by Vanda
“I don’t. She’s very good, and if she were a real man, she would rival Frank Sinatra, but she’s not, Jule. She’s a girl.”
“People expect me to know entertainers. It’s nothing unusual. In the early thirties when she was barely a child, the critics were wild for her.”
“In the kinds of clubs you would never appear in.”
“In ’34, Life Magazine interviewed her about her island. She owns her own island, you know.”
“Swell. Times have changed, Jule. Nowadays, Life wouldn’t sell her a subscription. You can’t get away with these things anymore. No one’s going to think you’re ‘artistic’ if you consort with people like Andy. They’re going to think you’re queer.”
She jumped up. “Don’t EVER call me that. I don’t know what’s come over you.”
“I sweated blood for your career, and I will not let you—”
“Don’t use a metaphor like that.”
“What metaphor?”
“Sweated blood. It refers to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, who, by the way, had a lot more problems than Andy or my career.”
“Swell. Become a nun. You oughta do terrific with that chastity thing. And Jesus cried blood; he didn’t sweat it.”
“Don’t make fun of nuns; they’re holy women.”
I took a deep breath. “Look, Jule, these are dangerous times. I don’t know why you’ve chosen this particular moment, when everything’s going your way, to lose your mind, but if you see Andy after the show, the morning papers will announce to the world that you are a pervert, and we will watch the crumbling of your career into tiny little bits. Then you can go sing in one of Andy’s ‘terribly-gay,’ faggoty-dyke clubs. I’m telling you, don’t see her.”
“You can’t tell me what to do.”
“Yes, I can. I’m your manager.”
“No, Richard is. You’re helping him out.”
I took another deep breath. “Where is Richard? I doubt he’d be too thrilled about Andy, either. Does he even know about her?”
“Richard flew to Omaha last night. His mother took ill.”
“So that’s why you’re with Andy. You knew Richard wouldn’t put up with it, but you figured I would. Well, I won’t, Jule. I worked too hard to get your name on that Copa marquee. If you let Andy come back here tonight, or I see you anywhere near him, or her, or whatever it is, I swear I’ll—I’ll …”
“You’ll what?”
“Don’t do it.” I slammed down my clipboard on the make-up table and walked out.
I don’t know how she got word to Andy, but when the crowds collected outside her door after the show, Andy was not among them.
Chapter 40
June 1950
“NO, RICHARD, DON’T sign anything,” I said into my office phone as I shook my cardigan off and turned on the light. The word was out—The Copa was selling Standing Room Only for all of Juliana’s shows, and the rumor mill was sizzling. Was it true she was leaving her current agent? “Let the lawyers go over everything,” I told Richard. “Bring the list of agents who called, and we’ll talk about each one with drinks. But don’t, I repeat, don’t commit to anything until you, the lawyers, and I have gone over everything. We don’t want another guy like the guy she’s with now. No imagination. I’ll see you tonight. No, I don’t want to meet your new young friend from Omaha. Yes, she was great last night. It is happening. See you tonight, and please don’t bring that guy with you.”
I hung up, knowing Richard was gonna bring that guy with him. All month he’d been introducing me to new guys he thought were perfect for me. I glanced at one of the papers on my desk. “US Leads the United Nations in a Police Action.” I thought the war we were in now, the one the government said wasn’t a war, was supposed to be cold. A police action isn’t cold; people get killed in police actions. At least it wasn’t a war. The phone rang again.
While listening to a would-be producer drone on about how wonderful Juliana would be in a bit part he had in mind for a show he was gonna air in the fall, I stacked the newspapers into a pile, hunting for my mail. No way was I gonna stick her in a TV show after the success she’d had. TV was for comedians. There was a letter from the school. I opened it and pulled out the report. “I’ll have her manager get back to you,” I told the guy and hung up, staring at my report card. The phone again. “Alice Huffman. No, Richard. I said no. We need to talk first. It’s too soon for Broadway.”
Max walked in. I waved him into the seat. “Tonight. When I meet you at Child's. We’ll start with drinks, then if I’m still talking to you, we’ll have dinner. Yes, I’m kidding, but come alone. Those young guys you want me to meet will be headed to Korea soon, anyway.”
The paper I’d thrown onto my desk caught Max’s eye. He picked it up before I could stop him. “Be there at six. Don’t sign anything before we talk.” I hung up the phone.
“What’s this?” Max asked, his voice stern.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s a federal offense to read other people’s mail?”
“What is this?”
“I’ll take it over. I’ve been busy. Juliana? The Copa? I didn’t go to class much.”
“This is not going to happen.” He waved my “F” report at me. “You’re moving in with me so I can watch you.”
“I’m twenty-seven years old. I don’t need a father.”
“But you should’ve had one when you first came to the city. Maybe if someone had watched out for you, then you wouldn’t have taken up with Juliana. And if that hadn’t happened, you’d have a more normal life now, instead of this crazy—”
“I met Juliana because of you.”
“No, I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“You invited my friends and me to hear Juliana sing so you could steal my boyfriend.”
“I did that to you? I did, didn’t I? No matter.” He pulled out his cigarette holder and pushed in a cigarette. “I saved you from a long life of boring heterosexuality. You have to move in with me. I’ve never been to a college graduation. I intend to go to yours.” He lit his cigarette. “You’re getting that degree.”
“Yes, Dad. But I don’t need it. I have a career that’s working out swell. I don’t need a college degree to manage talent and run a club.”
“For now things are going well, but this business is fickle. Maybe, if I’d had a degree when my club went under, I would’ve had something to fall back on, a way to raise money when I needed to start again. I had nothing when it happened.” He pounded his finger on my desk. “You will finish that degree. And I like you calling me Dad.”
“I’ll go to summer school.”
“I’m moving out of the Plaza. It’s too impersonal. I need something homier. I can hear Hildegarde and Anna arguing all night above me.”
“Are they …?” I whispered.
“Of course, but if you tell anyone, you could find yourself bound and gagged in the East River. The Incomparable Hildegarde is the most fiercely secret dyke I’ve ever met.”
“Max! Don’t call her that. What a horrible word to use for a friend.”
“Al right, all right, I know. Sorry. Anyway, I put down a security payment and two months on a penthouse apartment, a duplex. On East Fifty-third. I’ll be rattling around if I have the place to myself. Come live with me.”
“Haven’t you been rattling around at the Plaza?”
“Yes, and I don’t want to rattle anymore. Come live with me, so I can look out for you.”
“Are you lonely, Max?”
“I can get any cute young thing into my bed with a flick of my limp wrist.” He flipped his wrist.
“Won’t I get in your way?”
“It’s a huge place. You could have the whole upper floor to yourself. We could both be there for days and never run into each other. Besides …” He looked down and sighed.
“Besides?”
“Look, I’m going to tell you something I wouldn’t tell any other soul, so don’t go blabbing.”
“Cr
oss my heart,” I said as I crossed my finger over my heart—“Dad.”
“I turn forty next week,” he whispered.
“We’ll throw you a big party.”
“No, you won’t! I don’t want anyone knowing.”
“Wait a minute. How can you be forty? You were twenty-nine when I first met you.”
“Was I?”
“That means you should only be thirty-eight.”
“I am. To everyone but you. Somehow that age—that other age I told you about—is making me want to build something more substantial. With—someone. Shocks the hell out of me.”
“Aren’t you still with Scott?”
“Yes and no. There are times when we can spend whole days together and it’s pure ecstasy. But then he starts feeling guilty, or he gets a new therapist, and I become a monk. I’m no good at being a monk.”
“Maybe if you two lived together—”
“Two men living together?”
“Women do it. Women who are more than roommates. Look at Shirl and Mercy, Hildegarde and Anna. You don’t tell anybody.”
“You mean, one of us would be the man, and the other would be the girl?” He shook his head. “You know, one time when I was at a party I met these two old guys, and they said they’d been together for forty years. Forty years! Lived together and everything! Like a married couple. I never thought our kind could do that. Have a real life. Forty years! And these guys knew others who lived like them. Scott met a few couples like that in DC. Even pretended they really were married. I can’t fathom it—I mean, I always figured being the way I am I’d live alone, going from man to man, and yet, those old guys—there was something nice about it. But I don’t know.”
“What about Virginia? You two have been engaged for what? Twenty years? Maybe you should marry her for companionship.”
“The way I hear it, Virginia thinks quite a lot of you. Never stops singing your praises.”
“She told you?”
“Why don’t you and she …?”
“Because she’s straight, for one. We worked that out a few days ago. We’re going to stay friends.”
“Really? She told me you made her feel things she’d never felt before. You must be quite the sexual dynamo.”
“The poor woman hadn’t had any attention in that direction for I don’t know how long. Practically anyone who touched her in the right place, and she was gonna … Why am I explaining this to you? Like you haven’t crawled around a few public restrooms yourself.”
“This happened in a public restroom? Shame on you.”
“She didn’t tell you that part? Oops.”
He laughed. “You’ve come a long way kid. Maybe you and I should get married.”
We looked at each other with serious expressions as if we were considering it, then simultaneously burst out laughing so hard our sides hurt.
Virginia walked past my office door. She was weak with laughter too, which was unlike her; she couldn’t have heard us through my closed door. Max opened the door, “Virginia. Are you all right?”
“I’m sorry. Did we bother you? Moose keeps me in stitches.”
Moose came out of the kitchen eating spaghetti from a large china bowl, tomato sauce dotting his cheeks, chin, and the front of his white shirt. His ample belly drooped over his belt.
“We’re engaged!” Virginia announced.
“What?” Max yelled.
I put my hand on his arm. “Be nice. Virginia’s in love.”
“With that, that …” Catching my drift, he took in a breath. “Virginia, dear.” He pretended to be cheerful. “May I see you a moment?”
“Anything you have to say can be said in front of my fiancé.”
“Hi there, Max.” Moose waved his spaghetti fork at us from the kitchen doorway; he sucked in a long string of tomato-smeared noodle.
“No, Virginia, dear, it can’t,” Max said with a gritted smile. “Please come in the office.”
“I’ll leave you two to …” I began, heading for the door. Virginia stormed in, closing the door and trapping me inside.
“You had something to say to me, Max?” Her arms crossed over her chest.
“Are you out of your mind? You’re not going to marry that—”
“I am not a school girl whom you can chastise. Am I, Al?”
“Oh. Uh …”
“You must know what kind of man he is,” Max continued.
“I most certainly do. The kind that doesn’t take me for granted, like some people I know.”
“He’s a racketeer, a criminal! I have no choice but to deal with him, but you have no reason to go near him.”
“You are so arrogant, thinking you know what’s best for everyone.”
“This time I do, and you have to listen to me. If you knew what he’s probably done, you’d never—”
“I’ve heard rumors about what he’s probably done, but I don’t pay attention to gossip. If I did, I wouldn’t have been with you for the past twenty-two years.”
“I was never like that.”
“No. He appreciates me.”
“You cannot, under any circumstance, marry that man.”
“I’m a grown woman, capable of making my own grown-up decisions. Aren’t I, Al?”
“Uh …”
“Why can’t I marry him?” she asked us both. “Give me one good reason?”
“I have to explain?” Max shouted. “Well, for one thing, look at him. He’s not in your class.”
“Snob!” she shot back.
“He’s dangerous.”
“He’s a pussy cat.”
“He’s involved in illegal activities. You could be hurt. Please, Virginia, you mustn’t.”
She looked at him with sad eyes, a few tears escaping. “But he makes me feel—”
“What? For Pete’s sake! What could he possibly make you feel?”
“Max,” I said, “why don’t you try listening?”
“I’m trying to find out what that goon makes her feel.”
“He makes me feel, like—like … Al?”
“Like a woman,” I said.
Virginia silently nodded, pressing a handkerchief to her face.
Chapter 41
June 1950
“WE’RE ONLY HERE because Mr. Harlington sent you on a mission.” Virginia vigorously shook out her linen napkin and smoothed it over her lap. She took a tiny bite from her chopped chicken tea sandwich. “This lunch is merely part of your job.”
Virginia and I sat at a corner table on the top floor of Schrafft’s, Fifth Avenue. Despite her mood, she was attractively dressed in a large, lavender hat with a matching feather, a white jacket fitted tightly at the waist, and a dark flaired skirt. Since I was coming from the club, I used that as an excuse for wearing my usual dark suit-jacket and skirt with the chunky heels. “I thought it would be nice to have a little lunch together,” I said, in between bites of my peanut butter, chili sauce, and bacon sandwich.
“I haven’t seen you in ages and now you call? Why?” she demanded.
“It’s only been a couple weeks since we’ve gotten together.”
“Let’s be honest, Al. You’re only here because Mr. Harlington ordered you.”
She was right, but “ordered” seemed a bit strong. He wouldn’t let up, always nagging me to talk to her. I kept telling him it wasn’t my business, but finally, he convinced me she was in danger, and I knew she wouldn’t listen to him so … “Okay, you’re right, but Max is only concerned about you.”
“Ha!”
“He is, Virginia. I know he can be clumsy, but he’s really afraid you’re going to be hurt. First, he told me that Moose is married to a woman in New Jersey. They have three kids. You and he haven’t uh … you know … Have you?”
“None of your business! And, for your information, Moose told me about his wife in New Jersey. You can tell Mr. Harlington to stick that in his pipe and sit on it.
“Virginia could you stop calling Max ‘Mr. Harlington?’ It’s s
pooky.”
“I cannot. Mr. Harlington and I merely have a formal relationship. And you can tell him Moose is getting a divorce from his wife.”
“Moose said that? Really? And you’d marry a divorced man?”
“It’s not like I have a line of suitors waiting outside my door.”
“You can’t marry him because there’s no one else right now.”
“I’m not. He’s a lovely man, and any woman would be proud to—”
“He brings women to the club. Did he tell you that?”
“He’s very gregarious. People like him.”
“Virginia, these are not Girl Scouts. They wear clingy, sequined dresses and hang on him. That I’ve seen with my own eyes.”
“He likes to have fun. What—what women?”
“See? You didn’t know about them. He brings them around when you’re not there. Max thinks they’re prostitutes.”
“He would, wouldn’t he? That’s a reflection of his own dirty mind. It’s you I don’t understand. Doing Mr. Harlington’s bidding. I suppose you have to do what your boss tells you, so I’ll forgive you. Oh, those two colored girls. So sad.”
“What?” I asked.
“Sitting at the table over there. They’re never going to be waited on.”
“Why? They’re dressed appropriately. Better than me. At least they’re wearing hats.”
“Schrafft’s waitresses don’t wait on coloreds.”
“Why?”
“It’s policy. Those people do have restaurants uptown.”
“Well, yeah, but if they’re shopping in midtown …” The two Negro women stood and walked down the stairs toward the first floor exit.
“If no one was going to wait on them,” I asked, “why did the hostess seat them?”
“I imagine no one wants to say it aloud, so they let them figure it out for themselves. Perhaps they’re out-of-town coloreds. You can tell Mr. Maxwell P. Harlington III he can stay out of my life. I am doing fine with my Moose. Mr. Harlington is jealous.”
“Maybe, but …” A new approach. “Did you see James Cagney in White Heat last year?”
“It’s a gangster picture. I don’t go to gangster pictures. They scare me.”
“Well, you should. They tell you what those people are like. In that picture, James Cagney was very nice to this girl, and she thought he was a swell guy, until he punched her in the mouth.”