"Another word," she said. "Shiksa. It doesn't just mean non-Jewish girl, like you may think. My family calls me shiksa. It means a Jewish girl who tries to act like a gentile. They spit the word."
"Glenda ..." He ran his hand along her cheek.
She turned and looked up at him, smiling tearfully. "My real name is Golda Graustein. But why do I tell you this? You didn't ask for an education in the peculiarities of my background and family. I'm sorry, Bat."
He bent down and kissed her forehead. "If it helps you at all, any way at all, then tell me," he said.
"Are you going to stay with me tonight?" she asked abruptly.
Bat nodded. He was surprised but was not going to pass up the opportunity.
"You don't know what you're getting into," she said. "Glenda falls in love. Glenda makes a fool of herself."
"So do I," he said.
She stood and began taking off her clothes. Besides the blouse and skirt she was wearing a bra and panties, garter belt and stockings. In a minute she was naked. She had a beautiful body, oddly white as if she never exposed it to the sun. She had no swimsuit marks. The contrast between her bright pink nipples and the white skin of her breasts was fascinating.
"C'mon, baby," she said. "I wanta see you, too."
Glenda grew visibly excited as Bat stripped. She winced when she saw the bullet-wound scar on his chest, but her eyes stayed on it only an instant before they dropped to his loins as he pulled down his shorts.
"Oh, marvelous!" she whispered. "Not mutilated. Not circumcised. My uncle is a mohel. He cuts little boys. I hate it. Bring it to me, Bat! Oh, God, I want it!"
She dropped to the floor, rolled on her back, and spread her legs for him. She brought to lovemaking the same energy and frenzy she brought to performing on stage, and she ascended to levels of rapture he had never seen a woman attain before. They coupled twice on the floor before she would consent to interrupt long enough for him to carry her to the bedroom and put her down on the bed. No other woman had ever exhausted him, but when finally Glenda Grayson grew heavy-lidded and soft of voice he was glad.
"C'n we put it in the contract that you'll give me nights like this at least three times a week?" she asked.
"I'm not sure I could handle it," said Bat.
"What an admission!" She laughed. They were her last words before she fell asleep.
5
A week later Jonas arrived in Las Vegas, flown in from the airstrip at Cord Explosives. Bat met him at the airport.
"What's this crap about making a television show?" Jonas asked as soon as they were on the road.
"I've got a good idea," said Bat.
"Yeah? Well, when did I say I want to make a television show? I suppose you mean to use my money?"
"It's a business proposition," said Bat. "A good business proposition. One we're going to need."
"Need?"
"We're beginning to lose money on the manufacture of television sets," said Bat. "The little makers are going to be squeezed out. That's why I think we should go into producing."
"Why should we be squeezed out?" Jonas asked. "The Cord sets are quality."
"Research and development costs are going to go out of sight," said Bat. "Are you aware of this thing called the transistor that they developed at Bell Labs? In a few years, the only tube in a television set will be the picture tube."
"What good will that do?" asked Jonas. "Sure, they've got pocket radios, which is all very well and good, but a TV set has to be big enough for its picture tube."
"How often does a Cord set have to be serviced?" Bat asked. "Servicing television sets is a minor industry. Day or night, somebody will come in a little truck and fix your TV. And what are they fixing? Tubes. Ninety-nine percent of all service calls are tube-replacement calls. Tubes fail."
"Transistors don't?"
"Occasionally. But not regularly, like tubes. And they're cheaper, too. I've read some technical papers on this. In a few years tube sets will not be competitive. Not only that, the sets of the future will receive color broadcasts. Aside from that, the Japanese are coming in. Ever hear of a company called Sony?"
"I've heard of Sony. You paint a goddamned gloomy picture, for a guy just now sticking his toes in the water."
"Not gloomy. Television will be bigger than ever. That's why I recommend we go into the production of shows — and maybe get out of the production of sets."
"So you got this broad you want to use as a star. What you think she can do?"
"A combination situation comedy and variety show," said Bat. "She's a performer more than an actress: a singer, dancer, and comedienne. But she can act, particularly comic acting. The situation comedy would be based on the idea that Glenda has a weekly television variety hour, featuring herself as principal performer. But we show her at home, too, with a husband and children; and we show in a comic way the difficulties she has combining the roles of wife and mother and performer."
"That's a cliché," Jonas observed.
"Name a successful television show that isn't. They're all cliché-ridden, and they're all predictable. Originality is poison on TV. Let's say we open each show with Glenda singing a song, then do the situation comedy, and close with a production number. I think it'll work."
"It'll work if somebody, namely me, puts in a pisspot full of money."
"Not all that much. We can build the New York apartment into one soundstage, the theater where she does the variety show into another. We don't have to do any location shooting. Talent costs will be reasonably high. We've got one young little dancer I want to use on the show. She's a newcomer, so she'll be cheap. Her name is Margit Little. She's going to be a star one day, and we'll have her under contract."
Jonas sighed heavily. "You're way outa line. When did I tell you to get me into a new business?" Jonas asked.
"If all you want me for is to run errands for businesses you've already got going, then take my resignation," said Bat. "Your father checked out and left you to run things your way. You put Cord Explosives into businesses he would never have approved of: airplanes, movies. Or maybe he would have approved, when he saw the money they could make. I don't think you'd have stayed with him if all he'd let you do is make dynamite. You — "
"You assume a lot," Jonas snapped.
"All right, forget what I assume about you and my grandfather. I'm telling you I won't stick if I'm shot down every time I come up with an idea. Even you can't turn me into an errand boy. Capisce?"
Jonas raised his chin high. "I'd have more confidence in your judgment if you weren't screwin' this woman you want to make your star."
"What do you want, a virgin?"
"Uhmmm," muttered Jonas nodding. "She a good piece?"
"Fantastic."
"Maybe I should give her a try."
Bat shook his head. "She isn't a whore we can pass back and forth."
"Will she do a nude audition?"
"She's a star," said Bat. "Already. Without us."
"Shit."
6
Glenda squeezed Bat's hand when he opened the door and admitted her to the suite. She let his father see no other sign of her affection.
She had dressed for this meeting with the redoubtable Jonas Cord: in a tight black knit dress that looked modest enough but strikingly displayed her figure.
"Bat has told me what kind of show he proposes you do," said Jonas. "I assume you know what you're doing. Miss Grayson. I assume Bat will hire people who know what they're doing. It seems to me, though, that you're taking on a damned heavy burden by trying to do this show every week — or by trying to do thirty-nine of them a season. Bat hasn't had any experience in show business, but I have, and I think it's too much. If I'm funding this deal, I want to do it every other week — twenty shows a season, not thirty-nine. Apart from saving you from burning yourself out, that'll make it possible to build a little more quality into each show."
"I think that's a good suggestion, Mr. Cord," said Glenda.
"I
haven't accepted the idea, you understand," said Jonas. "Bat's still working at selling me."
"Yes, I understand," she said.
"Then I have a question," said Jonas. "Is this show something you really want to do? Do you feel a real commitment to it?"
"Mr. Cord," she said, "I've been a hoofer and singer more than half my life. It's all I've ever wanted to do. My family still doesn't like it, but it's all I ever wanted to do. To have my own television show, with my name on it — Well, that's the top. That's everything I ever dreamed of. Of course ... it has to be a success. I'll work my ass off for it, Mr. Cord."
"Well ... let's see how much you're committed. What I'd like to see is an audition. A nude audition, like a dance number in the altogether. Okay?"
Glenda turned to Bat, stricken, her eyes wide.
"No way," said Bat coldly. "No ... fuckin' ... way. Cut the crap, Jonas."
Jonas flushed deep red, and the veins in his neck stood out. But he said nothing. He dismissed Bat and Glenda with a toss of his hand.
7
"Well ... I suppose that's that," said Glenda as they waited for the elevator. "Maybe I should have done it."
"No. We'll produce the show."
"What makes you think he'll go along?" she asked.
"He knows what's gonna happen if he doesn't — which is that he's gonna lose a vice president."
"And a son?" she asked. "I still say, maybe I should have done it. Maybe I should go back in there and do it now."
"No," said Bat firmly.
"You trying to save my feelings or my dignity?" Glenda asked. "You should know my dignity doesn't amount to much. Golda Graustein did some undignified things scrambling to become Glenda Grayson."
17
1
" Shiksa!"
The first time she heard the word spat, it was not directed at her but toward her Aunt Leia, her mother's younger sister. That would have been — Oh, she had been seven or eight years old. Aunt Leia had been twenty-six or twenty-seven at the time.
The occasion was that Leia had broken the Shabbat that morning. While the men of the house were at worship, Leia had discovered that someone had forgotten to buy the extra bag of bagels that should have been in the house because they had four guests. Leia had slipped out of the house, first carefully covering her head with a scarf, as a modest Jewish girl did before she went out on the street. She had walked eight blocks to the market run by goyim on Eighty-seventh Street in Ozone Park. There she had made a purchase. She had touched money on the Shabbat. Someone saw, and someone brought the word to Rabbi Mordecai Graustein.
"Shiksa!"
It was not Leia's first transgression. She had broken the law before. What the family held most against her, though, was that Leia had reached the age of twenty-six or -seven and was not yet a wife and mother.
Nor was she finished with offending. When she was twenty-eight she would marry a young man from New Jersey and move with him to a town there. He was a member of a Reform congregation. They reared three sons in Reform Judaism. Rabbi Graustein forbade his wife ever to see those children, or ever again to speak to her sister. (She did see them, as he probably suspected, but husband and wife avoided confrontation by pretending she obeyed his injunction.)
Rabbi Mordecai Graustein was the father of Golda Graustein — Glenda Grayson. He was a formidable man. If not for her certainty that he loved her, little Golda would have been afraid of him. He was a bigger man than most: broad-shouldered, bulky inside his long black coats. He wore starched white shirts with collars buttoned tightly to his throat, without neckties. His beard usually covered his throat in any event. He wore his black hats set squarely on his head. He was a respected man in his Queens neighborhood. Many people spoke of him as holy. Men came to the house seeking the benefit of his wisdom and learning. Men came to him to hear him elucidate the law. Worried men came to the house to hear his opinion of the frightful things happening in Middle Europe.
Golda listened respectfully sometimes, and one day she heard him rule that the law proscribed the making of fire on the Shabbat and therefore light switches should not be moved on that day. Flipping a switch caused fire to appear inside an electric light bulb, he reasoned; therefore the switches should be set before the Shabbat and not touched until the Shabbat was over. A yeshiva student gravely but humbly argued the question, and the rabbi patiently overwhelmed his argument with citations to holy books.
The student then asked if it was lawful to allow a gentile servant to turn lights on and off during the Shabbat. The rabbi pondered for a moment and ruled that it was.
Golda learned to speak and read Hebrew and Yiddish. That was a necessity for her brothers but not for her, and that she took the trouble to learn earned her a measure of respect not earned by her sisters. She learned many things besides: to speak quietly and carry herself modestly, to light the Shabbat candles at the proper hour, to make the proper responses as her father led the family prayers, to keep the meat dishware separate from the milk dishware, not even to wash them at the same time.
She always knew — she couldn't remember when she had not been aware of it — that she and her family were very much like most of their neighbors and very different from other neighbors. The men who came to see her father dressed exactly as he did. They wore beards as he did and kept their heads covered, if not by hats then by yarmulkes. The women, too, dressed much alike, very modestly, and covered their heads before they left their houses. They shopped only in selected stores, where things suitable for their use were sold. They shared a body of special knowledge, and they shared customs and traditions that seemed foreordained and inescapable.
Yet, she knew from an early age that not everyone lived as her family did. She learned, too, very soon, that some people hated her people. Her brother Elihu came home one day from school when he was nine, bloody and bruised. He had been set upon by other boys and beaten. "Irländers," her father had grumbled. "Italianers. Katholisch. Sturmabteilungers." It never happened again, but Golda heard them yell sometimes — "Jew-boy! Kikey!"
She understood why those boys hated her brother. They were jealous of him because he was far brighter than they were and had a much better future ahead. He might become a rabbi like her father or a diamond merchant like her Uncle Isaac, while they were headed for toil on assembly lines in factories or greasy labor in automobile repair shops.
If they could get even such jobs. The Great Depression, which touched her family little, reduced many of their families to penury. Envy was the source of their hatred. Those whom G-d did not favor hated those whom He did. Throughout history, it had always been so, her father explained.
2
When she was seven her family took her to a street fair, and there for the first time she saw people dancing. Dancing! They moved their bodies, especially their legs, in rhythm to music and laughed and shouted in happy exuberance. The men danced first, then the women. Golda was ecstatic. She tried to do the steps. Her mother had to restrain her from trying to mimic the men's dancing, which would have been unseemly; but when the women danced she allowed the little girl to try the steps.
Golda could dance. Before her first experience with it was over she discovered something even more exhilarating than the dancing itself: that it made her the focus of attention. People close to her turned away from the women's dance to watch the little girl. That very first time she responded to them by mugging — grinning and rolling her eyes — and discovered they liked that, too.
Dancing was not a transgression. It should be done decorously, with appropriate modesty, but to enjoy it, even conspicuously enjoy it, did not offend. Nothing in the law, her father said, forbade people from enjoying themselves. Indeed, he had no objection to her mother enrolling her in a dance class, where she studied ballet. Her only problem with that was that her father judged tutus immodest and insisted she must dance in a knee-length skirt. But he never came to the dancing classes. He only supposed she would wear a tutu. He never dreamed that what she r
eally wore was tights — leotards.
In this little friction over what she would wear in her dancing classes, Golda for the first time felt a tinge of resentment about separateness. She was the only girl in her classes asked by her family not to wear what the others wore; and if she had done it, it would have embarrassed her, not to say humiliated her. She didn't want to be different. She didn't want to be identified as someone unusual, peculiar.
She wondered then why her father dressed eccentrically, why she was supposed to keep her head covered outside the house, why they were obsessed about keeping the meat and milk apart, why their family and nearby friendly families were so different from all the other people she saw as she rode the bus to her dancing classes. She ventured to ask her mother, not her father, and was told that they obeyed the law and followed tradition, which was what G-d wanted them to do.
G-d wants us to do, G-d tells us to do. (They never broke the law that forbade them spelling out the name of the Deity, and in Golda's mind, God was G-d.) What G-d wanted seemed to justify everything.
She rode to and from her dancing classes with a girl who said she believed in God but believed very differently.
"Why is it," she asked this girl on the bus one day, "that God tells you to do one thing and tells us to do something else?"
The girl shrugged. " 'The Lord moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform,'" she said. "We are God's children. Blessed be the name of the Lord."
By the time she was fourteen, Golda Graustein was very secretly, but very definitely, a skeptic.
3
When she was fifteen she was introduced to the young man Rabbi Graustein had tentatively decided would be her husband. His name was Nathan. He was a student at the yeshiva, preparing himself for the rabbinate. He was eighteen years old.
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