I don't know the name of the bar we all repaired to for drinks after Richard's show, except that is was opposite ABC, and Edmond spotted Roger Grimsby, and we all got a little excited. Of course, it wouldn't have matched the excitement of see Warren Beatty, or Diane Keaton, or Woody Allen even. I was more excited when I saw Alexander Haig at a ballgame, and I wasn't even sure it was Alexander Haig. But there was fair-to-midling excitement, anyway. (Maybe Richard wouldn't have been as excited by Keaton because she comes into his shop all the time looking for outre outfits, but the others probably would have been.)
I only knew Richard, Max and Edmond. Gordon I had seen a few times at our theatre, but we had never been introduced, and Patricia, Richard's stage manager, I was meeting for the first time. My friend Max was a stranger to everyone at the table, though he had seen some of them when he attended my reading at the theatre.
Richard recovered quickly from the audience response to his two short plays. The first was performed offstage among a predominantly geriatric audience. Richard had played the part of a bagman trying to peddle his poems. Most of the audience were looking towards the door, hoping that a security officer would appear to throw the bum out. Their confusion of delicious, though in the course of his performance, Richard confessed, he had felt a homicidal rage towards Gordon, his director. (In a production of Edmond's last year at the same space, there was a real baglady in the audience who shouted abuse at the actors before her outrage finally propelled her from the theatre.) In Richard's second play, the entertainer literally dies onstage, but again the work proved too unconventional for the audience, some of whom took the liberty to announce their disapproval, though they were availing themselves of a freebie and might have been only too happy to escape the 90-degree temperature outside. After it was all over, some people were still waiting for the show to begin.
We were all surprised that Richard has expected to be loved for his two wonderfully disturbing and marvelously unlovable plays. But then, most of the writers I know, for a long time grandly contemptuous of commercial writing (though some have come around, and others are only waiting to be asked) still expect to be loved for their nasty assaults on people's sacrosanct tastes and expectations.
The young waitress who served our drinks spilled part of them because she has asthma. This was her explanation. I only caught part of it. Most of my brandy Alexander was still there when if finally arrived. We were very careful about clinking glasses, not at all concerned that yet more of the stuff might be spilled, everyone at the table with everyone else at the table. No one wanted to be left out. It did instant wonders for the spirit of camaraderie. I'm always a bit leery of intimate gatherings of strangers. Clinking glasses goes a long way towards breaking the ice.
The spotting of Grimsby prompted some talk about prominent newsmen, one of whom had recently shaved his mustache. Edmond thought the newscaster was making some sort of statement by removing his mustache. I was a bit at sea, not really familiar as the others with the prominent anchorman. I had heard about the woman who was fired because she lacked the youthful and upbeat appearance necessary to make all the dreadful news seem palatable.
There was talk about massage: Patricia had completed a course in Swedish massage. She passed out attractive business cards -- not red on black, her first choice, but the silver and black she'd had to settle for -- and walloped Max a few times, beside her, catching him off guard (but exhibiting an intuitive awareness of his trouble spots, he said) to illustrate the fine points of the art.
Gordon was inviting my views and Edmond's on what we looked for in a director. Edmond was most sensitive to arbitrary line changes because they destroyed the careful rhythms of his sentences. Of course, he was open to criticism, and only lamented that the late Eugene O'Neill was no longer so.
Richard mentioned a friend of his who had been accepted into the Circle Rep workshop after directing one of his plays. An actress had also been accepted, but Richard, the writer, had been rejected. The play was about a brother and sister, who, after a nuclear alert, return to the house in which they were born to await the final holocaust.
``Some directors don't give a damn about the play itself,'' Gordon was saying.
``The Russians have an elaborate evacuation plan, and the U.S. is trying to copy it.''
``Once O'Neill achieved the status of a major playwright, he refused to consider even the slightest line change.''
``Is it true that there are underground shelters for government officials?'' Patricia asked.
``Absolutely,'' Richard said. ``They'll be able to go right on governing from under the ground. Whatever's left, of course. And in style. I hear those places are really fitted out.''
Max winked at Patricia. ``Makes you wonder if you shouldn't have gone into politics rather than massage.''
``Is there a difference?'' Edmond asked.
``Maybe they have their favorite masseuses,'' Richard suggested. ``That they'd insist on taking with them.''
``Maybe they'd take their favorite writers and entertainers into the shelters,'' Patricia said.
``They wouldn't have the room.''
``You think they'd turn away Warren Beatty? Diane Keaton? Woody Allen, even?''
``Absolutely.''
``I wonder if they'd take in Alexander Haig, or Henry Kissinger, now that they're no longer with the government.''
``Probably,'' we all agreed.
Jeanette Erlbaum Goldsmith has published in various places including Antioch Review, Commentary, Malahat Review, Mid-American Review, Denver Quarterly, and Confrontation. She received a CAPS grant for fiction and one of her stories was accepted for the Third Annual PEN/NEA Syndicated Fiction Project. She also writes plays, two of which have been produced in Manhattan.
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