Tsk, tsk, tsk went the machine as it counted out the money. Henry took the bills from the slot, a dry thickness of stiff, green paper. Two months in this country and it still felt like play money, the very stuff that he was here for.
“One, two, three…Oh dear, it’s all hundreds. I hope you won’t have trouble breaking these.”
Jessie assured him that she’d be using it to pay her rent.
They stepped back out into the rumble and roar of Ninth Avenue. He wanted to tell her good night, but not yet. His motor was still running too fast. Only the grass would slow it down enough for him to be able to sleep.
“Friday night,” Henry declared. “How I loathe Friday nights. Everyone else is having fun, but it’s a school night for our profession. Have you eaten yet?”
She said she had. Sorry.
“Ah. I’m not terribly hungry myself. I’ll just go home, fry up an egg, and partake of Mickey here. Which way were you walking?”
She offered to walk him home. They started up the block toward Fifty-fifth Street and his apartment.
“You don’t have someplace else to run off to? It is Friday. Didn’t you say you had some kind of boyfriend?”
“Some kind, yeah,” she said with a snort.
Henry decided she didn’t want to talk about her love life, which was fine by him. He didn’t want to hear about it. Jessie was a nice girl and she did her job well—so well that he could forget about her entirely if only she didn’t moon over him as if expecting pearls of theater wisdom, bird droppings of wit. Americans were such silly romantics, with none of the pride that enabled the English to keep their hero worship discreet.
“Ah, the city that never sleeps,” he proclaimed as they strolled against the late-night crowd. “They say that travel, like love, makes you innocent again. They obviously never did a theater tour. I’m in a very strange state these days. The play is locked, my performance set. There’s nothing for me to do each night except climb into my role and turn the ignition key. I’m committed by contract to stay on through this award thingy. The Tonys? If I win, heaven forbid, I’m obligated to spend the entire summer in this tedious show. It’s a quandary, a lose-lose for Mr. Lewse.” He laughed at himself. “Just listen to me. Ridiculous, ain’t it? It’s not like I have anything else lined up. And if I’m not working, I go bananas. I might fall in love, find religion, even try to find myself, heaven forbid.”
Hearing his own giddy chatter, Henry realized he might be bananas already. He should say good night before he made a complete anus of himself.
They reached his apartment building, a concrete monstrosity back toward Broadway, a postmodern neo-something like a high-rise pigeon coop. He suddenly remembered there was something he needed to ask. “Oh, Jessie. You know that mail thing you set up on my computer?” Yes, she did. The e-mail. “I can’t get into it. What do I click to open my mailbox?”
“It’s easy. You just move the cursor over to…”
But he could make no sense of what she told him. “I’m sorry. You know what they say about actors. We remember our lines by forgetting everything else.”
“If you like,” she offered, “I can show you.”
“Do you mind? If you’d show me just one more time, I’m sure I’d get it.”
She looked pleased to be invited up: her eyes remained cool, but her mouth was fighting a smile. Henry feared this was a mistake. He might never be able to get rid of her.
“You spoil me, Jessica,” he told her in the elevator. “I don’t have much to offer guests. Well, you know my stock better than I do. But I could give you a cup of tea.”
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “I’ll just walk you through the process and then get out of your hair.”
Henry had assumed a female assistant would be less complicating than a male one. There’d be no sexual undertones to muddy relations between management and labor. Jessie, however, was a closet Mrs. Danvers. Her worship was discreet, expressed in looks, not words. But it was definitely there, and completely unjustified. After all, she was intimate with the mess of his life, his unpaid bills, dirty underpants, and petty contradictions. Tonight, for example: he both wanted her company and wanted to be alone.
While Henry searched his pockets for his key, she took out her own key and unlocked the door.
“Ah, my home away from home,” he sang as he entered and turned on lights. “A canny hole of me own to fart in.” The producers had found this place for him just as they had found his batman, or rather batwoman. The flat wasn’t too awful. Everything was in tasteful shades of gray—carpet, upholstery, walls—with a couple of chrome tables topped with glass. It was as restful as an empty brain. A Nautilus machine stood in the dining room. Henry now turned on the television with the sound off. He needed a silent flicker of life.
“You know where everything is, my dear. I’ll let you to it. Call me when you’re set up.”
She promptly sat at his computer and turned it on. The machine was his, but only Jessie used it, for his correspondence, accounts, and money transfers. She was of that generation—their brains are wired differently—but he was still in awe of her ability.
“Are you sure I can’t offer you some tea?” he called from the kitchen. “Or beer or wine?”
“No, I’m fine. Thank you.”
Nothing in the refrigerator looked half as interesting as the bag of grass that he took from the Mouse sack. He poured himself a glass of wine, then rummaged in the drawer and found his rolling papers. Here was a manual task that he handled quite well. He crumpled a tangle of weed, sprinkled it into the fold of paper, licked the paper, and rolled it, slow and tight, producing a joint as neat as a toothpick.
He brought joint and wine out to the living room. Jessie was still messing at his computer.
“Something not right, my dear?”
“Oh, Henry,” she said, sounding more like a mother than an employee. “You scrambled your files.”
“Oh dear. This afternoon after you left, I tried again to get into my mail. The thingies kept disappearing.”
“Files.”
“I broke them?”
“No. You just put them into the wrong places. I have to shuffle them back to where they belong.”
He stood behind her with his glass of wine and unlit joint and watched the various boxes expand and pop, contract and mate.
“Henry,” she said. “Follow what I’m doing. Just take the mouse, slide it around until the cursor—”
“The what?”
“This arrow. See it on the screen.”
“All righty.”
“Slide it to the mail icon, then click twice. No. Here. You do it.”
She stood up. He handed her his wine and joint and sat at the keyboard. He did as she told him. Instantly a new box appeared, an empty box labeled New Mail.
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“It means nobody’s written to you.”
“Oh dear. Nobody writes the colonel. My fucking so-called friends. Or did I give them the wrong address?”
“Maybe they can’t imagine you plugged into the Net. You need to write a few notes to them.”
“I suppose,” he said with a sigh. “But tomorrow. This old dog is too fried tonight to do any new tricks.” He noticed her mouth print on his glass—she had taken a sip. “So you will join me? Excellent.”
She frowned at the wine. “Sorry. I took a swallow without thinking.”
“Not at all. You deserve a reward for your very good deed. I’ll pour myself a fresh glass. Did you care to share in Mickey?”
She didn’t but told Henry to go ahead. She’d drink one glass of wine and go home.
While Henry curled up on the sofa, Jessie took the easy chair facing him. She picked a paperback book off the floor. “‘There is a new name for evil,’” she portentously declared. “Greville.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Greville. This novel. Big bestseller. About a psycho-killer genius with a yen for teenage girls. Like a trashy marriage between Lolita and Silence of the Lambs. Why’re you reading it?”
“I’m not.”
“Then why is it here?”
“I don’t know.” He took the book from her, a fat thing with a Tuscan landscape on the cover. “Maybe someone left it?”
“You’ve had visitors?”
“No. Alas.” He flipped pages, remembered nothing, then tossed the book aside. He took up his joint. “Cheers,” he said and lit up.
The tip caught fire like a fuse, with tiny crackles and hisses. The bitter smoke filled his lungs, promising peace, calm, silence. He held it down and held out the joint. “Yes?” he huskily grunted.
“No thank you.” She leaned back in her chair; there was no disapproval in her gaze, only amusement, even pride.
It was fun to be the subject of a crush, so long as the crusher understood nothing could come of it. His batwoman knew he was gay. He never pretended otherwise, with her or anyone else. And she had a gay brother, that playwright fellow, so she must know. But just to be on the safe side, Henry thought he might reiterate the point.
He exhaled a gray gust and took a breath of clean air.
“What do you know about the Gaiety Theatre? Well, you wouldn’t, would you? It’s this old-fashioned queer club off Times Square. The costume designer took me there last month. I keep meaning to get back, but haven’t. It had the most beautiful Puerto Rican boys, strutting their stuff in G-strings and less. Very hot.” And he swallowed some wine, wondering what Jessie thought of that.
“Why haven’t you been back? You afraid you’ll be recognized?”
He burst out laughing. “You flatter me, my dear. Nobody knows me in this town. Oh, a few artsy theatergoers. But certainly no regulars at the Gaiety. No, in this country one isn’t famous until one appears in a hit movie or is a regular on a television series. Not that that would stop me. The world knows which way my wand points. I do not need to slip among the soldiery, King Henry in mufti.”
“You underestimate your fame,” she said. “Anyone who cares about real theater art knows your work.”
“Oh them.” He took another sip of smoke, but spit it out—his throat had not recovered from the first blast. “Those few, those blessed few. That blessed band of brothers. A few critics and old farts. I’ve given my life to ‘real theater art,’ as you call it. And it’s given me no satisfaction. Now that my youth has fled, I need to cash in on my so-called celebrity. Enough of this art shit. I want to make money. Bags of it. I want to sell out. If only I can find someone who’ll buy. Does that shock you, my dear?”
She was smirking, not looking shocked, merely skeptical.
“Look at Vanessa,” he said. “Or Hopkins or McKellen. Or Alan Rickman for chrissakes. Surely I have as much talent as those fakers. I’d make a lovely villain in a billion-dollar thriller. To die at the hands of Bruce Willis? The mere thought is enough to make me cream in my jeans.”
“You don’t really believe that.”
“Oh, Mr. Willis doesn’t get me hard. But the money does.”
“That’s what I meant. You’re not serious about the money.”
“Why not? What else is there to want from life?”
“But you were just complaining about being bored with this show. A big-budget movie would be even worse.”
“You think? Maybe. I contradict myself? Very well. I contradict myself.”
He smiled, hiding his irritation for being called on his conflicted desires. He took a deep drag on his toothpick of bliss, wanting to climb back into a soft chambered cloud. When she said nothing, when she just sat there, watching, her intelligence began to worry him.
He released his smoke. He took another gulp of wine. “I hope I didn’t sound envious and bitter about those other actors, my dear.”
She shook her head.
“You must understand. When I run down my peers, it’s not out of hatred or envy, though those emotions may be present. It takes a faker to know a faker. No, we hate one another chiefly to get a change from hating ourselves.”
He blinked at his own words—had he really said that? He let out a loud bark of laughter.
“Listen to me! What rubbish! What’s in this stuff anyway?” He stared at the joint. “Is this what they call designer grass?”
Just then something beeped, like a signal from Jupiter. A second beep came from Jessie’s chair.
Jessie dug into the cushion, fished out the cordless receiver, and passed it to Henry.
“Ah.” He pressed the button. “Yes?”
“Henry? You’re home? I thought I’d get only your machine. It’s Rufus. In L.A. How are you?”
“Rufus! What a nice surprise. How good to hear your dulcet tones. And how’s life in the world of sunshine, hot tubs, and penis?”
He was delighted to talk nonsense with a peer. His assistant’s curiosity and this potent grass had made him much too serious. He licked his thumb and forefinger and pinched out the ember.
“What can I do for you, Roof?”
“I just called to say hello.”
“Uh-huh. And whose number do you want? What dish on whose houseboy or boyfriend?” His teasing was jovial, harmless, brotherly.
“Hen? Are you partaking?”
Henry laughed. “We know each other too well, don’t we?”
They had met fifteen years ago, in a Vanya at the RSC where Henry was Dr. Astrov and Rufus was the nameless workman with two lines in Act Four. It was Rufus’s first baby step in the profession. They were lovers of a sort during the run, hygienic lust with a touch of playacted romance. Rufus was a tall, beautiful, lazy fellow, but he’d achieved surprising success in Hollywood playing “the best friend” in romantic comedies. Or what passed for romantic comedies in these sorry times.
True to form, he did want a favor. He was coming to New York next month and needed to meet Christina Rizzo. “She’s your new agent, right?”
“What? Where did you hear that?” Henry scowled. “All these damn little birds. Oh, all right. Yes. But it’s not final yet. And it’s not public. I haven’t even told Dolly yet that I’m leaving her for CAA.”
“My lips are sealed. But what’s she like, this Rizzo?”
“An absolute cunt. But she promises to be my cunt.”
“Lucky you. A good cunt beats a limp dick any day. And right now I’m being handled at ICM by a truly limp dick.”
Henry laughed, tossing his head back. And he saw Jessie sitting across from him. He’d forgotten she was here. “Just a sec, Roof.” He covered the receiver with his hand. “I’m sorry, my dear. I’m being terribly rude, aren’t I?” But he was annoyed with her, especially since she’d heard him say cunt, a real no-no with Americans.
“That’s okay. I should be getting home.” She smiled at him as she stood up, a watery, hurt smile. So why the hell hadn’t she left as soon as he started chatting on the phone?
“That’s a dear,” he told her. “I’ll see you, what, Monday? Have a jolly weekend. Indulge yourself. Don’t give me a single thought.”