New York Continued

May 18, 2008

Calm Sunday morning. Many cabs down there on the street, but apparently no people to ride in them.

Edward the King’s Saturday night was by far the best performance yet. Everyone was alive on the stage, listening to one another, following new leads dealt out by their colleagues. Some magic came upon the moment and I was able to watch as if I’d never seen it before, as if I hadn’t written the play but only come to it on a whim. I thought it was magical. I thought it was surprising and thrilling and funny, and of a sort of dark crimson, the color in the mind before Marlowe and Webster. I felt the play had chosen its company and lived up to them, and I was content. I thought, too, that exactly this might be the reward of it all, knowing I had created something nearly perfect, and to have seen it presented nearly perfectly before one’s eyes. It was like holding up a great jewel and peering in and seeing all the little jewels inside that are the record of its making and the pattern of its aspiration. I smiled my face in half, and for the moment thought, "this is enough."

Of course, in the pale blue of morning, it is not enough. I want Edward to go to Broadway. I want everyone on the planet to see it and, having seen it, ache for the next Hopes play. If I knew how to make this happen I would be out doing it. If I knew how to make this happen without appearing to be as self-promoting as I would probably have to be. I can, of course, be a jackass, but I don’t like it. Bruce and Jack are on my side, and others whom I met and did not meet. Some who are not on my side are on the play’s side, or Sidney’s, or Meg’s, or Brian’s. I want to bring everyone with me. I want to make Bruce and Jack rich and my cast famous, and I stand looking out the hotel window as though sudden firesigns on the side of Port Authority will show me the way. There were reviewers with their little pads, scratching away. Where will these reviews appear? What will happen in the week I’m away? It’ll will probably all happen then, when I’m absent, to keep me from messing things up in the way you have when things are too important to you.

Meg and Chad and I went to the Tic Toc afterward, and were joined by Adam and Stephen, who had just seen Young Frankenstein up the street. I wanted them to give Adam a boost in his career, some advice to straighten the path. What they said, and what I later read in a Backstage magazine I picked up in the foyer, made me think that professional acting must be the most demanding, grueling, unfair, exhausting trade in the world. Of course, exhilarating when everything is right. When I considered it long ago it may have been simpler, but still I set it aside easily enough, and have not regretted it since.

Walking back to our hotels up 8th Avenue, we heard someone behind us shouting, "Adam!" Adam had dropped his wallet, and a couple behind had scooped it up and run after to return it. The almost inconceivable good fortune of that confirmed our belief that a good angel watches over Adam’s determination to come to New York. A derelict was watching from the shadows against the wall, watching the whole return-of-the wallet drama. Our eyes met and we smiled. His smile said, "That wouldn’t have happened had I been the one to snatch that up. Your boy is blest."

My smile said, "Yes. Sometimes these things turn out right."

Went to Saint Thomas, 5th Avenue for sung mass. Arrived early enough to hear the choir warming up. It was gorgeous. I was ashamed for a moment of being so caught up in the glory of the singing, but corrected myself with the long-known truth that beauty is a surer way to God than reason, even than scripture. I had come determined to pray every spare moment for the success of Edward, taking God by storm, if that were necessary, but I’d barely got the first round out of the muzzle when that still, shockingly present Voice said, "I have already said ‘Yes’ to you." I knew that he had, but my faithlessness required me to go on haranguing even after the gift was given. That shut me up. I have already said yes to you. I was able to listen to the music. I was able to try to flirt with the man in the row in front of me. I was able to have a brief, pleasant dream during the sermon, which, on Trinity Sunday, tried and failed to explain the Trinity.

In a rare gesture of symmetry, the woman in the pew beside me left her purse, and I ran down the aisle with it in my hand to catch her. Adam’s debt is paid.

Meting of the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation. I tried to get my mind off Edward, which was transpiring at the other end of the same block. A second visit to Francine Trevens’ doll-filled apartment. We discussed mostly bad submissions and worried about Arch’s health.

I do not want to go home. I went to see Prince Caspian near Penn Station, and when I came out I was thinking, "This is my town." Now I have to find some way to make that true.