Lily Tomlin A Test of Character

Lily Tomlin is about to appear on Late Night With David Lettermanfor the first time in nearly five years, and she is monumentally nervous. She's running late, and the huge white limo that's taking her to Rockefeller Center is stuck in Fifth Avenue traffic. Tomlin sits in the back, looking miserable behind big dark glasses, cradling her Norwich terrier, Tess. ''I thought everybody just comes on to plug something, but they do more stuff, you know?'' she says.

Backstage at NBC, she despairs into the big mirror as the makeup woman works on her. ''Do you think my eyes are clean enough underneath?'' she asks, over and over. Finally she lets out an agonized ''OHHHHHH!''

''In about 14 minutes it'll all be over,'' says Frank Gannon, Letterman's segment producer.

''I wasn't meant to be an entertainer,'' Tomlin says.

The phone rings. ''Is it the governor?'' she says.

There's no last-minute reprieve, but everything turns out fine. Tomlin gives good segment, even getting up to do one of her old Cass Tech cheerleading routines. The audience loves her. And Letterman, who actually saw The Search as a play, is respectful, even sweet. She reenters the greenroom in triumph and sweeps out, gathering her small retinue. Miss America, another guest, is dying to meet her. A comic scheduled to appear in a few minutes turns to a friend. ''I'm not stupid enough to go on after her,'' he says.

This is what it comes down to, after all: She is loved, as few other entertainers are. The next night, in the rain, at a bookstore in Greenwich Village, dozens of fans show up to get their paperback copies of The Search autographed.

''This is calm compared to last week — Sting was here,'' a security man says. ''You had 1,500 screaming fans.''

Tomlin's fans only glow. ''She looks at you so deeply that you feel she sees all of you,'' says Goldie Hawn, Tomlin's coworker on Laugh-In, and it's true. For two hours, Tomlin sits behind a card table, signing books, taking each person in, calling each by name. ''Hi, I'm Joan, and this is Cindy,'' a forthright young woman says, indicating her shy friend. ''I would like to thank you and Jane for this.''

Intimacy is her true medium. ''I used to have a little storefront (in L.A.),'' she tells me. ''I wish I still had that storefront. We worked on The Search there. It had 25 seats in it, see. We used to put out fliers — 'No costumes, no props, no actors, no refunds.''' She laughs. ''Right now,'' she says, ''if I had a little group — I could get my stage manager, maybe a sound person — we'd be hittin' the road to go to San Diego. If Jane would just write us a new play.''

But Wagner doesn't seem to be in a hurry. ''Everything has to become a product,'' she complains. Still, as she had Trudy the bag lady say, ''(M)aybe one day we'll do something so magnificent, everyone in the universe will get goose bumps.'' If anyone can do it, it's Tomlin and Wagner. But when?