Screen Play Read online

  Helen stared at me from her love seat. She was wearing a large Egyptian necklace, a scarab resting at the base of her throat. I thought about Mrs. Gruens at that moment, picturing her standing in a frosted window, watching for James to return by train from a winter stint in Boston years ago when he was acting, greeting him with a bowl of hot clam chowder, happy to make him feel like a king in one world, even if he were only a serf in another.

  “I’m sure it won’t be necessary for me to fill in your shoes, Ms. Payne. You said it yourself, you never miss a show.”

  “Oh, come now. Don’t play goody-goody. Every actress wants a shot at knocking the star down a notch or two,” she said in a voice both sweet and accusing. “The legendary Bette Davis said it best: ‘The person who wants to make it has to sweat.… And you’ve got to have the guts to be hated.’”

  Helen sipped from the water glass on a table in front of her and set it down again, leaving dark rose-colored lipstick in a crescent moon on the rim. “I was aggressive at your age,” she said, rising to her feet. “Ready to do whatever was required to get on that stage—to be the best in the world.”

  Helen’s voice grew louder. I thought I saw some of her Audrey Bradford escaping through the seams of her tightly stitched personality. “I wasn’t going back to Hartford, not after feeling the heat of Broadway lights. I would do whatever it took to keep myself here, and I’m sure you’re the very same way.”

  “I don’t think I’m like that,” I said, trying to give deference, not correct her. “I’m only the understudy, but I want to feel gratitude for what I have.”

  Helen crinkled her face like I was certifiable.

  “Gratitude? But darling, you haven’t got anything!” She laughed, popping and hissing like a coffeemaker finishing its brew. “Oh, that’s delicious. Now why don’t you run along and play with the others?”

  Helen shooed me out of her dressing room, shutting the door behind me. I stood backstage for a moment, staggered by the woman’s gloating, her haughty rub-my-face-in-it snootiness. Discouragement fell on me like a sudden rain shower. Every encounter with Helen was unpleasant. I was still unsure how to deal with Tabby’s predisposition to dislike me. I’d made the cast recoil when I’d turned down drinks with them for an hour of worship, and I was concerned about Ben. Mostly, I was frustrated, or at least confused—why had God graciously rescued me from my pit in Chicago only to drop me in the middle of so much enmity? I was beginning to question whether this break was God’s will.

  I walked out of the wings onto the Carney stage to find Avril dancing by herself at center stage as the lighting team adjusted the gels and spotlights around her. She was dressed in faded blue jeans, a sleeveless white shirt that showed off toned arms, and a long maroon scarf around her neck she twirled with her hands while she danced. She looked like a happy little girl.

  I smiled when I saw her, and she took me by the hands, spinning me around, her laughter surprised and delighted. She waltzed us around the polished, wooden floor, dancing to a melody she made up on the spot.

  “I take it you’ve heard from Jon today,” I said.

  “Surprised me, with roses, my love,” she sang in three-quarter time.

  “You look like you’re in love.”

  “Maybe I am,” she said, stopping our dance to whisper. Avril’s real life was grander than most people dare to dream.

  “Avril, I need you in makeup. You and Helen,” Tabby called out, standing in the center aisle, lights dimming up and down around her. Marshall Graham walked in through the lobby doors, wearing a navy blue varsity jacket with white leather sleeves. He joined the other actors, Melissa and Harriet among them.

  I climbed down from the stage. The show’s set designer, Mark Blane, had collaborated with Richard Mulican, Apartment 19’s lighting director, to fine-tune everything to luminescent perfection. The stage dimmed and brightened, awash in a fantastic display of daylight radiance. Suddenly, it was summertime in New York onstage.

  I walked down the center aisle to the middle of the theater, taking in the full spectrum of the opening set. Mark had done a masterful job. Onstage was a recreation of midtown Manhattan in the 1950s. The painted backdrops looked like an exhibition on realism worthy of hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art. The newsstand and coffee shop looked like Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks come to life. The sleek silver buildings of the Manhattan skyline stretched upward behind them, reinforcing the American steel workers’ optimism for the world of tomorrow. An elevated subway station practically hummed on the canvas backdrop, anticipating the next arriving car. The muted color palate—plum, browns, burnt yellows, and charcoal black—made our stage feel as if Danny Kaye or Gene Kelly might step out at any minute and swing around a city lamppost.

  The actors had all gone into hiding. I caught a glimpse of Harriet warming up backstage waiting for Tabby’s cue to walk on. She looked nervous, and I found myself praying for her, for Ben, and for ticket sales. I thought about Mrs. Gruens, too, for some inexplicable reason, wondering why I’d never wondered until then whether her husband was still alive.

  A dress rehearsal should run exactly as the audience will see the show on opening night. I took my unassigned position, a seat on the back row, as the houselights dimmed around us.

  For the next two hours, Ben, Tabby, the crew, and the show’s financial backers and producers sat silently in the darkened Carney Theatre watching a play no one else had seen in America in over thirty years.

  Each set looked perfect. An enormous round moon hung on invisible lines. It looked like a luminous sun whenever hot yellow lights were thrown on it, and cooled into a silver evening whenever Richard hit it with twilight hues. Even I was buying the illusion.

  We watched like critics, scrutinizing the show’s pacing, its transitions and flow. We didn’t laugh at its humor or applaud the spectacle, and no one gasped on seven separate occasions when lines were forgotten or stumbled over. In the second act, Avril’s microphone went dead, and Helen looked as if she was going to have a fit. In one scene, the automated lighting board suddenly flooded an indoor night scene with bright daylight. When one of the crew’s cell phones rang backstage, Helen broke character and shouted out, “If it’s the New York Times theater critic, tell him we’ll call him back later!”

  After the curtain closed, Ben called everyone back to the stage.

  “You all know how this works: good dress rehearsal, bad show. Bad dress rehearsal, great show. We’ve got a couple of technical bugs to work out and a few missed lines, but also some very promising stuff. It’s three o’clock. Principal actors, take an hour lunch. I’d like to see you back here at four to fix a staging issue I sorted out this morning while I was working with Harper. Everyone else, we’ll see you here tomorrow for opening night.”

  ~ Nine ~

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  Avril’s Manhattan attorney, Jon, worked seven days a week and twenty-eight nights of every month. Holidays were a coin toss. Perhaps this was the allure of LoveSetMatch.com for him and every other busy Manhattan professional. Online dating allowed him access to what he couldn’t find any other way. Love and connection.

  My heart softened to the idea of online dating when I caught up with Avril in the Carney’s grand lobby following Saturday afternoon’s late rehearsal. I found her leaning inside in a cozy nook between the lobby wall and a lighted poster box, her cell phone resting against her ear. A golden light from the promotional poster for Apartment 19 cast a soft glow over her. Whatever Jon was saying on the other end, she loved it.

  �
�Yes, I know what day it is,” Avril said, still holding the bouquet of red roses Jon had had delivered after lunch.

  “No,” she giggled, “I don’t think it’s silly to celebrate our six week anniversary.”

  Harriet, the actress who joked she was Queen Latifah’s twin, walked up beside me as I waited to say good night to Avril.

  “What’s she doing?” Harriet asked.

  “She’s talking to her boyfriend, Jon. He’s the one who sent the flowers.”

  Harriet let a couple of beats pass before she responded. “Is it just me, or does Avril always look exactly like Miss America to you?”

  “It’s probably the roses,” I said. “But we can ask her later if ‘world peace’ is the one thing she wants most.”

  Avril overheard us and made eye contact, but it only brought a larger smile to her face. She turned away, seeking a little privacy, but I could still hear her as Avril told Jon she loved him. She closed the cover on her little pink phone.

  “Oh, bliss …”

  Avril collapsed against the wall, closing her eyelids as if nocturnal dreams were her only rest from the weight of continual happiness. She blew out a contented sigh.

  “Someone around here’s happy,” Harriet said.

  Avril opened her eyes. “Friends, neighbors, countrymen and -women, if it were in my power to bestow upon each of you one quarter of the happiness I feel at this moment, I would gladly do it.”

  I laughed, happy for her being so in love, but envious, too. Not the pity-party garden variety, but the kind that prods you into taking action. I wanted what Avril had, but in a way that was meant for me.

  Avril smiled, showing off white movie-star teeth and moving toward us across the bright red Broadway carpet. I could imagine flashbulbs popping all around her like the Hollywood press did for Marilyn Monroe. Maybe she was Miss America.

  “I’d love to stay with you all,” Avril said. “But alas, I’m off to catch a checkered chariot to whisk me away to my love. It’s our anniversary.”

  “I think what you got may be some kind of illness,” Harriet said.

  Avril, still enchanted, stepped closer to Harriet, lowering her own voice to a whisper. “Don’t cure me,” she said.

  Avril glided across the lobby and through the front doors, holding her bouquet of roses like a trophy. Harriet and I watched her hail a cab under a shower of brilliant marquee lights. A moment later, a yellow taxi pulled up to the curb, and Avril opened the backseat door and slid in. The taxi dashed away, merging into midtown traffic where it disappeared in the rush of trucks and cars. She was off to enjoy a sumptuous dinner at one of New York’s five-star restaurants.

  “There goes the most beautiful woman in New York,” Harriet said.

  “And the happiest.”

  “Must be nice.”

  Harriet turned her attention to me.

  “So, Miss Harper Gray, did you enjoy your church service last night?”

  I looked up at her, checking to see if she was making fun of me. I was still a little bruised and paranoid after Helen’s pep talk. Harriet appeared guileless.

  “Yes, I did. You should have come with us. We met some very nice people,” I said, trying to imitate the kindness Bella had once shown me.

  “I thought about it, but I don’t know. Next time, maybe.”

  Like Avril, Harriet had show-business charisma, an appealing quality that invites trust. I sensed she was a deep soul, someone able to understand the world around her better than most. She put it to use in her performance as the landlord. It gave her character—essentially a witness who sees some of the peculiar happenings in the apartment—a palpable empathy toward Roxy.

  “Any plans for dinner?” I asked.

  “I have to get back to Brooklyn. My son’s waiting for me,” Harriet said, fishing through her shoulder bag and retrieving her cell phone. “He’s not used to his mom having to work on Saturdays. Thankfully, his grandmother lives with us.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Darius. He’s nine and absolutely brilliant, a genius. Tonight we’re going to watch Animal Planet and eat Moose Tracks ice cream.”

  “Sounds like a big time,” I told her. “Will you bring Darius to see you in the premiere?”

  “Probably not. He has cerebral palsy, and it’s just hard to bring him here. I’d need to request a special van, and it’s a long way from Brooklyn and a long show for him to sit through. Plus, I don’t think I could act if I looked down and saw him in his wheelchair. I’d be like, ‘Darius, how you doin’, baby? Soon as we kill off Miss Audrey Bradford, mama’ll be done and we can go home and watch basketball.’ My baby loves the NBA.”

  Harriet and I exited the Carney Theatre, walking up West Forty-fourth Street through a biting wind to the subway. When we could travel together no further, we bid each other good night, and I boarded the D train to the Village.

  Sitting in a seat facing sideways, I shuffled through hundreds of songs on my iPod, but nothing seemed to match my mood. I chose the Yellowjackets as a fallback, instrumental jazz to massage my soul. It was my first time alone again, and I thought about calling Katie Tylers. She’d graciously offered to be my listening ear if I ever needed one. After chitchatting with Harriet and watching Avril float away for her romantic date, I was feeling just a little blue.

  But by the time I deboarded the train in Greenwich Village, I’d decided to spare Katie the tedium of listening to my whining. Still, I knew Avril wouldn’t be home for hours, and the prospects of a dull night hanging around the apartment alone seemed pathetically similar to my old life in Chicago.

  I jostled my apartment key into the dead bolt, unlocking the door with a loud click. Inside the rooms were dark and quiet. I turned on the small lamp Avril kept in the kitchen next to a fern on the counter. The stereo remote was on the kitchen island, so I picked it up, tuning in some music on Avril’s satellite radio from across the room.

  For dinner, I heated a can of tomato basil soup and crumbled a few Ritz crackers over the top. After cleaning up the kitchen, I could have easily just gone to bed, but it was only 8 p.m.

  I browsed Avril’s bookshelves for something interesting, but my blasé attitude prohibited me finding anything. Finally, I sat at the small alcove desk—a contemporary two-level lit by a retro ’70s reading lamp with stringy purple tassels. I smelled a real daisy peeking out of a small light blue vase next to the computer and wondered where Avril had picked it up. I began searching for the Power button, which I found hidden at the back of the Mac, and switched both it and the lamp on.

  I clicked around online for a while, checking emails, browsing Facebook for the first time since coming to New York, and awaiting the inevitable arrival of boredom.

  Then I closed my eyes, returning to prayer in hopes that God would choose this moment to speak again, but the only thing that came to mind was a picture of Avril sitting with Mr. Wonderful at a candlelit table with Manhattan’s diamond skyline in the background. Avril was so in love. How did that happen? She’d always been a go-getter, willing to take risks and try new things.

  Like Internet dating.

  I typed in a Google search for “Internet dating.” In seconds, 4,136,087 matches appeared on the screen. I reasoned this gave the weird social practice some kind of legitimacy. Then I did a second search, this time for Avril’s dating site, the one that produced the kind of love that came with a dozen roses—LoveSetMatch.com.

  I clicked again and watched the LoveSetMatch.com Web site load onto my screen. A photo of a happy thirty-something couple greeted me on the home page, a rugged, manly-type guy holding an attractive auburn-haired woman. They were beautiful in an average sort of way, and I understood its message instantly: This could be you.

  I snooped around LoveSetMatch.com for a minute or two, feeling curious and incredulous all at the same time.
The site boasted an impressive 12 million members worldwide, and proudly proclaimed that LoveSetMatch.com couples walked the aisles of matrimony to the tune of eight-five every day.

  There was a science to it, the site assured me, and that science required everyone to fill out a personality questionnaire before they could find their fabulously compatible partner.

  It all seemed so dubious and computer cold. Falling in love by algorithm? Then again, it was where Princess Avril had found her Prince Charming (and at least six weeks of complete bliss and happiness). Maybe LoveSetMatch.com was just a modern-day version of old-world matchmaking, the likes of which Mrs. Gruens’s sister, Elvira, could only dream of.

  The last hook? The LoveSetMatch personality test was totally, 100 percent free. I could take their two-hundred-question love survey, find out what personality type I was uniquely compatible with, and never spend a nickel. If ever there was a night to waste time on such a trivial distraction, this was it. A perfect remedy, or match, for my boredom. And who knows, maybe it would also be a scratch-an-itch lottery ticket leading me to my highly compatible soul mate. Be prepared, LoveSetMatch warned. The compatibility survey would take at least an hour to complete.

  Perfect.

  I left the computer alcove for the kitchen and pulled out an unopened carton of orange juice from the fridge, giving it a robust shake. I grabbed a heavy crystal juice glass, one of a set Avril told me she’d purchased in Soho, and filled it. Back at the computer alcove, I took a small sip and wondered if I was really going to do this. The “Let’s Get Started” button blinked on-screen, an enticing invitation, and I clicked on it.

  Step 1: Create a username and password.

  I typed in the first thing that popped in my mind.

  Username: H*E*P*B*U*R*N.