I luf you like a pig lufs mud.”
The sentence popped into Jessie’s head on the subway, complete with foreign accent. She didn’t know what it meant or where it came from. It sounded like Greta Garbo.
“This is a message for Jessica Doyle. Allegra here. Wondered if you’re free for coffee this afternoon. I need to pick your brain.” Beep.
The recording was on Henry’s machine when Jessie arrived. She could guess what this was about: Caleb and 2B. If you scratch my back again, I’ll scratch yours—one day. Which was so Allegra. But Jessie liked Allegra. You always knew where you stood with Allegra.
“Allegra, hi. Jessie here. Coffee sounds good. How about three? We can meet somewhere in Central Park. It’s way too pretty a day to waste inside. Call me back and let me know.”
Clank clank clank.
Henry was in the dining room, already banging on his weights.
Jessie went to work. She checked his schedule and made a dental appointment and a few restaurant reservations. He was having dinner next week with Christina Rizzo and Rufus Brooks, the hunky Hollywood hack. Then the lobby sent up a messenger with a package that needed a signature. Jessie signed Henry’s name. Not a full forgery, but she knew how to evoke his lazy squiggle. A flat cardboard envelope, it was from Adam Rabb.
Henry came around the corner. “Jessie, mon amie, what do you think?” His tank top was raised and he was frowning at his stomach.
“Uh, fine.” Hardly a washboard or six-pack, but the muscles looked solid under the light grizzle of gray hair.
“Not too much tummy?”
“Oh no. It’s the belly of a man ten, no, twenty years younger.” She could never remember how old Henry claimed to be from one week to the next. “Big date tonight?” she asked.
“What? Oh no!” He laughed. “Alas. Just need to tone up. This play’s left me flabby.” He jerked the shirt back down.
No, he must have a date, if not tonight, then sometime soon.
“I luf you like a pig loves mud,” she said, slowly and deliberately, so Henry would know she was quoting.
He stared at her. “I beg your pardon.”
Jessie blushed, then laughed. “It’s from a movie. It popped into my head this morning on the subway. I don’t know what it’s from. I think it’s Garbo.”
“Are you sure? It sounds like Dietrich.”
“That might be just my bad accent.”
He thought a moment. “No. Sorry, my dear. I’m a very poor queen, but I don’t recognize it. What’s that?” He pointed at the package in her hand.
“Oh. It just came.” She passed it to him. “From Adam Rabb.”
He weighed it. “Words, words, words. Ugh. He said he’d be sending me a script. So I can read the part they’re giving Malkovich.”
“There’s no part for you?”
“Oh, maybe the butler.” He thrust the package back at her. “But my body’s not completely beyond hope? Yes? Well, back to the rack,” he declared, and returned to the dining room.
Jessie tugged the screenplay from the cardboard—“Greville, based on the novel by”—and set it on the table with all the other unread books and scripts and plays that people sent to Henry.
He must have a date, she decided. About time too. He was a hardworking actor in a foreign city; he deserved to get laid. She felt mildly miffed, oddly annoyed, but only because she didn’t know who the man might be. It could be fun to find out.
“I’ll do what I can to get him there. But I can’t promise anything.”
“Right right right,” said Allegra. “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.”
“And you can lead a whore to culture but you can’t make her think,” Jessie added.
“What?”
“Sorry. Old Dorothy Parker joke. Hmm. Good cappuccino.”
They sat on a bench just inside the park under the trees behind the Maine Memorial, the weird white monument that faced Columbus Circle like an old set from Ben Hur. They were drinking mocha cappuccinos, which Allegra had brought today instead of coffee, making clear just how important Caleb was to their show.
“But the show’s looking good?” asked Jessie.
“Real good. What does Frank say?”
“Nothing really. We’ve hardly seen each other this week.”
“Oh?”
Jessie shrugged. “We’ve been busy.”
“You haven’t broken up or anything?”
“It’s too soon for there to be anything to break.”
“Good good good.” Allegra took a sip through the flute-hole in her lid. “I think you guys are made for each other.”
“Uh-huh,” said Jessie dubiously.
She had known Allegra six months, ever since they met at HB Studio, when Jessie was a secretary there and Allegra was taking classes. Jessie understood from the start that this friendship was built on use—she was Caleb Doyle’s sister—but Allegra was a very nice user. The Dorothy Parker joke was not consciously directed at her. She was very pretty, with black hair, pale skin, and red lips, very delicate, even today when she wore jeans and a man’s shirt.
“You look fine, girl. So fine,” crooned a bike messenger in boxy blue eyeshades as he walked his clicking bicycle past. Jessie assumed he was looking at Allegra.
“We’re in the home stretch,” said Allegra. “I wish we could do a full rehearsal tonight, but half the cast has a cater gig. Frank’s using it to go one-on-one with Toby. Who needs the attention.”
“Toby’s no good?”
“No. He’s just slow. Like Christmas.”
Jessie was relieved. She had introduced Toby into the circle. “Sounds like fun,” she said. “Hard work, but fun. I’m sorry that I’m not part of it.”
“I’m sorry you aren’t either,” said Allegra.
The idea of working with them often crossed Jessie’s mind. But doing what? She couldn’t act—she was too cerebral. She couldn’t write—she was too self-critical. She couldn’t direct—she was too impatient. She could stage-manage, but it was too much like being the mommy, and she was tired of being the mommy. She sometimes seemed to be everybody’s Stage Manager.
“Maybe next time,” said Jessie.
She should be going. They had said everything they had come here to say, and it looked like rain. The sky had been clouding over since noon. The clouds were gray, the grass as green as house paint.
Allegra sucked out the last dribbles of cappuccino but then leaned back on the bench, not ready to go yet. “Oh life,” she said, watching people pass. “Working on a play makes me itchy. Frisky.”
“How’re things with Boaz?”
“Oh, Boaz is Boaz.”
Jessie assumed they were talking about sex. “I hardly know Bo. But he seems nice. Sexy. In a hetero Nijinsky kind of way.” Then she saw the deliberate, faraway look in Allegra’s eyes. “Oh. Problems?”
Allegra took a deep breath. “I probably shouldn’t tell you—” She bent forward, folding herself over her crotch. Here was the real reason for the mocha cappuccinos. “I’ve been messing around. With somebody else.”
Jessie almost said “Frank?” But it couldn’t be Frank. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I won’t ask who. None of my business.”
“It’s Chris.”
Jessie shook her head. She didn’t know any guys named Chris. Then she squinted at Allegra, hard. “Chris Jamison? Big butch Chris?”
Allegra was smiling. “Are you shocked?”
“No. Surprised,” she admitted. Chris was bulky but beautiful, like Paul Robeson with breasts, while Allegra was so delicate, like a Cuban china doll. “I didn’t think she’d be your type.”
“I’ll say! She’s a woman.” Allegra laughed. “I mean—It’s not like I’ve never been there. Hey, I was a theater major. And my taste in women friends has always been better than my taste in men,” she admitted. “Except I like men being dumber than women. It makes them easier to be around. Less work.”
Jessie didn’t know what to say or where to begin. “But you all live in the same apartment.”
“And I sleep with Boaz, and we still fuck. Which is weird with Chris right down the hall. But it’s not like Chris and I are lovers. We’ve had sex twice—well, one and a half times. It began with a back rub. But she’s sworn off straight girls. They’re nothing but trouble, she says. And I see her point. But I can’t stop thinking about her. I don’t know if it’s love or horniness or preshow jitters. But I’m fixated. She has so much presence. She’s not fat. I know it looks like fat, but when you’re in bed with her, wrapped in her, surrounded, it doesn’t feel fat, it feels—metaphysical.”
Jessie listened with her chin in her hand, looking sympathetic, suspending judgment, feeling full of human interest, and all the while thinking: Everybody is getting laid except me.