Loveplay

“What do you think? You wrote it.”

His slitted green eyes ran over her like hands. “You’ll be adequate,” he said flatly, and turned away.

* * *

“Adequate,” Bett fumed when she went back to the apartment she shared with Janet Simms, a successful model. “Adequate! He never believed in me, never! He said I’d fall flat on my face six years ago. But I didn’t,” she added hotly. “I didn’t! I came to New York, and I worked hard, and I’ve made a name for myself! I have a leather coat and an uptown apartment and a great future according to the reviewers….”

“And you owe the government your arms, legs and a year’s salary,” Janet reminded her, and sighed. “You crazy idiot, why did you have to try out for Cul’s play?”

“Because I needed a job, and that was the only role going that I wanted to play,” she said curtly. She sat down near the window, her face pensive. “Besides,” she added, staring down into her lap. “Besides…”

“It was a glowing opportunity to get your knife into Edward McCullough?” Janet suggested. “At point-blank range?”

Bett shook her head wearily. “No. It’s just that I couldn’t resist the part. It has such feeling, such dra- matic beauty…” She tangled her hands in her red-gold hair. “They hadn’t announced the director. How could I have possibly known that Cul would turn up at the audition, for God’s sake?”

“He’s the playwright, too, why shouldn’t he? Didn’t you say he always has casting approval written into his contracts?”

“Yes,” Bett said miserably. She stared at her feet, hating the size of them. She was tall and tended to be too slender, but at least she carried it gracefully.

“What are you going to do about the taxes?” Janet asked.

Bett shrugged. “I don’t know.” She looked up. “I’ve only thirty days to get up the estimated amount, from what my accountant told me. I’ll have to cut corners like mad. And that means I can’t stay here.” She sighed miserably. In the past few days, her secure life had come tumbling around her ears. She was going to miss Janet terribly, but she couldn’t possibly pay even half of the rent for the Park Avenue apartment. “I guess I’ll work everything out somehow.”

“Of course you will,” Janet said bracingly. “After all, you talked the director of that nude play about Elizabeth the First into letting you wear a corset.”

“Remind me to tell you all about that someday.” Bett chuckled. “I always seem to get picked for Elizabeth.”

“You look exactly like paintings of her,” Janet said. “Except that your hairline isn’t as far back, and your skin isn’t as white. But the eyes, and the facial features, even the color of your hair is so like hers…” She grinned. “And she was a virgin, too.”

“Don’t say that out loud, somebody might hear you!” Bett exclaimed, laughing. “I’m supposed to be three months’ pregnant in the play!”

“A biological first—pregnancy without fertilization. Just think, it will make all the medical journals,” Janet teased.

“Want to go apartment hunting with me?” Bett asked as she got her coat and headed for the door.

“I guess I’d better. I do know the turf better than you do. Just let me get a coat.”

Bett wished she hadn’t had to sell her pretty leather one. With a sigh, she examined her threadworn coat, an old tweed one that she kept for sentimental reasons. Cul had taken her walking through Piedmont Park one late spring day, and she’d worn that coat….

Her eyes clouded. She slipped on the tweed without any real enthusiasm and followed Janet out the door.

The apartment they found was a shocking change from her former quarters. It was in Queens, on the top floor of a tenement building, and the noise from her neighbors was nonstop.

“I can’t leave you here,” Janet said firmly. “I can’t. Come with me, we’ll find something else.”

“No. It’s perfect,” Bett said, glancing around at the white dinette set with the peeling paint, the counter with its broken Formica top and the living room with its swaybacked sofa and matching chair with torn fabric.

“The health department would condemn it even after it was cleaned up,” Janet protested.

“Just right for a struggling actress,” Bett said with a forced smile. “After all, I started out in a place like this. First I’ll take care of the rent, and then we’ll go out and stock this place with a few groceries.”

“We can get you some curtains, too,” Janet added thoughtfully. “And maybe a throw cover for that awful sofa, and a couple of bushy plants—”

“We can not,” Bett interrupted her. “I don’t have the luxury of living up to my celebrity status anymore. Remember, I’m going to be on a tight budget for a long time.”

Janet only moaned, muttering something about the fickleness of fate.

Two

It was like old times for Bett, who’d lived like this in her younger days. She still knew where to go for bargains and what to buy. And the fact that it was New York and not Atlanta didn’t make a bit of difference. Poverty had many addresses.

“I don’t understand why you won’t just let me pay the rent until you get out of the hole,” Jane said later as she helped Bett move the few things she had to have into her new home.

“Because I’ll be working for minimum wage through all six weeks of rehearsals,” she told her friend. “And then we’ll have a tryout in Philadelphia before we open on Broadway. I don’t know when I’ll be able to make a decent living. And I don’t want to owe anybody, Janet. Not even you,” she added with a quiet smile. She sat down on the lumpy sofa with a sigh. “Once I start earning, and pay back what I owe the IRS, I’ll come home.”

“Okay. I guess you know best.” Janet watched her friend stack dishes on the counter. “But it’s going to be lonely without you.”

“You can come over for supper tomorrow night. I’ll make spaghetti.”

“That sounds nice. You can come for supper the night after, and move back in.”

Bett laughed softly. “I’ll miss you, too. But it will all work out.”

“Sure.”

“Really!”

Janet smiled. “Okay. I’ll try to adopt an optimistic attitude. Now, tell me what you want me to help with. I don’t have anything to do for the rest of the day, fortunately for you.”

“You’re not kidding. I never realized I had so much stuff to move!”

It took the rest of the day to get only half the things in their proper place. By the time Janet left, Bett was too tired to do anything except go to bed.

Her dreams were restless and unnerving and full of Cul. She woke up before dawn to the sound of a screaming child in the apartment above and couldn’t close her eyes again. She got up and made coffee, and stared out the window at the wall across the way. The only view was straight up, and it was too chilly to lean that far out the window.

She sipped her coffee, remembering how it had been six years ago. She had been a struggling young actress then, and Cul had written his first play. It was being performed by the local summer stock theater where the two of them had been performing for several weeks. Up until that time, she and Edward McCullough had been moderately friendly—it was impossible to work in such a small group of people without getting to know each of them. But Bett had been much more involved emotionally than Cul, from the very beginning. She remembered looking at him when he was introduced as the group’s newest player, and wanting him with a wild fever. Considering her puritanical upbringing in Atlanta, and her virginal status, it was surprising to find a man having that effect on her.

Because he bothered her so much physically, she’d begun needling him. It was a habit that took hold early, and had a lasting effect. Cul took it with unexpected good humor. And then they began rehearsals on his new play.

Bett, because of her unusual coloring and talent, had been given the female lead. Cul would have been perfect for the male lead, but had refused it, giving the part instead to Charles Tanner, an actor of large proportions and moderate talent.

The female part was that of a liberated young woman out on her own and enjoying liaisons. The male part was frankly reticent and condemning. The play contrasted the conservative viewpoint with the liberated one, and did such a splendid job of it that Cul was approached by a theatrical backer. Shortly thereafter he left for New York. But not before he’d done some devastating damage to Bett’s emotions.

She’d always told herself that she had followed him to New York because of his cold observation that she’d never be star material with all her hang-ups. But sometimes she wondered if it wasn’t because she’d loved him so much.

Her eyes closed and she could see them together that first evening, when he’d been coaching her in the part.

“You just can’t let go, can you, Bett?” he’d accused coldly after a half-dozen failed attempts at dialogue. He’d slammed the script down on the coffee table in his small apartment and reached for her. “Well, baby, let’s see if this kind of coaching isn’t what you need the most…!” And he’d kissed her.