You will not believe this. I can hardly believe this.
Monday, Barbara — do not ask Barbara who? — called. We do not speak of Barbara Eden or Barbara Feldon.
Barbara — the Barbara — was phoning from the ICU or maybe its next-door neighbor, the step-down unit. Who the hell — how the hell — do you smuggle a phone into the ICU? Only someone who could make 12 pages in a book on Steinbrenner when she didn’t even sleep with him. Only someone who in 1977 could actually schlep arch enemies, Israel’s Menachem Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat or whatever his name was, to a peace table.
Just six days before this phone call, she’d been operated on for a heart valve replacement. And she was calling me. And not sounding weak. The voice was strong. And coming off exactly like the Barbara I’ve known since the Year of the Flood — impatient, tart, funny.
Her very first words to me on her very first phone call after 5½ hours of heart surgery, which comes with a predicted five-month recovery rate? Using full voice power, all 11 words were irritable:
“I’m calling from ICU and your assistant puts me on hold?!”
I said, “I was outside the apartment in the hallway. She had to find me. Not exactly like we were expecting your call.”
She said: “I am calling you because I can’t stand it.”
At this point, her phone went off. I went mad. You can’t exactly call the ICU, even when a patient’s last words on a phone call were: “I can’t stand it.”
I rang her office, private home number, ubersecret cell of George, her chief of staff who’s devoted, been with her more than 25 years and, except maybe for a 14-karat solitaire, might be the only real treasure she took away from that last marriage. The lady’s had three.
Finally, she calls again. Something had happened to the line. Yeah, well, ICU is not exactly wired for Verizon.
Says the patient: “Today’s the first day I could read your column, and your item on Princess Firyal‘s children’s book isn’t correct.”
Like I care. Like tots who might read it care. Like Barbara actually cares. Like Firyal, who’s so rich, she could finance the health bill by herself, cares.
So we got over her smart-aleck hello, and I asked how she is:
“I’m now just on Tylenol. And walking. And George brought me pot roast and applesauce for dinner.
“The whole experience actually wasn’t so terrible terrible, except that you feel your whole cast and crew just landed on your chest.”
I actually am of the opinion that the worst of the surgery was her inability to give two more awards this week. I believe she planned to exhume Mother Teresa and hang another ribbon on her. The woman was calmed by my assuring her the minute doctors give the OK I shall personally arrange for a picture-taking with the mayor of Paterson, NJ. In his private office. In honor of the efforts he’s put in for out-of-work in-laws.
Barbara, late the same day, called back. She wanted me to know she’s just organized her BlackBerry. So you and the mayor of Paterson might be hearing from her.
D
AN KLORES, who began as a p.r. per son, osmosed into a documentarist, is now onto playwriting. His “Little Doc” opens the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater season June 11. A personal work, it’s set in 1970s Brooklyn. The living room of a one-bedroom apartment over the “el.” Four childhood friends in a life-threatening experience created by the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll environment in which they exist.
BARNES & NOBLE boss Len Riggio, its largest stockholder, will fight to prevent activist/investor Ron Burkle from raising his stake in the firm. From a fighting family, Riggio’s father Steve was one of the few boxers to defeat Rocky Graziano twice. That’s per lawyer Chris Seeger, an ex-boxer . . . B’way and 100th’s Metro Diner becoming a library. Brian Stokes Mitchell reading a script; Bruce Littlefield reading his own “Quiet Hero: Secrets of My Father’s Past.”
BLACK Lincoln Town Car travelling 100 mph down the Jersey Turnpike was carrying Dr. Robert Rosenwasser, chief neurosurgeon of Philly’s Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. To care for Delaware’s attorney general, who is Joe Biden‘s son Beau. Concord Limousine wasn’t thinking about a ticket, but Dan Gross of the Philly Daily News says they wanted to explain.
MAYBE 300 zombies lumbered through Union Square on Sunday afternoon for the premiere of George Romero‘s “Survival of the Dead.” Who do they bump into? A pack of vegans protesting the eating of meat.
The vegans were shouting. “Meat is murder! Brains! Brains!” shouted the vegans.
The zombies shouted back, “Grains! Grains!”