Adulation (11 page)

D
ANNY MASTERS LOVED
 
the sound of applause. Long ago, when he was a child, he had played the wizardin his school production of
 
The Wizard of Oz
—the perfect part for him, as it turned out, because he wasthe only one who didn’t have to sing. If only he’d had some kind of musical ability. He would havebecome a rock star, a guy with tight pants and long hair and a guitar, with women hiding under the bed inhis hotel room, flinging their underwear onstage, wanting a piece of him.

But short guys from Long Island, with the exception of Billy Joel, didn’t become rock stars. Inparticular, short, half-Jewish guys weren’t guitar virtuosos, had no intonation, and ran the music industryfrom the other side of the recording studio. At least that’s what Danny’s father had told him when he askedhis father to buy him an instrument—any instrument—for his eleventh birthday. More specifically, anyinstrument that could get him girls.

But when he stood on that elementary school stage, wearing a grown-up’s sports jacket and a shinyblack top hat, Danny had looked out at the crowd and seen a mosaic of faces of parents and aunts anduncles and teachers looking back at him, all smiling, their eyes reflecting pride  and satisfaction andaccomplishment. The vibrations of applause and cheers had entered his ears and circulated throughout hisentire body, pulsing like a heartbeat. It was as if each clap chanted a message:
 
You matter.

Oh, yes. He needed this. He was going to need this elixir for the rest of his life. It was the onlyway he could escape the abyss of obscurity in which he lived.

As it turned out, he had no more acting ability than he had musical ability, something that hadbecome clear as he got into high school and was relegated to the stage crew rather than callbacks. Not thatthat was so bad—he was happy to be a team player, and he loved his theater friends (“show geeks,” theywere called by the jocks and cheerleaders). And he was at least able to savor the applause knowing thatsomehow he had been a part of the thing that had compelled it.

By the time he got to high school and took a creative writing class in lieu of art (his drawing waseven worse than his singing), Danny’s teacher saw the flair he had for dialogue, and she insisted he try hishand at writing a play.

So he did.

Using the Shakespeare plays in his English textbook as a guide for formatting, Danny wrote a one-hour, three-act play about a debate between two presidential candidates from opposing parties who justso happened to be father and son. He showed the script to his teacher (who chaired the drama committee),who showed it to the drama committee, who then showed it to the drama club, who produced the play thatsemester. And when his creative writing teacher called him out to the stage, he crept out and was almostknocked over by the applause. The cast  took turns patting him on the back and shoulder and tousling hishair. His mother’s eyes glistened with proud tears. Even his father’s absence seemed inconsequential inthe cloud of the clapping, the adulation, all for his accomplishment, his words. For
 
him
.

Seeing his name on the cover of a program was one of the proudest moments of Danny’s life. Hecut out the graphic on the program (a drawing completed by one of the art students) and pasted it, along

with “A Play by Daniel Gold” onto a Playbill from the Neil Simon play on Broadway he’d attended during Christmas break. He then framed and hung it on the wall beside his bed—right where he could see it—as if it were hanging in a dressing room or an office, accompanied by Tony awards and perhaps even an Oscar someday.

He wrote a two-hour, four-act play the following semester, and they produced that as well.

Acting felt like work. But writing, although also work, felt right. He later realized that he’d had this gift all along, but assumed it was a normal relationship with language that everyone possessed. Words seemed to piece together in his brain like squares of fabric on a quilt. And he could arrange them any way he wanted. Words, like musical notes, had rhythm and texture and intonation, and it was an intonation he could hear and feel. They had octaves and volumes and pitches. They had shades and colors and intensity.

And, he eventually found out, they could make women swoon.

A monologue or a speech could produce the same effect as a guitar solo if delivered correctly by the right  speaker, he’d learned. Jack and Bobby Kennedy knew that. So did Martin Luther King Jr. and Laurence Olivier. And sometimes the silence was just as important, if not more, than the words. William Goldman taught him that in
 
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
.

By the time Danny graduated high school the drama club had performed four of his plays, including one about the Watergate break-in/Nixon cover-up that he’d written for his American Government class project, and the most popular being his contribution to the Senior Follies: a courtroom farce in which the teachers were on trial and the jury was the senior class. He had a flair for humor too, he discovered much to his delight. He’d studied the Marx Brothers and Neil Simon and Buck Henry with the same determination and focus as he studied Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller and William Shakespeare. This same creative writing teacher (whom he publicly thanked when he got his first Emmy Award for
 
Winters in Hyannis
) helped him compile a portfolio and send it out to colleges with strong visual and performing arts programs. Even his father seemed proud when Danny received a scholarship to NYU. Or perhaps it was relief that he wouldn’t have to foot the bill himself.

But neither attention nor applause came as frequently to the writer as it did to the performer, he’d learned. Writing was a lonely, solitary act, and although Danny eventually got used to this notion, he had never found it entirely satisfying. However, when he’d tried collaborating with other playwrights or screenwriters in college, they almost always wound up walking away exasperated by his need to control the process. And although breaking up  with a writing partner was never as bad as breaking up with a girlfriend (although one time they were one and the same), he always hated himself afterward for being so difficult yet so unwilling to change.

It was surreal how taking the stage in the present moment could make Danny relive all that—the pats onthe back, the tears in his mother’s eyes, the satiation—except that since then the ante had been raised. Theaudience, men and women alike, stood and hooted and whistled and cheered. It was for all of them—himand Paul and Shane and Sharon—collectively, he knew. But it felt very, very personal. He strode towardthe director’s chair on the far left of the stage and hoisted himself up, picked up the minute microphoneclipped to the canvas on the back of the chair, and attached it to the lapel of his sports jacket.

He scanned the crowd. The lights in the theater had gone up, so he could see the audience clearlyin the first five rows or so. Despite his beginnings as an actor, he’d come to loathe public speaking andhad picked up the trick of finding a fixed point on the right, left, and back walls of a room so that he could

give the appearance of looking at the people without having to actually make eye contact, unless someone was asking a direct question.

He knew what he was looking for. Rather,
 
whom
 
he was looking for. Ever since the encounter outside the theater, before the goon interrupted them, he’d been thinking about her, even as he changed and shaved and groomed  himself and closed his eyes, dozing off for a good twenty minutes during the film.

And then he found her.

She was sitting in the second row, in his direct line of vision. It was her eyes that caught his attention—big and round and glistening, although not with tears. And she wasn’t starstruck either. He’d seen enough starstruck eyes to know the look—something between a deer caught in the headlights and a sophomore high on weed. A doped-up deer. No, she was looking at him not with adulation or adoration or even infatuation. It was something else, something he couldn’t put his finger on. Whatever it was, he believed it to be genuine.

If only he’d gotten her name
, goddammit. If only he could go up to her right now and ask her for it. And really, he could, couldn’t he? After all, he was Danny Fucking Masters, wasn’t he?

“So,” Ryland Quinn, the moderator, began, “first of all, I have to say on a personal note to Danny Masters: as an NYU graduate, it’s a pleasure to be sitting here onstage with one of the rock stars of the NYU alumni.”

Funny that he should use those words.

More applause.

“Well, it’s a pleasure to be here. And thanks to all of you for coming,” Danny said, gesturing to the audience. “I’m really glad you liked the film.” The audience cheered and applauded again.

“Since a film starts with a script, I thought we’d start with you, Danny. I think we all know the Valerie Plame case inspired you to write this story, although it’s completely fictional, and yet it seems so real.”

“Well, thank you.” Forget fixed points. Danny looked straight at the girl (no, she wasn’t a girl— she was a
 
woman
, mid-thirties, he guessed). “It’s the Valerie Plame story that seems like the fiction, doesn’t it,” he said, to which the audience broke into laughter, followed by scattered applause.

“Yes, it certainly does,” said the moderator. “So why then did you want to write this?”

“Of all the things to come out of that real case, it seemed like no one felt satisfied in terms of accountability. I mean, really, a guy named Scooter going to jail and taking one for the team, although honorable in its own way, was really more pathetic than anything else in terms of justice. The nice thing about writing is that you have absolute power.”

He wrung his hands like the evil villains in spy shows, to which the audience laughed again, as did his fellow guests sitting next to him.

“I decided to create a world in which not only was the covert agent’s identity exposed, but also the operations she was in charge of—some of which were not all kosher—the unscrupulous reporter’s anonymous source, the source behind the source, and the top dog. I wanted this one act to bring down an entire administration. If anything, I was probably following in the footsteps of William Goldman’s treatment of
All The President’s Men
 
. Only there is no human hero or heroine here. Not to be cornball, but truth, justice, and the American way are the heroes and heroines of this story.”

The audience applauded.

Ryland Quinn moved on to Paul Wolf, followed by Shane Sands and Sharon Blake, and Danny had

to  consciously steer his attention away from the woman (irrationally believing that she’d disappear if he did) to look at his co-panelists and nod, or laugh, or pay attention lest the conversation be turned to him again. And from the corner of his eye, he saw her seeming to try to do the same. She was sitting between a man and a woman—the friends she’d mentioned, he presumed—and occasionally whispered something to either one. The man in particular was good-looking and well-groomed, wearing a suede jacket and

brightly colored pressed shirt. What if he was more than her friend?

With each question Danny was growing weary and bored, and each one directed toward him was more superficial than the last. Things got worse when the microphones were turned over to the audience: questions about specific lines or scenes devolved to comparisons to
 
Winters in Hyannis
 
, rumors about alleged tensions between Danny and actors cast in his previous work, was it true he was tapped to write a screenplay based on Bill Clinton’s autobiography, etcetera. This was supposed to have been a serious event, attended by film buffs and aspiring screenwriters and readers of more than
 
People
 
magazine. Danny kept hoping the woman from the sidewalk would ask a question—any question, even a superficial

one—so that he could, if nothing else, ask what her name was. But she kept her hand and head down. Suddenly this world he lived in—one with flashing lights and cheering fans, of dizzying heights of success and impossible goalposts to clear, where Charlene fit in so well and he, at best, was just hanging out with the cool kids—was meaningless to him. He wanted to be back  on that sidewalk outside the theater with her, where his feet were firmly planted in the ground. He wanted no interruptions, no distractions, no expectations. He just wanted to know who she was.

“This question is for Danny.”