[Juliana 02.0] Olympus Nights on the Square

by Vanda

  Stan turned toward me as I approached the stage. “I will not put up with these fits of temper, Alice.” His lips were a straight line of contained anger. Stan knew his business; he’d been at it for more than twenty years, but he tended to be pretty straight-laced. He expected everyone to do things his way, no questions. Sometimes we called him “The Professor” because he peered at us through thick-lensed glasses, wore a bow tie, and rarely removed his jacket no matter how warm it got in the rehearsal studio. Johnny could use some colorful language, so Stan was constantly reprimanding him. Stan had a quiet little wife he hurried home to after every rehearsal. He never went out for drinks and conversation with the rest of us.

  “I don’t think Stan meant it the way you’re taking it,” I said, hurrying to avoid a major riff.

  “We don’t need him, Al. Johnny has been directing me for years.”

  I wanted to say, “And look where that’s gotten you,” but since Johnny was sitting at the piano, staring at me, waiting for my response, I only smiled. “Johnny is busy writing your music, and he’s doing a splendid job. Splendid, Johnny.” I nodded at him, and he nodded back. “I’m sure we can work this out.”

  I walked over to Stan and guided him toward the doorway. “Stan, I know what you mean. Let me talk to her about it. I think I can fix it. Give me a little time alone with her.”

  “Alice, we do not have time for these tantrums, and the way she was singing that song—”

  “I know. It’s almost lunchtime. Why don’t you and Johnny have a bite, and—”

  “I will not go anywhere with that foul-mouthed ‘musician,’” he said musician the way some people said, “homosexual.” He marched to his chair and picked up his briefcase. “I will return in one half-hour, Alice, not one minute less or more. She’d better be ready to do it correctly. I’m a busy man. Remember our agreement.” He walked stiffly out the door.

  “I spose you want me to go, too,” Johnny said, rising.

  “Do you mind?” I asked in my humblest voice.

  “Of course I do,” Johnny said. “But for Juliana—anything.” He blew her a kiss, grabbed his cap and walked out.

  Juliana sat on a high stool in the center of the stage, one foot propped against the bottom rung, the other crossed over it at the ankle. She wore a sleeveless, light-blue blouse with a navy-blue pencil skirt.

  “What did he mean ‘remember our agreement?’ What agreement?”

  “Contractual stuff.”

  “I can’t work with that man,” she said. “Did you hear him? Calling me flat. Never.” She stood and lifted the water glass from the top of the piano.

  “I don’t think he meant musically.” I paused, concerned she’d now turn her venom on me. “I think he meant emotionally.”

  “Well, of all the nerve.” She slammed the water glass back down without taking a sip. “I know how to deliver a song, and I can knock an audience on its rear end.”

  “Yes. When the song has a humorous slant. Or when the song’s sexy with a sexy beat and it let’s you flirt and dance—there’s nothing like you. The whole audience feels the charge.”

  “But?”

  “But you seem to have trouble going full-throttle on some of the ballads. That’s why there’s only a couple in your act.”

  “Oh, really? You think I can’t sing ballads, so you’ve cut them down to cover my retardation? Who the hell do you think you are? You’re a kid from the country or, what are they calling it these days, ‘the suburbs.’ You didn’t know a thing about this business until a few years ago, and now you think you’re some kind of expert.”

  “I don’t think I’m much of an expert on anything. Except your career and how to make it happen. That I do know about, and you have to listen to me. We have a deal. So pay attention.”

  She walked to the stool and sat down. “Say something. Make it brilliant.”

  She was not the kind of woman who took instructions easily. “From that stool, sing ‘O, Mio Babbino Caro.’”

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  “It’s opera. It has nothing to do with this show.”

  “Sing it.”

  “From here? With no accompaniment? Do you have any idea how difficult that is?”

  “No. But you can do it. I’ve heard you. Begin.”

  I sat down in a front row seat while she grumbled under her breath, I think calling me names. Juliana sat silently, her head bowed. Then, she raised her head and lifted the song from the stage floor into her body, letting herself become the song. Watching this transformation made it hard for me to hold onto my professional pose. As the sounds poured out of her, the child inside me jumped up and down, my mouth hung open, and my heart fell on the floor. When she finished, she took one look at me and laughed. “If all my audiences were like you, I wouldn’t need to eat, sleep, or have sex. I’d just sing.”

  I swallowed, stood, and tugged on the edge of my jacket. “Jule, what you did just now, you have to do with your ballads; you have to put all of yourself into them.”

  She sat down on the stool. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “No, I don’t. Tell me why you can put all of yourself into an aria, but not when you sing a ballad or a love song.”

  “I—can’t explain it.”

  “But you know you’re not doing it.”

  “Of course I know!” she shouted, jumping up. “Am I finished? My career’s over. Is that it?”

  “Don’t be silly. You can do it. I’ve heard you.” I looked around the room. The doors were closed. “That time you sang, ‘My Romance’ to me,” I whispered. “And then, you—kissed me for the first time. Do it like that.”

  “Don’t ask me to do that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because—you were this innocent kid looking at me like I held the secret to the universe. You were sweet, and open, and … Don’t make me talk about this.”

  “You’re afraid of showing raw emotion in front of people, aren’t you?”

  “Of course not. I’ve been singing in front of people since I was three.”

  “Embarrassed then. Is that why you didn’t pursue opera professionally? You were afraid of the nakedness?”

  “I’m not afraid of nakedness. That’s you.”

  “Wrong metaphor. Right idea. Sing ‘(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons’ right to me. Look at me and sing it. Sing it with the same intensity that you sang ‘O Mio Babbino.’”

  “Don’t ask for that.”

  “What’s different? They’re both emotional.”

  “One, in ‘Babbino,’ you don’t know what the words mean, and two, it’s about a girl telling her father she’s going to run away with her boyfriend.”

  “That’s it? Gosh, for something that sounds that beautiful I’d expect the words to mean something grander. Like something about heaven or God.”

  “She’s extremely passionate about it, threatening to throw herself off a bridge. It’s hard to explain in English.”

  “It’s being personal that embarrasses you, isn’t it?”

  “Will you stop saying that? Nothing embarrasses me.”

  “Not true. You’re embarrassed when you have to stand there and be emotionally naked. That’s it. You’re embarrassed right now at having to listen to me talk about it.”

  “Stop psychoanalyzing me.”

  “I wouldn’t know how to do that.”

  “Everybody’s doing it these days.”

  “Quit changing the subject. I want you to stand on that stage and sing ‘(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons’ with the same depth of feeling you gave to ‘O Mio Babbino.’ Prove that you’re not embarrassed. Sing to me, Jule.”

  I sat down in the front row again.

  “You love doing this to me, don’t you?”

  I grinned. “Only a little.”

  She stomped her way back to the stool and broke into a silly dance step.

  “No fooling around. Do it seriously.”

  She stood in front of
the stool, her head down for a long time. The silence grew heavy with my tension. She opened her mouth, looking not quite at me, but close enough, and sang. I fixed my eyes on her to make her as uncomfortable as possible. It wasn’t so easy for me either to look at her straight-on while she sang a love song.

  She stepped down from the stage one white, high-heeled shoe after the other in delicate little steps. She walked toward me as she sang, a challenge in her eyes, and stopped only when she was so close to me that I could feel the soft material of the edge of her skirt against my knee. It was a duel, and she had no intention of losing. She sang with such feeling, almost looking right at me, that I wiggled in my seat. My eyes scanned the room to be sure no one had slipped in to see whatever we were—I imagined her bending over to kiss me, and I would have accepted that kiss even in that public place. The last line still vibrated over my head when she said, “Did that meet with your approval, Miss Huffman?”

  Before I could melt at her feet, clapping came from behind me. It was Stan.

  Chapter 23

  I KEPT UP my work at the Mt. Olympus while preparing for the opening of Max’s new place, The Haven, on 52nd and Fifth. We were headed for Swing Street! Down the block from our new building was “21” and Jimmy Ryan’s; another few blocks away was the Copa. The Mt. Olympus was doing so well that Max was going to keep both open with me as sole manager of The Haven. And I was going to get my own cabaret and liquor licenses. My name on both!

  There were plenty of women who owned bars, but a woman in full charge of a Cabaret? Well, I didn’t know any. But me! So I was happy, really happy, but—the darkness—it was always there, and sometimes there was a knife in the air and my mother slashing at her arms and at me. I had to stop thinking of all that. It was happening. My dream was coming. I had every reason to be happy. She couldn’t hurt me anymore, but there were times when I wasn’t so sure. Especially when I was happy.

  While Max was dealing with designers and carpenters, and spending a fortune making The Haven ready, he had me going to dives to look at unknowns who might become another client for me to manage. I think he hoped I’d find someone who would take up so much of my time, I’d drop Juliana, but there was no chance of that. I was young. I could live on three hours of sleep, Nedick’s hot dogs, coke, and the occasional brandy.

  Whenever I went out to the clubs, Bart would pick me up at my Milligan Place apartment like it was a normal date. Yes, he was that Bart—Bartholomew Montadeus Honeywell the Fourth, who Max tried to get me to marry in ’48. Bart became a necessity. Max paid him to escort me on my nightly hunts for a new client, since I couldn’t enter a club without a masculine appendage dangling from my arm.

  Bartholomew was about my height, short for a man, but his striking good looks, platinum blond hair, and slender physique made up for his short stature. He wore white pants and a white suit jacket over a white shirt and white tie. All that white showed off his pronounced tan. I was sure his dimpled smile drove men wild.

  Bart and I had gone twice to The Number One Club at 1 Fifth Avenue, not far from my apartment, for the Monday Night Amateur Show. The Number One was one of the few clubs that didn’t expect me to arrive in a formal gown. It was a pretty casual place, so Max dressed me in a simple flower print with only a slight flare. It was sleeveless in consideration of the eighty-degree heat. I think not having to dress up was what convinced me this place harbored hidden genius despite the not-so-hot “talent” I’d seen so far.

  “Shall I retrieve us a bit of libation?” Bart asked as we sat sandwiched among four tables of rowdy drinkers.

  “A Tom Collins for me. I hope they at least have that.”

  What passed for a stage was a grand piano wedged between two poles. A square piece of wood on the floor between the poles was the stage.

  Bart placed a bottle of beer in front of me, no glass. “That’s all they had.” He sat down, pressing one leg delicately over the other. He twirled his white loafer at the gentleman with the petite mustache across from us, sitting at his own tiny table. “Look, Bart,” I said. “You can’t be running off like last week and leaving me to sit here alone.”

  “I assure you, my dear,” he gestured with all five of his carefully-manicured fingers, “it was never my intention to cause you any anxious fright last week. I merely met an old acquaintance. However, for our sojourn tonight, I shall remain glued to your side.”

  I sighed. “Not that close. Sit there. And no more ‘acquaintances.’” Last week, the “acquaintance” was the bartender. This week, he turned his dimpled smile toward the mustached gentleman. Normals were delightfully blind to these flirtations occurring around them all the time.

  The lights went black. No warning. A young blonde girl slunk out onto that ridiculous stage in a clinging blue gown that no designer had designed. She glided in a circle of blue light as someone in the dark played a horn better than I’d ever heard it played in the big clubs. She sang “Blues in the Night.” Sultry. Sexy. She sang right through the audience’s chatter until they finally had to shut up and listen to her. She was a white girl singing the blues like a colored girl. I could barely stay in my seat. What a find. I had to represent her!

  She only sang the one song and then slithered off. “Bart, I’m going backstage,” I whispered as the next act was setting up.

  “Oh?” He looked at me hopefully.

  “Yes, you can go talk to that guy over there. Don’t leave without me.”

  I slid in and out of the tiny tables of people talking, ignoring the act that was on stage. It was good to be free of Bart, but I wondered if I was breaking some rule. Was I sposed to bring him into the dressing room with me? I didn’t know how to be a career woman, and I didn’t think to ask Max about that. Barney told me not to sit on my instincts, so I plowed ahead despite feeling like everyone was watching me.

  I took a breath and stood straight, pretending I knew what I was doing. I walked through the darkened hallway. A woman leaning on the wall, smoking a cigarette, directed me toward the backstage door. “Thattaway, honey.”

  Inside, under a few bright, bare light bulbs, was a room packed with entertainment hopefuls in various states of undress, crowding around a long make-up table.

  “Yeah, you wan’ sumpin’, lady?” an old baldheaded man in suspenders sitting near the door asked, as he sucked on a cigar.

  It must’ve have been 110 degrees in that room, and with all those sweating bodies, the smell almost knocked me over.

  “The girl—she sang, ‘Blues’ …” Trying to hold my breath and talk at the same time wasn’t so easy. “…in the Night.’”

  “Hey, kids,” the old man yelled, gesturing with his soggy cigar, “which a youse done, ‘Blues in da Night?’”

  “Da’s me,” the young blonde called, pulling a slip down over her small breasts. “Ya wan’ sumpin’?”

  “Dis here lady wants sumpin’. Make it snappy. She ain’t got all day. She’s dressed nice.”

  The girl stepped past a leggy dancer who was pulling on a nylon stocking. “Ya wan’ sumpin’, lady?” she asked me.

  “You’re the girl who sang ‘Blues in the Night?’” I tried to hide my shock. Or was that disappointment? I was expecting a sophisticated …

  “Yeah, dat’s me. So’s ya like it?” Her voice had the same nasal quality as Judy Holiday in Born Yesterday. She tightened one of the straps on her slip.

  “Yes, I did. Very much. And I wanted to talk to you about representation.” I handed her my card—wondering if I should get the hell out of there. What would Max do?

  “Hey, you! Don’t goes talkin’ to her,” a young colored man, barely eighteen, in a sleeveless undershirt shouted. He climbed over chairs and bodies to get to us. “Don’t be flauntin’ yerself like some two-bit ho’.” He pressed a dress into her hands. “Ain’t I learned ya nuttin. Ya covers yerself up when ya talkin’ to the public.”

  She started to slip into the red and blue-striped dress.

  “Ya wanna hire her?” the young ma
n asked. “She does bahmitzvahs,

  weddin’s, birthdays. Even funerals if ya gots the cash. But ya gots to fix it wit’ me first.” He pointed a thumb at his chest. “I’s her manager.”

  “You’re this young woman’s manager?”

  “I sure is and she don’t come cheap. You gots a old man round here somewheres? I ain’t negotiatin’ with no female.”

  “I think your friend and I should talk,” I said to him, then turned to her. “Did you look at the card I gave you?”

  The girl looked down at the card in her hand. “Jesus gawd, LeRoy, get a damn load of dis. She’s wit’ Max Harlin’ton. My gawd, dis could be my shot.”

  “Yeah, and she could be a screwball. Sorry, lady, I’s her manager. She don’t need nobody else.”

  “Uh, could you tell me your name?” I asked the girl.

  “Oh, yeah. I’m Connie and dis here’s LeRoy. He’s my special someone, if ya know what I mean. I’m his goil.”

  “Don’t be tellin’ her that. This are business. That all she gots to know ’bout.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Connie. I’m Alice Huffman. And LeRoy.” I nodded at him and took out my date book. “Connie, why don’t we make a date to meet at the Mt. Olympus? Bring some of your material.”

  “Hey!” LeRoy squawked. “You can’t comes in here and steals away my client. Don’t ya know nuttin’ ’bout ethics? I gotta come wit’ her.”

  I wasn’t sure what to do with him, and I wasn’t even sure I still wanted Connie. I wished I could crawl into Max’s lap.

  “Then, you and Connie have a contract?” I asked.

  “Hell, no! We ain’t got no contract,” Connie answered. “Quit yer catterwallin’ LeRoy. Dis here lady could maybe give me my start. She works with Max Harlin’ton! ’Sides, we only gonna tawk. Righty, dighty, Miss Huffman?”

  “No. I want to hear you sing, too. You don’t have to worry about hiring an accompanist, though. We have someone at the Mt. Olympus who can—”

  “I plays for her! Piano, horn, drums, you name it. Where she go, I goes.”