October 27 – Day 51: I’d Tell You My Name If Only I Could Remember It

Because of the excitement of the game, I wasn’t able to get to sleep before 5:00. I’d planned on getting up at 11:00, which would get me to the theatre at 12:30, but decided I could use the extra sleep and postponed my alarm until 11:30.

I was still kind of hung over (not alcoholically) when I got up, but persevered and went through the usual routine. (I will say that, while I’ll miss the whole living-in-New-York experience, the first thing I’m going to do when I get home is take a real shower. This one is really for the birds.)

In spite of getting to the theatre “late,” I was still the first one there. There wasn’t really a lot unusual going on once everyone else got there; just the usual talk and prep. The show went well. We’ve kind of settled into a routine now. The audiences are generally pretty full, they react some (maybe some laughter, but certainly chuckles and grunts of recognition), we find new stuff, and roll along. The thing that startles me the most is how fast it all goes. I’ve talked about how quickly a 7:15 (or 2:15) curtain comes, but before I know it, I’ve been on stage as Goebbels, and am halfway through my first Kraft scene, which means the first act is almost over. I then have a break, go up for another Kraft scene, and have just another few things before it’s all over. The running time is two-and-a-half hours, but most days it feels like it’s over in the blink of an eye.

That’s true of this trip, as well (as I knew it would be). Even though it feels kind of like I’ve been in this apartment forever, it also seems like I’ve been in New York for about a week. Paradoxically, when I was out to dinner Monday night, I was startled to realize it’s been only two weeks since Pidge was here. It felt like a month had gone by.

Anyway …

After the matinee, we did our usual between-shows visit to the diner on 57^th. GG and I walked over, compared notes about life in New York and the Bay Area, talked about the crosswalk signal on the northwest corner of Park and 59^th that sounds like a bad Trump imitation (it’s located right outside a Trump-labeled building, and I have to wonder if it’s not a coincidence). There’s a similar signal on the northeast corner, but it has no voice, and I have yet to spot any similar signals on any corner on Park. It’s a mystery wrapped in an enigma. (Although I just did a search on it, and it turns out the voice is from at least 2012 and belongs to the head electrician at the Transportation Department. He’s a movie buff, too—with posters of Abbott and Costello and Popeye in his office, and the Marx Brothers as a screensaver.)

 

We were eventually joined by Matt, Andi, Elizabeth, and Stef. For a change, I had a grilled cheese along with my soup. (The soup was good, but it was a pretty mediocre sandwich, even with an added tomato. I mean, it’s only grilled cheese, but surely it should have some savory flavor.) We’d been there only a few minutes when an older couple came up to us. The man started to ask if we’d been in the show, and I answered yes. They thanked us profusely for what we’d done. He’d read the book years ago, and they had both been moved by the story and its current relevance. Despite some of the so-so reviews we’ve gotten, feedback like that from them and the Vonneguts means more than anything else.

It had rained earlier in the day and was still kind of raw out, so Andi and I stopped at Starbucks for a refresher for the evening, then headed back to the theatre.

We got ready for the evening show (which, for me, means running a comb through the mass of tangled hair full of dried gel from the matinee) and it all went really well—with one glitch for me. In my first scene as Kraft, I’m discovered on stage, painting a canvas, and GG (as Campbell) knocks on the door. I ignore him until he mentions playing chess, then I rush over to open the door. My first line to him is supposed to be “Come in. I’m George Kraft.” Well, this time, I ran over to the door, unlocked it, and completely forgot my name. The only thing that came to mind was “Howard Baker,” which I knew was wrong, but there was nothing else I could do.

I opened the door, said “Come in,” and went back to my canvas. GG looked baffled, and finally asked me “And you would be …?” I took what felt like ten seconds (but was probably more like one) to shuffle through my mental Rolodex, and the name finally came into my head. I said “I’m George Kraft,” and events proceeded as usual. Fortunately, it was, like, the one place in the show where that would have worked. “The magic of live theatre.”

Following the show, I was once again prepared to postpone my watching of the World Series (I’d been following the play-by-play on my phone) if anyone had been interested in doing anything, but no one was, so I headed to the 6 to go south to the taqueria. I was listening and following along as I walked, and when Yasiel Puig hit a mammoth home run to put the Dodgers up, I pumped my fists and jumped on the street.

Unfortunately, that was the last gasp for the Dodgers in the series.

I made it to the bar, which was hopping (though not as much as it had been on Friday). I had learned my lesson on Friday, so I steered clear of the wall on the left (with the air conditioning vent) and worked my way to an open spot on the right. There were a number of people there—and someone sitting in the seat I’d been in when they’d won the game earlier that morning—but there was still room. No one seemed as drunk as they’d been Friday, so that was nice. I exchanged a few words with a big guy to my left, and everything seemed good until the Red Sox started coming back.

The big guy left and I took his spot, and when he returned a little while later, I asked him if he wanted his spot back. He said no, and we all went back to watching the game. We continued to talk and he mentioned, sotto voce (or as sotto as his voce could be heard in a loud bar) that he was actually a Boston fan. I said that no one was perfect, and we laughed.

The way that Dave Roberts handled the rest of the game will be debated by Dodger fans for years, but suffice it to say, the Red Sox scored nine unanswered runs as the Dodger pitching collapsed. As the game become more and more hopeless, people left (though there was still a pretty substantial crowd), but it was soon pretty obvious it was a lost cause. I stayed until the end, shook the hand of my Boston-fan friend, and left.

I was still hungry, so I headed (once again) to Sunny and Annie’s for a roast beef sandwich, which I came home and ate before turning in. Unlike Saturday morning, there was no need to watch the post-game shows, so it was a relatively early night for me, especially since we had a Sunday matinee coming up.