Free I Blame Dennis Hopper by Illeana Douglas

They really love you.”
    The crowd—most of them women in their sixties—really did love him. I loved him. And he loved being loved. He had been in show business for more than sixty years. He was the only act at the Camelot that made you feel as if you were at the opening night of a Broadway show. He gave it all he had. Each night he got better, and that’s what I told him every night when he left the stage: “Sir, that was amazing!”
    â€œDo you think so?”
    â€œThink so? I know so!” And he would laugh and head back to his dressing room to freshen up and get ready to sign autographs for the adoring elderly women in the front of the house.
    He was only there for a week, and on his last night, he handed me his raccoon coat for the final time. He went out and, as usual, knocked ’em dead. My only interaction with him had been to hand him his coat and tell him how great I thought he was, but I seemed to make an impression on him. I told him that I was really going to miss him, and I meant it.
    That night, after his last performance, he invited me back to his dressing room. I didn’t know what to expect. I had certainly heard stories from my grandfather of older men making passes at young girls. I knocked on the door and went in. He told me to take a seat on a nearby couch. He was alone, sitting at his dressing table drenched in sweat. Now, out of the stage lights, his heavy pancake makeup and overly rouged cheeks made him look macabre, like a marionette. It was like a scene from that movie Limelight with Charlie Chaplin. I got a little nervous all of a sudden. Was Rudy Vallée–Vagabond Lover going to pounce on me?
    Finally he turned around and smiled at me. “I want you to listen to something,” he said. “I think you’ll appreciate this.”
    He took out a small, cheap GE cassette tape recorder and pressed PLAY. We both sat there in his dressing room listening to the tape, which played a whooshing sound, then was quiet, then whooshed again. I had no idea what I was listening to, but he seemed to be enjoying it. He leaned back and smiled. Full of pride. “Do you know what that is?” he asked.
    I listened again very hard but all I heard was a rushing, whooshing sound. I finally said, “Is it the ocean?”
    He spun around from the mirror and raised his hand in the air with a flourish.
    â€œIt’s my applause,” he said.
    â€œOh, yes,” I said. “Yes, now I hear it.”
    Rudy Vallée smiled at me with complete satisfaction. “I tape it every night,” he said. “I knew you would appreciate that.”
    And I did. It is one of my most touching and vivid memories of show business. Rudy was a real trouper. A trouper who went out there night after night to give the performance of his life. Drenched in sweat, in the middle of the boondocks. It didn’t matter. A show is a show is a show. All that was left of it were the echoes of the applause. If you could somehow keep that sound, that joy, to remind you of why you were put on the planet. To entertain people. To make them happy just for a little while. I listened to Rudy Vallée’s applause and then quietly excused myself.
    Not long after that, we showed up for work and Phil and Rosie had skipped town. The office was cleaned out. The safe was empty. There was helpless panic felt by the staff, which quickly turned to anger. I felt betrayed. How could they do this to the Camelot? Audience members began showing up for that night’s performance of Mame and refused to be turned away. We explained to them that there would be no show, but they wouldn’t believe it. I watched people sitting in their seats, waiting for a show to start. As if the lights would go up through their sheer will. In the back, waiters and cooks were loading their cars with steaks and booze—they hadn’t been paid for weeks. Actors were making calls about their next gigs.
    There