The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [43]
“She certainly sells tickets.”
“So do a ton of name people who are also human beings. Her outstanding feature is that Tony can get her cheap because so many places won’t touch her with a rake. She gave me the treatment opening night and waited to see what I’d do. I did nothing. Pretended I didn’t notice. So she did it again the next night, and I let her get away with it. Eight shows, and each time the cunt was waiting for a reaction. By the last performance she was blowing her own lines. She was that tense to see what I was saving up for her. Nothing. Nothing on the stage, nothing after the show. It was a truly difficult piece of acting, and I doubt she got the point, but I was trying to teach her a trick she never heard of. Restraint.”
“I think that was too subtle for her.”
“I’m sure it was, but I like to think I made her uncomfortable. Tony wanted me to play opposite against her last summer. What was the play? Mame. I took the script home and didn’t open it. I brought it back the next day. I told him I couldn’t handle the part. He said it would be a cinch for me. ‘I just can’t do it,’ I told him. ‘I haven’t got the talent.’ Of course he knew why I wouldn’t do it and he knew better than to push. This time he wanted me for Mr. Goldstone. Well, you walk on and you walk off. Anybody can do it who can wear a suit, and you don’t have to wear it particularly well. ‘I don’t have the talent, Tony.’ He had to stand there and take it. Somehow I couldn’t sympathize with him.”
“He’s been getting it pretty good from Vanessa himself.”
“He knew what to expect. He tried to tell me I thought bit parts were beneath me. I would have liked a bit part. It’s a pleasure every now and then to be part of a production without the strain of a demanding role. Next week we get going on The Man Who Came to Dinner. I’ve played that so many times I don’t think I’ll have to refer to the script, but even so it’s a taxing part. A bit part before that would have been pleasant. Well, it’s even more pleasant to be at liberty. I even like the phrase. It’s a delicious euphemism, and one can’t object to the state when it’s only going to last for a week. Peter? I’m glad to see Gretchen looking herself again. I think you’re very good for her.”
“We’re good for each other.”
“May I presume for a moment? Please don’t take this the wrong way.”
“What?”
“Just that you shouldn’t expect miracles.”
“I hardly ever do.”
“She’s gotten better before. It’s what she does when she’s not getting worse.”
“I know.
SIX
On the first of May, Hugh Markarian got up at daybreak. He showered, shaved the stubble from his neck and cheekbones, and noted that his beard needed a trim. He habitually trimmed his own beard, never having found a local barber to whom he would trust the job. But beard trimming was methodical work, certainly not to be undertaken first thing in the morning.
He got the Times from the front stoop and scanned the front page while his eggs fried in the cast-iron saucepan. He read as much as he cared to of the paper while he ate his breakfast, and in the course of it noticed the date.
A line of doggerel ran through his head:
Hey, hey, the first of May,
Outdoor fucking starts today!
Well, it would have to start without him, he thought, because he had other things to do. He generally began the annual novel at about this time and had already decided that today would be his first day on the book. If things went well he would turn it in by Christmas; even if they didn’t, he would have a final manuscript on his publisher’s desk in time for the book to appear the following fall.
Hey, hey, the first of May… .
He was at his desk with the door closed before his housekeeper arrived. Mrs. Kleinschmidt was a garrulous sort, pleasant enough company when he was in the mood but a pain in the neck when he wasn’t. When she