Rafael Yglesias - Hot Properties

He was too tired to wait. He interrupted. “So I suppose you won’t be able to do my play.”

She looked surprised. “Why do you say that?”

“Well, the funding being lost and so on — I thought …”

“I wouldn’t tell you like that!” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and felt rage at her, because he knew he was correct.

“We want to do your play. I’ve told you that all along. But I do think the questions about the thematic content raised last night have to be considered.” Tony nodded. “Didn’t you feel some of what was said was helpful?” she pressed when he stayed silent.

“You want me to be honest?” Tony asked in a tone that implied she sure shouldn’t.

Hilary seemed startled, but she answered, “Of course.”

“Until Hal brought it up, no one mentioned that they thought I had left deeper questions unanswered. I took what he said very seriously. I think I made that clear. Then everybody jumped on the bandwagon.”

Hilary frowned. Despite the fact that his comment wasn’t overtly insulting, in truth it was. She had been consistently complimentary until Turner’s comments. “Well, it often does take an experienced playwright — I mean, we are talking about one of the major writers of our time — to express for an audience an uneasiness that they can’t articulate. I know I didn’t mention my reservations until last night, but I felt when reading the play — and it’s one of the reasons having a play read is so important—”

Tony lost it. Whatever brake he had on his speeding fury at the world lost its resilience: his foot slammed to the floor and his heart raced as caution flew by the window. “Come on, this is bullshit. I’ve heard this over and over. Sure Turner’s questions are valid. I have valid-criticisms of Hamlet! My play probably isn’t one of the great works of art of this century, but frankly, Hilary, if that’s the standard you use before mounting a production, then your theater should have been dark for the last twenty years!”

“Tony”—her thin face seemed to squeeze itself, narrowing—“all I’m suggesting—”

But his vehicle was racing on, the freedom of releasing his contempt and rage like a sexual liberation: “I’ve been coming to readings for four months regularly. Not one can compare to mine! Not one!” he shouted, and noticed the movement of heads at nearby tables.

She did too and looked down at the table while putting her right hand up, like a traffic cop. “Please,” she said. “There’s no need for us to quarrel.”

“Why is telling the truth a quarrel? I could bullshit you. I’ve done it well enough in the past. I knew that I could’ve gone out for a drink with you and Hal last night and beat my breast and then worked for two weeks adding a couple of scenes like he writes, everybody announcing what the fuck their motivation is, get you to commit, and then dilute it during the rehearsals. And maybe I will!” Again he saw people glance at them. He felt as though he must be screaming. Hilary’s downward glance was becoming more severe; her body seemed to be trying to merge with the table. “Maybe I will rewrite it! But I don’t want you making that decision for me. I want a director. I want actors. I want a date. Then I’ll go into rehearsal and find out for myself. And decide myself! I may not be a great playwright, Hilary. I’m not sure how good I am, but one thing, one goddamn thing for sure, no one else around me is either! I haven’t met anyone in my entire life who knows more than I do about what works and what doesn’t. I understood what Hal Turner thought better than he did! It’s my problem! It’s my fucking play! Let me fix it or not!”

She raised her head when he paused. The tearful look in her eyes, and the wounded, trembling movement of her chin and mouth, surprised him. He really didn’t know her very well — she had seemed no different from the dozen or so artistic directors he had dealt with over the years. They were obstacles, abstractions, infuriating people because he never understood why they took the jobs they held. Off-Broadway theater didn’t pay well; their role wasn’t really a creative one, despite the title; they had all the disadvantages of being put in a business posture in charge of artists, with few or none of the monetary rewards. Because of their lack of financial prestige, there was a kind of unspoken understanding that one didn’t treat people like Hilary as though they were Broadway producers or movie-studio executives. They were in the same leaky rusted boat with the starving character actors and the unwashed playwrights. Tony had torn up his part of the agreement and treated her like a boss, a philistine wearing the sackcloth and ashes of the holy.

“I came here …” she said, and the tremors of her lips made the words sound weepy. It flashed through Tony’s mind that to the others in the restaurant this scene probably looked like a romance breaking up. “… to suggest you work with a director on a rewrite …” She stood up, breaking off abruptly. “I can’t continue this …” She opened her purse, her hands shaky, and pulled out a mangled ten-dollar bill and let it drop on the table. “I’m sorry,” she added, and walked out on wobbly legs.

He looked straight ahead to avoid the glances of the waiters and customers. He remembered vividly, as though it had happened yesterday, going to lunch with his mother at the Russian Tea Room twenty years before, something he had loved to do because the waiters in their red tunics treated him like a young prince (indeed then he was a member of New York’s royal family: the child of a Broadway star), and enjoying the special dishes they brought for him while she talked with … whom? her agent? was it a producer? He was eating a dessert when he first noticed the shift in tone and heard the harsh sound his mother would make when the craziness began. The nonstop talking at someone, sentences looping out of her like snakes entwining their insults on the victim, slithering so quickly out of her mouth that there was little chance to escape and no hope for defense. She was always so charming, had won the affections of her eventual victims so completely, that they would be in shock as the long bodies of her rage wrapped around them and squeezed. The betrayal of her hatred, the utter lack of any hint prior to its release, was what so stung them. Whoever it was had walked out. Her yelling had caught everyone’s attention, and they were so well-known there, so many people were in business with her, that the embarrassment was profound. Indeed, they never went back. That night she got drunk. In his bed staring at a Superman comic by the weak light of the streetlamp outside his window, he had heard her retching. The choked gasping sounds weren’t that different from the noise her rage made at lunch. That was exactly the look her victims had — horror — as though she had vomited bile on their laps.

Sweat broke out all over his body. He felt a cold eye from the heavens turn his way and freeze him. He heard a deep voice intone: You are going mad. Just like your mother. Mad, mad, mad.

Patty listened to David tell his story. He was excited about this one. She marveled, when he was done, at the fact that nothing had happened. He was steeled for battle, talking angrily, vehemently, but nothing had happened. Mrs. Thorn had had a talk with his two bosses, and they decided nothing would change. And there David was, knowing this, and yet feeling it was all so thrilling, so important. She wondered if he would really make it in that world. Gelb wasn’t so foolish. She had learned from him that most things in business were much more simple and pure than someone like David imagined. What is, is. If Mrs. Thorn wanted to fire Rounder, she would have accepted the resignation. She didn’t want to. That she would someday was no daring insight on David’s or Chico’s part. Everybody at the top is eventually fired. And once a person reached the zenith, failure no longer existed. Rounder would go on to other jobs, either as well paid or better, his so-called failure at Newstime just last week’s snicker, not forever’s shame.