The crowd of actors, investors, and Beautiful People broke into cheers, Edgar raised his hand to plead for silence. At last, they quieted down to hear more. Only the tinkle of glasses was audible, occasionally punctuated by melodramatic female sighs and appreciative whispers.
Meanwhile, Edgar read on from the sacred document.
“Tonight, at the Shubert Theatre, Daniel Rossi confirmed beyond doubt that he is master of every musical form. What better demonstration of the enormous range of a composer than the comparison of his complex, powerful, nearly atonal Savanarola ballet with the dulcet and unabashedly simple melodies from Manhattan Odyssey. Certain to become standards are gems like, ‘This Evening, Like All the Other Evenings,’ and, especially, ‘The Stars Are Not Enough.’
“Poet Stuart Kingsley has also shown that he has a magical gift for the theater.…”
Immediately after the definitive critic’s closing salvo (“I hope it runs forever”), the band broke into “The Stars Are Not Enough.” And everyone, young and old, drunk and sober, began to vocalize. Except Danny Rossi.
As the guests sang chorus after chorus, Maria leaned over and whispered in her husband’s ear.
“It’s really lovely, Danny.”
He kissed her on the cheek. Not to acknowledge what she had naively intended as a compliment, but because there were photographers watching.
The following March, at the Tony Award ceremonies, Manhattan Odyssey was chosen as Best Musical of the year. Not unexpectedly, Danny Rossi won for Best Score. Accepting the prize on behalf of Stuart Kingsley, who had won for Best Book, Edgar Waldorf gave a touching little speech about Stu’s teaching commitments making it impossible for him to attend.
In a frantic round of bidding, MGM carried away the screen rights for a record sum of nearly seven million dollars.
Not long thereafter, Danny Rossi’s picture appeared on the cover of Time.
For a long while Danny felt ashamed about the secret Manhattan Odyssey humiliation. Though only two other people in the world knew, he harbored an inner sense of failure.
Yet, the soul has remarkable powers of regeneration. As years passed, and the number of different recorded versions neared two hundred, Danny gradually began to believe that he actually had composed “The Stars Are Not Enough.”
And, what the hell, given half a chance, he probably could have.
ANDREW ELIOT’S DIARY
May 15, 1968
Practically living as I do at the New York Harvard Club, I was probably the first guy outside of Cambridge to see a copy of the Decennial Report, which chronicles our class’s progress in the first ten years since graduation.
I note a tendency of the less successful guys to write longer histories than their more shining counterparts.
I mean, one character goes on for paragraphs in tedious detail about his uneventful army service, his choice of wife, what his kids both weighed at birth, and so forth. Also how challenging life is in Daddy’s shoe-manufacturing business (“We’ve had to move our operations from New England to Puerto Rico and are now exploring the possibility of relocating in the Far East”).
The only thing he doesn’t talk about at length is his divorce. That’s where I might have found something to empathize with. Anyway, it’s clear to see through the thick clouds of his verbosity that he’s trying to disguise a life of quiet desperation. He concludes with the philosophical observation, “If the shoe fits, you’ve got to wear it.”
In other words, he’s taken four whole pages to inform us that he’s on his way to being a successful failure.
On the other hand, Danny Rossi merely lists the dates of his marriage and his daughters’ births, the things he’s written, and the prizes he’s won. That’s all. He didn’t even offer a pithy conclusion like “I’ve been very lucky,” or “I owe it all to eating Wheaties,” or some such.
And yet who hasn’t seen his face in all the papers and read at least a half dozen stories that all but deify him?
I bet a lot of guys who thought he was a weenie are now boasting to their wives and kids that they were buddies with him in the college days. I confess that I even exaggerate my passing friendship with him, too.
Ted Lambros’s entry was also brief and to the point. He and Sara had enjoyed the decade at Harvard. He was gratified that his Sophocles book had received favorable reviews, and he and his family were looking forward to the new challenge of living and teaching at Canterbury.
Neither Jason Gilbert nor George Keller sent in a response, both for reasons I well understood. Jason, with whom I’m still in touch by letter, has been through a hell of a lot.
And George is just the same old paranoid, suspicious nut. He didn’t even vouchsafe any of the meager information he gives me when we have lunch.
Unlike a lot of my classmates, I thought I’d try to be honest in my capsule history.
My two years in the navy got a sentence, and I didn’t glorify them. Then I simply noted that after seven years at Downs, Winship, I’d been elected a vice-president.
Then I said that the greatest joy I’ve had is watching my children grow. And the greatest disappointment that my marriage didn’t work.
I don’t think many people bothered reading my entry, but I didn’t give much away.
I didn’t mention that I’m really not that much of a success in investment banking. I owe my promotion to the fact that a couple of buddies and I helped float Kintex, which grew to be the world’s largest producer of The Pill. And hence took off like a wild rocket. (Sheer luck — or was it a subconscious way of regretting that I had allowed myself to have children with such an unfit mother?)
I didn’t say that though there are thousands of new singles’ bars sprouting all over First Avenue for so-called successful guys like me to meet fairly neat women, my life is desperately lonely.
I spend every weekend trying to reconnect with my kids (Andy now seven, Lizzie four), to little avail. Faith seems to have given up sex in favor of booze — and her face shows it. Apparently the only time she sobers up is when she’s telling the kids what a bastard I am. And I only have a couple of hours on Saturdays to try to counter this calumny.
My one solace still seems to come from Harvard. Though I’ve bought a fancy pad in a new high-rise on East Sixty-first Street, I spend most of my time playing squash at the H-Club and socializing with the guys. I help the Schools Committee recruit good men for “the age that is waiting before.” I’m even thinking of running for the Alumni Council — which would give me a nice pretext to go up and walk in the Yard again.
In short, I’m no happier than the garrulous shoe salesman. On the other hand, I think I hide it a little better.
Ted Lambros prepared himself for his new life at Canterbury with typical enthusiasm. He spent the summer of ’68 packing books and notes, improving his old lectures, and — most important — taking tennis lessons at Soldier’s Field.
As they were settling into the ramshackle house they had rented from the college on North Windsor Street, Sara cautioned him, “You know, honey, if you actually beat Bunting, he’ll never vote for you.”
“Hey,” he replied jocularly, “you’re speaking to the great tactician. I’ve got to be just good enough for him to want to keep me as a sparring partner — or whatever they call it.”