Vivian In Red

by Kristina Riggle

Oh, kid, if only that were true.

  Vivian drops her casual smirk. Thunderclouds pass over her face; I recognize the look and my body blasts with sweat at the memory, and seeing it now scares me more than anything this impossible Vivian has yet done.

  Boston, 1935

  The actor stomped downstage and peered into the house seats, his hand shading his eyes. “I can’t sing the note like that, I need another one.”

  Milo put his hand over Allen’s forearm, gripping hard with a warning shake of the head.

  Allen whispered back, “He could sing it if he wanted to, he’s just a lazy guinea.”

  “Change the note, it doesn’t make much difference now.”

  Allen snorted. Hilarity was in Boston for its first opening night, and word backstage was that it was gonna flop here, which meant it wouldn’t even open in New York and Milo’s lyricist career would be over before one note was even sung on Broadway.

  Allen yanked his arm hard away and stomped over, Milo holding his breath like he did ten times a day that Allen was about to get them fired.

  Milo put his hand half over his face, peeking through his fingers. He saw his friend snatch the music right off the rehearsal piano, and scribble ferociously on the manuscript. He slammed it so hard back on the piano that the instrument groaned a deep, echoing thud.

  The rehearsal pianist, a pint-sized man named Finkelstein, cleared his throat and looked sideways at the actor, Mark Bell, who was born Marco Rubellino and slipped into his accent when angry.

  “Well?” Bell demanded, and Finkelstein played the new phrase, with a lower note. Bell repeated it beautifully, and without a word of thanks to Allen, barked to take it from the top.

  Allen flopped down next to Milo, again grumbling insults under his breath. Milo’s specialty was the words, so he couldn’t have said exactly why Allen’s original music was better, but it had been. The new note was singable, but conventional. Dull, like the hundred Tin Pan Alley ditties they’d banged out at Harms.

  Allen was squirming in the seat, cursing that if the show failed it would be all “that dago Rubellino’s fault.”

  It made Milo squirm, too. If he made Allen mad enough, would he become “that kike Schwartz”?

  Not that Bell was any kind of sweetheart. He’d demanded changes to every song he sung like he was Caruso and everyone had to fall at their feet in tribute to his greatness, when in fact his voice was strained and thin at the high notes, and he had to throw them out of his mouth almost.

  Milo tipped his head back on his seat as he listened to Bell squawk through the new version of their song, a comic number about rival apple cart salesmen. It was supposed to be a duet with another man, but Bell had insisted he deserved a solo performance and the director had caved. Milo thought the bit lost its spark without someone to play off, but what did he know from Broadway?

  He had been excited to go to Boston with the show, and his sister had squealed about it, too, begging their father to buy a camera so Milo could bring back photographs. Their father was about to say no, his face all screwed up like he was biting something rotten, when Milo jumped in to say he wouldn’t have time for that anyhow, and didn’t know how to work a camera besides.

  Camera or no, he hadn’t time to even set foot outside, and they would be heading out of town the minute the sun came up the day after the preview run, or earlier, if it flopped hard enough. The older hands on the show told him there were always changes last minute, but when pressed they admitted that it seemed like more than usual this time. Milo felt like he was always rewriting a lyric, or a new rhyme.

  The only thing that hadn’t changed a bit was Let’s Live On Hilarity. He’d tinkered with it a little that first day with Allen but after that, Max Gordon insisted they not change a word. The torch song, a ballet number, a jazz tune, the big splashy number just before final curtain, all of it had been rearranged and disassembled and sometimes the original lyrics put back.

  The fella writing the dialogue—Milo learned this was called “the book” even though it wasn’t a real book and in fact wasn’t much of a story, just an excuse for a bunch of numbers and some talking over scene changes—wasn’t faring much better.

  “I’m not feeling so good,” Allen said, burping into his hand. “I’m gonna go lie down. Come get me if they need me again. Or better yet, just tell them to fix it themselves how they think it should go. What do I care anyhow? I’m paid either way.”

  He supported himself on the backs of the theater seats, and continued to use the backs of the seats to hold himself up as he drifted up the aisle to the back of the house. The sight of him like this made Milo swallow hard. If Allen spent much more time fried to the hat he’d be well and truly useless, and then what would become of their team?

  On his other side, he smelled Vivian before he saw her.

  “If I have to type another article for another lousy press agent I’m going to demand they pay for a new manicure,” she said, holding her slim hands before Milo so she could inspect her chipped red polish.

  “You wanted to come, right?”

  “I know, I’m just teasing. It’s interesting, being here.”

  Milo looked up at the inside of the ornate theater with its curlicue décor far overhead and rows of balcony boxes staring haughtily down. “Funny thing is, this theater could be in New York and it’s just as cold outside as home. If not for the train ride I wouldn’t think I’d left.”

  “I think any place has a different heart, don’t you? New York is like a wild flapper chorine, dancing her fringe all over. Boston seems like a grand lady to me, wise and serene.”

  “Serene? You been in the same city as me?”

  “Well, no one’s serene around here, true.”

  “So what’s the heart of where you come from? You told me once you moved here, and we got interrupted.”

  “Chicago. It’s like…a big muscular boxer. Tough, you know? Not in a bad way, not always. But it’s out on the prairie, really, and the winters are hard. I think even the women go around with a certain toughness, because otherwise they’d freeze to death.” At this she laughed lightly, but Milo knew enough by now to realize she didn’t mean it. When she laughed for real, she doubled over and cried real tears right down her face, like when Allen had dolled up in the lead actress’s hat and gloves and sang her torch song in a falsetto. It was nice not to see them hate each other for a few minutes, but of course Allen didn’t know she was out there, even, just hamming it up in general.

  “Is that why you left, then, the winters? If so, you shoulda looked at a map.”

  “I’m not tough, is why I left.”

  “Coulda fooled me.”

  “Apparently I have fooled you. No, I’m not tough at all.”

  “Why here, though, seriously? New York might be a dancer or whatever you said but it’s not the softest place to land, seems to me.”

  “Are you disappointed I came?”

  “’Course not. Just asking.”

  A voice came out of the wings while Bell was sitting down on the edge of the stage, conferring with the director. “Adair! Mabel needs you to go get some stockings for the chorus girls. There are a bunch that are ripped.”

  “Duty calls,” Vivian said with a sigh, and pushed herself up from the seat like she was a hundred.

  “I’ll go with,” Milo decided, standing up too. “I need to get out and see this serenity you’re telling me about.”

  Milo didn’t get halfway down the row of seats when the director hollered at him, “Hey, Milo! Where you going? We might need you again, you gotta stick around. You need anything, that girl can get it, right, honey?”

  The director didn’t wait for an answer, and Milo shrugged. “Sorry, Vivian. Maybe next time.”

  But she was already turning away from him, striding fast enough out of the seats she stumbled and had to right herself on a seat back. It was her long, angry stride that Milo had seen a time or two since she’d joined Hilarity.

  Milo moved closer to the
director, figuring he might as well get a better view of the stage, though by now he knew the songs—all the versions he’d written—so well he could have sung the entire show himself backward.

  “Sorry, Milo,” the director said, staring at a clipboard and frowning at whatever he saw there. “I know you like that girl, but she didn’t come for a tea party.”

  “No one said she did.”

  He looked up at Milo over the tops of his glasses. “Says you. Mabel tells me she’s been making up excuses not to work since she got here. Headaches.” He tapped his head with his pencil. “I’ll give her a headache. Anyhow, stick around, we’re about to run through the Hilarity number, orchestra, costumes, and everything. Enjoy it, Milo.” He allowed a rare smile. “This is when it gets fun. Trust me.”

  The stage darkened, and a spotlight came up on George Murphy, dressed like a ragamuffin, reading a prop newspaper, slouched on a stoop.

  Murphy raised his face in a crooning lament, as the stage began to fill with leggy chorus girls dressed in racy costumes meant to both look like rags and show off their gams.

  Herbert Hoover said he knew our bleak Depression wouldn’t last

  The Prez said we’d be on our feet instead of on our….keister.

  Franklin Delano said, “Hey, Friend! You know, happy days are ’round the bend!”

  Well I say, “Sure enough! The little guy gets it in the end…”

  At “end” the girls all bent forward and popped their tuchuses straight up in the air.

  No more worries about money, honey, cuz we’ve got no more to count.

  About your rent, say, pal, don’t fret! That landlord will kick you out!

  When a guy comes by to give you a dime, just say no to that charity!

  Tell us a joke, sing us a song, and let’s live on hilarity!

  Now in the instrumental break, the tap dancing girls surrounded and obscured Murphy. Milo knew what was happening back there; the costume gals had rigged his rags to rip right off of him, revealing a tux underneath. The girls melted away just in time for the next few bars.

  Tired of breaking your back all day to earn a dollar?

  Fear not, here comes your boss to grab you by the collar!

  With no time to lose and nothing to gain, I see it all with such clarity

  Let’s get married, sweetheart, and we can just live on hilarity!

  At this Murphy grabbed around the waist a girl who had danced in from the wings, wearing a sort of wedding veil made out of newspaper. Now the tempo slowed down and Murphy danced and sang the next part with the girl in his arms, throwing in plenty of suggestive leers to make Milo’s lyrics seem naughtier than they really were.

  Freedom’s what you got when you’ve not a pot to piss in

  Liberty for you and me, there’s all day free for kissin’!

  No pennies to pinch, no floors to scrub, I say count yourself lucky, bub

  If all you’ve got is nothing, there’s nothing to be missin’!

  The chorus girls kicked and shimmied, and Murphy danced and trotted his way among them. Milo laughed out loud that the words he’d scribbled in that tiny office with Allen, for fun on a slow day, were now being belted out by none other than Broadway star George Murphy, fresh off of his turn in Roberta, while a dozen dancing girls frolicked around him.

  Murphy’s voice vaulted and somersaulted through the house as he drew out the long notes of “missin’” far longer than seemed strictly natural, then took a big, obvious breath in the middle to go a little longer, which made Milo laugh each time.

  The company exploded in a frenetic dance as Murphy melted back into the crowd for the big finish, where he climbed back onto the stoop. He began the final refrain slower, almost tenderly, before picking up the pace on the final two lines.

  I suppose I’d like something to eat besides the sole of my shoe

  And a roof would keep out the rain, but who makes me smile? It’s you!

  Working’s a chore, eating’s a snore, who cares if a paycheck’s a rarity?

  If I get hungry I’ll eat my words, so darling, let’s live on hilarity!

  The chorus girls collapsed into their final poses of admiration for Murphy and his paper-veiled girl, clutching one another on the stoop. In the silent moments that followed, the echoing notes trailed into the air, and Milo was sitting close enough to hear the dancers’ panting, and see their heaving chests.

  Goose bumps chased each other right up his arms.

  The director broke the silence. “Outstanding, everyone. Really terrific. Girls, remember to keep those smiles big as can be during the release, Murphy, you could be faster getting that contraption off, we need this to skip right along…”

  Milo tuned him out, trying to get back those last seconds when everything was sharp and bright like sun through crystal, and all his fear had fallen away, if only long enough to savor that, for the first time, everything made a kind of sense.

  The next night at Jimmy McHugh’s house, everyone involved in Hilarity got drunker or sicker or both with each tick of the second hand toward the time when the next day’s morning paper would be handed to an errand boy outside the Boston Post on Milk Street, who’d hotfoot it to the house and the first real review would be read aloud, so all could hear at once if they were to be failures.

  Milo was asking the rehearsal pianist, Finkelstein, if it was always like this.

  “Like what?” he asked, swirling his ice cubes in his whiskey.

  “Everyone’s so nervous. It feels funny in the air, even. Like there’s either going to be a parade or a brawl at any minute.”

  “Oh, that. Sure, normal. Makes not much difference to me as I’m just one of the hired hands. Two hired hands!” He held up his hands with long, delicate fingers, much as he could with a rocks glass in one fist. “You know I used to work on Tin Pan Alley? With McHugh over there. He helped me get this job. Thought he might cut me in on some of his songs, too, but that ain’t never gonna happen.”

  “Cut you in?” Milo put his own drink down, deciding against adding gin to his queasy stomach.

  “Yeah, you know, on the songwriting credit. I helped him out with one or two melodies. Course it wasn’t much help, so I can’t complain. Still, it sure woulda been nice.”

  “Is that his wife with him?”

  “Nah. That’s Dorothy Fields, in from California. She’s the daughter of Lew Fields, you know, the vaudevillian. She’s writing with Kern now, but she worked with McHugh a lot, a while back. Remember ‘I Can’t Give You Anything But Love’?”

  “Oh yeah! Sure, great tune.” Milo cocked his head. “They seem awful cozy.” They weren’t doing anything all that much that Milo could see. But she was turned toward him, standing very close, and they were sharing glances, eye-to-eye, like they had a secret language that didn’t even need words.

  “Some people think they’ve been making more than music together, if you catch my meaning. They barely see their own spouses. But who knows?”

  “I don’t know why my mother is in such a hurry to marry us off. Seems like more trouble than it’s worth to me.”

  “I bet Vivian would toss on a wedding veil for you… Or maybe not.” At saying this, both men had swept their gazes around the room in search of her, and found her sitting almost in the lap of Mark Bell on a divan near the living room doorway. “Huh, I should have guessed. She’s been hanging around his dressing room lately. Guess you’re out of it, Milo.”

  “I was never in it, Fink. You know how it goes, I gotta find myself a nice Jewish girl; better yet, let my mother find one for me.”

  “You run across any with rich fathers, throw them my way, huh, pal? I’m so sick of piano playing. I’d like to just get behind a desk at some family business somewhere, only my family doesn’t have any business anywhere.”

  “What you got against this gig?”

  “I got a good ten years on you, Milo. And I’m still just fingers on the keys to them. I’m never going to get to write a show, or sing, or act. A
nd it gets old, sitting there on that hard bench, watching everyone all around you live the life you ain’t never gonna have.”

  Milo was about to ask how that happened, how his chances blew by him already, when Allen burst into the room, waving a paper. “It’s in!” he shouted, then the paper slipped out of his hand. Vivian was quickest off the mark and snatched it up, rattling through its pages and ignoring Allen’s woozy attempts to grab it back.

  The phonograph stopped with a loud rip, and conversation dried up, and every face in the room turned to Vivian like flowers to the sun.

  She cleared her throat and began to read, in an overly projected, affected high-class accent she must have thought fitting for the crowd.

  “Let’s Live on Hilarity? Let’s not. That’s the headline,” she explained, and a groan rolled through the crowd. Milo put his head in his hand. He hadn’t considered how a newsman might make fun of the show’s name.

  Vivian read on with less verve now that the acidic headline had seeped the joy from the room. A new Max Gordon production has opened for previews at the Colonial Theatre, with some old Broadway hoofers and crooners, and a new team of songwriters the Great White Way has never heard of before, and may never hear of again.

  Allen cursed, loudly, and glanced around as if looking for something inexpensive to break.

  The revue is a herky-jerky affair with some topical songs and some standard numbers meant to be crowd-pleasing, but the performances don’t have the polish that one expects for a professional show, even a show in previews. Dancers at times crashed into each other, and a costume mishap for George Murphy marred what was otherwise a lively and tuneful number that gave the show its name. In particular, the lyrics to the title number were clever and comically lowbrow, with an ending both sad and unexpected.

  But the efforts of these new songwriters, Bernard Allen and Milo Shirt—

  Laughter raged throughout the room, charged with relief there was some other reaction to be had other than angry weeping.

  Vivian tossed her hair impatiently and waited for the giggles to recede. “Pardon me, I should have corrected it as I read aloud. “… Milo SHORT, will be wasted if the powers that be can’t shape up the show with enough snap and pizzazz to keep the seats filled and the audience clapping at curtain call.”