“Let’s not be so formal, Helen. Why don’t you call me Jake? Your mother does.”
“In that case—” I held out my hand, which he again took in both of his own. “Thank you, Jake.”
Schultz, having spotted us standing under the marquee, came motoring up from his parking place.
“Kramer will handle the details. Good luck to you, dear.”
I watched the limousine disappear down the block, disoriented by the sudden change in my fortunes. For a while I wandered through the Olde Playhouse, getting used to the idea that I was now in charge. In which case, I thought, I would reorganize the ticketing system according to my own plan. But first I had to get the advertising copy to the newspaper. I added the telephone number of the Playhouse to the ad, an innovation I’d been thinking of suggesting to Richard, so people could call ahead to reserve their tickets.
Albert would be so happy for me when I told him about my new position. I’d been thinking an invitation to Clarence’s graduation party would make a good excuse to see him again, except from here on out, I wouldn’t need excuses. We’d see each other often, now that Colonel Ruppert—Jake, I reminded myself to think of him—had designated Albert to be my liaison. I liked the taste of the word on my tongue. I repeated it throughout the afternoon as I counted down the hours until the rehearsal.
Chapter 18
“I’m so sorry I’m late, Helen. Have I missed any of the rehearsal?” I snatched off my hat and kissed her cheek.
“Not yet, no, but I was starting to worry.”
“Did you ever have one of those days where you just couldn’t get a grip on the clock? The hours seem to be creeping by and then, all of a sudden, there’s no time to spare.” It was close enough to the truth, which was that, after staying up all night with Felix, I’d slept right through the afternoon. I woke up that evening confused even as to what day it was until I looked at the clock and jumped out of bed.
Helen placed her hand on my chest. “Calm down, Albert, it’s fine.” She was hoping we’d have a chance to talk first, she said, but just then one of the stagehands came to tell us the rehearsal was about to start. “Let’s go in, Albert. We’ll talk afterward.”
The seats in the Olde Playhouse were as uncomfortable as they were cramped. The play was very serious with lots of long speeches and my thoughts often wandered back to Felix as the actors and actresses intoned their lines. After spending the Sabbath in the bosom of his family, would he have the courage to come see me as he’d promised? Though we shared the same affliction, he was tormented by it in a way none of my friends seemed to be. I worried Helen would notice my inattention, but her eyes were fixed on the stage, especially whenever Joseph Harrison strode on from the wings to bellow a direction. At one point, he took Jessica Kingston by the arm in the middle of a soliloquy and dragged her closer to the audience, instructing her to try it again from there.
“And don’t stand full front, give it a left quarter turn.” He jumped down from the stage (for a big man he was surprisingly agile) and dropped into the seat beside Helen. “Tell me if you think this staging works,” he said, stretching his arm behind her shoulders.
After witnessing their argument yesterday, I expected Helen to pull away. Instead, she seemed to relax back into his embrace. It made sense, I supposed. Joseph Harrison did exude a brutish charm. I felt it myself as his fingers accidentally brushed the fabric of my jacket. Still, I resented his sense of entitlement. Why should he assume I was there as Helen’s friend instead of as her date?
The play seemed to last forever. Bored, my thoughts turned to food. Except for an apple I’d grabbed from the bowl in my room and a pretzel I’d gotten from a vendor in Washington Square, I hadn’t eaten since the middle of last night. The memory of chopped liver on pumpernickel flooded my mouth with saliva.
When the rehearsal finally ended, Jessica Kingston addressed her director from the stage. “Aren’t you coming, Harrison?” He told her to go ahead without him, that he’d catch up later. I watched Jessica stomp off into the wings, her hands balled into frustrated fists, and realized Harrison must be sleeping with her.
Turning in his seat (no small task for a man of his size), he thanked Helen for sitting through the rehearsal with him. “I was glad to, Harrison. It’s going to be a wonderful success, I’m sure of it.”
“One can only hope.” He dropped a hand on her knee. “It should have been you up there, Helen.”
Whether out of pride or protectiveness I wasn’t sure, but I stood and pulled Helen to her feet. “I telephoned ahead for a table at the restaurant.” I made a show of looking at my watch. “We better get going or they’ll give it to someone else.”
“Oh, well then, let me get my pocketbook.”
“But you can’t leave,” Harrison said, as if Helen and I were actors on his stage to be placed where he directed. “You saw how Jessica floundered through that soliloquy. I want to know what you think she should do.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out, Harrison.” Helen started up the aisle beside me, then turned back. “The speech lasts too long for her to be onstage alone. You were right to think she needs a little dog that she can hold in her arms and act like she’s talking to it.”
“Then you’ll pay for the trainer?”
Helen shook her head. “There’s really no money. But listen. The core of her character is her inability to distinguish truth from fiction, right? That’s why she believes the gardener instead of her own husband. What if her dog died years ago, but she had it stuffed and keeps it on her bed? That way, when she addresses herself to it the audience will have to wonder if she believes the poor thing is still alive.”
Harrison grabbed her hand and brought it to his mouth in an exaggerated gesture. “That’s brilliant. I’ll have to add a line to the script, but yes, I think that’s even better than a live animal. Thank you, Helen.”
“You can thank me by making sure this play of yours turns a profit.” She took my arm. “Let’s go, Albert.”
Once we were outside, I confessed that I didn’t really have a reservation.
“But you are starving, aren’t you?” Helen said. “I heard your stomach complaining through the entire rehearsal. Come on, I know a place.” She led me to an Italian restaurant on Eighth Avenue. On the way, she asked if I’d go with her to Clarence Weldon’s graduation party the next evening. I turned her down, saying a college friend from out of town was staying with me Saturday night. I hoped there was some truth to my lie and that Felix Stern really would show up at my door.
At the restaurant, the maître d’ assumed we were a couple and led us to a quiet table in a dark corner. “I hope I did the right thing, Helen, rescuing you from Joseph Harrison.”
“Is that what you were doing? I can take care of myself, Albert, but I’m glad you suggested dinner. We have business to discuss.”
“What business?” A violinist sidled up to us and started sawing away at a Chopin nocturne. We listened politely for a minute before I gave him a quarter and waved him off. That’s when Helen surprised me with her news about the Colonel’s purchase of the Olde Playhouse and his offer to make her the manager. I’d had no idea that was in the works. “Congratulations, Helen. I’m happy for you.”
“I hope you don’t mind, but Jake wants you to help me with the business end of things. He said you’d be my liaison.” A waiter brought out a plate of antipasto and filled our glasses with Chianti. I ordered a lamb chop with buttered beets, eagerly anticipating a meal superior to anything I could get at Antonio’s.
“I suppose the Colonel will tell me all about it on Monday.” Tamping down a sense of betrayal at having been kept in the dark, I lifted my glass and offered a toast. “To your new career, Helen.”
• • •
“A career girl?” Paul said when I caught up with him at Antonio’s later that night for Jack’s show. “You better watch yourself with her, Prince Albert.”
“But won’t that make us perfect for each other? From wha
t I read in the paper, women like her aren’t looking to catch a husband. They just want a man to take them out for dinner. Anyway, I like Helen. Why shouldn’t we be friends?”
“Don’t you know that saying? The Bachelor Girl life is one sweet song, providing it doesn’t last too long. Believe me, women all want to get married sooner or later.” He pointed at Edith whispering to Toni. “See, even the lesbians want to marry each other.”
It was nearing midnight and the place was packed. If my Boston friends from the train came by, I never saw them. A group of uptown swells on a slumming trip through the Village had taken over half the tables. The more they drank the louder they got until I was afraid they’d drown Jack out. I shouldn’t have worried. In character as Jacqueline, he came strutting down from that little stage and shushed the loudest of the group without losing a word of the song. When the guy’s friends laughed at him for being shamed by a pansy, he jumped up from his seat and threw an unsteady punch. Jack reached out and caught the guy’s fist in his lumberjack hand and forced him back into his chair. “That’ll teach you to insult a lady, sonny boy,” he said, dropping his voice down to a masculine register before spinning around, squealing like a girl, and sashaying back to the piano. The place broke into such wild applause even the guy who’d been belligerent got up and took a bow.
“By the way, Albert,” Paul said, “let me give you my new address.” I assumed he’d gotten behind on his rent and been kicked out of his measly garret. Anticipating another address just as dodgy, I raised my eyebrows when he slid a card across the table on which he’d scrawled a house number on Waverly Place. Turned out, his benefactor had arranged the move. “He can’t stand coming up to my shabby room, and he doesn’t like the idea of running into neighbors in the stairwell, so he bought this place—just wrote out a check and signed the deed. It’s a narrow old town house, but he’s having it fixed up with steam heat and he’s put me in charge of furnishing it. It’s still a wreck, but we’re inviting Jack and some people up for drinks tomorrow to celebrate. You’ll come, won’t you? But don’t bring that girl.”
If I brought anyone, it would be Felix. I imagined he was asleep by now in the narrow bed of his childhood, the smell of roasted chicken and candle wax lingering in his hair from his family’s Sabbath dinner. Paul would have welcomed him, of course, but after what Felix had said about pansies, I didn’t think it was the kind of party he’d want to attend. I made an excuse about having work to do and left it up in the air.
Sleeping all day had transformed me into a nocturnal animal. After Antonio’s closed, I wandered down to Corlears Hook Park to watch the Saturday morning sun come up over the Navy Yard across the river. Seeing the troop ships at anchor turned my thoughts to King. It had been a week since he’d shipped out. They must have disembarked in France by now, those stiff boots of his tearing up his blistered heel as he marched toward the front. A pang of worry pierced my ribs and made it hard to breathe.
I decided it was time to go home when a drunken sailor tried to lure me into the bushes. Crawling into bed, I pictured Felix seated with the men at the synagogue, a skullcap pinned to his hair. As I punched my pillow, I wondered if he’d pray (as I once did) for God to cure him of our shared affliction. I’d given up asking for divine favors back in boarding school, but perhaps Felix still believed such grace was possible. To be a husband, to father children: our strange desires did not divorce us from these common longings.
I slept fitfully through the day. That evening, I met up with some friends at the Life Cafeteria for a meal that was both supper and breakfast. When the sun went down and the streetlamps came on and still there was no knock on my door, I shut my curtains and figured Felix’s prayers had been answered.
Then the landlady called up to say I had a visitor. There he was, Felix Stern, standing tall and nervous in the hallway. He came in. I shut the door. I took his hat and jacket and hung them on the rack. We were awkward for a moment, mumbling words of no consequence. Then he stepped forward and put his mouth on mine. I unfastened his collar, unbuttoned his shirt, unbuckled his belt, untied his shoes. As we fell into bed, it soon became apparent that the excessive passion I’d witnessed at his apartment carried over into his lovemaking. I sent up my own little prayer, thanking God for leaving the field uncontested.
Around midnight we locked ourselves in the common bathroom and filled the tub. I poured water over his hair to rinse out the soap. The lump on his forehead had gone down since Thursday night, but I imagined his mother fussing over it. I felt a pang of jealousy as I pictured her lips on his skin. “So, every week you disappear for an entire day?”
“Every week, yes, but look at it this way, Albert. You’ll always have Friday nights to spend as you please. That’s the advantage of being with a Jew.”
Being with. Those were the words he used. It was a bold assumption after such a short time, but one I welcomed. It made the coming summer shimmer for me, the notion that Felix and I would be with each other, even on the nights we spent apart.
Chapter 19
Though the heat of July had lifted, Manhattan had a way of making even the most tolerable of August afternoons uncomfortable. I fanned myself with a Playbill while I paced the lobby of the Olde Playhouse, listening to the click and grind of the adding machine from the office. Finally, the sound ceased. I leaned through the doorway. “Don’t keep me in suspense, Miss Johnson. What’s the verdict?”
“Do you want the good news, or the bad news?” the bookkeeper said, removing her horn-rimmed glasses. Though a young woman, Bernice Johnson favored old-fashioned outfits, from high-collared shirtwaists that covered her neck to long skirts that hid all but the toes of her shoes. As if to add to the effect, she wore her black hair in a bun from which a few tightly curled strands escaped at the nape of her neck. She reminded me of when ingénues play matronly roles—the costume, the posture, even the voice could all be right for the part, but still the pretty face undermined the act.
I pushed aside the ledger so I could sit on the desk, my feet swinging. “Let’s get the bad news over with.”
“You were hoping to replace the seats before the opening of the next production, but I’m afraid there’s not enough surplus in the account to complete the project.”
“Oh no.” We were set to open the fall season with an original drama about a returning soldier confronting infidelity on the home front. Harrison’s play had run through June, followed by the Shakespeare troupe Richard had scheduled for July and August, so booking this new production had been my first big decision as manager. I’d had a difficult time convincing the playwright, who’d hoped his Broadway debut would be closer to Times Square, to stage it at the Olde Playhouse. It was my promise of improvements—replacing the seats and the spotlights, installing new rigging for the backdrops—that had clinched the deal. When I heard of a theater downtown that was closing, I’d negotiated a good price for their seats which, though well used, were decades newer than ours. But I still needed to have them installed, and here was Miss Johnson telling me we didn’t have enough to pay the workers. I was sure the new play would bring us acclaim, but I worried my artistic ambitions as producer had compromised my financial obligations as theater manager. I pinched the bridge of my nose, understanding now the pressures Richard Martin had been under. “You said there was good news?”
“I did. As of today, the Olde Playhouse is officially in the black.”
“Thank goodness for the summer Shakespeare season; it always saves us.” The troupe, which had come in from Peoria, was so impressed to be in New York they never complained about the shabbiness of the house. I’d told their director to stage only comedies, fearing that seeing Henry storm Agincourt would make the audience worry about our boys in France.
“You were right, Miss Winthrope. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is sold out for the final performances this weekend. After all the expenses, you’ve realized a modest profit.”
“But not enough to finish the improvements I promised. What a
m I going to do, Miss Johnson?”
She looked at me, amused by the question. “Why not ask Colonel Ruppert for the money? After all, it would be an investment in his own property.”
I wasn’t sure how much more I could ask of Jake. I hadn’t even seen him since he’d come to the Playhouse back in May to tell me he’d bought out Richard Martin. Everything went through Albert. “I’ll ask Mr. Kramer what he thinks. Is there anything else?”
“No, that’s all.” She covered the adding machine and picked up her pocketbook. Miss Johnson’s olive skin, along with her old-fashioned style, made me think she must be Italian. Perhaps her people had changed their name from Giovanni.
I walked out with her. “Have a nice Labor Day weekend, Miss Johnson.”
“Same to you, Miss Winthrope, you and your young man.”
“You mean Mr. Kramer? I wouldn’t say he’s my young man, exactly.”
She frowned playfully, as at a child telling a silly falsehood. “If he’s not your young man, then what is he?”
That’s a good question, I thought. Albert and I had been seeing each other every Friday night for months now, but I still didn’t know to what extent our weekly dinners were dates as opposed to business meetings. We always ended up discussing the management of the Playhouse or his work as Jake’s secretary instead of more personal topics. I knew I should have talked less about myself and asked more about his ambitions and goals, but there was no one else who listened so attentively to the challenges I was facing at work. I did look forward to that moment at the end of every Friday night when, in the lobby of my apartment building, Albert placed his lips sweetly on my cheek. It was such a contrast to Harrison’s boorishness that I wasn’t sure what to make of it until I read Miss Rowland’s advice column in the paper: Kissing a girl, she told young men, without first telling her that you love her, is as small and mean as letting a salesman take you for a free ride in an automobile when you have no intention of buying it. Albert was neither small nor mean, but he was no more ready to make a declaration of love than I was ready to receive one. It made no difference what label we attached to our relationship, I decided. He was my young man in all the ways that mattered to me.
Bachelor Girl Page 15