The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [55]
To take the first part of him, the womanizer, it seemed like the thing he had about money, to be all mixed up with his pride. The Contessa came around, and not only the Contessa, some pretty fancy women came by, and yet I couldn’t figure out what he specifically liked about them. Variety seemed to be the only rule. There was something impersonal in the way he treated them. I could see he didn’t love any of them, that he didn’t even particularly like them; he—I don’t know what he them’d.
And then, toward the end of rehearsals, I suddenly stopped being jealous. I could tell by certain things, the way I’d catch him looking at me, the way he’d stopped his maddening pretense that I was an abstract type going through abstract experiences, and make some personal remark to try to find out how important Teddy and Jim were in my life, that he was going to get around to me soon. The question was when.
I was wearing a dark red corduroy skirt and a blue-and-white-striped shirt one day. I remember that because he’d kept on looking at me until I asked him what was the matter. He laughed. “You look so—” he closed his eyes a moment and smiled slowly, “—so vital,” he said finally, and then “Sorry about that evening at Visconti’s. I shouldn’t have goofed off like that. Should have stayed on with you. Should have taken you home.”
“Yes, you should have.”
“Have I lost the chance?”
“I don’t know.”
“When will you?”
“Urn. Opening Night?”
“Right. Opening Night. Don’t forget, Gorce.”
“Oh, I won’t.”
Larry and Fame; I was now approaching the two things I wanted most in the world with breakneck speed. The only trouble was that toward the first, my inclination was to rush headlong, full-steam ahead, and from the other—the Ordeal—to hold back forever.
The theater was ice-cold, and as I slumped and quivered in my slip in the dressing room trying to keep my hands steady enough to put my eye make-up on, I wondered how on earth I’d gotten there in the first place. It was all supposed to be a joke, wasn’t it? It was all supposed to stop long before it actually happened, wasn’t it? I wasn’t really supposed to get out there in front of a bunch of strangers and make a fool of myself, didn’t God know that? I took a deep breath and watched it come out in a frozen puff. That’s going to look great on stage, I thought, especially in the love scenes.
“Half an hour.” The distant clangor of the Assistant Stage-Manager’s voice coming along the upstairs corridors was entirely unnerving. Must she bellow like that? All my esprit de corps slipped quietly away. Every man for himself and swim while the shore’s still in sight. What use would I have been to them anyway? I couldn’t even remember my lines. I began shaking all over. I just made it to the John before becoming violently sick. The spasms were of such excruciating pain that I thought I was going to die then and there, leaning ignobly over the bowl. Everything had come up and yet I was still wracked with contractions. Entrails next, I told myself.
“Twenty minutes.” That voice again. O.K., I thought, this is it. And I waited. Perversely enough nothing happened. I lay on the floor for about five minutes. My cold sweat seemed to have encouraged my circulation, and I felt healthy and in a curious state that I could only describe as “optimistic.” I began to tingle rather than tremble, and some of my lines came back to me. “We are now entering the old manic phase,” I told myself, calmly enough, until I realized I’d said it out loud. Then I picked myself up off the floor.
When Larry came into my dressing room to wish me luck I was almost able to match his confidence, except that my words came out all funny. “And good luck too to you too!” I heard myself replying.
“Five minutes,” roared the Assistant Stage-Manager. What on earth could I have ever liked about that girl anyway, I wondered. Who hired her in the first place? She obviously didn’t know her job, going around scaring people to death like that. I’d speak to Larry about it later.
“Places, please!” That did it. At last I understood