Stuart Dybek - Ecstatic Cahoots - Fifty Short Stories

In a corrugated shed lit by a misty overhead bulb, a welder working late looks up from acetylene, then removes his mask to kiss his wife, who’s brought him a cold beer.

Smoke smolders through the projection beam as if the old theater is filling with mist; on-screen, gigantic faces gaze out at an audience of shadows.

He holds her to him with his left arm, extending the blue flame away from them with his right, and she holds the foaming bottle of beer away from them as if it, too, were a torch. When their mouths touch, her breath enters him like mist.

An endless chain of boxcars slams back together with a sound of rolling thunder, thunder smothered by mist.

She can see the mist rising from the hairs along his skin, and touches him as carefully as she might draw a straight razor along the length of his body.

Listen, in the dead of night, high above the mist, steeplejacks are nailing up the new day’s Christ.

A buoy tolls in the mist like the steeple of a little neighborhood church that has drifted out to sea.

A freighter, sounding a melancholy horn, hoists the moon, which it’s been towing, from a moonlit slick, and tows it through the mist.

The only one to arrive fashionably late for the Mogul’s little soirée was the last of several rain-soaked bike-delivery kids bringing up Thai takeout. By midnight, the rain had turned into an unexpected, fluorescent snowfall wafting past the windows facing Central Park, and the dozen or so members of the show who’d been invited to the Mogul’s suite at the Carlyle had nearly drunk their way through a case of Dom Pérignon. When no one moved to open the last bottle, the Mogul popped it himself.

“To the success of EverAfter ,” he said. “By the way, that fucking title’s got to go.”

Everyone raised their flutes and drank.

“I can order up more bubbly,” the Mogul said, “but it won’t be the same great year.”

“Man, they’re all great years,” said Nestor, the musical director, and drank to that.

“Some are decidedly better than others,” the Mogul said. “That’s what you pay for.”

Nestor bowed, corrected. They’d all witnessed, earlier in the day, what disagreeing with the Mogul could cost.

* * *

The Mogul had flown in from L.A. that morning in his private jet to watch the rehearsal. Wearing smoke-gray aviator glasses as if he had piloted the plane himself, he slipped into the theater unannounced and sat silently smoking in the back row. The cast didn’t need the smell of cigarillo to know he was there. Gil had never seen the actors more jumpy. Even Renee Wilde and Tony Kayne — TK — the romantic leads, both with established careers, appeared nervous. They’d been working on the play for over a year.

No one called the Mogul “the Mogul” to his face. The nickname wasn’t meant affectionately; it alluded to his reputation for being egotistical and ruthless. But it wasn’t solely his reputation that put the cast on edge. The rehearsal was a make/break audition. If he liked what he saw, the Mogul was set to buy the film option and help bankroll the dramatic production. If EverAfter went on to Broadway, he would buy it outright for a film; and, if that happened, even the writers with their mere 1 percent shares would score.

“You’ll never have to teach again, Gil,” was how Liam, the director, put it.

EverAfter was a sequence of three one-act plays, each by a different playwright, and unified by a musical score and by the ensemble of actors. Over the course of the evening the audience watched the players changing identities and aging as the stories moved from youth to middle age to maturity. Gil had written the first act, “Youth.”

It was set in a haunted jazz club that back in the Roaring Twenties had been a speakeasy, and told the story of an affair between a coked-up chanteuse named Bea and a young trumpet player named Dex. Bea believed Dex was a reincarnated Bix Beiderbecke and that in their former lives, when they’d been lovers, she’d been responsible in a way she could no longer remember for his mysterious death at twenty-eight. Now, back together in love again, Bea feared their fate would repeat itself.

“Dick Jokes,” the second act, involved a banjo-picking woman comic touring the Deep South during the Nixon-Kennedy presidential campaign. When “Dick Jokes” ended, the Mogul signaled for a break. He didn’t return for an hour, and this time he sat close to the stage next to Liam, who, besides directing, had conceived of EverAfter and assembled the cast.

Everyone in the company knew that the third act, “Viste di Mare,” had problems. Jeremy Spada, who’d written it, had disappeared into a Mexican alternative medicine clinic, the rumor was with AIDS-related cancer. The act told the story of a couple trying to save their marriage of twenty years by taking a honeymoon cruise on the Adriatic. It opened in the ship’s lounge during a storm at sea, with the Captain sitting down at the piano and singing “Slow Boat to China.” Sven Nystrom, a noted Shakespearean actor, played the Captain. Halfway through the song, the Mogul interrupted. “Stan,” he said, “hold on a sec.”

Sven continued to sing until the Mogul stood and raised his voice: “Stan!”

“It’s Sven,” Sven Nystrom said.

“You’re doing it like Sinatra,” the Mogul said.

“Actually, Tony Bennett,” Sven said. “The Captain’s Dutch, but he’s always wanted to be an American crooner. You’ll see that everyone on this cruise is acting out a fantasy.”

“Try it like he thinks he’s Michael Jackson,” the Mogul said.

“He’s Dutch . White, retirement age. Why would he want to be something so outlandish as Michael Jackson?” Sven asked.

“Maybe because the corny-white-lounge-singer shtick’s already been done to death. Here, have him put these on,” the Mogul said, handing his aviator shades up to Sven.

“Wouldn’t dark glasses be more Stevie Wonder?” Sven asked, taking the glasses and looking to Liam for support, but all Liam said was, “Nestor, take it from the start of ‘China.’”

Sven sat down at the piano, put on the sunglasses, and resumed singing “Slow Boat to China.” He halfheartedly grabbed his crotch a few times à la “Thriller” but still sounded like Tony Bennett.

“Stan,” the Mogul called. Sven ignored him and kept crooning.

“Stan!” the Mogul shouted. “Instead of parked on your heinie, you’re supposed to be all but moonwalking behind that fucking keyboard.”

“It’s Sven,” Sven said.

“Sorry,” the Mogul said, “ Sven . Do I have that right? Sven, you can deposit those sunglasses on the piano as you leave the stage.”

“Pardon me?” Sven asked.

“I have to spell it out? You’re toast, Sven,” the Mogul said.

Gil was sitting beside Tina Powell, who had written “Dick Jokes.” She pulled him toward her so that her lips were beside his ear. “The Mogul just announced that he’s bankrolling the show. And that he owns us,” she said. “You may never have to teach again.”

After the rehearsal, Liam waved Gil over. The Mogul wanted to meet him. “I knew I was going to back the play after I saw your first act, Gil,” he said. “Brilliant, spooky stuff. Do you ever write about vampires? The third act totally sucks, though. Can you rewrite it?”

“It’s not my play,” Gil said.

“I can hire a script doctor,” the Mogul said, “but I’d rather someone already connected with our project did it. I’m not even sure I know what the fuck it’s supposed to be about. I get the everybody-has-a-fantasy bit, but that’s not doing anything for me. Help me out here, Gil. What’s there to salvage?”