Violencia! by Bruce Jay Friedman

Author:Bruce Jay Friedman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2001-10-23T04:00:00+00:00

Scene 8

When the two collaborators got back home, their first or der of business was to wrap up the casting so they could get on with rehearsals before Undertag got cold feet and decided to back away from the show.

“I think he’s afraid he’s got a hit on his hands,” said Hartog. “This is a new experience for him and he’ll probably do everything in his power to kill it off. When I think of how we brought the sonofabitch pure gold, and he doesn’t even see it.”

There were two key parts that remained to be filled, those of the detective hero son Matt Tanker, soon to fly east, was at the head of the pack for that one and his one-armed ingenue girlfriend at the Bureau. Mr. Mortimer lined up all of the available young one-armed actresses in the city; Gurney was surprised that there were so many of them. The part finally went to a pretty and feisty little bundle of talent named Betty Pound. She was acknowledged to be over-brimming with talent, but understandably, she had found it rough going in the theatre because of the shortage of parts for girls with one wing.

Gurney was not fooling himself; he knew that the character was based on a real-life individual, his dear friend Angela. And his heart fell when he saw the audition of Betty Pound, who was slightly prettier than Angela and was certainly a better singer and dancer. What if he became romantically involved with Betty Pound? But he was almost relieved to discover that the actress’s good qualities were all playacting ones. Offstage, her personality was a brittle and unappealing one. She was obsessed with only one goal in life: success in the theatre, and after that, Hollywood.

When Matt Tanker flew east, the two collaborators sat him down for a final interview and gave him a thorough going-over.

“This is a long, tough haul,” said Hartog. “You’ve been a sex detective and a chiropractor. What makes you so sure you can cut it as the lead in a Broadway musical?”

To his credit, Tanker refused to beg and plead for the part. With his mother at his side, he sat opposite the two of them, clear-eyed, pleasant, steady.

“I don’t know that I can, sir, but I’d sure like to try. If it doesn’t work out, I can either go back to my practice or perhaps find an island in the Pacific and just sit around and count the waves.”

Since the time they had seen him on the West Coast, Tanker had let his hair grow out. He was wearing torn blue jeans, moccasins, and a dirty old poncho that was falling apart.

“I don’t know,” said Hartog, taking Gurney aside. “I still like him, but I prefer an actor who’ll fight and claw and insist that he’s the only one in the world who can do the part and tell us that if we don’t agree we can go fuck ourselves.”

“I know what you mean,” said Gurney. “He doesn’t seem to have as much desire as I would have thought.

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