Vivian In Red

by Kristina Riggle

  That day she stopped in at Harms, Milo had been shocked to see her, but delighted. His gratitude for her long-ago advice to the aspiring song plugger caused him to think of her warmly, and it’s not like her shapely legs and sparkling green eyes hurt her case. The other office girls had gaped at her suspiciously. Even the reserved Mrs. Smith had given her a long, appraising stare before looking down her nose again at her Corona.

  Allen had been irritated at the disturbance when Milo brought Vivian into their little cubby of an office, and she didn’t help matters by sitting on the edge of his desk, messing up his papers. She crossed her legs and tapped one foot in the air, as if to a rhythm in her head. That’s when she explained her current jobless condition, and how she wondered if Milo had heard of any positions available? “I do so miss the music,” she’d sighed. They were standing close enough—of necessity, in that cramped space—that Milo could see a tiny brown mole above her collarbone, and smell her aura of roses and tobacco smoke.

  “As it just so happens,” Milo replied, a grin spreading over his face, “a certain young typist just got herself hitched.”

  Vivian could type fast as a speeding train, which warmed Mrs. Smith to her right off. She landed the job on the spot. Vivian had been starting Milo’s day on a pleasant note ever since.

  Except today, when she regarded him with wide-eyed surprise, and shared glances with all the other secretaries.

  Milo checked his reflection in the window in case he’d forgotten to put on clothes, or walked out with a face full of shaving lather. All normal.

  He cast a sneaky look around for Allen, though he didn’t figure on seeing him before the sun came up over the skyline after a bender like last night’s.

  “Milo!” bellowed Keenan, the manager, who’d blown through his office door like a typhoon. “You have nerve showing your face here now.”

  “Nerve? Sir, I don’t have much nerve. In fact, I’m terrified right now. What gives?”

  “I was under the impression that you and Allen are going to be big Broadway hotshots now and don’t need to work in a dump like this.”

  Milo felt his blood rush right into his toes, and probably through his shoes and right out all over the floor. He looked down as if he thought he’d actually see it.

  “Sir, there’s been a misunderstanding…”

  “Damn right there has. I want people here plugging our own music, not out there trying to get all they can for themselves.”

  “Hey, that’s not fair. I’m here, aren’t I? I’m all set to put in a good day’s work, same as I always do,” though Milo’s heart sank at having to work without Allen. They’d gotten such a good system going, even after Milo finally sprung for some better glasses. Playing by ear suited him, simple as that.

  “So is Allen crazy, then, for saying you’re going to do this?”

  “No, see… I want to keep both jobs. I’ll just work on the show songs at night, is all…”

  An unpleasant smile curled into place across Keenan’s wide, pale head. “That so?” He pivoted on his heel, stomped back to his office and back out again, proffering a piece of manuscript out ahead of him as he walked, like a newsboy. Extra, extra, read all about Milo Short’s career going up in flames….

  It was a handwritten draft of “Let’s Live On Hilarity,” which they’d worked on in their office, during a slow, rainy afternoon.

  “So,” Keenan drawled, “you did this on your own time, did you? And just happened to leave it lying around the office?”

  “Well, yeah, as it happens. That’s exactly right.”

  “Far as I’m concerned, you quit this morning. Beat it.”

  “Wait, Mr. Keenan! I didn’t—”

  The door slam cut him off, and Keenan yanked down the window shade on his office door for good measure.

  Milo turned to the gawking office girls. Vivian was glaring with murderous fury at the closed door of Mr. Keenan. Mrs. Smith had her hand lightly on her chest, her eyes wide. “Where’s Allen?” Milo demanded.

  Mrs. Smith just shook her head. “Oh, Milo,” she said.

  Vivian grabbed her coat and pocketbook. “I bet I know where. I’m taking a coffee break, Mrs. Smith.”

  Mrs. Smith protested, “Vivian, you can’t just—” but Miss Adair was already pushing through the door and clattering down the stairs.

  Milo scurried after her. “Wait! Just tell me where, don’t get yourself in deep with Keenan, too…”

  She banged open the door onto Broadway. “I’m so angry, I could spit. How dare they!”

  She hadn’t bothered to button her coat, and a gust flapped it open, pushing her dress against her, outlining her legs up as far as they went. Milo rushed to stand in front of her, to shield her from the breeze. He took her coat lapels and pulled them together, trying to button them for her. “You’re gonna catch your death.”

  She batted his hands away and did her buttons up herself. “I bet he went right to the theater. He was so disgustingly proud he crowed all the way out the door about it.”

  “Which theater?”

  In Milo’s shock of the previous night, he realized he’d never asked where this supposedly brilliant show was supposed to be mounted.

  “The New Amsterdam, I’m pretty sure he said.”

  She began to forge ahead through the crowd. “Vivian! I can get there myself. Please, go back upstairs. Keenan is in a firing mood and I don’t think they’ll take you back at the perfume counter. I’m begging you, kid, just go.”

  “Kid? How young do you think I am?” The heat of her anger was burning off, and now she gave him a lopsided smile of sorts, one corner of her rouged lips tipped up like a crescent. “I bet I’m older than you.”

  “Older than me or not, you look beautiful, now get upstairs, please, before I get you fired twice.”

  She gazed up at the building. The wind mussed her neat curls. “You know, I didn’t want to come today at all.”

  “Bet you want to eat, though. Are you going back in or what?”

  “Fine, Mr. Short. I’ll go. Just pop Allen a good one for me, will you?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she turned abruptly, causing two ladies with shopping bags behind her to cluck and shake their heads as she plunged between them.

  Milo leaned against the building, putting his hands on his knees to stop them shaking. Leah had been up half the night coughing, and Chana Schwartz sat up with her, and Milo had listened to the cacophony, congratulating himself on not letting Allen talk him into quitting his job.

  Milo pushed his hat firmly onto his head and sliced through the crowds as fast as he could manage without actually knocking people over. Over his shoulder he saw another theater that just last year had premiered a lavish musical revue, but now was a movie house showing Tarzan and His Mate for twenty-three cents a ticket.

  He got to the front door of the place, and a great wash of stupid swamped him. He didn’t even know how to get into a theater this time of day. The box office wasn’t open. The front doors were locked, the lobby dark. How could Allen think he was capable of being a lyricist when he couldn’t even find the door?

  He walked around the block until he saw a side door on 41st Street, opening and closing to let in people in dribs and drabs. He figured no one would know him from Adam, so he sauntered up the block, trying to time his arrival at the door with someone else’s entrance. This took him a few tries and he peered up and down the block for a policeman who might haul him off for loitering. But eventually a gal swung the door open hard enough, at the right time, that Milo caught it before it swung shut again.

  He pulled his hat low as he snuck in, in case the girl should happen to look back over her shoulder. He braced himself for a scream if she discovered she’d been followed in by a stranger.

  Soon enough, it was clear he needn’t have bothered. People were rushing this way and that, no one going any particular direction. It put him in mind of ants after you kick over their hill.

  He stood in the winding
halls of this theater, not having thought of a next step, feeling the stupid creeping up on him again, when he heard that voice, that booming laugh that he knew was Allen, knew even more when it was accompanied by the careless tinkering of piano keys.

  “When I get my hands on that schmuck…” he muttered, following the sound, ignoring a “Buddy, you need something?”

  His trail led him to the wings, and the quickest way to Allen, from what he could tell, was to go right onto the stage itself, so that’s just what he did. He burst out of the wings and onto the same stage where just last year, the lovely Tamara had performed “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”

  Allen’s laugh cut off short, and he switched his light piano tinkling to villainous chords.

  The house lights were dim, and the stage—while not lit for a show—was bright enough that Milo felt cornered by the dark, and confused. His bleary eyes finally sought out the stage’s edge, and he leapt off into the dark, teetering on landing.

  “What do you mean by quitting my job for me?”

  The men who’d been laughing with Allen, and a pretty little thing Milo assumed was a chorine in this lousy songless revue, scattered like bugs in the light.

  Allen finally left the piano alone. He had just enough beard growth to make his face look dirty, and his hair was sticking up in odd points, mostly on one side of his head. He still smelled like drunk, though his eyes were clear and bright.

  “Hey, I thought you were with me. Last night…”

  “I’m surprised you remembered how to get home last night, much less what I said or didn’t say.”

  “I didn’t remember. I mean, I probably coulda, but I slept in the office. That’s how I caught Keenan so early. Things were a bit frosty on the home front yesterday, anyhow.”

  “I didn’t want to quit! I was gonna work on the songs after hours, but then you went and got him so mad that I’m out of a job now.”

  Milo dropped onto the piano bench next to Allen, and plunked his elbows into the piano keys with a jarring, dissonant clang. Milo ran his hands through his own hair, gripping by the roots like he might rip it out, as the sickening echo rang out into the house.

  “You know, you never even asked me how much we were gonna make off this gig.”

  Milo let go of his hair and pivoted just enough to see Allen from the corner of his eye. “Okay, I’ll bite. How much?”

  Allen told him, and Milo grabbed the edge of the piano bench. “No fooling?”

  Allen laughed. “Nope, no fooling. You think Mr. Max Gordon is gonna pay you in peanuts? We’re gonna do fine, I told you.”

  “Course if we fail, we might never work again.”

  “That’s the spirit.” Allen began to plink out ominous chords again, then swung into a jazzy rendition of “Hilarity.” “So, whaddya say, pal? You said something yesterday about a better rhyme? I happen to know you’ve got nothing else better to do at this here moment.”

  “I came here to slug you.”

  “I know you did. And I did you the courtesy of sobering up first. Aren’t I swell?”

  “How am I going to tell my family I’m fired? Oy, my father. I’ve got to explain this to Keenan. Will you come back with me and explain it? Tell him I was always going to be loyal. Maybe he’s cooled off enough now and he’ll listen.”

  “Milo, what’s your beef? You’ve got a job, and a job that pays well enough I saw your eyes bug out just now. And you don’t have to report to that bully Keenan, and you can work anywhere and anytime you want.”

  “‘Anytime’ as long as it’s right this minute, and all day and all night, isn’t that it?”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “You’ve either ruined us both, or you’ll make us famous.”

  “Probably both! Now let’s get to work. Gordon is in a rush, seeing as he’s paying all these people to rehearse songs he hasn’t got. There’s paper and a pencil right over there,” Allen said, pointing with his head at a music stand next to the piano.

  Milo hauled himself up off the piano bench, and walked with a resigned step to the music stand. He looked up to absorb the soaring grandeur of the theater and it hit him all at once, like a wrecking ball, that his brother had taken him to see the Follies here in ’27. And now it would be his words filling up all this beautiful air, soaring out of some ingénue, or maybe even a star, dare he imagine?

  He began to drum up some rhymes, then tried them out on Allen. Hours passed before he realized he was hungry, and by then it was three o’clock. He shook his head as if coming to from a dead faint, and violently started when he spied, a few rows back sitting in the theater seats, Vivian, her hair still mussed from the wind, her coat draped over the seat in front of her. She waved at him with a flutter of her fingertips and shrugged, smiling, by way of saying that she’d lost another job, and such is life.

  New York, 1999

  I smile at my granddaughter as she walks in, a huge backpack hanging off her narrow shoulders. Bee would have fussed at her to have something to eat, and would have set about cooking her something. Bee could have employed a cook; we could afford it, of course. For a big enough party she would hire someone. But someone else should cook for family? Not on your life, she declared, and that was that.

  Eleanor kisses my cheek, her hair tickling my face a little. She mostly misses my face actually, but she doesn’t go back for a second try. Just as well. I’m worried I’m getting that old man smell. I mean, I shower and all, even if it takes me an age one-handed and a nurse has to hover outside the door, which is humiliating all by itself. But there’s something about being in a bed or chair all the time that I think must create its own scent. Eau d’Invalid.

  Eleanor makes small talk of the cooling weather, leaves turning, as she pulls a notebook out of her bag. She notes that Rosh Hashanah is next week and says she plans to come with the family to services. Her voice keeps trailing off and then she shakes herself back to what she was saying. Something’s on her mind. Something more than usual.

  “Grampa, I heard a name that might mean something to you. Vivian Adair?” The name hits me in the chest like a sandbag.

  I can’t help it. My eyes go to the window seat, the corner, the stairs, I know I’m looking like a crazy person, looking everywhere like this, but she keeps popping up. The other day I saw her at the piano, though she never played, so far as I knew. She was sitting on the bench, and her fingers were skating over the keys. She was looking down, her head tilted sideways like a curious child. She was wearing a glossy dress with fluttery sleeves, the waves of her hair covering her ears, her nose looking pert in profile. The nurse had been sitting right in the corner of the room, none the wiser.

  “Grampa? What’s wrong?”

  I shake my head at Eleanor and shrug, like I thought I’d seen something and was mistaken. I smile, but I have to close my good hand tight to keep it from trembling, which will look strange to her I know. My heart feels like it’s beating both harder and slower. Ominous drums in a film score.

  “I know,” she says, cringing, “you can’t say exactly, but… Do you remember her?”

  I bite my lip and look down at my knees, feigning an attempt to recall. This is also the perfect excuse to break my gaze away from my granddaughter’s earnest eyes, which look even bigger behind her thick lenses—sorry, kid, you got that from me.

  Why is she asking? Who the hell mentioned Vivian? Anyone in the city who would’ve known her is dead now, and that’s sad but also just as well.

  I look back and bunch up my forehead like, “Who?”

  Eleanor looks down at her notebook, tapping it idly with her pen. “I was talking to Mrs. Allen. Bernie Allen’s widow.”

  Oh jeez. Dorothy. I kinda figured she’d be dead by now, too. How on earth did she think to talk to Dorothy? I shudder to think what she might’ve said. I was never in her good books, after…

  This is the precise reason I didn’t want any damn biography written. Maybe I’ll die before it gets published. Then they can p
ut on my show and everyone will go see it as a tribute and they’ll make a bajillion dollars and Paul and Naomi will be thrilled.

  Eleanor’s still looking down at her notebook. Now she’s swirling doodles all down the margin. “She said her husband could never stand her for some reason, and that she was from Chicago?”

  I swallow and shrug, to indicate I don’t really know. Then I narrow my eyes, tilt my head. I’m getting good at telegraphing my thoughts with my face. Who knew I’d have to pantomime my whole life someday?

  Eleanor gets it. She was always good at reading these little non-verbal things. Like with babies and toddlers, before they could talk. Eleanor would always seem to know what they wanted, sometimes even faster than their mothers. Drove Naomi and Eva crazy, I could tell.

  She says, “She might not be important at all, but I was just curious. Mrs. Allen, and well, her son, seemed to think she was significant. In your early life. But you don’t look like you even remember?”

  I take a deep, slow breath, otherwise willing myself not to move, not to shift expression, not to betray a thing. I shake my head, sighing, eyebrows up, as if to say, whaddaya gonna do?

  “Hmm. Well, maybe something will come to you. I’ll ask next time, just in case. Well, then, I have this list of yes or no questions, to double-check my library research. Got enough energy for this?”

  I’m so relieved to be off the Vivian topic that I nod emphatically, and lean forward in the upholstered chair.

  Eleanor begins to ask. Her hair keeps sliding in front of her face, and she keeps pushing it back, until she finally ties it back with a hair thingy, sticking her pen in her mouth as she does this. The yes questions are easy, of course. When I shake my head no, it takes some doing to zoom in on what the wrong part is, but Eleanor asks enough details that she hones in on it quick. Smart girl, that one. She could be a superstar, career-wise, right there with Dr. Joel and businesswoman Naomi, though she’s made it clear as crystal she doesn’t want to be some executive in a suit. She might yet be that superstar, of course, though I overheard Paul saying she’s not doing her journalism anymore. I wonder why he assigned her this book, if perhaps it was at least partly to give her a job. Well, why not? A family business should help the family.