“Someone who admires you almost as much as I do — the newly emeritus Professor of Greek at Oxford.”
“Cameron Wylie?” Ted asked, his elation dissipating.
“The very same,” Whitman answered. “And I can’t imagine his report will be less favorable than mine.”
I can, thought Ted as he hung up.
He spent the next week playing dawn-to-dusk tennis with any professor, undergraduate, or groundskeeper he could lay his hands on. He could not bear the tension.
And then a hand-addressed envelope with an Oxford postmark at last arrived. He dared not open it in the presence of the department secretary. Instead, he rushed to the men’s room, locked himself in one of the booths, and tore it open.
He read it several times and then began to howl at the top of his voice.
A few moments later, Robbie Walton, summoned by the secretary, arrived to see what was wrong.
“Rob,” cried Ted, still in the confines of his narrow kingdom, “I’m made in the shade. Cameron Wylie still thinks I’m a bastard, but he loves my Euripides book!”
“Hey,” said Rob with amusement, “if you’ll come out of there, I’ll buy you a drink.”
Danny Rossi began to grow tired. Not of music. And certainly not of the applause that seemed to surround him quadraphonically both on and off stage. Nor was he weary of the unending parade of women who presented themselves for his sexual signature.
No, what he felt was fatigue in its most literal sense. His forty-year-old body was weary. He found himself growing short of breath at the mildest physical activity.
Danny had never been an athlete, but several times when he was in Hollywood homes and invited to take a dip, he found that he could barely swim one length of the pool. If he were still at Harvard, he joked to himself, he would not be able to last the requisite fifty yards. And he increasingly found himself going to bed merely to sleep.
He finally decided to consult a noted internist in Beverly Hills.
After a full workup, during which every inch of him was probed and every bodily fluid analyzed, he sat down across the glass-and-chrome desk in Dr. Standish Whitney’s office.
“Give it to me, Stan.” Danny smiled uneasily. “Am I going to die?”
“Yes,” the doctor replied poker-faced. Then immediately added, “But not for at least another thirty or forty years.”
“Then why am I always so goddamn tired?” Danny asked.
“For one thing, Danny, any guy with a love life as active as yours would be worn out. Although let me quickly say that no one ever died from too much sex. On the other hand, you do other things besides screw. You compose. You conduct. You play and — I presume — you must spend some time rehearsing. Also, if an airline pilot traveled as much as you, he’d be grounded. Are you reading me?”
“Yes, Stan.”
“You’re giving your system a lot of wear and tear. Do you think you could cut down on any of your activities?”
“No,” Danny answered candidly. “I not only want to do all the things I do, I have to do them. I know that may sound strange —”
“Not at all,” the doctor interrupted. “This is L. A. — paradise for the compulsives. You’re not the first patient I’ve seen who wants to die young and leave a beautiful corpse.”
“Correction,” Danny retorted. “I don’t want to die young, I just want to keep on living young. Isn’t there anything you prescribe for your other ‘compulsives’? I mean, I assume they don’t slow down either.”
“No,” Dr. Whitney answered, “but they come to me at least once a week for a little booster shot.”
“What’s in it?”
“Oh, megavitamins mostly. Plus a little of this and a little of that to lift you up and mellow you out. If you’d like, we could try a series and see if it helps.”
Danny felt like Ponce de Léon when he caught sight of the Fountain of Youth. “Any reason why we can’t start right now?
“None at all,” Dr. Whitney said with a smile. And rose to go and mix his potion.
Danny was a born-again workaholic.
During the next month he felt like a teenager. He breezed through his frenetic schedule of work and play. He could once again go from conducting an evening concert to an amorous rendezvous. Then go back to his home in Bel-Air and practice the piano for several hours.
In fact, the only problem was that, on the few occasions when he actually wanted to sleep, he felt too stimulated. For this the good Dr. Whitney kindly prescribed some soothing phenothiazine.
During the past year or so, his relationship with Maria had gradually evolved from silent antagonism to a kind of entente cordiale. Whenever he was in Philadelphia they play-acted happy couple for the outside world and loving parents for their daughters. What went on his Hollywood Hills “bachelor pad” was, of course, never discussed.
Now that the girls were at school, Maria resolved to build a life for herself.
To find something real to do behind the facade of their cardboard marriage.
For a thirty-eight-year-old former dance teacher, the schoolhouse doors were bolted shut. There was no way to pick up where she had left off. And she was painfully aware that although she had brains and a good education, she had no particular skill to offer the job market. Some of her suburban friends worked for various charities. But that seemed to Maria to have too much of a social aspect to be genuinely satisfying.
She did agree to help out with the annual auction to raise money for the local PBS television station. After all, having spent so much time in studios with Danny, she felt she had absorbed some knowledge of how television worked. At least she might be able to contribute a suggestion or two.
Being the wife of the city’s symphony conductor, Maria was something of a minor celebrity. And the officials at the station tried to persuade her to appear on camera to attract contributions from viewers.
She was coaxed by Terence Moran, the charming, prematurely white-haired president of the station.
“I can’t,” she protested. “I’d be a nervous wreck.”
“Please, Mrs. Rossi,” he insisted. “All you’d have to do is stand in front of one of the tables and say a few words about the objects on it.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Moran. My voice would freeze. You’d either have to superimpose the dialogue or do a voice-over yourself.”
The youthful executive smiled. “I’ll accept that compromise,” he said.
“You will?” said Maria, slightly taken aback.
“Sure. You just stand there and point to the items and I’ll describe them from off-camera. Is it a deal?”
“No, not yet,” Maria replied anxiously. “I’d have to know your director’s shooting plans.”
“Mrs. Rossi,” Moran responded affably, “I’m so keen to get you on even for a split second that I’ll let you literally call the shots.”
“Okay,” she relented. “I guess I can’t get out of it now. If you must show me, let it be in a wide establishing shot in front of the table. But I want your word of honor that the minute you begin to describe the merchandise, you’ll zoom in close and get me out of frame.”
“It’s a deal,” Moran replied. “And I’m very impressed.”
“With what? My stubbornness?”
“No. You seem to have more camera expertise than my directors.”
“You don’t have to keep flattering me, Mr. Moran. I’ve already said I’d do it. Anyway, I’ve spent about a million hours with Danny in TV studios. To keep from overdosing on coffee and doughnuts, I locked myself in the control booth and sort of picked up what all those buttons meant by osmosis.”