Variation on a Theme, Book 6
Copyright© 2024 by Grey Wolf
Chapter 147: New Places, Old Friends
Wednesday, June 4, 1986
Our clothes were indeed back in plenty of time. We didn’t change into them until after breakfast, just in case. Wouldn’t do to waste CBS’s laundry services!
They did want us back. As I’d guessed, Angie and Paige spent the morning being interviewed together.
At lunch — in the CBS cafeteria again — they told us it was mostly ‘establishing shots’ and the like. Things were carefully staged, and I suspected they could cut between the two of them together and a single shot of one or the other from their one-on-one interviews and have it all look like the whole thing had been done with them both present. We would see how it looked on the air, but we guessed that’s how it would play out.
They released us after lunch, asking us to please keep these clothes ready for next week. We promised we would. No one was wearing anything so unique that we couldn’t replace it, if it came down to it.
We headed back to the hotel, put our clothes away carefully, and changed into a different set of business casual attire. It might have been a bit much for Central Park, but we planned to explore the park a bit, have dinner there, and then go directly to the theater.
Once we were ready, we headed out. It was a clear, sunny day. Not too hot, thankfully, though New Yorkers’ thoughts about heat were probably different from those of the average Texan. Perhaps the locals thought this was a hot day. It wouldn’t have surprised me if they had.
Much of Central Park was vaguely familiar from the many movies and TV shows that featured the park. At one point or another, each of us said something similar to, ‘This looks familiar! Cool!’
We went around The Pond, near the Zoo (but not into it), then walked along The Mall and beyond, until we hit Bethesda Fountain and The Lake. By that point, we’d used more than half of the time we had available, so we headed off toward Tavern on the Green.
We arrived slightly before our reservation time. I didn’t know if CBS had arranged it or not, but they seated us in the Crystal Room, scene of many a movie dinner. I suspected this was one of the more popular spaces at Tavern on the Green, so it probably was something CBS had requested.
The food was somewhere between ‘decent’ and ‘pretty good.’ No one thought it was excellent, but it certainly was one of those places where the setting elevated the experience.
I wasn’t sure how soon we would eat here again. It felt like the sort of place one would take out-of-town guests to impress them, which meant some of the Dell-related trips might bring me here, even if nothing else did. We might also try to eat here when the others arrived for the Amnesty concert.
And, if so, it was probably especially nice that we’d gone here now. I was less likely to be distracted by the experience on a return visit.
After we finished with dinner, we called a cab and headed off to Broadway. ‘La Cage aux Folles’ was showing at the Palace Theater, which meant both a lot and nothing at all to us. A lot, because we’d all heard of the Palace Theater. It was a familiar name, one referenced in other shows. Nothing at all, because we knew little about it other than that it was ‘on Broadway’ and historic.
Jas and Paige both bounced a bit in their seats as Broadway itself came into view. Angie and I were slightly more restrained, but only slightly. The reactions were fairly predictable. Jas and Paige had considered seeing a show on Broadway to be a dream for at least six years, probably more. It was a seriously big thing for them, albeit one they had always thought would happen ‘sometime.’ And, in fact, that was true. It was just that ‘sometime’ was now.
I hadn’t had it as nearly as much of a dream, not being a drama kid in my first life, but it had been a dream. My ex-wife and I had always wanted to visit New York. As part of that, seeing a show was definitely on the agenda. We both loved live theater and always had.
It’s just that we never did it. The two of us had traveled to over forty of the states together, but neither New York nor New Jersey was included (excepting changing planes once or twice). She had been to New York at least twice, once before me and once during our marriage for a work trip. I hadn’t ever been there, and my one and only trip to New Jersey had ended abruptly (albeit in, most likely, the best way a fatal crash could possibly end).
Perhaps, if we hadn’t divorced, we would have gone there in retirement. We had made a fairly extensive list of retirement plans. By now, going by the ‘six years later’ rule, she would likely be retired, and maybe off to Broadway herself. Who could know?
As she’d said, Angie hadn’t thought much about it at all in her first life. It had been a dream since late 1981 or early 1982 in this life, though.
We helped our dates out of the cab (an amusing process in and of itself, since it again put Angie into the ‘guy’ role, at least nominally) and headed off to the Palace. Our tickets were at Will Call. After a brief wait, they were in our hands, and we started the process of getting to our seats. That, inevitably, required stops at the restrooms, picking up a Playbill (each, plus extras for a few people, including Steffie), and browsing the souvenirs. We all passed on those, since we had two more shows to see on this trip.
We certainly hadn’t set out to see a show focused on gay issues right on the heels of the ‘60 Minutes’ interviews. The thought hadn’t even entered my mind before Act One started. When we discussed it at the intermission, the others agreed — it hadn’t been on their minds, either. It was a classic musical (admittedly, more ‘classic’ to me than anyone else) and promised to be a good time.
It was, too. We got a kick out of the whole thing. Jas drew the obvious parallel at the intermission: what if one of Angie and Paige’s hypothetical children happened to fall in love with, say, some descendant of Phyllis Schlafly? Hilarity would ensue, no doubt! Of course, Phyllis might know who they were, so perhaps it would be one of Cammie and Mel’s children.
One nice part of the story was that it was relatively timeless. We imagined there would always be anti-gay activists in the world. There certainly had been in 2020, anyway. It didn’t matter if there were thousands or a handful for the story to work. That there were some, and in some position of prominence within their community, was enough.
I don’t think any of us would have put ‘La Cage aux Folles’ on our Broadway bucket list, but this wasn’t a ‘bucket list’ sort of trip. We were seeing three shows in two weeks, after all, and fully expected to be back many times after this. Some of my ‘bucket list’ shows didn’t exist yet, and others had not yet even shown on Broadway, in any case.
Heck, I’d never seen ‘Miss Saigon’, nor did it exist yet, but that had become a ‘bucket list’ show as soon as Jas and I became serious. We might not even like it — that was entirely possible — but it seemed like a must-see show.
‘Beauty and the Beast’ was unquestionably a must-see show. No doubt there.
Since these didn’t exist yet, there was always some chance they would never exist. I could live in a world without ‘Miss Saigon’. A world without ‘Beauty and the Beast’? There would be something quite wrong with such a world, at least in my opinion.
When we finally went to bed, both Jas and I were tired, but not that tired. Not until a bit later, when we were very tired indeed.
Thursday, June 5, 1986
After breakfast at the hotel, I went and picked up the rental car. The agency was fairly close to the hotel, so it wasn’t a big deal, at least. Waiting until after breakfast got us out of New York rush-hour traffic, too.
After that, we were on the road and heading north. The drive out of Manhattan took us along the East River, and we passed the UN before heading north to the RFK bridge. After that, it was a combination of interesting views and urban jungles for quite a while. We were all fans enough of classic TV to think fondly of Dick van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore while passing New Rochelle, which amused me.
It wasn’t a particularly long drive to New Haven, Connecticut. We weren’t going to meet Connie and Jimmy until dinner — they had classes today, after all — so, instead, we took an impromptu walking tour of Yale. In general, it looked like I had generally expected Yale to look, but that was based on vague impressions of what an Ivy League school should look like. Half of Harvard looked like that, based on personal experience, but half of it didn’t look like that at all. There were plenty of somewhat nondescript modern buildings at Harvard, but I didn’t see any here. Maybe I just missed them.
Yale also had an interesting art museum. We only had a couple of hours to spend there, but it was a place we would return to if we were in New Haven again.
After our impromptu campus tour, we headed to our hotel and checked in. It wasn’t all that much compared to the Hilton, but it was perfectly nice for tonight. We weren’t the sort of hotel snobs who needed five-star accommodations or else. At least not yet, anyway.
Once our bags were in our rooms, the girls declared a desire to ‘freshen up,’ which seemed to involve a complete change of clothing in addition to bathroom breaks. I joined them, because it seemed like the thing to do. We wound up in pretty much the same style of clothing, but they were fresh, so that was nice.
We were going to have to do laundry somewhere — likely Boston — and again in New York when we got back. That New York round was going to be on CBS’s tab, which was nice. The difference between laundering one or two pieces or nearly a suitcase-full was probably trivial to them.
Angie spent a while on the phone touching base with Jane. Things were in motion, but there was no date and no plan yet. On the plus side, Sharon’s therapist seemed convinced it all could be done legally and aboveboard. It would require Angie signing a notarized affidavit making it clear she wanted this meeting, but that wasn’t hard. Angie would probably have to meet with Sharon’s parole officer first, too. That wasn’t hard either. I doubted even a jaded Chicago parole officer could out-stubborn Angie.
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