Читать книгу Mending - Sallie Bingham - Страница 9

SEAGULL

“LISTEN,” SHE SAID, LEANING ACROSS THE TABLE and laying down her fork, “if this is about money, I’m leaving.” She began to gather her coat around her shoulders.

“It’s not about money,” he said. “How could I invite you to dinner and the theatre and ask you for money?”

She hesitated, one arm in her sleeve. “You’re edging toward it.”

“How?”

“As soon as you started talking about trying to raise money for your play.”

“That was innocent,” he said. “Believe me. You’re in this game, too; I thought you’d understand. Getting a new play on its feet—I thought you’d be sympathetic.”

“I’m plenty sympathetic,” she said, “but I have my own projects.”

“I know.”

She stared at him, assessing. Apparently he had researched her. It was easy to find what she’d done: two respectable off-off Broadway productions, mounted by a company she’d helped to finance.

She regretted, now, that she hadn’t done her homework. All she had to go on was the way he looked, on the other side of the café table. He was thin, tall, his background, whatever it was, hidden by decades of living in the city; she was thin, tall, sharp, her background still hovering in her Midwestern twang, worn proudly, like an award, although she, too, had lived in the city for decades. Both were theatre people—playwrights, occasionally directors, actors in their own or other people’s productions, but invisible, really, in the crowd. And of course there was no money—never had been, never would be. Feeling cheerful, she’d say it kept them honest—theatre people, her tribe.

But he was black. That was a distinction.

After ten minutes of talk, she knew they’d both come to the city years earlier, expecting a special destiny. No one could have told them it had not worked out the way they had expected because they knew it had worked out, but that their expectations had been slightly, perhaps fatally, off. So they had already in that first ten minutes established a base and a sort of harmony, and then he had started off in another direction with his play, the production mired in financial problems.

“The sources I’ve turned to in the past have dried up,” he said now, satisfied that she had let her coat fall to the back of her chair, taking her arm out of the sleeve, although she hadn’t picked up her fork; her tuna filet lay exposed on her plate, rapidly chilling. “With what’s happened to the economy, even the foundations are pulling back, and the two or three patrons”(he couldn’t help giving the word an ironic tinge) “have cut back, as well—and it’s a crucial time for me, I need to do this show now, before we have a change in administrations.”

“Really,” she said, relenting a little. She was not uninterested although she was dubious.

“It’s explosive material, but it’ll lose its bang after January. My best work so far,” he added quietly.

Her opposition seemed to have died and so he set to work, pick and shovel. It was what he usually did, it was his job, as much as the writing of his plays. He didn’t resent the need to lay out his plans, precisely and powerfully, and felt after all these years that the labor of raising money for his productions sharpened his appetite and gave him new reasons to go on. He was educating his patrons (the word had no ironic tinge now), he was bringing them into a world that still in spite of its tawdriness was magic.

She hadn’t given him much time, rushing into the restaurant late and then looking surprised, in spite of herself, when she saw him. They would need to be finished with dinner and paid in forty-five minutes, to get across the street to the Booth Theatre on time. And neither of them was ever late to a play. They associated that with amateurism, loudly chatting visitors from the suburbs who didn’t leave enough time to park their ridiculous cars.

She lifted her fork and pressed the tines, tentatively, into her tuna. “How’s your fish?” he asked, hoping for a little air.

“I don’t know, I haven’t tasted it.” She shot him an imperious glance. He could have strangled her; did she think he was one of those hapless waiters who ask the crucial question too soon? Then he checked himself. He often asked the crucial question too soon.

Not this time. Too much was riding on it.

He’d found her by chance because he was working part-time in the box office and had recognized her name when she called to order a ticket and, greatly daring, had called her back (her telephone number was part of her order) and asked her to join him for dinner and the play. “You shouldn’t have to go to the theatre alone,” he’d said, realizing from her startled silence that this was a new thought but not an entirely unwelcome one.

“I go to the theatre alone all the time,” she’d said, opening another door for his implication: a woman of a certain age, living alone in Brooklyn, riding the subway to the downtown theatres and in spite of herself beginning to worry during the second act about the long, late subway ride home.

He studied her, realizing that, between bites of her tuna, she was studying him. What he saw didn’t correspond exactly to what he’d imagined when he’d recognized her name; she’d had some success ten years earlier with a one-woman show. He remembered the newspaper shot from that production—a woman smiling energetically—and something of the story: how she’d been working on the piece for years, mentored by several serious contenders, picking up an MFA in theatre somewhere and then seeming to burst on the scene full-blown. But the one-woman show had been followed by silence, although he knew she’d continued to “contribute to the life of the theatre”—that meant money—as well as commuting into Manhattan for classes and plays. The story. All of it easily found, and he’d found it.

She saw something less defined since she’d never seen Jeffrey’s name in the theatre section, which she still read assiduously as though it decided fates, as it had at one time. His name had been there, a time or two, but inconspicuously, when he’d directed something that bombed in Chelsea or understudied in a little show that managed to run on Perry Street for nine months. That was five years ago, and nothing much since, which was the reason for the part-time job at the box office.

He was in his early forties, she guessed, in good shape, never a leading man but now maturing into a skilled character actor; he was ready for the parts he had been waiting for when casting directors passed him over for the romantic lead. He was ready for the characters he had tailored in his own plays, which other actors had never found a perfect fit. She could see that; she could see that he fit, especially now that black actors were once again being cast occasionally in white parts, or parts that had always been assumed to be white, by nature. It might be that he was a better actor than playwright, even more likely that his real strength was as a director but knew that field was more surely closed. She thought she was probably a few years older.

“How did you know my name?” she asked, lightening a little as she ended her scrutiny.

“From Woman in Love.”

“But that was a long time ago.”

“I keep up,” he said modestly. “You made quite a splash, back then.”

“I hit the crest of the wave,” she said, equally modest, although both of them suspected that modesty was not their strong suit. “Nobody’s interested in one-woman shows anymore.”

“Or one-man,” he said, to set the record straight.

She glanced at him, and he wondered if he had run up against an opinion, a hard one, with edges. But she only said, “Did you do those, too?”

“Not my kind of thing.”

“So what turned you from writing plays to directing?”

“Did I tell you I directed?”

“No, but I gathered.” She smiled. “You have that manner.”

“What is that manner?” He was amused, in spite of himself.

“I think you think you have authority.” She gave the word the same ironic tinge he’d given to the word patron.

“Authority.” He thought a bit before answering, realizing that this was a challenge, her gauntlet laid down. With some women, this was the way they began to flirt, although he did not think flirting was what he wanted. But it might provide a way in.

“Of course I don’t plan to direct my own play, ” he said, to prevent her jumping to the conclusion. They’d both seen efforts spoiled by the over-involvement of the writer. She knew that. She was smart, sharp, he thought, in the spiked way of theatre women in the city, women who’d struggled for a long time, and survived.

“Well, you know enough about the scene to know you should be asking for money from someone else, some talented young producer.” She would have liked to add, “no doubt black,” but resisted. He didn’t seem to have any race identification and the time of those fights was long over. “Much more realistic than going around raising money from people like me.”

As she said it, she saw he didn’t believe her. In addition to her two plays, he’d seen her name listed here and there as a sponsor of little hole-in-the-wall shows, the kind of short run she felt sure he was contemplating for his play—equity minimum, rarely reviewed.

“I believe in this play, I’m willing to try any way I can to get it on,” he said.

“There’re some ways not worth trying.”

“Probably a waste of time but—”

“No,” she interrupted him. “Shameful.”

Her eyes were light brown, almost yellow, and since she didn’t take care of her eyebrows, her eyes seemed set in a colorless waste. He knew suddenly that she’d given up trying to find acting parts. “Can’t you imagine how I feel?” she went on softly, intently. “I’m your peer, I’m a fellow playwright, but you couldn’t care less about my work”—she held up her hand to prevent him from objecting—“you haven’t asked me a single question about myself. Can’t you imagine how I feel?” Now her voice rose, and someone at the next table glanced at her.

“I suppose,” he said as calmly as he could. “I suppose I can imagine it.”

She was still staring at him. He ate some of his potatoes without tasting them. He’d called her on impulse; it was something he’d never done before, and he suddenly remembered how her Midwestern twang had seemed, when she ordered her ticket, to open possibilities. He would never have called her if she’d sounded like a New Yorker. “Where do you come from?” he asked, moving his hand along the tablecloth to grasp his glass of wine.

“Indiana,” she said, relenting,” a long time ago,” and her hand, matching his, moved toward her glass. “I’ve lived in the city or at least in the boroughs since I graduated from school.” She gulped her wine.

He didn’t need to ask which one. She had the implacable air of privilege; it would have been Yale or an equivalent although he couldn’t think at the moment of an equivalent. Certainly nowhere in the West or the South.

“Were you born here?” she asked in her turn; they were moving onto neutral ground, and Jeffrey realized that she was not intractable. It was even possible that she was embarrassed by her outburst.

“Right up in Harlem.” It was what she expected. “Single mother, all that.”

“Don’t use that as an excuse,” she said briskly. “You might end up president.”

“So might your daughter,” he said recklessly, trying to even the ground.

“I don’t have a daughter.”

“I mean a young woman of that generation.”

“I don’t think anyone will risk it after what the Senator went through last spring.”

“You do have to be tough,” he said. She was tough, he knew, but not in the way he’d expected; she had resources, but they were not spread out to be viewed, they were not her wares. He’d never met a woman with resources who did not spread them out, disparaging them, maybe, but knowing their draw. It was possible, he realized, that she believed she had another draw. But he could not be sure.

She was a realist. Surely she was. Otherwise it would be very hard to negotiate.

“Do you enjoy producing?” he asked.

She smiled. “Yes, my own work, but I can’t afford it.”

He knew that was not true. She was keeping a drop cloth over her display.

“I like that dress. A very nice color,” he said although until then he hadn’t noticed. “Green is a good shade for your hair.”

“No use, Jeffrey,” she said, smiling. “I know what looks good on me, I don’t need to be told.”

There was the rock again, the foundation stone. “I’m not trying to flatter you,” he said.

“I know, and anyway, you couldn’t. We only have a few minutes—tell me what you want, stop beating around the bush.”

He nearly gasped. Suddenly, she was coming forward, even rushing at him. “I want your help,” he said, before he realized that she might misunderstand. “I want money,” he explained, and felt a rush of shame.

“I know you do.” She folded her napkin neatly. This was what she’d suspected from the beginning. She knew this situation as well as she knew the feel of her coat lining, the beige silk that hung over the back of her chair. “Go ahead,” she said evenly. “Tell me your plan. You must have a plan,” she added when he was silent.

And so he began. He had to. There was no option. And at the same time, he felt a great wash of sympathy, as though he’d found something in his path, unexpected, soft, wounded, and was about to step back to avoid crushing it, but did not.

The details now, all of them, were laid out. She listened without expression.

He did not believe this was the conversation she had expected when he called her up to make the date.

She would never admit that, now, and yet her vague, smiling fantasy of what he might have wanted hung in the air like a trailing bit of steam.

He summed up, sighing, in spite of himself. “That is what it would take.” He had the specifics in mind; it only took two or three minutes to list them: the costs, in general terms, of a six-week run, Equity requirements, the audience he hoped to reach and how he planned to reach them. It was a template, and she knew that. There was nothing new in it although it was well-grounded in the experience they both shared.

“Isn’t there another way to go about it? Selling tickets that way seems not to work anymore,” she said, getting up as he waved at someone for the bill. “Everything happens on the Net.” She put on her coat while he was paying. “The audience has changed,” she added, “and your ticket prices seem high.”

He hurried after her. There was so little time. Her back was unexpectedly broad in her coat.

“We’ll use the Internet, too,” he assured her, holding the restaurant door for her to sweep through—and she knew how to sweep, he saw that.

“I should hope so,” she said over her shoulder. “Print advertising—”

“Theatre audiences are older, they still look at the listings.”

“Not for limited-run engagements way down town that may never get past the previews.”

He did not reply. That was just another dig, her due, he supposed. Nobody liked being asked; it seemed to devalue them, whether they gave or didn’t was immaterial.

They were waiting to push through a crowd crossing the street to the gold lights of the theatre marquee. In spite of all their disappointments, the sight of that marquee and the crowd streaming toward it excited them.

But then she took the shine off. “My fifth Seagull,” she told him.

“I’ve only seen it twice.”

She began to name the productions she’d seen, the famous Russian one, the new translation with a hot British director, the slipshod amateurs in a summer theatre on the Cape. Meanwhile he guided her, palm under her elbow, across the street and through the crowd.

It was what she expected. He was fairly sure of that.

They waited in line at the will-call box until a man in carefully rolled-up sleeves and a vest handed them their reserved tickets. She seemed surprised that they would be sitting side by side.

“How did you manage that? I thought it was sold out,” she murmured.

“I have my ways.” There were some advantages to his part-time job.

He saw she was wondering if they were comps. “You paid and I paid,” he reassured her. That was not the sort of doubt he wanted to raise.

They swam through the crowd, as used to it as sea creatures to drifting weed. The waters parted before them, he found their seats without assistance. He took the aisle. They were good seats, more than he would have been willing to pay if the ticket hadn’t provided him with this opportunity.

The girl in black was on the stage. He hadn’t had time to look at the program and so didn’t know her name, but there was the famous line, “I’m in mourning for my life.”

He glanced at Helen. Of course she was wearing black, too. In this city it meant nothing.

He wondered suddenly if she wanted sympathy. That had never occurred to him before, especially after he’d seen her broad back, her shoulders like shelves, jutting. But now he heard her sigh, lingeringly, drawing it out, and although it might only mean she was relaxing—and she was settling into her seat—it proved his intuition correct. He remembered, suddenly, a summer when he’d been sent to visit an uncle in Jackson: the long bus ride, the slow lowering of the land that seemed to him—a small boy—to be running downhill to an invisible sea, the crowd of black people, as thick as in Harlem, at the bus station where he’d seen his uncle standing without expectation or surprise as though he stood there all his life. And then the long days. He’d felt sorry even for the dogs, lounging under the porch, scratching fleas.

There was no comparison, of course. Yet he felt the same inexplicable temptation to step back to avoid crushing something soft.

The play progressed. He’d had a long day. Before the end of the first act, he put his head back against the seat and dozed.

He jerked up at intermission as people began to climb over his knees. She was looking at him with her jagged smile. “So you don’t care much for the play? Or is it the production?”

“I was remembering,” he said, unshelled by his sudden waking. “I was feeling sorry.”

“For what? Or for whom?”

“For you,” he said, shaking himself awake. “It doesn’t make sense.”

She didn’t answer, looking across the crowded theatre as though she recognized someone. Then he saw she was studying the gilded mermaids that decorated the long-unused balcony where the black casings of the lighting system protruded like snouts.

“Never mind,” she said, which didn’t seem a response to what he had said.

They fell into silence. It was not uncomfortable. She continued to scan the theatre, taking in its recently re-gilded ceiling where amorphous gods and goddesses reared and plunged. He felt relieved of the responsibility of talking to her. It was almost like being at home. His roommate expected nothing in the way of words, which was a relief for a man working in the theatre.

The sharp edge of his wish, of what he’d been determined to get from her, dulled, as though rubbed against a stone, and he felt sleepy, again, and wondered how he was going to stay awake during the long second act.

The audience was crowding back in. He stood up to let several large people pass. It struck him that he was small compared to most of these people. It was an odd thought.

Then it was necessary to look, at least briefly, at that seagull, stuffed and mounted in a glass case on the stage, surely the most ridiculous representation of a symbol he’d ever seen, and to hear the girl on the stage lamenting.

They were all lamenting for their lives, but how hideous it was to have that stuffed, yellow-legged bird in its glass coffin held up to represent them.

“At least grant us the privacy of our disappointments,” she said, as though trespassing on his thoughts.

But it didn’t feel like trespassing. It felt like something soft.

Then it was over, and they were shuffling into their coats. “Walk me to the subway,” she said as they poured out with the crowd.

This time he didn’t put his palm under her elbow. “I’m sorry I asked you for money,” he said as they followed the swarm down the sidewalk.

She looked at him, surprised. “But I’m giving it to you,” she said. “Why should you be sorry?”

He was silent. People jammed past them. At the entrance to the subway, she turned and gave him her hand. “Goodbye,” she said. “I’ll put the check in the mail tomorrow.” Then she went, swooping down the long dirty steps.