Come to the Edge_ A Memoir - Christina Haag [78]
“Are you all right?” Jane asked when he handed me the phone. “You can go now, you know.”
We had talked about everything, about painting and philosophy, our childhoods and religion, and certainly the theater. He had played Hamlet and I had played Ophelia, and we’d both been in Pinter’s Old Times. We talked of plays as if they were real worlds, but when I asked what he would see while he was in New York, he said, “Why watch when you can do.” His gaze was intense, and at one point I moved to the window, touching my wineglass absently. “Does the tension make you nervous?” he asked, adding that for him it was a rare thing. “No,” I replied. But I had dropped mentions of a boyfriend and how I was meeting him later. He smiled, cat-like, but scoffed when I used the word boyfriend again. It was, he said, so American.
Then we began to talk about the film—how he would shoot it and what did I think of this or that idea, and if I had the role, how would I respond, how would I wear my hair, how would I move. Together we conspired over the story, sliding easily into the roles of acolyte and mentor. It was, after all, the point of our meeting, to test the thread of chemistry, and when I stood to leave, he stood as well, offering to get me a cab. Once in the lobby, he wanted to show me a mural in the Time-Life Building a few blocks south. He knew the painter, Josef Albers, and collected his work, as well as the paintings of Klee, Rothko, and Dubuffet.
I was eager to learn, and I went with him.
After the murals, we kept walking. To show my daring, I took him not up Columbus, but through the park, until finally we stood under a streetlamp outside John’s apartment building on West Ninety-first Street.
“Farewell,” I said.
“Adieu,” he corrected. “I will see you again.” With that, he kissed my hand and backed off into the cold night.
Upstairs, the apartment was empty. I sat at the dining table savoring the moment. I was giddy, seduced not so much by the still-chiseled movie-star profile or the quality of attentiveness an older man can give to a much younger woman—although I was flattered by the fact that he’d followed me thirty-odd blocks in the cold—but by the spark I’d felt. The talk of Art and artists. The ebullient sense of what it would be like to work with him. This was what was powerful to me, and though relieved to have escaped, I wanted the part and thought, as I waited for John to come up the stairs, that this might be the break I’d been waiting for, the role that would change everything.
I heard the key in the door. John wheeled his bike in, dropped it by the bench, and, grinning, turned on the hall light. “How’d it go?” he said, whipping off his headphones. He had been as excited as I had about the meeting. I began to tell him everything—the walk through the park, the murals, the questions. Then, with my eyes fixed on the middle distance, I sighed and said, “He’s the most powerful man I’ve ever met.”
His smile dropped. As soon as I said it, I wanted to take it back. Speechless at first, he began to berate me. I was foolish, naïve, and, more than that, silly. How could I not see that? “I can’t believe you!” he bellowed. “He’s playing you.” When I protested, he waved me off. There’d be a lull and he’d go off into another room, but soon he’d stomp around the apartment and it would start again. He carried on so much that night that I began to doubt what had happened. Until the next morning, when my agents called. He’s smitten, they said. Nice work.
To my embarrassment, John began to tell the story every chance he got. I didn’t like it, but when I heard him act it out for Anthony, I had to admit he had me down pat.
At his mother’s holiday party two weeks later, we were greeted at the door by a smiling Maurice. When John left with our coats, Maurice lowered his voice and shook his head, concerned. “My dear, I heard about Maximilian Schell.” Ed’s reaction was similar, only more dismissive, and by the time I reached his mother at the center of the gallery, I was prepared to take my lumps.