Vivian In Red

by Kristina Riggle

  He craned his neck to reach her face, and he was dissolving into her. He put his hand up into her hair, so soft, that hair, that he couldn’t stop stroking it. She groaned a little into his mouth, and Milo sat back, startled. Had he hurt her? She smiled, a brief chuckle, though not unkind. Vivian put her hand behind his head and pulled him forward, groaning again, this time so intentionally that Milo got it, oh yes, that’s a good thing, and then he groaned too in the same moment, and a kind of delirium took him over. He hoisted them both up like he was a sideshow strongman. Her gown was dragging down and he was worried he’d trip on it, as he bore her back toward her bed.

  He laid her down, and then frowned at her robe, the complicated ribbons and lace both blurry and confusing. She gave a low, purring chuckle and pulled it loose herself. Her gown swooped low over her bosom, revealing a valley between her breasts that Milo instinctively kissed.

  And then he was pushing her gown up, up as far as he could, and she yanked on his belt, and between the two of them, they tossed and pulled and discarded and unbuttoned as much as was necessary, and when Milo saw under the gown itself she’d been wearing nothing at all he wanted to weep, so instead he buried his face in her neck where it met her shoulder so if he did weep she wouldn’t see, wouldn’t laugh at him, and then Vivian’s lips brushed his neck, too, which startled Milo for a moment back to the afternoon, and Allen.

  Milo reared up, and loomed over Vivian’s heaving, creamy body. Then he swooped back down over her like he was ravenous, which in fact, he was.

  Vivian tickled his chest hair with her red nails. “I love you, too.”

  Milo sat up on one elbow, and felt like he was half in a dream.

  Vivian stretched and turned over to face away from Milo, and began patting the bedside table. “You don’t remember saying it, do you?”

  “What?”

  “Saying ‘I love you.’ Then again, perhaps you were a little distracted.”

  Milo remembered nothing but a wave of sensation so intense he instantly understood every crime of passion, every farkakte thing every person ever did for the opposite sex.

  “Damn, my cigarettes are in the other room.” Vivian stood up out of bed, nude, and Milo averted his eyes. She laughed shrilly. “Oh goodness, we’re well past modesty. But suit yourself if it makes you feel better. There, I’m decent now.”

  Milo looked back. “Decent” was arguable. She’d put on the filmy robe but skipped the nightie. She glided out of the room and in short order returned with two lemonades and her cigarette case pinched under her arm.

  Milo drank his lemonade in three gulps, not realizing until he felt the kick in the chest she’d spiked them with the gin. Vivian held her glass to her forehead and closed her eyes. “Be a love and fetch me the matches? And the ashtray. They’re on the side table, by your side.”

  Milo reached over and picked up a matchbook and ashtray, both from the Stork Club. Another memory, angry Vivian and soused Allen, back when he was still cranking out Hilarity lyrics.

  His thirst overcame his languid exhaustion, and he hauled himself off the bed to get a plain old drink of water. In the kitchen, though, he spied the gin, and with a shrug, he picked it up to bring it back to the bedroom.

  “Hey!” Vivian called out. “Bring that steno pad in here! Let’s see if you’re feeling… inspired, shall we?”

  Milo paused in her sitting room, gin in one hand, glass in the other, eyeing the steno pad where she’d dropped it on the floor next to the divan. So far all that sweat and worry by himself had granted him only two lousy lines. “Sure, why not,” he muttered, so quietly she couldn’t have heard where she lay stretched out on the bed in her gossamer robe.

  Inspired Milo was, as it turned out.

  He lay sideways across her bed in his undershirt and shorts, hanging his head backward off the edge, enjoying the blood rush and the gin or maybe both and who cared?

  Vivian had taken command of the pen, seeing as how she was marginally less pickled, and Milo would’ve been embarrassed about a girl being more sober than him, if he’d been sober enough to remember to care.

  Milo sang to himself in his squeaky, wavering tenor, for lack of a piano.

  “You might just love me… I think. Did you just give me a….”

  “Wink!” shouted Vivian. She was cross-legged on her side of the bed, like a schoolgirl playing jacks. Her robe covered all the important parts, but her bare legs and toes peeked out from under the diaphanous fabric.

  “Yeah, wink. I was gonna say that, give a fella a chance. Did you just give me…a wink? But I’m no swell, can’t you tell, my charms might simply…shrink?”

  “Oh, I like that. But can charms shrink? Do you think? Ha, now I’m doing it! Maybe the charms should evaporate.”

  “Try to rhyme evaporate, I dare you.”

  “Extrapolate!”

  “Okay, I’ll give you that one. Now you fit extrapolate and evaporate in those syllables.”

  “Um…” Vivian paused, scribbling, then sat up straight. “Don’t you extrapolate my charms might evaporate?”

  Milo sat up fast, his head swimming, a not-unpleasant sensation in a girl’s bed. There are few unpleasant sensations he could have in a girl’s bed, Milo figured. “Excellent rhyme, doesn’t fit the phrasing. But more to the point, I got you to sing for me.” He smiled, and pointed a finger at her in mock triumph. “Your voice is just like your laugh. It’s … lyrical.”

  Vivian gave Milo a small, sad smile that made him hold his breath. Then she said, “That would be a …miracle.”

  “Empirical,” Milo answered.

  “Satirical.”

  “Spherical.”

  Vivian nudged his calf with her bare foot. “Hysteer-ical!” Her burst of laughter rang like chimes, then receded as she shook her head. “No, we must get back to business. We’re writing you a hit song, Mr. Milo, and I will not be distracted. Not evaporate, then, but charms should do something else.” She crossed off the abandoned rhyme.

  Milo flopped down again and warbled thoughtfully, “I’m no swell, you can tell, my charms will evaporate, you think?”

  Vivian jotted something, then tapped her pencil against her lips. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be ‘charms.’ Maybe it’s something else entirely. My dear, in a year, your estimation of me, will sink.”

  “Maybe. ‘Estimation of me’ sounds clunky. Hard to sing. I like the ‘sink’ though, that’s a good thought. It’s why I picked ‘wink,’ because it has lots of easy rhymes.”

  “Aren’t you very clever.”

  “I’m also very tired. Let’s take a break, eh, kid?”

  Vivian tossed the pad on her floor. “A break it is, but you don’t get to call me kid anymore.”

  “Awww, don’t get sore.”

  “I’m not sore at all. I’m just twenty-six years old.”

  Milo rolled over and crawled like a cat to stretch out next to her. “Then you have lived twenty-six exquisite years.” Milo threaded his arm behind her neck and pulled her close to his chest.

  New York, 1936

  Milo wondered why his mother was in his apartment, shaking him.

  He snapped his eyes open to a fuzzy brown blur, with a voice that was not his mother’s. “Milo. Wake up. I have to go.”

  Vivian. He was in Vivian’s bed. Someone was banging a kettle drum in his head, his mouth tasted like a rug, and he thought he might dump the contents of his gut all over her bed sheets. How could Allen do this all the time?

  Allen. Curse that damn Allen anyhow.

  “Milo!”

  He shook his head and with effort focused on Vivian, who was pulling on a sky-blue dress. “It’s time to get up, don’t you think?” He fumbled for his glasses, and when her smiling face came into sharp clarity, he returned her amused grin.

  She approached him, turned her back, and said, “Zip, please.” Her dress was only zipped up partway. She tipped her head down slightly, and waited.

  Milo at first fumbled with the tiny zipper. T
hen he pulled it smoothly closed over her satiny slip, smooth bare back, and sharp shoulder blades. He rested one hand on her shoulder, the other on her hip. He was about to pull her back toward him, and reverse the action on the zipper, when she stepped away briskly, whirling around fast enough her skirt hem swirled around her knees.

  “I’m not sure it would do, to leave you here alone, and in this state, while I step out.” She raised her eyebrow at “state,” causing Milo to look down and inspect his unshaven, smelly, nearly naked self. That unromantic reality jarred him out of the sensual fog he’d been in for countless hours. A pang darted through his chest, as though something precious had been irretrievably lost. He began to search the floor for his clothing.

  Vivian continued explaining, though Milo had not asked her to, nor objected to leaving. “It’s true what I said that no one cares about a man visiting here. But there is a landlady who might let herself in to fix something, or just to be nosy. And I don’t need her spreading stories.”

  When Milo continued to collect his clothing without comment, Vivian sat at a dressing table and began to make up her face.

  Milo found his pants in a crumpled heap on the floor. As he pulled them on, he wondered anew how Vivian would get by once the newlyweds returned to claim their home. By the time he stuffed his shirttails into his pants, he’d vowed to find Vivian another job, a job with an understanding boss. Hell, maybe if The High Hat took off, he could hire her as his own personal secretary. That would solve everything.

  In her sitting room, he found his tie on the floor in front of the sofa and his hat on the table. He tucked the tie into his shirt pocket. Vivian by then emerged from the bedroom, walked straight to him, and pressed her lips into his with ferocity. Then she jerked back and shoved Milo lightly with her flat palms. “Time to go.”

  Minutes later, Milo scurried out the door and jogged down the steps, running back over the events from the day in his mind, shaking his head at all that had happened, all that he’d done. Milo Short would never be the same after a day like that.

  Milo slammed his way back into his own apartment. His phone was ringing as he walked in, but he ignored it, locking himself in and drawing all his curtains.

  Today would be all about work. He’d finish that last blasted song and get away from Allen for good. He couldn’t remember much of what he’d written the night before, to say nothing of whether any of it was decent. Not for nothing it was progress, though, and that counted for a hell of a lot. He ought to buy Vivian some flowers for her inspiration.

  Milo stepped into his tiny bathroom to wash his face and shave, at least. He let the water run cold, splashing his face and letting it run over his wrists. It wasn’t yet noon, but the air outside was already shimmering with heat.

  After he’d cleaned himself up some, Milo changed into fresh pants and an undershirt, skipping anything else in the privacy of his own apartment. He set about making himself some coffee, then sat down at his little kitchen table to look at the lyrics with sober eyes.

  That morning, Vivian had made to tear the lyrics out of her steno book and hand them over, until she realized something she needed to keep was on the reverse side of one of the pages. In her excitement to begin, she hadn’t noticed. “Oh, I’ll copy it over fresh for you anyway, without all my scribbles,” she’d declared, and hurriedly written a clean copy for Milo, tearing it out with a flourish. She’d then tucked it, folded, into his front pants pocket, making Milo gasp.

  Vivian’s handwriting was angular and sharp, aggressively slanted, but perfectly readable. Beautiful, really. Much nicer than Milo’s crabbed-looking scrawl, anyhow.

  He shook his head. How pickled had he been? Half the rhymes he didn’t even remember. Either they were Vivian’s ideas, or he was so tight he had invented rhymes he could not recall. He took it as a warning against hitting the bottle so hard lest he go the way of Bernard Allen.

  A gentle knock shook his concentration. Milo put the paper down and yanked open the door, half hoping to see Vivian there, finished with her appointment—

  He stumbled back two steps. Allen, reeking of booze and sweat and smoke, did not wait for an invitation before crashing through the doorway.

  “Why aren’t you answering your telephone, Short?”

  “I wasn’t home.”

  Milo stood as far away from Allen as his modest apartment would let him.

  Allen flicked a glance at him, then began pacing the short length of the room. “I’m not coming near you, don’t worry. I’ll never touch you again, not even shake your hand. Here, you left your notebook.” He dropped the notebook on Milo’s sofa, and backed away, raising his hands as if someone were aiming a pistol at him.

  Allen continued, “I’m just gonna beg you to finish the show. Just let’s finish this show, and maybe we can work together again some more, if I promise not to go near you. We can work separate, and get together when we have to at the theater rehearsal rooms, or when my wife is at home, because that’s the other thing, I sent her a telegram begging her to come home to the city. I’m doing lots of begging around now. I threw out all the booze and I swear I’m going off it now, for good and permanent.

  “Only, I can’t be alone, I see that. I can’t be alone, ever, because if I do, I do terrible things.”

  Allen screwed up his fists and pushed them hard into his eyes.

  “Hey,” Milo said, “take it easy.”

  “Just tell me we can still work together. Please. It’s bad enough what I did, but if I ruined the only good thing in my life, our songs, I’ll never forgive myself. Never.”

  “Sure, okay, we can still work together. I don’t hate you.”

  Allen choked back one sob, and took one step toward Milo. Seeing his friend recoil, Allen halted, drooped, and took a long, slow step back.

  Allen cleared his throat and took out a damp handkerchief. He wiped his face roughly. “My wife should get back in a couple days. Maybe you can come over for some coffee and we can finish the last song.”

  Milo nodded, and Allen seemed to be waiting for something, but when nothing else happened, he dragged himself to the door and out without a backward look.

  When the door clicked shut, Milo exhaled, realizing he’d been holding his breath almost the entire time Allen was there. The poor schmuck was so wretched, so miserable, that Milo couldn’t shun him forever, especially considering he owed his whole career to Allen. But could they really work together, like before? Could Milo sit beside him on the piano bench like they always used to? Could he sit on that couch and make polite conversation with Dorothy Allen, knowing what he knew?

  Vivian may have thought that drowning herself was preferable to slinking back to her sister, but just then Milo envied her ability to shake everything off and vanish into some Midwestern city. In that moment, he’d have liked nothing better than to dust his hands of the whole lot of them. But where else would he go? Where else would he even know how to live? And more to the point, he could never leave his family, who were by now almost entirely dependent on him.

  Milo sat back down at his kitchen table, picking up the pencil he’d dropped in frustration, before going over to Allen’s place. For a moment before he began writing, he stared at that pencil, and imagined himself then, not twenty-four hours before, no notion at all of what lay ahead.

  He turned his attention back to Vivian’s writing. He squinted now at the words, the night’s memories fighting back through his hangover. He frowned with the struggle toward clear recollection. Some of these rhymes were Vivian’s, it seemed. But how many? Which ones, exactly?

  An errant image, of sheet music with the credit line “Lyrics by Milo Short and Vivian Adair” flashed into his mind. He laughed and shivered at once. Preposterous! An erstwhile secretary and errand girl cut in on the credit. Max Gordon, and the director, they’d dismiss it as nonsense, no doubt, lust-crazed Milo wanting to impress a girl, or take pity on her. And Allen…with what he thought of her, Milo dared not imagine his reaction to her name
on their song. They might not even let him do it, it’s not like he went down to the music publisher himself to file paperwork or whatnot. He just wrote the songs and sheet music turned up in stores, somehow or other.

  And what they would think of him for needing help from that dame! They’d truly believe he’d gone soft in the head if he couldn’t even finish one show without some girl… His name would be mud, and in a business built on connections, your name was everything.

  Milo ran his finger down the paper. He still needed several more lines, and he could tell right off others were just not singable, and that’s not something a person can fix unless you’ve written songs before and watched actors try to put them over. And he’d have to continue to refine and polish, with Allen at the piano, then during rehearsals and maybe even at the tryouts. Hell, he wasn’t even one-quarter done, no matter how much Vivian may have helped him, for one night, in his drunken creative frenzy.

  Milo shook his head and remembered the brewed coffee, rising to get himself a cup before it turned bitter. It didn’t matter. The point was to finish the job, rid himself of The High Hat once and for all.

  New York, 1999

  The cab lets us off at the corner. Alex places the box on the curb and holds his hand out to help me step out of the car, as if he’d been doing this all his life. He has to stoop so low, tall as he is, it almost looks like a bow. Despite our serious mission, I allow myself a brief smile at the accidental courtliness.

  After sorting through Vivian’s things, Alex and I had sat on the floor in front of the big windows, as I pointed out landmarks and tried to orient him to the city. We agreed with little discussion to bring the box to Grampa Milo the next day. I didn’t bother with any more protests that Vivian might have been just a secretary, just a fan. I’d offered again to get Alex tickets to a show, played awkward concierge and tried to recommend things he could do in the city, but he waved them all off, promising he’d come back another time.