Nine Women, One Dress(36)

Daphne’s husband entered the scene. His disdain for Daphne was palpable. As was the critic’s disdain for Jordana. He wrote a word I’d hoped not to see.


Ambitious.



You may think of this word as complimentary. I knew it wasn’t. I pictured his review.


Ms. Winston might have chosen a less ambitious role for her Broadway debut. One that didn’t have her accent stray farther south of her native Los Angeles than, let’s say, Pasadena.



Onstage, Reggie Beauregard took hold of Daphne’s most precious snow globe—an antique replica of Niagara Falls—and threw it to the ground.


Daphne shrieks.


DAPHNE?Not the Niagara Falls! You know that belonged to Mama!

REGINALD?Well, now it belongs to no one. And if you don’t stop meddling in my business, you will belong to no one as well.


Reginald exits stage right. Daphne throws herself onto the bed and sobs.

Curtain down. End of Act One.



The critic and his companion hurried to the bar as soon as the lights came on for intermission. I sidled up next to them, ordered a martini, and searched Web images of New York theater critics on my phone. I nearly choked on my olive. The man standing next to me was none other than Brad Bentley, chief drama critic for the New York Times. This is a total nightmare.

“She is way too old for that part. The guy who plays Reginald could be her son,” said his crony. Bentley agreed as he ordered another scotch. Maybe he would sleep through the second act. What was I going to do? A bad review in the Times would devastate her. Too old for the part? I could not imagine the hell and Botox a remark like that would bring about.

He spoke to his friend. “At least you can leave. I have to stay for the second act!” His friend dismissed the suggestion, but I took it.

I ran from the theater as if it were on fire and hailed a cab. You may wonder what I see in this narcissistic prima donna beyond a meal ticket, but I love her. I do. There’s something underneath the drama, underneath the ego, that speaks to me. We understand each other. And I’m her person. It’s better being her person than being the person I am without her—an out-of-work actor who hasn’t been cast in anything since Titanic, when my character’s name was First to Drown. Well, I wasn’t going to drown today. Today I was going to jump ship, and I was going to take my darling egomaniac leading lady with me.

I made all the necessary arrangements in the car back to the hotel. The second act was only fifty minutes long, so I had to multitask. The three-hour time difference between New York and L.A. helped. I called Jordana’s assistant back home and had her arrange first-class tickets for the midnight flight to Paris and a suite at the Plaza Athénée. At three a.m., when the reviews came out, we would be sound asleep somewhere over the Atlantic. Thank god and her agent that she never signed that contract. I ran up to our suite, threw some essentials and half her wardrobe in my black wheelie bag, grabbed our passports, and was back in my seat before the finale.

In my absence Daphne and Reggie had returned from the Whitmans’ dinner party, where Daphne had accused Reggie of groping the Whitmans’ maid in the pantry. As payback he’d smashed every last one of her snow globes. This drove her mad, and the play wrapped up with Jordana wrapped up in a straitjacket, being taken away to an asylum. The curtain dropped. People clapped, mostly I think because it was over, and I hurried backstage during the curtain call to wait for her in her dressing room. She came bursting in, full of exuberance and hope. Actually, it wasn’t hope—she was completely certain she’d been fabulous.

“Was I fabulous, darling? Tell me!” It was definitely a “Tell me!” not a “Tell me?” Already down to just her slip, she reached for the little black dress she was to wear to the opening-night party. She couldn’t wait to take in all the accolades she was sure would be forthcoming.

I broke it to her gently. I knew it would hurt less coming from me. I’m her person; this is what I do.

“I thought you were fabulous, baby, really I did, but I sat next to Brad Bentley, you know, the critic from the Times—”

She interrupted me; her exuberance had turned to irritation. “Of course I know who Brad Bentley is. I wasn’t born yesterday!”

“Well, he seems to have noticed that. And I’m pretty sure that he’s writing that you’re in over your head. I’m sorry.”

She sat down and breathed. She could be pretty clear-headed when it came to her own damage control. “The reviews will be out at three a.m., right?”

I nodded.

“Did you see anything else?”

“He wrote the word ambitious,” I said, in as humane a whisper as I could.

She grimaced. She knew that word was lethal. “We need to be as far from here as possible when that review comes out!”

“How’s Paris?” I pulled out the wheelie bag I’d stashed before sneaking back to my seat and told her that everything was arranged. We went out the front of the theater to avoid the crowds that would be waiting by the stage door and jumped into a waiting car. She stripped off the little black dress that had been so full of promise when it had arrived, shoved it in the luggage, and threw on the disguise I had brought her: a Juicy Couture tracksuit and a dark brown wig.

“The show must go on!” she proclaimed grandly. “Without me!”