Lives of the Circus Animals Read online

  When there was a lull in the storm of parents, Jessie came over, set her briefcase on the floor, and embraced him.

  “God that was good!” she declared. “And smart!” She gave him a spearmint-scented kiss—on the jaw. “You didn’t try to hide that these were children, but used it, made it part of the play. I was in heaven, watching those kiddos do theater.”

  He was tickled that Jessie understood what he’d done, even as his joy stumbled over the fear that she’d come for his play, not for him. He held her against his side. “I’m glad you liked it,” he said and kissed the top of her head. “I’m even gladder you came. Thank you.”

  “I didn’t just like it, I loved it. Everybody loved it.” She pulled out from under his arm to face him. “Even Prager of the Times. Did you know the Buzzard was here?”

  “Oh yeah. His daughter’s in the show.”

  “He’s got a kid? Poor thing. Still. Even he loved it. He was sitting right in front of me. I gave him a piece of my mind. Oh, not really. I was way too subtle. He’s lucky I didn’t stab him with my pen. When I think of what he did to Caleb’s play.” She laughed at herself. “But I’m telling Caleb about this show. One more night, right? He’d love it. It should bring him out of his funk.”

  Caleb was Jessie’s brother, Caleb Doyle, the playwright, author of Venus in Furs and a new play, Chaos Theory, which had just tanked. Theater was in their blood. The Doyles were not a showbiz dynasty, however, but outer-borough New Yorkers, their background as blue-collar suburban as Frank’s family, but Yankee, not southern. Jessie’s love of theater was matched by her smarts, but she’d not yet found a vocation there. She tried different things—acting, writing, managing—a jill-of-all-trades. Right now she was personal assistant to Henry Lewse, the British actor, during his stay in New York.

  “I don’t care if Caleb sees this,” said Frank. “I’m thrilled you came. Look, there’s a cast party for the kids and I have to hang out. But then we can go grab something to eat and, uh, talk.”

  She made a face, an overdone look of sorrow and guilt. “I’m sorry, Frank. I know I said we could get together tonight. But I can’t. I need to take care of something for Henry.”

  “It’s almost nine o’clock. You on call twenty-four hours?”

  “It’s an emergency. I’m sorry. He’s my job.”

  Frank was surprised at how angry he felt, angry and hurt.

  “I’m meeting him uptown after his show,” she explained. “I don’t know how long it’ll take. But it can’t take too long. Hey. We could meet at Mona Lisa later. About eleven?”

  “I remember the last time we did that. You never showed.”

  “That wasn’t my fault. Henry needed to talk. I couldn’t abandon him. Come on, Frank. I apologized for that already. Oh, all right,” she conceded. “What if I come out to Hoboken when I finish with Henry?”

  Which meant spending the night, which was what Frank had wanted all along. Except he hated the idea of making love to Jessie when her head was full of Henry Lewse.

  “No,” he said. “It’ll be too late. We better not. I have an early rehearsal of Dwight and Allegra’s play tomorrow anyway.”

  She studied him, timidly, skeptically. “You weren’t going to ask me to spend the night?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. If it wasn’t too late.” Of course he’d planned to ask her, but he couldn’t now.

  She frowned. “Jesus, Frank. Don’t be this way. You don’t have to be jealous about Henry. He’s strictly business.”

  “I’m not jealous. Why should I be jealous?”

  “He’s gay,” said Jessie.

  “I know that.” He also knew that Lewse was fifty-plus, but this was more complicated than sex or bodies. “I’m not jealous,” he repeated. “I assume he barely ever notices you.”

  Jessie glared at him. “Oh no. He notices me. Believe me. He’s helpless without me. He can do art, but he can’t do life.”

  They said nothing for a moment, neither wanting to admit how angry they were.

  “How about tomorrow afternoon?” she said.

  “I told you. We’re rehearsing this other show tomorrow. It opens next week.” He feared he was being silly now and decided not to punish her further. “What about Sunday?”

  “Sorry. Caleb and I are going to see our mom on Sunday.” She curled her upper lip and rolled her eyes.

  He rolled his eyes in sympathy. Mothers, they seemed to tell each other, and made their peace.

  “But see?” she said. “It’s not just my life that’s full. Yours is too. We’ll talk during the week. You’re coming with me to Caleb’s birthday on Friday, right?”

  “I guess.” He’d agreed to go but dreaded it. The party would be full of successful actors.

  “But we’ll talk before then,” said Jessie. “Good night.” She kissed his cheek again. “It was great, Frank. Really. You should direct more.”

  “I’m directing Dwight and Allegra’s show.”

  “No, I mean big-time. For real.”

  “It’s not like I’m turning down offers.”

  “But you’re not pursuing them either.”

  He took a deep breath. He did not want to get into this discussion tonight.

  Just then a tall man like a stooping scarecrow walked past. He called out, “Nice job!” before disappearing in the crowd.

  “Oh my God,” said Jessie. “Do you know who that was? That was Prager. The Buzzard!”

  Frank looked and saw only the elevated back of a gray suit.

  Jessie grabbed Frank’s arm. “He said nice job! Can you believe it? Oh wow. You should feel so pleased!”

  “Whoopee,” went Frank. But he was pleased. He’d feel more pleased if the two crummy words had changed Jessie’s mind about running after her boss tonight. Except he wanted to be loved for himself, not because he’d been patted on the head by the New York fucking Times. “Talk to you when we talk,” he said and touched Jessie good-bye on the elbow. “I need to get backstage and make sure stuff’s put away. Good night.” He backed toward the auditorium and waved at her, pretending everything was cool.

  She waved too, a light twist of her hand like Queen Elizabeth, then hoisted her briefcase under her arm and departed.

  Frank slipped back into the auditorium. It was empty, the stage restfully deserted. As he feared, coats and hats were strewn all over. He felt like kicking the hats, but instead began to pick them up and set them on the prop table. It made him feel like a mom, ineffectual and sexless. He cursed himself for telling Jessie not to come by tonight. Why did he do that? He could at least have gotten laid. What kind of man says no to sex? Well, a man in love. Men were supposed to think of love as a way to get nookie, but Frank just said no to nookie out of love. Or was it only pride?

  Maybe he wasn’t in love with her. Maybe he only wanted to be in love. What was there to love? Jessie was nothing but trouble. She loved theater, and Frank loved that she loved theater, but Frank was giving up theater. And she loved theater not like Frank loved it, as a craft, but needily, therapeutically, with lots of personal strings. There was her brother, for one, a successful playwright. And now there was Henry Lewse. The great Henry Lewse, former star of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Hamlet of his generation and all that crap, currently appearing on Broadway. Frank was unimpressed, but Jessie was infatuated. There was no other word for her devotion. Lewse was gay—famously so, a public homosexual—which meant Jessie’s love would remain platonic. Only what the hell did she love then? His artistry? His fame? His success?

  Her brother was gay too, but not half as successful, especially after his new play flopped. There was some kind of connection there, which Frank was reluctant to explore. He could call her a fag hag, except the name explained nothing. He knew so many gay men himself that his friend Dwight, who was gay, called him a fag hog. Frank had cast Caleb Doyle’s new boyfriend in their uptown play in hopes of getting closer to Jessie. Toby was not half bad as an actor, although halfway through rehearsal he was sudden
ly an ex-boyfriend and Frank was still stuck with him.

  Carmen appeared at the stage door. “Oh, Frank,” she said. “I was going to do that. You should be outside talking to parents.”

  “They have their stars to talk to. Didn’t your mom come?”

  “Yeah, but she’s talking to one of our neighbors, wanting the dirt on our landlord. Here. I’ll help you.”

  “Thanks, sweetcakes.”

  She picked Captain Andy’s coat off the floor and took it to the coat rack. “Actors are such pigs.”

  “Welcome to theater,” he said. “Where there’s the actors and the rest of us. Who clean up after the actors.” He bumped his hip against Carmen’s hip and she bumped back and they laughed.

  5

  Jessie sat in the fluorescent gloom of a rocking subway car, feeling guilty about ditching Frank—reluctantly, irritably guilty. She was attracted to Frank, kind of, just not in the way that Frank was attracted to her. Seeing his talent reflected in a pack of clever kids tonight made her feel warmer about him—for two hours anyway. So why didn’t Frank use that talent? He could become a success if he set his mind to it. He called it purity, but Jessie called it waste.

  She got off at Forty-second Street and rode the escalator up from her bad mood into the weird, white light of Times Square. Bright canvas billboards like full-page ads from Variety or Vogue hung overhead. Headlines raced around digital zippers two stories up. Digital images played in big monitors or over the curves of a black glass building.

  Jessie always felt like a beetle in a website here, a cockroach in cyberspace. Worse, the electronic canyon was full of nice-smiling people, happy families grinning skyward. Everything was so damned boojhee nowadays. She missed the old Times Square, even though it had smelled like ass and been full of wackos. It’d been real, unlike this galactic shopping mall. Jessie herself felt quite real tonight, tough and businesslike, briefcase under her arm, trench coat snapping around her legs. She was a woman on a mission—and what a mission. She dug into the coat pocket and took out the smooth stone of her wireless, flipped it open, and poked in the new number.

  “Hello? Skull? Jessie here. Digger’s friend? I’m in Times Square. Where do you want to meet? Five minutes? Sure.”

  She clicked off, then checked the clock overhead, under the quarter-scale replica of the Concorde soaring on a roof. Perfect. She’d meet this guy at ten and have plenty of time to get to Henry in his dressing room at the Booth Theatre after the curtain.

  Beautiful giants in their underwear, male and female, lounged behind the Concorde, continents of skin with sulky lips as big as sofas. Frank looked nothing like those men, but then Jessie looked nothing like the women. She was thirty-three but, depending on her dress and haircut, could pass for a twenty-five-year-old woman or a sixteen-year-old boy. Jessie was regularly cruised on the street by nearsighted chicken hawks.

  She was suddenly sorry Frank had said no to a late-night visit. She’d offered it only as a consolation prize for breaking their date. Their one time in bed had been perfectly enjoyable, although it had clearly meant more to Frank than it had to her. Still, his refusal tonight made sex ticklishly attractive, itchily necessary. Surely Frank wanted to get laid. Maybe he hadn’t understood that that’s what she’d offered. He was a nice guy, sweet and considerate, but with nice guys you sometimes had to spell things out. If only he were ten pounds lighter. If only he were more serious about theater. If only he didn’t love her more than she was ready to love anyone.

  Jessie was marching west on Forty-second Street, past the Disney Store and Disney theaters, under Madame Tussaud’s giant hand. Back when she was a kid, this street had been lined with third-run movie houses, old shells of the Great White Way showing kung fu flicks and soft-core porn. Now even the sad ranks of white marquees were gone. Broadway was a postmodern theme park, a virtual unreality. All the good theater work was being done downtown or in the shoe boxes on the far stretch of Forty-second Street beyond Port Authority. How pitiful that Henry Lewse had to work in this phony-baloney Las Vegas.

  She went up Eighth Avenue, past the last surviving porno theater to the Milford Plaza Hotel. She entered a white marble hall like a deserted corner in an airline terminal. Muzak “Oklahoma” played in the lobby upstairs. She followed a sign down a passage to a coffee shop of fumed oak and red vinyl. The same Muzak played louder here. She glanced over the middle-aged couples in crayon-colored sweats before she spotted a twentyish guy sitting alone in a booth, in preppy glasses and sweater, not what one expected for a man named Skull. And he had a full head of hair. But a Mickey Mouse shopping bag lay on the table, the agreed-on signal.

  “Skull?” she said softly. “I’m Jessie.”

  “Heeeeeey,” he drawled. “Digger wasn’t lying. You are pretty.”

  He was not stoned, yet grass gave him his style. “This your office?” she joked as she sat across from him. She wanted to seem like an old hand at this.

  “I do a rotation. Here and there. I prefer the Edison. Old dude agents sitting around making deals? Nobody looks twice at a man on a cell phone. And I love their blintzes. Sooooo.” He stretched out vowels like a Bob Dylan impersonator. “Bring the book?”

  “Uh, I brought a play. I hope that’s okay.” She took a copy of Chaos Theory from her briefcase, the new Samuel French edition bound like a pamphlet in raspberry construction paper.

  “Right. Yeah. Digger told me you’re Caleb Doyle’s sister. Bummer about his last show.” He flipped through pages until he came to the swatch of new hundred-dollar bills. “Cooool.” He patted the plastic Mickey Mouse bag. “You’ll love this.”

  It seemed bad manners to peek but suspicious to onlookers if she didn’t. Skull acted like they were being watched—illegality turned any act into theater. Jessie looked in the bag. A neatly rolled Baggie lay nestled between two wads of rolled-up newspaper.

  “Oh thank you! I always wanted one of these.” She folded the plastic bag and stuffed it in her briefcase.

  Skull was looking through the play, like he actually intended to read it. “Times sure was mean to your brother,” he said. “What’s the word on when they’re doing the movie of Venus in Furs?”

  “No word. But hey. Hollywood.” She was surprised a drug dealer knew so much about this. “Uh, are you an actor yourself? This is just your day job?”

  “No way. Not me.” He laughed. “But I read Variety. To keep up with my market base. And I deal tickets now and then. When that line’s more profitable.” He pointed at her briefcase. “For him?”

  “Oh no. Uh-uh,” she said quickly. “All for me.”

  “Heeeeey. None of my business. Most uncool to ask.”

  Jessie had brought the playscript tonight simply because she had a whole box of them at home. The publishers had jumped the gun on this one. But she enjoyed the idea of inadvertently starting a rumor that her brother was now a pothead.

  When a waitress stopped by to ask for an order, Jessie used the interruption to say good night.

  “Great seeing you again,” she told Skull. “Until next time.”

  “Sure thing, doll. You know where to reach me.” He mimed using a phone. “We’re like all connected.”

  6

  Jessie came out on Forty-fifth Street and turned right. Shows were letting out. The street was glossy orange with taxis picking up well-dressed old ladies and their hat-wearing husbands, old-school playgoers who’d come to Midtown for an expensive treat. They were smiling, most of them, but with relief rather than joy: they’d had their fun and could go home. The block was lined with unkillable, long-running dogs: Jekyll and Hyde, Les Miz, Footloose, and Jackie Mason. Only the McAuliffe Theater was dark, a sad hole in this gaudy carnival midway.

  Chaos Theory had closed over a month ago, but the name still hung in the dead marquee. A poster remained in the gloom underneath. “An Important New Play by Caleb Doyle.”

  The producers had been idiots to open it on Broadway. Jessie liked the play—she did. A young woman marries a
brilliant physicist, not for love but because she thinks he’ll become famous. She wants to share his greatness. But the man’s abstraction turns out to be a cover for schizophrenia. He gets crazier and crazier; the marriage is spent in police stations and mental hospitals. But she does not abandon him. Out of a love that is part guilt, part duty, she takes up the burden. Which was where the curtain fell. There was no cure, no happy ending—no tragic ending either. The playwright offered the audience nothing except damage control in the hell of mental illness.

  All right, Chaos Theory was bleak stuff, pure spinach. And the production didn’t help: actors standing like zombies on a bare stage covered in numbers. Jessie couldn’t imagine many people wanting to sit through it, but the play might have succeeded Off-Broadway. Here it needed raves to survive. The producers pulled the plug the morning of Prager’s pan.

  There are few things sadder than a dark theater, but Jessie continued to loiter, enjoying this pocket of peace. Poor Caleb, she thought. Foolish, earnest, pigheaded Caleb.

  Her pity was sincere. Failure made her brother human again. She’d never resented his success, although it sometimes made her feel like a failure. If he could succeed, why couldn’t she? Jessie blamed herself for being too stupid, scattered, lazy, and flaky.

  But Caleb had discipline. He had drive. He’d been writing constantly since high school: stories, poems, one-acts, even a novel. Jessie was seven years younger. Back when she was a kid, she loved it when her brother came home from college and she could hear the tap dance of the manual typewriter in the next room, a soothing sound like rain on a roof. He would call her in and read what he’d written, or better, when he began writing plays, they’d read it together. Jessie already loved theater, but Caleb fed that love, made it worse. Then he would send her away, shut the door, and the rain of words resumed. Later he disappeared behind the closed door of life with his boyfriend, Ben, just as Jessie disappeared behind the closed door of a marriage. Now they were both single again.