He should know, I thought. He certainly looked for it hard enough. “But this was really an innocent situation. An accident.” I explained about Hector being thrown from the back of the camp wagon and Marcy driving off.
“Innocent? Mr. Powers, you surprise me! The lady was transporting a naked man. Right now I’m investigating to see if charges can be lodged against her. And considering his nudity, you don’t expect me to be naive enough to believe his intentions towards her were other than carnal. They’re unmarried, Mr. Powers, and in my book that’s sin.”
“But the lady was married,” I pointed out.
“Really? I don’t see what bearing—-”
“To me,” I added.
“Oh. But she’s not your wife any more.”
“That’s true. But if the matter isn’t dropped, it will doubtless receive wide publicity,” I told him smoothly.
“And that would cause me great embarrassment. Professionally as well as personally. You, of all people should appreciate that, Reverend Boxx. It was just a few weeks ago that you came to me with a similar problem.”
“The situations aren’t at all alike,” he protested.
“Granted. But my problem has elements in common with the one you had. I am in danger of being professionally embarrassed by my ex-wife, just as you feared embarrassment if your wife appeared in the play I was directing. I’m only asking you to show me the same consideration I showed you. After all,” I loosed my heavy artillery, “it would be the Christian thing to do.”
“Very well, Mr. Powers. I cannot deny that I am in your debt. I will use my influence to have the case disposed of quickly.”
I thanked him and hung up the telephone. I hoped Marcy’s Hector didn’t get off too easily. I wanted to savor the satisfaction of Marcy’s discomfiture over the incident. There wasn’t much time for savoring that day. Besides playing David Merrick and I-Spy, I also had to earn a living. I had to spend the day in court trying to prove that a monopoly wasn’t behaving monopolistically. When I was done, I wandered into a Wall Street watering hole for some alcoholic vitamins to carry me through the ordeal ahead.
I beat out a worried looking stockbroker for the only barstool left unoccupied. Behind me the belly-up boys multiplied with the five-thirty egress until they were standing three deep. They were strictly a white-collar crowd, and the last type I would have expected to see in the place was a plumber.
Yet there, wedged into a little booth in the back, was Cass Novak! And wedged tightly beside him, like a spawning sardine, was Zelda Lenzio! That gave me something to mull over on the LIRR as I six-oh-sevened back to Pine Glen and our stellar production of The Mome Raths Outgrabe.
It still lacked an hour of showtime when I arrived at the Community Center. That hour was something like the time between the Geneva Accords and the landing of American “observers” in force on the shores of South Vietnam. There was a lot of tension in the air and the actors had a tendency to look at each other like you could never tell who might secretly be a member of the Viet Cong.
There were several repetitions of the makeup hassles which had taken place during the dress rehearsal. But there was also a grand unifying in which such petty differences were forgotten when it was discovered that the real Ho Chi Minh in our midst was my old friend the custodian. It seems he’d staged a night raid in which some of our carefully stored costumes had been scrambled, atrocities had been committed on our recently painted scenery, and certain of our props had been looted and had vanished altogether.
The fat old heap was as brazen as a one-man resistance movement. “It’s my job to keep this here place clean,” he told me. “You people leave a lotta junk lying ’round, I just throw it out!”
The hell he had! I figured him for a quick trip to the local junkyard to pocket whatever the filched props had brought. As for the damage to the costumes and scenery, that was probably just his natural bile asserting itself.
But I had no time to take him apart the way I would have liked. The play had to go on soon, and a quick patch job was needed. So I persuaded the cast there was no time for a lynching and put them to work straightening out the mess. It was chaotic!
“This one-piece foundation garment with the push-up bra I wear in the first scene is ripped right in the seat!” Rusty Roundheels wailed.
“Can’t you sew it?”
“The material’s too thin!”
“Then pin it with a safety pin!”
“This backdrop’s all splattered with red paint!” Peter Putter called to me.
I looked at it. “Touch it up as best you can,” I told him. “There’s some paint in the storeroom downstairs.”
“But it won’t dry in time!”
“That can’t be helped!”
“The wine glasses are missing for the seder scene.”
“Use paper cups.”
“Paper cups for a seder?” Phil Anders was indignant.
“If you can have a seder in a bordello,” I told him, “you can use paper cups.”
“I can’t find the rope to tie the platforms together,” Cass Novak yelled.
“Nail it!” I advised him.
“Somebody stole the electric light bulbs from the table lamps,” Lolly noticed.
“Run down to the shopping center and get new bulbs,” I told her.
“I can’t. I have to finish getting made up!”
“First get the bulbs! The time you’re taking up arguing, you could have been back already!”
That was the way it went right up to curtain time.
Somehow we got the set pasted together. Somehow we patched up the costumes. Somehow we found substitute props. Somehow the play started. I went out front to watch it.
I picked myself a rice paddy near the back of the hall where I could make a fast exit if the audience got violent. God knows they had every right to! Herschel Pinkus, the author, would have dropped dead if he’d seen it. He would have looked at the desecration of his work the way Betsy Ross might have eyed a flag-burning.
The opening scene found Rusty, as Blanche Bernstein, addressing a shadow-silhouette gathering of whores. The effect had been created by using a scrim and it called for delicate, filtered lighting from backstage footlights. The trouble was that the footlights also silhouetted method actor Cass Novak doing push-ups backstage in a modern version of An Actor Prepares.
Tittering from the audience made Rusty realize they could see the distraction. So she tried to block it. That was a mistake.
“Why should we unionize? I’ll tell you why!” Rusty pounded the lectern like Walter Reuther high on Dexedrine. “Because we have certain rights! That’s why!” She angled her body right and left, swung up and down in an effort to hide the exercising Cass. “Soft mattresses are a right! Time off for Passover is a right! A closed shop, safe from nonunion streetwalkers is a right! Compensation for on-the-job accidents is a right! Medical benefits until a girl can get back on her back again are a right!” Rusty jumped high in the air, partly to stress the point the character was making, partly to hide the now-leaping Cass from the view of the audience. “Fringe Benefits for Floozies!” she exhorted. As she landed the safety pin holding the seat of her foundation garment together parted. She screamed as it pierced her flesh.
The material ripped apart and her bare derriére thrust out at the audience. They roared with laughter. I hid my head in my hands.
Somehow Rusty managed to get offstage. The entrance lines of Will Leigh as the pimp and Wanda Humphrey as the Madam were lost in Rusty’s furious chewing-out of Cass Novak backstage. Finally she simmered down, leaving Wanda and Will still trying to outshout her in a scene which was supposed to be conspiratorial and hushed.
“Madam, the girls are planning a big labor tsimmis,” Will shouted into Wanda’s ear.