His eyes widened. Overacting, he hunched up his shoulders — amateurs always do too much — saying, “But why? What have I done?”
“You know, Herr Henry,” I said. “And they sent me, you see, because we know each other.” Again I did the gesture of helplessness. “They know that, you see. They know everything.”
He looked more honestly worried. He said, “But— What’s going to happen?”
“Bad things,” I told him. “It might be better for you to try to run away. Faster. Cleaner.” More sympathy showed: “I promise I won’t miss.”
“By God,” he said, breaking character, “you’re scaring the shit out of me.” Looking past me at Rita Colby, he said, “Well? Is that enough?”
“It is,” said her voice, cool and thoughtful. I turned toward her, grinning, and she said, “I’m very impressed, Ed.”
“That’s great, coming from you, Miss Colby,” I said. Then I ducked my chin down, and grinned wide-eyed at her, and said, “But I’m better, you know, playing a lover.”
30
She didn’t pick up that cue. In fact, she was all business, and not at all what Tom Lacroix, for instance, would have anticipated. Telling me I shouldn’t think I definitely had the role, that others would have to be consulted — playwright, director, two producers — and that the casting wouldn’t in any event be made until January, she nevertheless sat me down in Henry’s office and described the play and my part in it; or, that is, the part I was being considered for.
Four Square was a suspense romantic comedy about a ménage à trois nearly becoming a ménage à quatre, and also nearly becoming a murder mystery. The principal characters were a United States senator, his wife and his longtime secretary, with whom he’s been having a longtime affair. Rita Colby would be playing the secretary, who has now fallen in love with a younger man, a television news anchor; once Dale Wormley’s part, now possibly Ed Dante’s. The ‘switch’ in the story was that the wife didn’t want her husband’s affair with the secretary to end; it had provided a stability and safety in their lives, and without the secretary the husband might go off and become involved with women who would lead him into scandal and disgrace and loss of the next election.
Therefore — I suppose they could make this seem fairly reasonable — the senator and his wife proceed to scheme to murder the news anchor. But when the wife meets the news anchor — the character appears only in two brief scenes, of which that was the second — she also falls in love with him. When she tries to stop her husband’s murder scheme, things go wrong, and at first it seems as though the senator has been killed by his own plot, at which point the secretary realizes it was the senator she truly loved all along. So, when the senator turns out to be alive, the couples switch, the senator and his wife amicably divorce, she goes off with the news anchor and the senator marries his secretary.
The plot construction of this trash was based on the known prejudices of the potential audience, which would mostly be middle-aged theater parties from Connecticut. These people liked stories of extramarital titillation, particularly among people of power or glamour — a United States senator, a television news anchor — but they didn’t like stories that doubted the essential correctness of the social order. The situation at the beginning of the story could include adultery and a ménage à trois, but by the end the characters must have rearranged themselves into traditional couples. (Since most of the audience would themselves have gone through at least one divorce, the traditional couple no longer needed to be the first-time couple.)
Rita Colby didn’t want me to have a copy of the script, since protocol required the other principals be consulted first, but she described it rather extensively, quoting — very well, in fact — some of her own better lines. Partway through this exercise, Kay Henry plaintively said, “Rita, darling, I really do have other things to do. Must you take over my office like this?”
“Oh, all right,” she agreed, without fuss, and got to her feet, saying, “We’ll go up front, then.” To me, she said, “Do you have time for this?”
“I sure do,” I told her, grinning and grinning. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” And here was a point where Ed Dante and I converged and became one.
After thanking Kay Henry for all his help, shaking his hand a little too fervently and grinning all over him, I followed Rita Colby back down the hall and through the door into the waiting area, where her presence caused a little flurry among the campers and Miss Colinville briefly lifted an ironic eyebrow before deciding to ignore me. It was nearly five by now, so fewer people were hanging around, but the cozy clubby atmosphere remained the same.
We crossed the waiting room, Rita Colby opened the door that had so interested me before, and I followed her into a neat but impersonal studio apartment; with, as I’d guessed, windows overlooking the street. The place looked like an upscale hotel room, with a kitchenette in one corner. A kingsize bed dominated the right side of the room, a seating area with couch and two armchairs grouped around a glass coffee table filled the left. Traffic noise was suddenly audible.
Closing the door after us, Rita Colby said, “Do you want a Coke? Perrier?”
“Terrier would be good,” I said, dropping out of character — though not badly — while I looked around the room. “What is this place?”
On her way to the kitchenette, opening the low refrigerator — well-stocked with snack foods and nonalcoholic beverages — she said, “A kind of crash pad, really. Kay lives upstate. If he stays in town, for a show or anything, he’ll sleep over here. And the same thing if one of his clients needs a place.”
I said, “Do all of his clients get that privilege?”
She gave me a knowing smile, neither of us looking toward the door and the chattering fellas and gals outside. “Not all,” she said. “Here’s your Perrier.”
“Thanks.” I took the bottle and glass from her hands.
She stood looking at me, a can of Diet Coke now in her hand. “You’re not quite what you seem, are you?” she asked.
Whoops. Time to get back in character: grinning my awful grin, I said, “I’m a man of parts, I am. And a man of mystery. And here’s looking at you, kid.” I clinked my glass against the Diet Coke can and slugged back some of the Perrier, managing to make a little noise while I did it.
When next I looked at Rita Colby, that little moment of interest had come to an end; she was turning away, toward the sofa and chairs. “Come sit down,” she said. “Where was I in the story?”
“The wife has decided to kill me.”
“Oh, yes. Come sit down.”
So then she told me the rest of the story, and explained my part in it: “The thing is, he’s this younger guy that both women fall in love with, so he should be a hunk, and when the audience first sees him they should think that’s all there is to him. But then, for the wife to credibly go off with him at the end, we have to see there’s more to the guy than that. Dale Wormley would have done it very well, he would have brought that edge of his to the part. You didn’t know him, did you?”
“No, I didn’t.” I offered my dopey grin again. “Julie Kaplan thinks he was a terrific guy.”
“Not exactly,” she said. “He was pretty sour, in fact, but he could use that anger in his work, it could make him seem as though there were depths there.” With a small smile and a dismissive shrug, she said, “For all I know, there were depths there.” Then, studying me critically, she said, “You know, you really should get rid of that moustache.”