TWO

I t would be hard to measure—always is when looking for an antecedent—what impact his snub of Sydnee Villapane had on his ongoing career. Harry knew she was influential among the stage crowd, but did not know how vengeful she could be, or how profoundly she valued her seductions. What he experienced was a sudden end to the breaks he seemed to be getting.

Despite wonderful reviews of his work, he returned to Los Angeles without a “next gig,” the dry well feeling unnatural, as if the planet had spun off-course, his “express-to-success” derailed.

To compound his frustration, Juliet, now returned from location, seemed indifferent, reluctant even, to resume their once-a-week sexual rendezvous. For a span of three months, his energy flagged, interest in theater, his life for fifteen years, began to wane.

Katy tried to prop him up.

“Everyone goes through slumps. Novelists have writers’ block. Composers create pieces that bomb. Top directors produce flops. It will turn around. You’re too good not to be wanted.”

“Thanks, Katy. I believe in myself, but I’m not sure I believe in the profession anymore. It’s dirty, polluted by favor and influence, the way to the top a grungy road, filled with pot-holes and detours that have little to do with talent or its lack.”

“It will turn around,” Katy said.

Some part of him, hidden from his full awareness, melted a little at the pure devotion from his best friend. No double agenda there; no driven ego pretending concern; no self-serving motives; a lovely light that shone on him, illuminating his dark corners.

He decided to visit his college mentor, Garth Benjamin.

“I appreciate,” Benjamin said, “the clippings you sent. Seems as if your Bay Area stint was a tour de force.”

“Seemed to be, but since then, nothing.”

“That’s how the business goes. Is your agent on the ball?”

“She tells me theater people, all of a sudden, seem leery of me. She doesn’t know why.”

“Do you know why?”

“Not really. Well, it could have something to do with Sydnee Villapane.”

“Meaning?”

“The last week up there, she hit on me. I turned her down.” Benjamin broke into laughter. Spontaneously, he reached for Harry and hugged him, Harry surprised and aware of the prickly stubble on his professor’s face.

Holding him at arms’ length, he said, “My young friend, Sydnee is renowned as a seductress. I believe she played that part once, years ago, and imprinted it onto her persona, a crafty woman, certainly, but shameless in her behavior with her leading men. Your agent needs to send out an APB that Villapane is acting up again, and all must ignore her calumny. Anyway, some dramaturges are well aware of the scene, and you watch, one of them might well want you because you stood up to the madam.”

Harry felt his heart leap, as if he had breathed in a lungful of fresh mountain air. He smiled broadly.

“I hope you’re right.”

Flushed by his former professor’s insight, Harry drove along Pico Boulevard, indifferent to the garish corner strip-malls that usually soured his mood, the red and yellow neon—why were they so often those colors?—promoting tacos and burritos as he crossed Alvarado, sushi and sashimi as he reached Westwood Boulevard, the culturally diverse landscape of Los Angeles seeming a neighborly contrast to the cultural friction around the world.

“Damn!” he said as he checked his voicemail messages, the first from Juliet, canceling their proposed dinner engagement. “Yes!” he shouted as his second message played out: “John Carmona here, from Pasadena Playhouse, the oldest public theater in California. Would like to speak with you about an upcoming production. Your agent told me to call you directly, see if you were interested. Said something about Sydnee Villapane in San Francisco. When you call back, we can talk about her too.”

Carmona towered over Harry by at least six inches, and while arguably an athlete in his youth, he had not maintained his rugged appearance completely, nor had he let it go beyond redemption. Broad-shouldered, alert in manner, not obese and certainly not slovenly, his paunch the main indication of too much good food and too little activity, the fifty-year-old ex-actor smiled warmly with a demeanor that marked him, at once, as an open and approachable person. Harry trusted him at first glance.

The Schiff family, during Harry’s teen years, had season tickets to the Pasadena Playhouse, a theater with charm and a welcoming ambience. Harry recalled with fondness the interesting stucco building, the cozy patio waiting-area by the entrances, the art and gift shop off to the left, and the changeable restaurants off to the right, none seeming to make a go of it for too long.

“A pleasure to meet you, young fellow. I’ve heard many good things about your work.”

“And probably some bad things too.”

“You mean from Sydnee? Oh yes, but I know what that’s all about. It means, to me, that you have character.” He spoke with a kind of clinical authority that caused Harry to wonder about his educational history.

“Thanks. To me, it means that she is a character. No disrespect, because I admire her professional work, but the gossip in our cast was not to get caught alone with her.”

“A business meeting, okay, but personally? Well, you played it out correctly. Her influence with other venues won’t hurt you.”

“I hope not.”

“It won’t. I was a psych student for a while, learned a lot about human motivation. People manage to read an imposter pretty well.”

Harry took in the casual trappings of Carmona’s small office, the natural wood furniture, oak and walnut, similar to his own tastes—he remembered his mother saying once that all woods go well together—with a parquet floor that looked recently waxed, and a circular throw-rug in front of his desk that could have been a gift from an Asian country.

“And that’s a good lead-in to our topic here today,” Carmona said. “Authenticity is our métier. Are you familiar with the Playhouse work, our usual productions?”

“When I was younger, my family came here often.”

“Good, then you know the quality of what we do—and our thrust as a theater group.”

“Kind of.”

“We generally do established pieces, occasionally a musical, rarely a world premiere, though we have done several west coast openings. I remember one of our ‘didn’t work’ offerings was a musical with the book by Ray Bradbury. Great novelist, but not a successful playwright. Anyway, we are casting now for a play that has been acknowledged as a winner, originally opened on Broadway, way back in 1975, and has had a few revivals over the years. It’s Edward Albee’s work, Seascape, which only ran for sixty-three performances when it was first produced—a box-office failure—lost out to Equus for the Tony Award, but then won Albee his second Pulitzer, the first for A Delicate Balance and the third for Three Tall Women.”

“I’m familiar with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

“Yes, well the Pulitzer committee was probably stunned by the extreme nature of that one, though today we acknowledge it as Albee’s masterpiece. Seascape originally starred the glamorous Deborah Kerr as the older woman, and an unknown, Frank Langella, as the younger man. It’s a surreal play, about an older human couple living by the beach, and a lizard couple, naïve about the people-world. Leslie, the male lizard, is macho and guarded, and the elderly couple try to explain human behavior to him and his partner, the two inexperienced aliens from the sea.”

“Pretty bizarre setting.”

“Typical of Albee. And we would like you to audition for the male lizard’s part. We take care of the costume.”

Harry laughed. “Leslie has to look like a lizard.”

“You bet. We have a top-notch costume and make-up department.”

“When can I read for the part?”

“Are you okay doing it cold? I mean without looking at the script first?”

“Any time. Right now is fine.” He had not lost his strong belief in his own talents.

“You got it. Follow me.”

He got the part. At one point, he wondered aloud if they needed anyone to play the lizard’s female companion, thinking that Katy would be wonderful for the part, and wouldn’t it be a kick if she and he were together in a professional production, the second time he was recommending her for a gig. Carmona, quite familiar with the deeply competitive nature of theater casting, said to him, simply and directly, “We have a woman in mind for that role. She has already read for the part and we like her. Name of Ophelia Razz, odd name, excellent young actor.”

He told Katy the whole story. She thanked him for thinking of her. At the time, she was in the last couple of weeks of a run of Simon’s Prisoner of Second Avenue, receiving strong reviews and a mountain of support from her fellow cast members and Brian De Genera.

The positive thing Katy knew was that Harry cared about her, and respected her abilities, but nothing more intimate than that.

“Crap,” she said aloud that same night, to her empty apartment. “He has fucking tunnel vision.” She was aware, instantly, with a spear of pain, that there was no Gus there to repeat her profanity.