculine face. His strong features registered as handsome only from twenty feet away. This close, and on film, he looked his age, especially around the eyes.

He studied his face in the mirror, then scrambled the front wave of Hackensacker's dyed hair, attempting to fix his image.

“If you'll excuse me, my dear, I'll just hop in the shower. Only a minute. Meet you outside.”

“Right. Sorry. Yes,” said Jessie, blushing slightly, afraid that he thought she wanted to see him naked. One could never second-guess
the modesty of actors. Not only had she just taken off his pants for him, but she'd already seen him naked, three years ago in London, making love to Vanessa Redgrave in
Antony and Cleopatra
.

Out in the corridor, she nodded at Tom, Gerry, the Princess, and the others as they hurried out and headed home. Henry had told her last week how the intensity of living “arse cheek to arse cheek” through rehearsals, previews, and opening night gave everyone cabin fever. They needed a break from one another, an escape from the hothouse of enforced familiarity. Later they might become friends again, maybe. Out of makeup and costume, these ordinary faces bore no trace of stardom, only a residue of extra thisness, as if they were just slightly more real than ordinary people.

Finally Henry came out, snugly buttoned into sky blue jeans and a jean jacket, dressed like he probably dressed back in his twenties when he was at RADA and then the Royal Shakespeare.

“Did you bring Mickey?” she asked.

He laughed and patted his jacket. “I did not forget Mickey.”

Jessie was pleased to have made him laugh.

Although it was a Friday, only a handful of fans stood outside the stage door. There'd been dozens the week after opening night, but they dried up over the following month, and all that remained now were old-fashioned autograph hounds.

“Henry! Great show!” called out a fortyish man with a precisely trimmed, pencil-line mustache along his upper lip, a John Waters mustache without the irony. He was accompanied by an old lady in a blue-black wig, a long-necked boy with center-parted hair, and a plump young woman in a red velvet cape. They looked like refugees from other decades, but no contemporary person would wait to see live actors come out of a theater. It would be as primitive as hoping to see TV stars climb out from the back of your television set.

“Yes. Thank you. So nice of you to come. You're very kind,” Henry muttered as he signed autograph books, a
Playbill,
and a poster. “Bye now. Thank you. Yes. Bye-bye.” He raised his arm and twisted his hand at them like royalty.

It was a mingy kind of fame, but Jessie was sorry when she and Henry headed down the street. The farther they got from the theater, the less the chances were that anyone would recognize Henry Lewse.
She wanted people to spot him, know him, admire him—and wonder who
she
was, the mystery woman accompanying the Hamlet of his generation.

Alas, poor Yorick, he was soon anonymous. Even in the Citibank on the corner of Ninth and Forty-second, where there were always actors and acting students, nobody looked twice at the short, middle-aged fellow in denim who entered his code at a terminal and made pouty fish faces at the screen while he waited for his money.

T
sk, tsk, tsk went the machine as it counted out the money. Henry took the bills from the slot, a dry thickness of stiff, green paper. Two months in this country and it still felt like play money, the very stuff that he was here for.

“One, two, three…Oh dear, it's all hundreds. I hope you won't have trouble breaking these.”

Jessie assured him that she'd be using it to pay her rent.

They stepped back out into the rumble and roar of Ninth Avenue. He wanted to tell her good night, but not yet. His motor was still running too fast. Only the grass would slow it down enough for him to be able to sleep.

“Friday night,” Henry declared. “How I loathe Friday nights. Everyone else is having fun, but it's a school night for our profession. Have you eaten yet?”

She said she had. Sorry.

“Ah. I'm not terribly hungry myself. I'll just go home, fry up an egg, and partake of Mickey here. Which way were you walking?”

She offered to walk him home. They started up the block toward Fifty-fifth Street and his apartment.

“You don't have someplace else to run off to? It
is
Friday. Didn't you say you had some kind of boyfriend?”

“Some kind, yeah,” she said with a snort.

Henry decided she didn't want to talk about her love life, which was fine by him. He didn't want to hear about it. Jessie was a nice girl and she did her job well—so well that he could forget about her entirely if only she didn't moon over him as if expecting pearls of
theater wisdom, bird droppings of wit. Americans were such silly romantics, with none of the pride that enabled the English to keep their hero worship discreet.

“Ah, the city that never sleeps,” he proclaimed as they strolled against the late-night crowd. “They say that travel, like love, makes you innocent again.
They
obviously never did a theater tour. I'm in a very strange state these days. The play is locked, my performance set. There's nothing for me to do each night except climb into my role and turn the ignition key. I'm committed by contract to stay on through this award thingy. The Tonys? If I win, heaven forbid, I'm obligated to spend the entire summer in this tedious show. It's a quandary, a lose-lose for Mr. Lewse.” He laughed at himself. “Just listen to me. Ridiculous, ain't it? It's not like I have anything else lined up. And if I'm not working, I go bananas. I might fall in love, find religion, even try to find
myself,
heaven forbid.”

Hearing his own giddy chatter, Henry realized he might be bananas already. He should say good night before he made a complete anus of himself.

They reached his apartment building, a concrete monstrosity back toward Broadway, a postmodern neo-something like a high-rise pigeon coop. He suddenly remembered there was something he needed to ask. “Oh, Jessie. You know that mail thing you set up on my computer?” Yes, she did. The e-mail. “I can't get into it. What do I click to open my mailbox?”

“It's easy. You just move the cursor over to…”

But he could make no sense of what she told him. “I'm sorry. You know what they say about actors. We remember our lines by forgetting everything else.”

“If you like,” she offered, “I can show you.”

“Do you mind? If you'd show me just one more time, I'm sure I'd get it.”

She looked pleased to be invited up: her eyes remained cool, but her mouth was fighting a smile. Henry feared this was a mistake. He might never be able to get rid of her.

“You spoil me, Jessica,” he told her in the elevator. “I don't have much to offer guests. Well, you know my stock better than I do. But I could give you a cup of tea.”

“I'll be fine,” she said. “I'll just walk you through the process and then get out of your hair.”

Henry had assumed a female assistant would be less complicating than a male one. There'd be no sexual undertones to muddy relations between management and labor. Jessie, however, was a closet Mrs. Danvers. Her worship was discreet, expressed in looks, not words. But it was definitely there, and completely unjustified. After all, she was intimate with the mess of his life, his unpaid bills, dirty underpants, and petty contradictions. Tonight, for example: he both wanted her company
and
wanted to be alone.

While Henry searched his pockets for his key, she took out her own key and unlocked the door.

“Ah, my home away from home,” he sang as he entered and turned on lights. “A canny hole of me own to fart in.” The producers had found this place for him just as they had found his batman, or rather batwoman. The flat wasn't too awful. Everything was in tasteful shades of gray—carpet, upholstery, walls—with a couple of chrome tables topped with glass. It was as restful as an empty brain. A Nautilus machine stood in the dining room. Henry now turned on the television with the sound off. He needed a silent flicker of life.

“You know where everything is, my dear. I'll let you to it. Call me when you're set up.”

She promptly sat at his computer and turned it on. The machine was his, but only Jessie used it, for his correspondence, accounts, and money transfers. She was of that generation—their brains are wired differently—but he was still in awe of her ability.

“Are you sure I can't offer you some tea?” he called from the kitchen. “Or beer or wine?”

“No, I'm fine. Thank you.”

Nothing in the refrigerator looked half as interesting as the bag of grass that he took from the Mouse sack. He poured himself a glass of wine, then rummaged in the drawer and found his rolling papers. Here was a manual task that he handled quite well. He crumpled a tangle of weed, sprinkled it into the fold of paper, licked the paper, and rolled it, slow and tight, producing a joint as neat as a toothpick.

He brought joint and wine out to the living room. Jessie was still messing at his computer.

“Something not right, my dear?”

“Oh, Henry,” she said, sounding more like a mother than an employee. “You scrambled your files.”

“Oh dear. This afternoon after you left, I tried again to get into my mail. The thingies kept disappearing.”

“Files.”

“I broke them?”

“No. You just put them into the wrong places. I have to shuffle them back to where they belong.”

He stood behind her with his glass of wine and unlit joint and watched the various boxes expand and pop, contract and mate.

“Henry,” she said. “Follow what I'm doing. Just take the mouse, slide it around until the cursor—”

“The what?”

“This arrow. See it on the screen.”

“All righty.”

“Slide it to the mail icon, then click twice. No. Here. You do it.”

She stood up. He handed her his wine and joint and sat at the keyboard. He did as she told him. Instantly a new box appeared, an empty box labeled New Mail.

“What does that mean?” he asked.

“It means nobody's written to you.”

“Oh dear. Nobody writes the colonel. My fucking so-called friends. Or did I give them the wrong address?”

“Maybe they can't imagine you plugged into the Net. You need to write a few notes to them.”

“I suppose,” he said with a sigh. “But tomorrow. This old dog is too fried tonight to do any new tricks.” He noticed her mouth print on his glass—she had taken a sip. “So you
will
join me? Excellent.”

She frowned at the wine. “Sorry. I took a swallow without thinking.”

“Not at all. You deserve a reward for your very good deed. I'll pour myself a fresh glass. Did you care to share in Mickey?”

She didn't but told Henry to go ahead. She'd drink one glass of wine and go home.

While Henry curled up on the sofa, Jessie took the easy chair facing him. She picked a paperback book off the floor. “‘There is a new name for evil,'” she portentously declared. “Greville.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“
Greville
. This novel. Big bestseller. About a psycho-killer genius with a yen for teenage girls. Like a trashy marriage between
Lolita
and
Silence of the Lambs.
Why're you reading it?”

“I'm not.”

“Then why is it here?”

“I don't know.” He took the book from her, a fat thing with a Tuscan landscape on the cover. “Maybe someone left it?”

“You've had visitors?”

“No. Alas.” He flipped pages, remembered nothing, then tossed the book aside. He took up his joint. “Cheers,” he said and lit up.

The tip caught fire like a fuse, with tiny crackles and hisses. The bitter smoke filled his lungs, promising peace, calm, silence. He held it down and held out the joint. “Yes?” he huskily grunted.

“No thank you.” She leaned back in her chair; there was no disapproval in her gaze, only amusement, even pride.

It was fun to be the subject of a crush, so long as the crusher understood nothing could come of it. His batwoman knew he was gay. He never pretended otherwise, with her or anyone else. And she had a gay brother, that playwright fellow, so she must know. But just to be on the safe side, Henry thought he might reiterate the point.

He exhaled a gray gust and took a breath of clean air.

“What do you know about the Gaiety Theatre? Well, you wouldn't, would you? It's this old-fashioned queer club off Times Square. The costume designer took me there last month. I keep meaning to get back, but haven't. It had the most beautiful Puerto Rican boys, strutting their stuff in G-strings and less. Very hot.” And he swallowed some wine, wondering what Jessie thought of that.

“Why haven't you been back? You afraid you'll be recognized?”

He burst out laughing. “You flatter me, my dear. Nobody knows me in this town. Oh, a few artsy theatergoers. But certainly no regulars at the Gaiety. No, in this country one isn't famous until one appears in a hit movie or is a regular on a television series. Not that that would stop me. The world knows which way my wand points. I do not need to slip among the soldiery, King Henry in mufti.”

“You underestimate your fame,” she said. “Anyone who cares about real theater art knows your work.”

“Oh them.” He took another sip of smoke, but spit it out—his throat had not recovered from the first blast. “Those few, those blessed few. That blessed band of brothers. A few critics and old farts. I've given my life to ‘real theater art,' as you call it. And it's given me no satisfaction. Now that my youth has fled, I need to cash in on my so-called celebrity. Enough of this art shit. I want to make money. Bags of it. I want to sell out. If only I can find someone who'll buy. Does that shock you, my dear?”

She was smirking, not looking shocked, merely skeptical.

“Look at Vanessa,” he said. “Or Hopkins or McKellen. Or Alan Rickman for chrissakes. Surely I have as much talent as those fakers. I'd make a lovely villain in a billion-dollar thriller. To die at the hands of Bruce Willis? The mere thought is enough to make me cream in my jeans.”

“You don't really believe that.”

“Oh, Mr. Willis doesn't get me hard. But the money does.”

“That's what I meant. You're not serious about the money.”

“Why not? What else is there to want from life?”

“But you were just complaining about being bored with
this
show. A big-budget movie would be even worse.”

“You think? Maybe. I contradict myself? Very well. I contradict myself.”

He smiled, hiding his irritation for being called on his conflicted desires. He took a deep drag on his toothpick of bliss, wanting to climb back into a soft chambered cloud. When she said nothing, when she just sat there, watching, her intelligence began to worry him.

He released his smoke. He took another gulp of wine. “I hope I didn't sound envious and bitter about those
other
actors, my dear.”

She shook her head.

“You must understand. When I run down my peers, it's not out of hatred or envy, though those emotions may be present. It takes a faker to know a faker. No, we hate one another chiefly to get a change from hating ourselves.”

He blinked at his own words—had he really said that? He let out a loud bark of laughter.

“Listen to me! What rubbish! What's in this stuff anyway?” He stared at the joint. “Is this what they call designer grass?”

Just then something beeped, like a signal from Jupiter. A second beep came from Jessie's chair.

Jessie dug into the cushion, fished out the cordless receiver, and passed it to Henry.

“Ah.” He pressed the button. “Yes?”

“Henry? You're home? I thought I'd get only your machine. It's Rufus. In L.A. How
are
you?”

“Rufus! What a nice surprise. How good to hear your dulcet tones. And how's life in the world of sunshine, hot tubs, and penis?”

He was delighted to talk nonsense with a peer. His assistant's curiosity and this potent grass had made him much too serious. He licked his thumb and forefinger and pinched out the ember.

“What can I do for you, Roof?”

“I just called to say hello.”

“Uh-huh. And whose number do you want? What dish on whose houseboy or boyfriend?” His teasing was jovial, harmless, brotherly.

“Hen? Are you partaking?”

Henry laughed. “We know each other too well, don't we?”

They had met fifteen years ago, in a
Vanya
at the RSC where Henry was Dr. Astrov and Rufus was the nameless workman with two lines in Act Four. It was Rufus's first baby step in the profession. They were lovers of a sort during the run, hygienic lust with a touch of playacted romance. Rufus was a tall, beautiful, lazy fellow, but he'd achieved surprising success in Hollywood playing “the best friend” in romantic comedies. Or what passed for romantic comedies in these sorry times.