seemed to have died and so he set to work, pick and shovel. It was what he usually did, it was his job, as much as the writing of his plays. He didn’t resent the need to lay out his plans, precisely and powerfully, and felt after all these years that the labor of raising money for his productions sharpened his appetite and gave him new reasons to go on. He was educating his patrons (the word had no ironic tinge now), he was bringing them into a world that still in spite of its tawdriness was magic.
She hadn’t given him much time, rushing into the restaurant late and then looking surprised, in spite of herself, when she saw him. They would need to be finished with dinner and paid in forty-five minutes, to get across the street to the Booth Theatre on time. And neither of them was ever late to a play. They associated that with amateurism, loudly chatting visitors from the suburbs who didn’t leave enough time to park their ridiculous cars.
She lifted her fork and pressed the tines, tentatively, into her tuna. “How’s your fish?” he asked, hoping for a little air.
“I don’t know, I haven’t tasted it.” She shot him an imperious glance. He could have strangled her; did she think he was one of those hapless waiters who ask the crucial question too soon? Then he checked himself. He often asked the crucial question too soon.
Not this time. Too much was riding on it.
He’d found her by chance because he was working part-time in the box office and had recognized her name when she called to order a ticket and, greatly daring, had called her back (her telephone number was part of her order) and asked her to join him for dinner and the play. “You shouldn’t have to go to the theatre alone,” he’d said, realizing from her startled silence that this was a new thought but not an entirely unwelcome one.
“I go to the theatre alone all the time,” she’d said, opening another door for his implication: a woman of a certain age, living alone in Brooklyn, riding the subway to the downtown theatres and in spite of herself beginning to worry during the second act about the long, late subway ride home.
He studied her, realizing that, between bites of her tuna, she was studying him. What he saw didn’t correspond exactly to what he’d imagined when he’d recognized her name; she’d had some success ten years earlier with a one-woman show. He remembered the newspaper shot from that production—a woman smiling energetically—and something of the story: how she’d been working on the piece for years, mentored by several serious contenders, picking up an MFA in theatre somewhere and then seeming to burst on the scene full-blown. But the one-woman show had been followed by silence, although he knew she’d continued to “contribute to the life of the theatre”—that meant money—as well as commuting into Manhattan for classes and plays. The story. All of it easily found, and he’d found it.
She saw something less defined since she’d never seen Jeffrey’s name in the theatre section, which she still read assiduously as though it decided fates, as it had at one time. His name had been there, a time or two, but inconspicuously, when he’d directed something that bombed in Chelsea or understudied in a little show that managed to run on Perry Street for nine months. That was five years ago, and nothing much since, which was the reason for the part-time job at the box office.
He was in his early forties, she guessed, in good shape, never a leading man but now maturing into a skilled character actor; he was ready for the parts he had been waiting for when casting directors passed him over for the romantic lead. He was ready for the characters he had tailored in his own plays, which other actors had never found a perfect fit. She could see that; she could see that he fit, especially now that black actors were once again being cast occasionally in white parts, or parts that had always been assumed to be white, by nature. It might be that he was a better actor than playwright, even more likely that his real strength was as a director but knew that field was more surely closed. She thought she was probably a few years older.
“How did you know my name?” she asked, lightening a little as she ended her scrutiny.
“From Woman in Love.”
“But that was a long time ago.”
“I keep up,” he said modestly. “You made quite a splash, back then.”
“I hit the crest of the wave,” she said, equally modest, although both of them suspected that modesty was not their strong suit. “Nobody’s interested in one-woman shows anymore.”
“Or one-man,” he said, to set the record straight.
She glanced at him, and he wondered if he had run up against an opinion, a hard one, with edges. But she only said, “Did you do those, too?”
“Not my kind of thing.”
“So what turned you from writing plays to directing?”
“Did I tell you I directed?”
“No, but I gathered.” She smiled. “You have that manner.”
“What is that manner?” He was amused, in spite of himself.
“I think you think you have authority.” She gave the word the same ironic tinge he’d given to the word patron.
“Authority.” He thought a bit before answering, realizing that this was a challenge, her gauntlet laid down. With some women, this was the way they began to flirt, although he did not think flirting was what he wanted. But it might provide a way in.
“Of course I don’t plan to direct my own play, ” he said, to prevent her jumping to the conclusion. They’d both seen efforts spoiled by the over-involvement of the writer. She knew that. She was smart, sharp, he thought, in the spiked way of theatre women in the city, women who’d struggled for a long time, and survived.
“Well, you know enough about the scene to know you should be asking for money from someone else, some talented young producer.” She would have liked to add, “no doubt black,” but resisted. He didn’t seem to have any race identification and the time of those fights was long over. “Much more realistic than going around raising money from people like me.”
As she said it, she saw he didn’t believe her. In addition to her two plays, he’d seen her name listed here and there as a sponsor of little hole-in-the-wall shows, the kind of short run she felt sure he was contemplating for his play—equity minimum, rarely reviewed.
“I believe in this play, I’m willing to try any way I can to get it on,” he said.
“There’re some ways not worth trying.”
“Probably a waste of time but—”
“No,” she interrupted him. “Shameful.”
Her eyes were light brown, almost yellow, and since she didn’t take care of her eyebrows, her eyes seemed set in a colorless waste. He knew suddenly that she’d given up trying to find acting parts. “Can’t you imagine how I feel?” she went on softly, intently. “I’m your peer, I’m a fellow playwright, but you couldn’t care less about my work”—she held up her hand to prevent him from objecting—“you haven’t asked me a single question about myself. Can’t you imagine how I feel?” Now her voice rose, and someone at the next table glanced at her.
“I suppose,” he said as calmly as he could. “I suppose I can imagine it.”
She was still staring at him. He ate some of his potatoes without tasting them. He’d called
