“Yeah, I heard it. That’s why I didn’t cut out this afternoon when I wanted to. That expression never made any sense in the first place but I didn’t want to fuck everybody up. Well, a blind chimpanzee would have done the show more good than I did. Good-bye, Tony.”
“Wait a minute!”
“Fuck you.”
“What?”
“I said go fuck yourself. You’re a fatass cocksucker and your mother eats pig prick. You’re a thief and a liar and a disgrace to the theater, Tony. Fuck you. Drop dead.” The words were without meaning to him and he spoke them without venom. They achieved their purpose. Tony Bartholomew fell back as if kicked, and Peter wasted no time in getting past him and out the door. On his way through the parking lot he heard people calling his name but didn’t stop to see who they were. He walked on as if he heard nothing, nothing at all. He just kept walking without paying any attention to where he was going. At one point, as he crossed a street in mid-block, a driver hit his brakes hard and swerved to miss him. He kept walking, heading away from the driver’s curses, walking as if nothing had happened.
It didn’t matter where he went because there was no place to go. There was never any place to go, so it didn’t matter where you went. It hardly mattered whether or not you kept moving, but it was easier than standing still.
When Warren finally found him he was leaning against the cannon with his hands in his pockets and his head tilted up toward the stars.
“How did you happen to know that Tony Bart’s mother eats pig prick? It’s supposed to be a closely guarded secret, and now absolutely everybody knows.”
“Is that what I said?”
“Among other bon mots.”
“I don’t even remember.”
“What really struck home was when you called him a thief and a liar and a disgrace to the performing arts. He’s all those things and knows it, but it still troubles him to have it brought to his attention. I’ve been looking all over hell and gone for you, you know.”
“I guess I’ve been waiting for you to find me.”
“We ought to establish a secret rendezvous spot for just such contingencies. And a less public one than that which you’ve chosen this time. My car’s across the street. We can go to my house or drive around. I’d vote for driving around.”
“Sure.”
“And you can tell Aunt Warren all about it.”
“What good will it do?”
“Bloody little, probably. But you’ve nothing better to do than talk, and I’ve nothing better to do than listen.”
But he didn’t start talking until Warren had driven for half a dozen blocks. He put his head back on the seat and closed his eyes and reeled off everything that Anne had told him.
“You haven’t seen Gretchen since then?”
“No.”
“You’ve just had Anne Tedesco’s word, and she was in a state at the time.”
“She was hysterical, Warren, and I don’t blame her. But she wasn’t crazy.”
“But you didn’t go back to see Gretchen.”
“I couldn’t.”
“I see. And until Anne reported to you, you had no reason to doubt that Gretchen was completely recovered?”
“You sound like a lawyer, Warren.”
“I am trying to sound like a lawyer, Peter, for precisely the reason that lawyers try to sound like lawyers. Answer the question.”
“Now you sound like the judge. When does my lawyer get a chance to object?”
“Please don’t stall.”
“I don’t know if I had reason to doubt or not. But I doubted. From about the third or fourth day on.”
“I never heard you say a thing to that effect.”
“I didn’t dare.” He explained the hints he had put together, the clues that had been enough to convince him, explained too his fear that his suspicions were a form of wish fulfillment. “And what Anne said fit in perfectly. It was just what I would figure her to do, just what she would come up with if the whole thing’s an act.”
“Oh, hell,” Warren said.
“Yeah, that’s what it is, and I got the warmest chair.”
“You know that she has to be committed.”
“How could I commit her when she’s acting sane for the first time in her life?”
“Do you think she could fool a trained psychiatrist?”
“I think she could fool God and Perry Mason.”
“That does complicate things. And neither of us are relative, and we can’t produce a psychiatrist who’s familiar with her case. Peter, I’m very concerned.”
“So am I.”
“Let me think for a minute. Christ, I wish she’d hanged herself so I’d be obliged merely to comfort you and disperse a crowd or two. I’m better equipped that sort of thing. No, there’s no question about it. The woman has to be committed. I’m not a psychiatrist, but sometimes I think I ought to have been one. So many lives I could have led. It’s hell being limited to just one of them. Of course you know what’s wrong with her.”
“Yeah, she’s out of her fucking tree.”
“That’s probably as valid as the clinical terminology. She’s a paranoiac schizophrenic with delusions of grandeur, Peterkin, which is idiot talk for a combination of split personality, persecution complex and a tendency to confuse oneself with God.” He inhaled through clenched teeth. “This is not a thumbnail diagnosis. She showed symptoms of all of that months ago, and her little Main Street performance would have drawn that diagnosis from any halfway-bright premed major at Whitewater State.”
“So why is it so much more serious now?”
“Because before she was weak and now she’s strong. She was passive before, and dangerous only to herself. And now she’s active.”
“And dangerous to others?”
“She could be. Sooner or later she’ll almost have to be. Right now she’s busy playing a role and fooling the world. She can’t play it forever. Sooner or later she has to break. In fact she’s broken already. Not in front of you; that was just the mask glimpsed from an angle, that combined with your own sensitivity to the woman. But she certainly broke in front of Anne. Anne hardly knows her at all but knew she was face to face with a maniac.”
“She couldn’t help knowing.”
“Obviously. The point is that Gretchen doesn’t know she took her mask off. She thought she was still in her role and never realized the script didn’t make any sense. The danger is that she’ll slip and know it. Oh, I don’t have the clinical background for this, and anyway not even the best shrinks can agree on anything, let alone just what a person in her condition might do. Or when she might decide to do it.”
“Robin’s with her now.”
“I know.” “Well?”
“No, I wouldn’t worry about it. Peter, I have to think. I have a lot of scraps and shreds that I have to put into some semblance of order. I’m going to drive around for a little while. I’ll be talking to myself. It’s a useful mechanism but considered antisocial. I’ll say any number of things and you’re not to comment or interrupt. I want to be able to pretend you’re not here at all. Do you understand?”
“No, but I’ll shut up, if that’s what you mean.”
“It is. Not another word... I should have been a psychiatrist. And a lawyer, and a judge, and Hamlet’s father’s ghost. Not Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be... I should have been a pair of ragged claws... Or a criminal, a master criminal. A con man, an illusionist... Had to be an actor. Other men have to live one life all the way to the grave. Actor lives a thousand lives and never has one of his own... Brave man never tastes of death but once... Hi-diddly-dee, an actor’s life for me... We’ll go to Paradise Island, Peternocchio, and let our noses grow, and we won’t be back for donkey’s years... You can’t kid a kidder, but God never made an actress who couldn’t be upstaged. Or upstaged an actress who couldn’t be made... What it comes down to is illusion, one against the other. Not what you know but who you look like... Turn it around and look at it backwards. Suppose the place was a Mooreeffoc, and Dickens got tricked into thinking it was a coffee room? Never would have been the wiser, Bud. Older Budweiser... I grow stout, I shall wear the bottom of my trousers out... In the room the women belch and fart, talking of Jean-Paul Sartre... It’s the morality of it that’s the sticking point. You can’t play God unless you’re Charlton Heston... Damned sight easier on the stage...”