Chapter 2: The Season of Success, Part I

I.

“When did you first meet Nick, Mike?”

The convention had ended in the early afternoon, and the organizers had invited Nick to dinner. He’d asked if he could bring along a date, and they’d said of course.
 

There were six of them at the table – the four organizers, Nick, and his girlfriend….whom he’d introduced as Mike, seated on his right side. Tracy still wore her blonde wig, her fat suit, and her teeth. 

When Tracy went out as herself she did not hide her light under a bushel. She could talk knowledgeably on a wide range of subjects, and did. She could tell serious stories or humorous stories with élan, and was at home in all companies.

                

When she was in one of her disguises, she did not necessarily change her behavior. She had a role to play and she played it, with that little frisson of excitement if the slightest wrong move – a recognizable gesture, a vocal inflection, a laugh- and her disguise could be penetrated. It might be safer not to be thought to be bragging too much, to cause someone to pay too much attention to her, but that would defeat the object of the game.

Tracy spoke in an intriguingly-accented Audrey Hepburn-ishish type of voice – one she’d perfected after watching Charade and How To Steal a Million.

“I met him in Switzerland about a year ago,” she said, glancing mischievously at Nick. “He came there to buy a cuckoo clock, and he took me home instead, didn’t you darling?”

Nick was an intelligent man, an educated man, but he wasn’t much on improvisation and Tracy’s forays into the realms of fantasy always made him nervous, as he struggled to follow her lead. Now all he did was smile and say, “If you say so, darling,” putting the onus back on her to continue the story.

Tracy’s chuckle tinkled like a silver bell. “Oh, Nick, you’re such a stick in the mud. No, gentlemen, I tell you the truth. I am from Switzerland, and if you can believe it, I had never been to San Moritz until last year, and I had never ski-ed before. I spent one day on the…you call it the bunny slope, yes? – and decided that I was then good enough to go onto the slopes for grownups. 

The first person I ran over, fortunately, was Nick, and instead of picking me up and shoving me onward down the hill unceremoniously, he spent the rest of the day teaching me how to ski properly. Isn’t that so, Nick?”

               

“Well, I tried to teach you,” Nick said cautiously.

“He’s so modest,” Tracy said, shaking her head sorrowfully. “But I must tell you, that is how we met. And of course I recognized him from his television series, so I was very much flattered by his attention. And we have been friends ever since.”

She took a sip of water. She’d give Nick back the stage, she decided. “But this is the first time I have seen him in such a performance as this…this radio re-enactment. I enjoyed it very much. Tell me, Nick, have you acted on the radio before?”

Nick was on surer ground, now, and entertained the rest of the table with the history of how he’d become interested in old time radio.

The dinner ended successfully.

 

“We know the first episode of the new season of The Coldest Equations is airing tonight,” Patrick, one of the organizers, said diffidently. “As a matter of fact we’re going to have a party to watch it. Would you care to join us?”

“That’s very kind of you,” said Nick, “but as actors we…I mean…I, am superstitious about such things.  I don’t watch myself on TV.”

The group broke up, shaking hands and saying warm farewells, and then Nick and Tracy were headed back to New York and the hotel suite they were occupying during the run of Private Lives.

“Do you plan to tell that story again, Tracy?” Nick asked as he drove.

“What story?” Tracy queried, looking up from The Case of the Disappearing Doctor. 

“About me teaching you how to ski.”

 

“Well, I don’t know, Nick. I don’t know that I’ll ever play the role of the blond-haired Swiss again. But it was a good story, wasn’t it?”

“It was good except for two problems. You’re the one who is an expert downhill skier, and I’m the one who has never been on a ski hill and never will be, because I’m terrified of heights.”

“What does that matter?” Tracy asked curiously.

“Well, what if one of these stories of yours gets around to a casting director or something, and all of a sudden I get offered a part that entails me being an expert skier. I’d have to turn it down and what excuse could I give?”

Tracy laughed. “Oh, you know better than that, Nick. No one in the movies does real skiing. They’ll put you on a pair of skis and you’ll crouch down in front of one of those blue screens, and the mountain scenery will just zoom by realistically.”

“It still makes me nervous,” Nick said obstinately.

“Well, look at it this way, then. I don’t think it matters how well they think you can ski. If you get offered a movie role – and please god you will be, after our series has had a successful five year run!, there’s no way the producers are going to risk having you break a leg or something. Even if they choose you because you’re an expert skier, they still won’t let you do any skiing, no matter how hard you plead. You’ll be in front of a blue screen for close-ups, and a stuntman will do all your skiing for you. After all, that’s what they’re for.”

Nick grinned, ruefully. “That’s true. Thank god for stunt men.”

“And stunt women.”