Me and Orson Welles (9 page)

Sara was up now; I could hear the shower running. Because she usually left the door open a quarter of an inch to vent the steam I could sometimes catch a glimpse of her standing naked in front of the mirror. It was sort of a sleazy thing to do, but I was feeling the increasing necessity of seeing a girl naked. And my standards were getting lower every day.

I ate the same breakfast every single morning: Fig Newtons and coffee
(“Hearty and nutritious,” he said, spitting out all his teeth.)
And this particular Monday I sat with my legs jammed against the kitchen radiator, determined to feel the first stirrings of warmth.

“Mommy's going to kill you,” said Sara, bopping into the kitchen, already dressed, scented, and perfectly groomed.

“For what?”

“For what?”
She whittled down a couple of carrots and then ate them aggressively. “For coming in after midnight on a school night.”

“Hey, I was helping Caroline and the play people strike the set, and we—”

“Strike the set, huh? And why would they be striking the set when the play was
canceled?
You better get your story straight, twerp.” She bit into another carrot, enjoying her power. “And I've got something else you better get your story straight on.”

I fanned the air. “Why do you wear so much of that stuff?”

She ignored me and pulled her chair closer. “You know your little girlfriend, Caroline?”

“She's not my girlfriend; she's my friend.”

“She certainly isn't your girlfriend. Joan was at that party Saturday night over at Kristina Stakuna's house, and Joan told me she saw your little friend Caroline dancing her sweet little behind off with your big buddy Phil Stefan! Everybody in the whole school knows about it.”

“You think I care?” I said, and I threw my plates noisily in the sink. “Jeez, the
small-mindedness
of people around here.”

“I
told
you she was just hanging around you to get near him.”

I held my hands to my ears. “I am
suffocating!”

 

Of course Stefan's pursuing Caroline was exactly what you'd expect from the lying, drunken, horny, overly developed son-of-a-bitch. He couldn't wait
five
minutes to pounce?

I slammed the door and headed toward school.

The morning sky was perfect blue. Tangerine-colored leaves filled the steps and the sidewalks and the gutters and the flowerbeds. The trees looked like enormous sculptures, vaulted up into the sunlight, creaking. A man stood on a ladder putting up storm windows, and the morning smelled of rain and woolen scarves.

First class was Shakespeare with Dr. Mewling. He was in his early sixties, and he conducted every class in exactly the same manner: he took attendance, sat behind his desk, and then read us his notes for one hour straight. They were written on yellow legal sheets—God only knew how old they were—and he carefully returned each page to the bottom of the stack, perfectly prepared for next year's lesson. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, the woman Shakespeare married was
clearly
already with child when he
married
her, and her name was? Her name was? Don't overwhelm me now. No one remembers?” And here he didn't even bother to look up to see if anyone might
attempt
to remember. He just kept talking. “Well, let me tell you. Anne Hathaway.” He'd glance at the wristwatch he kept on his desk to keep us from noticing that he was checking the time every two minutes. “Now, ladies and gentlemen, the Earl of Southampton was Shakespeare's patron. Do we know what a patron is? A patron?” His eyes never left his notes. “Don't everybody speak at once now. Well, ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you. A
patron—”

It was beyond ghastly. It was a sort of deranged monologue in which the presence of the students was entirely irrelevant. If anyone in that room had ever held the remotest affection for Shakespeare it was being bled from us, page by yellowed page—
any questions, don't overwhelm me now.

The only thing at all interesting about that morning's one-hour prison sentence was that Kristina Stakuna was late. Of course, the Amazon Queen of the Swollen Softballs was always late; she'd sweet-ass it into class ten minutes after the bell sounded, wagging her little rich-girl's note on pink stationery. And Mewling would read it, smile, and gesture to her to take her usual seat. The Black Crow Crew had this joke that all her notes read:
To Whom It May Concern: Please excuse Kristina's lateness this morning, but her breasts are so enormous that she finds it difficult to walk at a normal speed.

That morning the student teacher was sitting in Kristina's usual seat, and the only other empty chair (besides the one directly in front of Mewling) was right next to mine. There was simply no way she couldn't sit next to me. My heart accelerated just thinking about it. I could see it all: she'd come in late with her gray sweater with the blue
W
sewn across the front. She'd stand there looking confused for one adorably sweet second—then she'd sit down next to me.

I was ready.
Rule Number Two: Smile
. Kristina, I heard the play was canceled. You must be
so
disappointed. You know, I was wondering, could I come over some night for extra help on my Spanish? Why don't we work up in your bedroom—it's so damn noisy in this kitchen? Tell me, Kristina, a few of us were wondering if it was really true that your boyfriend screwed you for nine hours?

Mewling lectured on; months passed; seasons changed. “Now, Shakespeare dedicated his first poem
Venus and Adonis
to whom? Don't all jump in here at once. To the Earl of
Southampton
, now isn't that a coincidence, ladies and gentleman. Shall we move on?
(places page on bottom of pile, realigns stack, glances at watch)
Part Two—The Histories: A Period of Development—1594-1600. Please make sure this is in your notes, ladies and gentlemen, hint, hint.”

The door opened—loudly, boldly—and there was Kristina Stakuna, in her seventeen-going-on-twenty-seven magnificence.
Gentile angels walk the earth,
I thought. And some poem began taking shape in my head:
O, women of Westfield!
Gray sweater with a blue letter
W.
She handed Mewling her pink note. She took in the room in one glance—oh, the beautiful consternation of her lightly freckled face! And there was smiling Richard—and there was that barbarically empty torture-chair directly in front of Mewling.

She sat directly in front of Mewling.
I couldn't believe it.
She had never sat in the front row of any classroom, ever, in any class, in eleven years.

I watched as she opened up her purple notebook and began writing in her enormous, looping script.

I looked at the empty seat next to me. It was as if she couldn't even
see
me, as if her eyes couldn't even register my impression.

I sighed, and I shut my eyes.

“Mr. Samuels?” called out Dr. Mewling.

I opened my eyes. It was pick-on-the-idiot-who-hasn't-been-listening-and-humiliate-him-in-front-of- the-class time. The whole class turned to look at me (except, of course, for Kristina).

“You don't seem to be taking any notes today? You
know
all this material already, Mr. Samuels? Because if you do then perhaps
you'd
like to teach the class—you're apparently so knowledgeable about the historical plays of William Shakespeare?”

I looked up to challenge his gaze. He stared back at me with all the passion of a three-month-old corpse.

Mistake.

“Mr. Samuels seems to have his
mind
on other things this morning, ladies and gentlemen. We were discussing Shakespeare's histories. Perhaps you'd care to offer us
your
thoughts on the histories, Mr. Samuels; you appear to find the taking of notes so
completely
superfluous?”

Silence.

I spoke as loudly as I could. “I believe the greatest of Shakespeare's histories must be
Julius Caesar.
”

“That's
what you believe.”

“And I know we're not starting it until next week, but I read it over the weekend for my own edification. Take, for instance, the brief but telling scene between Brutus—‘the noblest Roman of them all'—and his serving boy, Lucius. That tiny, almost insignificant scene serves to humanize the entire historical pageant of the play. And that beautiful lullaby Lucius sings. Interpolated, I believe, in most productions from
Henry VIII
, act three, scene one.”

The bell rang.

“See me after class,” said Mewling.

 

Later that morning I sat in the back of Spanish class with Stefan. Señora Katz had spent the last twenty minutes trying to get the slide projector to work. She'd spent the first twenty minutes trying to get the screen to stand up.

“I heard you put the moves on Caroline, Judas,” I said to Stefan.

“I danced with her, all right? She
begged
me to. If I hear about this one more time—”

“I thought you're seeing Kate Rouilliard.”

“I
am,
but Caroline kept grabbing my ass all night, all right?”

“Drift, you can have any woman you want. You have to mess around with Caroline?”

“I'm not messing around with her, all right? The Black Crow is loyal to its own.”

The slide projector finally came alive. The slides were illustrations from
Los de abajo,
the novel we were supposed to be reading. Señora Katz read us the caption:
“¡Qué hermosa es la Revolutión, aun en su misma barbarie!
Can anybody translate that?”

There was this girl sitting across the room from us who was wearing a loose-fitting dress, and she sat with one leg bent upwards and the other stretched out so that you could see all the way up her long legs to her black underwear. She raised her hand.
“How beautiful is the revolution even in its very barbarism.”

Stefan nudged me. “
¡Qué hairmosa!”

 

I was out roaming the halls with my bowling pin lavatory pass when I met Kate Rouilliard coming out of the first-floor bathroom. She raised her hand in protest before I could speak. “I heard already.”

“It was just one dance.”

“That he could do this to
both
of us is just so typical,” she said. She leaned against a locker. No socks. “You once told me I was too good for him. I should've listened to you.”

I laughed. “Maybe we'd both be better off if we started dating each other.”

“I wish I weren't so supersensitive about him.”

She looked right through me.
The InvisibIe Man Returns.
I willed her to say:
Why am I hanging around with him anyway, Richard? It's right in front of our eyes, isn't it? Right in front of our eyes, and how come we've never seen it before? How could we be so goddamned blind? You're the one I talk to; you're the one who's been my best friend—

“Do you think he loves me, Richard?”

“I'm certain of it, Kate.”

“You're one of the very few people I trust not to lie to me.”

“Listen, Kate, could you do me a favor?”
Unbutton your shirt.

“Oh, dear. Sometimes I think the only reason people are friendly to me is because I work in the attendance office.”

“I have to get out of here by noon. You've got to get my name on the absence list.”

“I can get your name on the list, but if they call home to check, you're screwed.”

“They're not going to call home for me. I've never cut once. I have credit in my account. Will you do it?”

E
ven the New Jersey swamps seemed worth studying that afternoon as my train clanked along toward New York. Has there ever been a more delicious feeling than being suddenly set free from school?

The morning sang in possibilities: all the time in the world! And my vision suddenly felt sharper, richer, unoccluded.

 

I sat on a bench in Bryant Park and read the theatre page in the
Times,
my ukulele next to me. I felt like a true denizen of show business, and I breathed in Times Square like perfume. A cup of hot chocolate steamed in my hand.
Producer Jed Harris arrives today on the Normandie with plans for his fall season. It can be said now that these plans include Thornton Wilder's latest play ‘Our Town.' Next Monday night Ed Wynn will open the Philadelphia tryout of ‘Hooray for What!' a new musical satire with songs by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg.

Church bells were ringing somewhere.

I picked up my ukulele and my script for
Caesar,
and, walking down the steps of the park, I felt in direct contact with a fantastically lucky universe, felt it hard under my feet. And, yes, I knew people were still desperate to find work, and people were still bombing each other in Shanghai, and the world could be dark and terrible—
but not that afternoon.
Not for that second. That second it was sunshine rising beyond the clouds. It was Orson Welles and the taste of hot chocolate and the smell of the
Times
ink and the face of every extraordinary woman passing on Sixth Avenue.

Taped to the box office window of the Mercury was the Hirschfeld cartoon that had run in Sunday's paper. The drawing showed a brooding, hooded-eyed Welles in black jacket and black tie staring at the sprawled body of Joe Holland. Caricatures of Gabel and Coulouris stood nearby. In the background, a circle of silhouettes stood shoulder to shoulder, and the caption read:
The death of Caesar as they will start doing it Thursday at the newly christened Mercury Theatre.