Me and Orson Welles (15 page)

“Is there a reason you're angry at her?”

“I'm goddamned angry at everything,” she said. She wiped her eyes again. “I have a lot of emotional problems, O.K.? I'm angry at myself; I'm angry at you; I'm—”

“Hey, I haven't done anything.”

“You haven't,” she said. “It's me. I'm Lady Rage. That's what my therapist calls me. ‘How's Lady Rage today?' ”

“And how
is
Lady Rage today?”

“She's glad to be here with you.”

“Then what else is there to worry about?”

“Ah,” she said with mock drama. “And will you be the rock I hide myself behind? The mighty oak to protect me?”

“The mighty twig sounds more like it.”

She took another swig from the wine bottle. “You should drink more, mighty twig. It might loosen you up a little.”

“I have to stay strong to shield you from the wild, wicked world. I think there's an idea for a really bad song here: ‘I'll Be Your Orson Welles, You'll Be My . . . .' I don't know, who's he in love with?”

“Orson Welles? A Narcissist's Love Song. There's a new idea.”

“You and the Night and the Mirror.”

“I like it,” she said, and she rested her head against my arm. “I like you.”

“Sleep if you want to, Lady Rage.”

“Don't call me that, O.K.?”

“O.K.”

I moved my fingers through her hair, caressed her right temple—a tiny freckle northeast of her ear.

“I'm trying to lose Lady Rage; trying to annihilate her in my work, in my life. But I tell you, she's a tough son-of-a-bitch to kill.”

I did my Ronald Colman. “Togethuh we will slay huh.”

“Good luck, Ronald. She's a cagey customer. So wary of being hurt, she's been known to strike first.”

“What's she wary of?”

“Abandonment, my therapist says. In all its symbolic implications. I have no father, you know.”

“Is he alive?”

“Probably.” She pushed herself more deeply into my arm and shoulder. “I'm like Orson that way. Another orphan of the Mercury. I don't hear you talk much about your father either.”

“I suppose I don't. I understand Orson doesn't have a father or a mother living.”

“Yes,” she said. “Therein lies the difference. My mother still walks the earth.”

“Do you talk with her much?”

“We try. It's usually disastrous. She's probably a bigger emotional mess than I am.”

“Well, mothers and daughters: that's always a disaster, isn't it?”

“She's clinically depressed. Clinically an alcoholic. It's just one great scene of domestic bliss there. She and her unemployed boyfriend, Tex.”

“Tex!”

“Yes, another strong male figure in my life. Another rock in the storm. Another emblem of enduring passion.” She opened her eyes. “You know, I see the way my professor at Vassar loves her little boy—he's four months old; she brings him to class. I helped change him the other morning, and, oh, you've never seen such
adoration
from one human being to another. All she says is ‘Who's the wonderful baby?' and ‘Who's the special boy?' and ‘Who's the best baby in the world?'—just cooing and joy and the expectation of pure wonderfulness for this tiny thing with its big staring eyes. And
everything
the baby does is
absolutely
fine, you know? If the baby soils itself, that's fine. The baby is kissed, its feet are rubbed—and I'm standing there helping her change him, watching her pour out this love, and part of it is absolutely wonderful, and part of it my heart is just breaking because I know I've never felt anything like that ever. I don't think I even
can
feel anything like that. That
pure
and that passionate. And I want to. Just once in my life I want to feel something that isn't
me;
that isn't
me watching me.
That isn't me
furious
at the world because it isn't noticing me. Richard, I'm so afraid that if I ever had a baby that's all I could give it—just this anxiety inside me and this insane need to keep proving how
terrific
I am.” Tears were flowing. She wiped them away; it made no difference. “I can't even talk to my mother on the phone for one minute now without fighting.”

“I'm sure she loves you, Sonja. I'm sure that in her own complicated way she loves you.”

“I dreamed I
hit
her . . . you know, I want to accomplish so much; to be so much—and I feel her pulling me down—and I hear her
self-righteousness
and her
defensiveness
and her
terror—
it doesn't stop; whatever I do—and I want so much to get
past
her—to get past who I was as this scared, needy kid—and at the same time I need her approval so much. It feels like on some level she
resents
my success. Resents that I got away.” Her face was distorted with tears. “We're still these needy, pathetic children, aren't we? Do we ever get beyond that?”

“Probably not.”

She wiped her eyes. “I'm not looking for an answer; I just need to cry. Look, I'm wrecking this coat. I'm going to wash up and find a nightgown. When I cry I feel so weak. I feel as if somebody was bleeding me. There's pajamas, I think, around here, too, if you want to stay.”

“Am I spending the night?”

She kissed my head.

In that almost-dark apartment, I got dressed in Orson's red pajamas; she put on Virginia's white nightgown.

“They don't mind we're doing this?” I asked. My heart was racing.

“Well, I don't plan on telling them, do you? We can leave the stuff in the hamper,” she said. “Somebody comes in once a week to clean.”

“Beautiful night,” I said, pointing to the painting of the stars on the living room ceiling.

She stood in front of me and looked up at the stars. I put my arms around her. Then she broke away and shut off the last remaining light.

I could hear her walk into the bedroom.

I stood in the living room.

I was so scared I could actually feel the blood pulsing through my hands.

“I guess I'll sleep on the sofa,” I heard my voice saying.

Her voice came from the dark bedroom. Four words.

“Richard, come in here.”

I
wore Orson's robe; Sonja wore nothing at all, and we drank our coffees standing in that tiny kitchen with its yellow countertop. It was 7:30 in the morning. She was eating a piece of chocolate she'd found in the icebox. Then she filled her palm with water from the sink and drank from it as if it were a tiny cup. She smiled when she saw me watching. “Ha!” she said. She took another sip from her palm, smacked her lips heartily, her eyes full of sly charm. The radio played softly.

She took another bite of chocolate and then kissed me.

“You taste like chocolate,” I said.

She kissed my white undershirt, leaving a perfectly formed print of her lips made out of chocolate.

“Don't wash it off,” she said. “Now you can't forget me.”

I looked at her eyes, her body, her bare feet, and I thought: How on earth could I ever forget you?

I sneezed.

She showered, got dressed, and was heading out the door. “I'll see you over at the Mercury; I've got a million calls to make. And don't worry I'll call your school and tell them that you're working with Orson Welles. I can be
very
persuasive.” She smiled and pointed to the chocolate kiss on my shirt. “That'll be like me kissing you all day.”

 

Quadruple space.

 

I got dressed. She made a plateful of cinnamon toast, and we carried it up to the roof.

Below you could hear the city waking; the rain had cleared; the sky was white-gray, shadowless.

“Now you're going to tell me you knew this was going to happen?” I asked, and I bit into my cinnamon toast triangle.

“I was pret-ty sure.”

“Regrets?”

“None that a friend wouldn't forgive,” she said in her best Ronald Colman.

“Then I forgive you.”

I wanted to ask:
Did I do all right?
But I was pret-ty sure I hadn't. I mean, I hadn't messed up
entirely,
but my amateur standing was grievously apparent.
(And grievously hath Caesar answered it.)
What was also apparent to me was that it wasn't sex she really wanted anyway. I wasn't sure what it was—maybe somebody to adore her; somebody she could hug; somebody she could fall apart in front of; somebody she didn't have to bargain with.

“It's supposed to be in the mid-sixties today,” she said. “Isn't that absolutely amazing?”

“I'm starting to fall in love with you, Sonja.” I imitated her: “Isn't that absolutely amazing?”

She touched the back of my head. “I know. I'm feeling the same thing.”

“Are we going to do anything about it?”

She thought a second: “We're going to open
Caesar.
”

“I was hoping you might say—”

She held up a hand. “We're pushing the river. Orson's right about that, Richard. You can't force
any
thing.”

“Of course, Orson's right,” I said. “He's right about everything. It's infuriating.”

“I think it's kind of thrilling. Watching him turning into a star right in front of your eyes.”

“You know what's strange?” I said. “I'm in his show; I'm sleeping in his pajamas; I'm around him half the day. I feel as if, sometimes—I don't know—as if I
am
him.”

“That's the pull of every great star, isn't it? The feeling that you're participating in their lives. It doesn't make any sense, but there it is. That static charge on the back of your neck. John said he felt it the first second he saw Orson.”

“For these past few days I've felt as if this whole city
belonged
to me, as if all of New York were this enormous stage set, and somebody said to me:
Richard, it's all yours to play with.
I'm feeling so damn
alive.
Like I'm breathing some substance that didn't even exist last week. All this, and I'm down to my last thirty-five cents.” I had pulled out my wallet to check on my exuberantly dwindling capital. I took out my driver's license. “You know, there's a place on the back here you're supposed to send in if you make a mistake on your name and address? I'm thinking about mailing it, and telling them my middle name is Orson. I don't think you need a lawyer to change your middle name, do you?
Richard Orson Samuels
. Do you like that? I think I really am going to change it. Richard Orson Samuels.”

 

She left for the Mercury, but I stayed on the roof for a while. I breathed in the city: its warming wind, its noise. And I was one young man on a roof who had just spent the night with a beautiful woman. My skin smelled like Sonja, and my shirt collar smelled like Sonja, and the air around me smelled like Sonja, and the sunlight suggested winter and hard days to come, but we would all survive somehow, and the seasons were bigger than any of us anyway—and we were all tumbling along on the breeze of something enormous and eternal and gloriously busy.

I thought maybe that's what roofs were for: to pull you up high enough to feel the totality of it all, while the ambulance sirens sang below.

Before I left the apartment, I swiped one of Orson's cigars, and as I walked uptown I struck a few Orson-like poses in the shop windows. I was so impressed by my own reflection that two workmen nearly crushed me to death with a huge wooden crate they were carrying. “Goddamn-sons-of-
bitches!”
I shouted, waving my cigar, and I stalked off down the stage-set of a sidewalk.

When I waited for the lights to change I asked myself: Which foot would Orson lead with? When I saw four men standing around waiting for a job agency to open, I thought: How would Orson stage this? How would he arrange the men? How would he light it? Were they friends or just four strangers outside a locked door? Which guy had the stammer? Which guy had the sense of humor? Which guy was hungry?

All of New York felt like my paintbox. There was a sonnet in every high-heel, a full-length play in every face.

On the sidewalk in front of the Mercury Theatre a placard read: PREVIEW TODAY: MAT. AND EVE. BARGAIN PRICES! It was really happening: two paid previews, and then we opened tomorrow night. It was one day away. The lobby posters read
Production by Orson Welles
, and it struck me for the first time how much pressure must be on Orson's shoulders. He was twenty-two and opening a show to the most brutal audience on earth. You had to admire the pure nerve of it—that he could say, in the middle of a Depression: I'm opening my own theatre company, and I'm the star!