Acts of Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

We’ve been playing a game? Monte, I have better things to do with my time than play your little games.”
    â€œI’m paying for your play, Mr. Home, and if I want to play a game now and then, I’ll play it and so will you. This wasn’t a game, though, this was serious. I wanted her younger. I fight for what I believe. You don’t understand that? Look at you, standing there like Clint Eastwood ready to shoot me through my whatsit. I tried and I lost. Sometimes you’ll try and you’ll lose. That’s how it goes.”
    â€œI don’t lose.”
    â€œThe hell you don’t. You’d better think again about that.”
    â€œLet it go,” Luke said. “It’s going to be a rough two months of togetherness if you two can’t learn to get along. That’s your assignment. Both of you.” He opened the office door. “Monte, ten o’clock tomorrow? We’ll start again. Tommy will be here, too.”
    â€œTommy?” Kent asked.
    â€œWebb,” Monte said. “Casting director. Ten o’clock, Luke.”
    â€œI’ll be here, too,” Kent said aggressively.
    â€œOf course you will,” Luke said, “it’s your play. But I shouldn’t have to tell you that this isn’t a one-man show: not yours, not mine, not Monte’s. The theater—at least my theater—is no place for tyranny. You’ve never had a play produced, but whether you had or not, here you do it our way. Some lines—what the hell, sometimes whole scenes—always need rewriting; the minute rehearsals begin you can hear when lines that look terrific on paper just don’t work when they’re spoken. I’ll never deliberately compromise your integrity as a writer, but I’m telling you now, you’ll be rewriting as we go along.”
    â€œI don’t rewrite. It’s perfect the way it is.”
    â€œI’ve never seen a perfect play. Neither have you. The Magician is a wonderful play, but I can’t promise I won’t ask for changes, and if that doesn’t satisfy you, you’d better pull out now.”
    There was a silence. “You know I wouldn’t do that.”
    â€œI’m glad to hear it. Tomorrow at ten?”
    Kent nodded. Monte was drawing shoes on his nude woman. Luke left. He had a lot of planning to do, or it was going to be a hell of a long two months.
    â€œIt doesn’t seem long enough to put on a major play,” said Marian Lodge as they sat in Luke’s office an hour later. She was tall and thin with hair slicked back and gold loops swaying from her ears, and she wore a linen suit and a silk rep tie. She sat erect in an armchair, a malachite roller-ball pen poised over the pad of yellow lined paper on her lap and a tiny tape recorder hissing faintly on the arm of Luke’s chair. “Readers of The New Yorker profiles demand verisimilitude, you know, so I’ll want all the details. How do you get everything done in two months? Don’t actors need more time to learn their lines and psych out their characters, and then rehearse? And what about all the rest of it—costumes, stage sets, lighting, props . . . I’m fascinated by the theater, you know; I could talk about it forever.”
    â€œI don’t have quite that much time,” Luke said with a smile that was caught by the photographer who prowled about the room, his camera’s automatic shutter making a rapid staccato as he photographed Luke, the few prominent, abstract sculptures, the leather-and-suede furnishings and the signed photographs that covered the walls. Luke held his smile and masked his impatience. He had only agreed to the interview because Tina Brown had asked him to do it as part of a double issue on the arts, and already he was regretting it. “Let’s see how much we can do in an hour. As for the two months, preparation for a production can go on too long: not only does it