Page 121 of Playworld

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Naomi’s hands. I slept in the Shahs’ guest room, the only bedroom on their house’s first floor. Over those next several weeks, after everyone had gone to sleep, after Naomi slipped through my door and padded across the carpet, she would grope my blanket in the pitch-dark, patting down my outline like a child feeling for a parent after a bad dream. Her slip’s sheer fabric, once she’d tented the sheets above us, sometimes generated static electricity, and her body, so blued by dark as to be invisible, seemed briefly strung with heat lightning, which crackled. Her laughter, now that she lay atop me, was throaty, wicked,pleased.She liked to clasp my chin between her thumb and index finger when she began to kiss me, as if to assert that I was hers now, that there was no getting away, and in those initial weeks, I did not want to. I wanted to exercise my new powers, spread my wings. I thought about the first thing Kepplemen had taught us about wrestling:Where the head goes, the body will follow.So I moved Naomi around, I reversed our positions. I flipped her over to claw the back of her neck. She loved when I did this, she was encouraging as we proceeded. She gave me directions, she spoke as if she were teaching me to drive: go slow, speed up, go easy, gofast.It felt wicked, before and during—this velocity—though afterward it made me terribly sad.

The Shahs lived in the Saddle Rock neighborhood of Great Neck, just a few blocks from Little Neck Bay. Their home—two stories tall and designed like a giant H—was on Melville Lane, between Byron and Shelley, a cosmic joke I wouldn’t understand for years. Their foyer, its floor laid with great slabs of black-and-white marble, was dominated by a wide set of twin stairs whose strands, after ascending, met again at a long hallway—the letter’s crossbar. If you made a left, you arrived at the familywing. On the top of this stem, the west-facing side, was the Shahs’ master bedroom, which I visited only once during my stay.

Danny and Jackie, on the first afternoon after I arrived, gave me the tour. The master, which I’d been in that past winter but had not seen in the light (I’d walked through it in a daze, after my wrestling tournament, on the night I was concussed, before Naomi led me to the shower), was made bright by three large windows, which the Shahs’ California king waterbed faced, this second-floor height affording a view, over their yard’s high hedges, of Little Neck Bay. Above the headboard was a recessed section of wall, top-lit, its lower edge serving as a shelf. There were several books here: a pair of leather-bound copies of the Quran as well as a multivolume set of the Hadith, whose gilded spines, taken together, formed embossed letters in Arabic. Above these volumes hung a calligraphic painting, the symbol of Allah—I recognized all these from my days at Al and Neal’s apartment—beneath which there rested an ancient saber in an ornamented scabbard, balanced on the alabaster cast of a woman’s long-fingered hand. “We’re not allowed to touch the sword,” Danny said, as if she’d read my mind.

She led us to her room at the stem’s middle. It was decorated, paint to linens, in various shades of pink, every item exhibiting the same sheer femininity as a dancer’s tutu. A framed Degas, one of his soft-focus, seen-from-the-wings dancers, stood above the dresser. Her large window’s sill was arrayed with a menagerie of Baby Alive dolls. A collage of Fashion Plates designs, all of which were of women in variously patterned leg warmers, covered the bulletin board above her desk. Her bedroom was connected to her sister’s bedroom by what she called “our Jackie and Jill bathroom,” a phrase she’d clearly heard from her father, since her tone had the same cutesy inflection he liked to use with them.

Jackie’s room (“Follow me, please,” she said, taking over the tour) was for the most part the twin of her sister’s—the same color scheme, the same puffy pink polka-dotted bedspread. Above her dresser were three sets of women’s pointe shoes, one toe of each autographed: Darci Kistler, Kyra Nichols, and—in a fine hand that I’d seen in the margins ofThe Age of InnocenceandThe House of Mirthas I searched for Dad’s stash of cash—Lily Hurt, my mother. A pair of framed posters hung above Jackie’s headboard, both of Baryshnikov. In the first, that famous shot byMax Waldman, Misha is shirtless, his torso chiseled, his foot extended well above his ear—développé en l’air,as Mom would say—the picture snapped mid-leap, his right hand touching his pointed toe, the other arm outstretched while his head is flung back. In the second, by Richard Avedon, he is naked and so stirringly virile that when Jackie caught my eye after staring at it, I realized for the first time how closely she resembled her mother.

My room, downstairs on the H’s opposite stem, was somewhere between a maid’s room and a study. It had its own bathroom and a window that faced the driveway. Two full beds were arranged against this same wall, and between them was a small desk. Above it, a quartet of individually framed photographs of trucks decorated with rainbow-bright designs and friezes—Pakistani folk art, I would later learn, that adorns its country’s buses. There was a more formal guest room upstairs, above the garage, but I quickly came to understand my room had been picked by Naomi because it was the diagonally farthest from the master. You had to first pass through the dining room, whose collection of china sat on a pair of decorative shelves and tinkled loudly when you walked through it. From the dining room, a swinging door opened onto the kitchen—this in the middle of the stem—which, if you made a right once you’d passed through it, led to what Jackie called the Blue Room, because its walls were painted a deep, lacquered navy: a sitting room of sorts, formal and clearly never used, with the door to my room opening onto it. If you turned around and continued through the kitchen, again headed toward the house’s bay side, you stepped down into a glass-enclosed sunroom with a tulip table at its center surrounded by four chairs. The slate floors were outfitted with radiant heating—an unimaginable technological luxury back then—which the Shahs kept turned to high during the summer because they cranked their air-conditioner morning to night.

The sunroom looked out on the well-manicured backyard and a water feature, a large koi pond, whose filter made a pleasant burble. My only chore for those three weeks that I lived with them was to feed these fish in the evening. They ate pellets that smelled like dried cat food, and when I so much as passed my palm above their pool, the fish coalesced into a single being, a mythological creature, many-mouthed, and theirlips, when I lowered my cupped hand amid their massed bodies, were mobile and delicate, sucking and kissing away their meal. Their tenderness always brought a smile to my face, as it did to Naomi’s, whom I often spied watching me from the living room’s floor-to-ceiling windows—this room behind the staircase, where the TV lived, and where the family spent most of its time together. She’d check over her shoulder to see if Sam was nearby, and if he wasn’t paying attention—he, in profile, was usually glued to the news—she gave me a secret wave.

On the mornings when I was shooting and had to be in the city early, it was Sam who drove me. “Pick,” he’d say, gesturing toward the Bentley and the Ferrari as the garage door clattered open. I always chose the Ferrari—the 365 GT, that gorgeous bullet of a vehicle and one I became very familiar with during those several weeks. Sam relished this crack-of-dawn opportunity to “peel,” as he liked to say (it was also the word on his custom license plate). It offered him the excuse to leave for work even earlier than he would normally and thereby enjoy what he called his “freshest hours,” when he was the only person in the office and could, as he liked to brag, “get more done before nine a.m. than anyone else before lunch.” He said this often, clearly pleased with what he considered such a felicitously phrased witticism. He always laughed, whether I did or not. I, a decent mimic, would practice my impression of it if I wanted Naomi to give me some distance, to cool her desire, its sound being so anti-libidinous to her because of its familiarity. It had a lower, more masculine register; it was a dash of spit mixed with a scoop of gravel, and its four notes revved louder with each detonation, injected, as it was, with self-satisfaction:Hew,went Sam,hew hew hew.

The hour’s lighter traffic gave him license to speed, and we touched some Autobahn numbers on those morning commutes, which made me laugh as one does on roller coasters or during near-death experiences. And yet my response was equal parts giddiness, because Sam was so clearly expert at the wheel. He saw seams in the Long Island Expressway’s ever-shifting lanes that conferred the sense that we were on an invisible, zigzagging lane, newly paved just for us. During these drives, as I chuckled instead of screamed, I saw—as I had during my weekend with Amanda, and now, during my night visits with Naomi—that part of the nature of my character was to blur into background, to camouflagemyself, to cuttlefish in order to hide. And in my newfound state, I found it repulsive, I wished to molt it from my person. I arrived at 30Rock with my pulse thready and heart pounding from the ride; I slipped toward sleep, after Naomi left my bed late that night, in the exact same state; in both instances, I suffered self-loathing. I was riding two waves, abdicating agency because of circumstance, and I decided I needed to change this about myself as soon as possible. Or at least talk to Elliott about it upon his return from vacation. Assuming, of course, I didn’t get myself murdered by Sam in the meantime.

During these high-octane performances of Sam’s—which was exactly what they were—he enjoyed talking about the Ferrari’s handling. Its hood was disproportionately lengthy to accommodate its massive V12; its fender was wedge-shaped, with hideaway headlights that, when collapsed, maintained its sharp lines. The Ferrari’s appearance was more sedan than a sportscar, but there was something unmistakably ferocious about its makeup, something mako-like in its slipstreaming capacity to torpedo down the road. The interior was James Bond classy, its walnut dash full of unmarked black switches, one of which, on my most paranoid days, I feared Sam might flip and eject me through the roof. “Listen,” Sam said as he drove, and cupped a hand to his ear, “to the induction noise. You feel that steady rev?Thatis the V12’s effortlessness. Here we are in third gear, and you wouldn’t know we were about to touch ninety miles an hour. Becausethatis where the carwantsto cruise. It makes you forget speed limits. It makes you want to break the law.”

I knew Sam was showing off. I also knew he was thrilled to have another man around. Given that he lived in a house full of women, I was important to him. My audience, given that he was his company’s owner and boss, also made me, in his estimation, less of a yes man than a test case. I also knew I possessed qualities that he did not and was envious of, jacked up as I was from my summer workouts, my body pheromone-flooded, my dalliances with his wife signaling, precognitively, my alpha status. It was to my great surprise, during these drives, that I discovered how insecure he was about what he perceived to be his deficits. That in spite of his money, clothes, and cars, he suspected he was…uncool. What he wanted, then, was my approval.

So he overcompensated. That first week, during what must have beenonly our second drive together, a terrible accident near Flushing Meadows forced us to detour onto Grand Central Parkway and to then swing north to the Triborough Bridge. When we crossed the Harlem River, we found traffic snarled on the FDR—a ripple effect of all the rerouted volume. “Shortcut,” Sam said, and yanked us onto the 116th Street exit in East Harlem, seemingly deserted at this early hour. At the very first red light, we were beset on both sides by squeegee men. “No, no!” Sam shouted, and knuckled his window several times. “No, thank you!” But they’d already soaped down the windshield and raised the wipers. Through the suds, the now-green light dripped like wet paint until it wasS’d back into its solid state by the squeegees’ rubber. “Motherfucker,” Sam said, reaching over my knees to open the glove box, revealing the silver bulk of a .44 Magnum, a weapon I knew from the Dirty Harry movies. He threw open the car door and stepped out into the lane. He brandished the pistol and then shouted, “I said, ‘No, thank you!’ ” as the two men, sprinting, shrank into the distance. Sam watched them for a moment, then pincered the abandoned sponge from the hood and dropped it onto the pavement. He kicked the tipped-over bucket out of the Ferrari’s path and got back in the car.

“These people,” Sam said, replacing the pistol in the glove box, “are ruining this country.” He dropped the car into first and gunned the engine. “Nixon at least was willing to say it. Reagan, not so much.”

Our current president loomed large during my first week with the Shahs. When Naomi and I arrived home that Thursday evening with Danny and Jackie in tow, Sam greeted us at the front door holding a sweating magnum of Dom Pérignon. “Hurry,” he said, “or else you’ll miss it.” He led us to the living room and, while he fiddled with the bottle’s cage, indicated we should watch the television. There was Reagan, seated at table outside his home in Rancho del Cielo. Beneath a denim jacket, he wore a white shirt with a western collar, jeans, of course, and cowboy boots. It was so misty you could barely make out the press corps gathered around him. Whether it’s the fog itself or the fidelity of the camera, everything looks like a dream, the vapors are so thick there is a soft-focus quality to every image.President Reagan,said the anchor,offered remarks before signing the Kemp-Roth legislation into law.

“I can’t speak too highly of the leadership, the Republican leadership in the Congress, and those Democrats who so courageously joined in and made both of these truly bipartisan programs. But I think in reality the real credit goes to the people of the United States, who finally made it plain that they wanted a change and made it clear in Congress and spoke with a more authoritative voice than some of the special interest groups that they wanted these changes in government. This represents a hundred and thirty billion dollars in savings over the next three years. This represents seven hundred and fifty billion dollars in tax cuts over the next five years. And this is only the beginning.”

With great fanfare, Sam produced the sword that usually rested above his bed, ran its blade up and down the bottle’s neck three times, and then, with a quick stroke, sabered it open. A greatpopfollowed. The girls leaped and clapped. Naomi shook her head at me. Sam filled the flutes and handed them out. After raising his glass, he shouted, “To getting rich!”

Jackie said, “I thought we were already rich, Daddy.”

“Well,” Sam said, “now we’re richer.”

And then he laughed that rich man’s laugh of his. A sound that affirmed what Elliott would say to me later that year: judge people not by how they lose, but how they win.

In the evenings, it was Naomi who almost always drove us, but only on rare occasions immediately. She would pick me up in front of Radio City Music Hall and then make straight for the Dead Street. Though once, in the back seat, after she had buttoned her blouse, she startled me by saying, with a pain in her voice that was close to anger, “It really bothers me that you never ask me to come see you at work!” I was stunned by this. The thought hadn’t even occurred to me. And when she began to cry, I found I was frightened by this display of emotion.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I’msorry,” she said, and wiped her eyes, “I just want us to be more than just”—and she swept her hand in front of her—“this.”

Ididn’t know what I wanted, but I knew exactly what was being asked of me. So I kissed her gently, then firmly, repeatedly, pecking at her till she started smiling; I tickled her until she stopped crying, till she beganto giggle; and after she told me,“Stop,”and blew her nose, I promised to make it up to her, sweetly. “Come to the studio tomorrow,” I said, “after lunch.”

I met her in the lobby. I was in my Peter Proton costume—suspenders, pocket protector, capri pants, Einstein wig, gigantic glasses—which Naomi thought was hilarious. I even greeted her in his nerdy voice. “Look at you,” she said, “all in character and everything.” I walked her past Sert’sAmerican Progressmural and his smaller frescoes, pointing out the figure I liked best—the titan carrying the gigantic branch, straddling the ceiling columns, with the bomber squadrons in the background, sailing through the clouds—as if I owned the paintings, as if this weremyliving room. When we approached the security guard’s podium, before the elevator bank, I showed him my NBC identification card, which Naomi asked to see as well, examining it over my shoulder while we waited for the next car, clasping her hands in front of her because, I could tell, she was so nervous and excited. “Look at you,” she said again, and knocked her shoulder to mine, “all official and professional.” I gave her the entire tour of 8H, starting with a view of the soundstage from the audience’s balcony seats so she could appreciate the space’s vastness. We had to speak very quietly because they were taping—a scene in which our archvillainess, Lady Lava, has trapped my parents beneath her volcano, binding them back-to-back and suspending them above a pool of magma, using them as bait to lure me into her trap. Fog machines pumped white smoke from the pit. “Look at all the wires and stuff hanging from the ceiling,” Naomi whispered. “How do they know which plug is to which, you wonder?” I explained to her that the red light flashing atop each video camera meant that it was the feed the director had cut to, that the trickiest part of the boom operator’s job was to get the microphone close enough to the actors to pick up their voices while not dipping it into the shot. When Tom called “cut” over the speaker, I led Naomi down the hallway to hair and makeup, where Nicole and Freddie were sitting in their respective high chairs, smoking and reading the newspapers.

“Wow,” Naomi said to Freddie, “salon care for this kid every day. If I had you around, maybe I could get mine under control.”

“Probably not,” Freddie said, and smiled, which made Naomi laugh, because she didn’t know him.

I took her to costume, showed her the Coneheads suits, the Killer Bees outfits, Belushi’s Samurai hotel kimono, the turquoise tuxedo jacket Bill Murray wore as Nick the Lounge Singer. Naomi fingered the outfits, pulled at an unraveling thread in Father Guido Sarducci’s habit, and tsk-tsked. “That show’s a little too irreverent and racy, if you want my opinion,” she said.

We proceeded to the control room. “Look at this place,” Naomi gasped, surveying all the buttons atop the panels lit up like Christmas lights and the array of screens. “Tom’s the director,” I said, and pointed him out to Naomi, “the bearded guy in the Hawaiian shirt.” He was seated before the monitor wall. Jeff, the video-switcher tech, was to his right. When Tom snapped his fingers and called out, “Camera three, and one, and three, and two,” I explained how they were cutting between units, that on the three left-hand monitors you could see the cameras’ individual feeds and on the fourth screen the scene in continuity.

“And who are they?” Naomi asked, indicating the pair at the adjacent console.