“I mean it,” the woman insists. “You really were good.”
“I mean it. I know.”
More laughter. I gauge it at 8. I even laugh this time, because it is pretty funny. But it doesn’t stay funny for long. It gets weird again, and I zone right the hell back out and watch the faces in the audience instead. They’re like children, most of them—curious, happy children, trying to see their lives onstage.
Don’t ever ask me what Love in the 0’s was about. Wittig tries explaining it to me in the cab on the way to the director’s apartment, says it has to do with the way people like hurting each other. A reaction to the absurd. I don’t know. Only reason I care even a little bit is in case I talk to Matthew the director. I mean, I’m not going to tell the guy I didn’t know what the hell his play was about.
So I’m sitting in the back, trying to think of something I can say I liked about the thing as the lights of the Village blur by, sidewalks loaded with keen dressers. The city’s gorgeous at night. Vital. I roll down my window and the night air rushes hot into my face, perfumed with the smell of garlic and women and spicy meat and coffee beans and storm gutters. For a moment, everything kind of stops, and I’m overwhelmed with this city and this man, Wittig, who I’ve only known for nine hours, and the fact that I woke up this morning in the room above my parents’ garage, and that only yesterday I was fired and had the wherewithal to put this beautiful idea I’ve been planning for ages into motion. Funny how life goes. The same thing every week, year after year, and then one night you’re in a cab in New York City on the way to a party at the apartment of a director whose play you’ve just seen, and everyone thinks you’re a movie Star, and they might just be right.
Wittig pats me on the knee. He’s always patting me on the knee.
“You must tell me, Jim. The play—what’d you think?”
“I think your boy Matthew’s got a lot on his mind.”
“Do tell.”
I severely wish he’d just leave it at that, but I can tell he won’t.
“I could rave all night,” I say. “Let me make one criticism.”
“It’s our critics who teach us,” he says.
I guess you have to say that sort of thing when you’re a professor.
“I think Matthew—what’s his last name?”
“Gardiner.”
“I think Mr. Gardiner is too eager to lecture his audience. There’s a certain anxiousness and immaturity there. I knew what he wanted me to see in the first five minutes. He spent the next twenty-five beating me over the head with it.”
“Fascinating.”
I’m not making this up. Jansen starred in a movie ten years ago that was savaged because it felt more like a lecture than a story. It was called Room 116, about a guy who’s lying in a hospital bed (in Room 116) dying slowly and in immense pain. And the doctors can’t kill him ’cause it’s against their creed or whatever. Jansen played his part well, but it’s just scene after scene of this guy moaning in bed, and by the end of the movie it’s like, okay, we get it, fucking kill him already. Anyway, that little spiel I just delivered was adapted from Ebert’s review of that movie.
“But Matthew’s a talented director,” I add, because I don’t want Wittig to think I’m one of those people who hate everything. And I’m not. I like most things.
Strange music leeches through the door of Matthew the director’s apartment. It’s this highly danceable music with this guy speaking monotonously over a drumbeat and synthesizers. I can’t tell what he’s saying yet.
There’s a note on the door: “Just come right in.”
So we go right in, me following Wittig and feeling a little nervous but not quite as bad as you might think. The first and only time I went to the Lewis Barker Thompson Hardy Christmas party, I threw up in the bathroom as soon as I got to the restaurant. I hate stuff like that. Social engagements. Mingling. Finding that stride of charming superficiality. I just don’t know what to say to people. I’m good for about a minute, but after that I’m unbearable. I’m just not that interesting. I mean, I wouldn’t want to talk to me at a party.
But tonight is different.
Tonight, I am not me, and that is the greatest comfort in the world.
Find a place. In the park. Sit and watch the ducks. Watch the sky and turn around. I’ll be there in your dream. Find a place. In the park. Sit and watch the ducks. Watch the sky and turn around. I’ll be there in your dream.
That’s what the monotone voice is saying. Over and over.
I like it. I don’t know why.
It’s a studio apartment, and people have crammed themselves between the walls like you wouldn’t believe. There’s way more people here than were at the play. I follow Wittig through the crowd, since he seems to know where he’s going. The floor is hardwood, the ceiling high. Paintings, sculptures abound. If I were the kind of person who used words like chic, I’d say this is a very chic apartment.
The back wall consists of windows, and they look out high above the city. People are standing outside on the balcony as well, leaning against the railing, smoking cigarettes.
Wittig turns and says something to me, but I can’t understand him. There must be a hundred people here. Like ants, most have assembled in the middle of the room. Bouncing. Gyrating. A colony of dancing. Others stand in the kitchen around the stove island. Or sit on counters, or along the walls. Certainly this guy can’t know everyone here. If I invited everyone I knew to a party, there’d be about eight people in the room, including my parents. All you can hear is a jumble of voices and above them—find a place. In the park. Sit and watch the ducks…
Next thing I know, we’re standing in front of this guy garbed in black, with moussed black hair, black-framed glasses, who isn’t even thirty, and Wittig’s got his arm around my shoulder and he’s saying, “Matt, I want you to meet a dear, dear friend of mine. I brought him to the show tonight. This is James Jansen. I think you’ve probably seen his work.”
Right off, I don’t like this kid. He’s impressed to meet me, it’s obvious, because for three seconds his mouth hangs open and he doesn’t, or can’t, speak. I mean, James Jansen is standing in his house, you know? But then he catches himself and gets this cool, smug look on his face that I’d like to peel right off. He’s not honest, and I don’t respect that. It’s okay to be blown away that I’m standing here. That I took time out of my important, maniacally busy life to come to your weird fucking play.
I thrust my hand forward. “Jim,” I say, real understated-like.
“Matt.” He shakes my hand, then looks at Wittig and breaks. “You brought James fucking Jansen to my show?” He releases my hand and hugs Wittig. Okay, now he’s coming around. Kid might be all right. But if I were a lesser Star, you can tell he’d try to come off like it was no big deal.
“Guys want a drink?” Matt offers.
“I’d like one of those with Tanqueray.” Wittig points to the martini in Matthew’s hand, “and Jim would like, I know this, hold on…a double Absolut with one cube of ice, no lime.”
Matthew threads his way to the open bar. A spinning disco ball dangles from the ceiling, its radials of light causing the liquor bottles to flicker intermittently.
He returns with our drinks, and I really wish Jansen liked cranberry juice or something, because I can’t stomach downing another glass of vodka.
“It’s too fucking loud in here!” Matthew shouts over the music, like he’s annoyed he has enough friends to fill an apartment. “Let’s step outside!”
I barely sip the vodka, but by the time we push through the horde of dancers and reach the glass doors, I can feel the alcohol behind my eyes.
When we step outside, I try not to act too enthralled, but man the city is stunning tonight. We’re thirty-nine floors up and the breeze is gentle and mild. The three of us find a place on the railing, and we stand there just gazing out over the sweep of light and motion and sound far below. I’m damn near in tears, but like I said, I don’t show it. You’ve got to figure Jansen’s experienced far more beauty than some off-off Broadway director’s balcony.