Timothy Zahn: The Play's the Thing

The actors froze into statues, staring wide-eyed at this pinfeathered Goliath bearing down on them in slow motion. Making his way across the seats and the covered orchestra pit, he made a huge bound up onto the stage, landing with a thud that must have shaken the whole block. He turned around, filled his lungs, and bellowed.

You’ve never seen a theater clear out so fast. The orchestra and mezzanine both—it just emptied out like someone was giving away free beer outside. It was a miracle that no one was killed or seriously injured; even more of a miracle, in my book, that no one filed any lawsuits afterward for bruised shins or tom clothing. I guess the thought of feeing a huge unpredictable alien in court made quiet discretion the smart move on everyone’s part.

But at the time, I wasn’t convinced any of us would be getting out of the St. James alive. With the ambassador’s second bellow even the actors lost it, scurrying for the wings like they’d spotted a critic with an Uzi. I was cowering in my seat, trying desperately hard to be invisible, unwilling to move until I had a straight shot at an exit that wasn’t already jammed with people. The ambassador, still bellowing, had begun pacing back and forth across the now empty stage when Angus grabbed my arm. “Look!” he shouted over the hysterical bedlam.

“I see him!” I shouted back, momentarily hating Angus for drawing unnecessary attention our direction. “Shut up before he—”

“No!” Angus snapped, jabbing a finger at the RebuScope monitor he was carrying. “He’s not just roaring at nothing—he’s talking to us!”

I looked at the RebuScope… and damned if he wasn’t right.

“Fine,” I shouted. “So what does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” Angus said. More pictures were starting to scroll along the screen; punching for a hard copy, he tore off the first part of the message and thrust it into my hands. “Here—see what you can figure out.”

I shrank back into my seat, half of my attention on the paper, the other half on the ambassador still pacing and roaring. Tb-hiss book hiss awl th-hat eye knee-d —

None of this made any sense. It really didn’t. In the five weeks I’d been with the ambassador he’d never so much as raised his voice.

Howl two howl two drink—

And anyway, what in the world could be important enough for him to interrupt a play for? A play he himself had asked to attend?

Drink? No, not drink. Straw? Howl two straw? No. Ah — suck. Howl two suck-see-d…

And then, with a sudden horrible jolt, I had it. I took another look at my sheet—glanced at the new pictures Angus was getting—

“I’ve got it!” I yelled, grabbing Angus’s arm and waving my paper in front of him. “ ‘This book is all that I need / How to, How to Succeed.’ ”

He blinked at me. “What?”

“It’s part of a song,” I told him. “The opening song from the classic musical ‘How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.’”

Angus looked up at the ambassador, his mouth falling slightly open. “You mean—?”

“You got it,” I said. “The ambassador’s not talking to us. He’s singing. ”

It took till after midnight for Fogerty to get the preliminary damage control finished with the St. James management. An hour after that, he held a council of war in the hotel.

A very small council of war, consisting of Fogerty, Angus, and me. I’m still not exactly sure why I’d been included, unless that as our resident Broadway expert I was the one Fogerty was planning to pin the fiasco on.

Not that he wasn’t willing to apportion everyone a share of the blame if he could manage it. Fogerty was generous that way. “All right, MacLeod, let’s hear it,” he said icily as he closed the door behind us. “What the bloody-red hell happened?”

“The same thing that’s happened before, sir,” Angus said calmly, letting Fogerty’s glare bounce right off him. “The RebuScope made a mistake.”

“Really,” Fogerty said, turning the glare up another couple of notches. “The RebuScope. Convenient enough excuse.”

“I don’t think ‘convenient’ is exactly the word I would have chosen,” Angus said. “But it is what happened.”

He pressed keys on the RebuScope monitor, pulling up a copy of the ambassador’s original Broadway request. “A very simple error, actually, compared with some we’ve seen. You see this letter C? It should have been a B.”

A frown momentarily softened Fogerty’s glare by a couple of horsepower. “What?”

“The message wasn’t ‘I want to see a Broadway play,’ ” Angus amplified. “It was ‘I want to be a Broadway play.’ ”

For a long minute Fogerty just stood there, staring down at the RebuScope, a look of disbelief on his face. “But that’s absurd,” he said when he finally found his voice again. “ ‘I want to be in a—?’ No. It’s ridiculous.”

“Nevertheless, sir, that’s what he wants,” Angus said. “The question now is how you’re going to get it for him.”

Fogerty tried the glare again, but his heart was clearly no longer in it. “Me?”

“You’re the head of this operation,” Angus reminded him. “You’re the one who talks to the White House, authorizes the expenditures, and accepts the official plaudits. We await your instructions. Sir.”

For another minute Fogerty was silent, gazing at and through Angus. Then, with obvious reluctance, he turned to look at me. “I suppose you have the contacts for this one, too?”

With anyone else who treated people the way Fogerty did, I’d have been tempted to demand a little groveling before I gave in. But, down deep, I suspected that being polite to underlings was as close as Fogerty ever got to a grovel. “I know a few people,” I said. “ There may be a way to pull it off.”

“Seems to me there are at least two stage versions of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ out there, aren’t there?” Angus suggested. “He’d be a natural.”

“Wouldn’t work,” I said, shaking my head. “Too many lines, too much real acting.”

“How about a non-speaking role, then?” Fogerty suggested. “Maybe a walk-on part?”

I snorted. “Would you travel three hundred light-years for a walk-on part?”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “No, I suppose not,” he conceded. “I suppose that also lets out any chance of using him as part of the set decoration.”

“It does,” I agreed. “Which leaves only one approach, at least only one I can think of. We’re going to have to have a play written especially for him.”

Fogerty waved a hand. “Of course,” he said, as if it had been obvious all along. “Well. Phone’s over there—better get busy.”

“What, you mean now? ” I asked, looking at my watch. “It’s after one in the morning.”

“New York is the city that never sleeps, isn’t it?” he countered, jabbing a finger at the phone. “Besides, we need to get this on track. Go on, start punching.”

There were six New York playwrights with whom I had at least a passing acquaintance. The first five numbers I tried shunted me to answering machines or services. My sixth try, to Mark Skinner, actually went through.

“Mr. Skinner, this is Adam Lebowitz,” I said. “I don’t know if you remember me, but I was assistant set designer when your play Catch the Rainbow was at the Marquis. I’m the one—”

“Oh, sure,” he interrupted. “You’re the one who came up with that rotating chandelier/staircase gizmo, weren’t you? That was a snazzy trick—tell you the truth, I was damned if I could see how that was going to work when I wrote it into the play. So what’s up?”