“Pa was in a bad way for a while—that was when the drinking really started. But one day he told us we were going into show business. He put the act together for us, and we’ve been touring with it ever since. Ten years.”
“You and your sisters need to stand up to him. Tell him you want a new routine, new costumes—”
“It’s too late for that.”
“If the three of you stand together—”
“We won’t. Florrie and Dot are quitting the act. Florrie’s getting married next July, and Dot found herself a job in a milliner’s shop in Manhattan and she’s moving there. And I”—her mouth trembled—“I’m going back home to Brooklyn to live with Pa. But now there won’t be any act for him to think about. Nothing for him to look forward to.” She couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. They started to fall; without thinking, Joe moved toward her. “Living with Pa is going to be hell!”
Joe believed her. He could imagine how bad it was going to be. And it shouldn’t be allowed. No, he wanted to shout. You can’t go back and live with that old drunk!
All of sudden, she seemed to realize she’d been spilling her family secrets to a total stranger, and she was embarrassed about it. She turned her back to him. “Thank you for the steak,” she murmured.
He was being dismissed again. But he couldn’t leave. Let me fix this for you, he wanted to say. Just tell me what to do. But she never would; he knew that about her already. And then it came to him in a flash: Maybe there was something he could do to help her. It would take a little work and he’d have to convince Benny to go along, but it might be just the ticket for all of them.
There was a roar of applause from the stage, a hand big enough to carry up three flights of stairs. The headliner act had just finished, and clearly they had killed. The second half of the show was coming to an end. He had to get downstairs fast and start working on Benny. “I gotta go,” he told the beautiful girl. “I gotta find my partner.”
She turned to him and held out her hand, and he’d been right, she was even prettier when she cried. “I’m Ellie.” She smiled through her tears. “Ellen Doran.”
He didn’t tell her that he already knew her name. “Joe Masters,” he said.
Then he ran out of her dressing room and down the stairs.
CHAPTER 17
Joe found Benny in their dressing room, leaning back precariously in a chair with his feet propped up on the makeup table, his eyes closed. Benny hadn’t taken off his dashing white suit, and he hadn’t even put a towel on the chair to protect it. Benny’s mother had spoiled him for so long that now, even though she was gone, he still acted as if he had someone doing his laundry for him. At this rate, his suit was going to need cleaning before they left New Rochelle, which would make a dent in their carefully calculated budget. Joe was the one who had done the calculating, and normally he would have yelled at Benny for being a careless jerk, but Joe was about to propose something that was going to make a much bigger hole in their finances. So he didn’t scold his feckless partner—not even for resting his dirty shoes on their makeup table.
Instead, he put on his own suit for the curtain call, doing it fast, while, in his head, he ran over the idea he was about to propose. Then he sat in the chair next to Benny and plunged in. “I been thinking,” he began.
Benny sat up. “Me too,” he said. “We’re getting nowhere in this business, kiddo.”
It was the same complaint he’d been making, but this time it seemed to Joe that there was something more urgent about it. Momentarily dropping the speech he’d been about to make, he said, “It’s our material. When we finish this tour, we need to rewrite it. That’s all, Benny. We’re a good team onstage. Our timing is great, and the way we look and sound—all that works.”
For a second Joe thought Benny was going to argue, but he seemed to think better of it. He began patting powder on his nose. “If you say so,” he said.
But that didn’t mean he agreed. And the tricky thing about Benny was, if he ever did quit the act, he’d give his partner the news in his own sweet time, if he bothered to do it at all. Benny hated any kind of unpleasantness. When he was finished with something he just walked away—as dozens of girls around the country had learned the hard way. His favorite method of telling a lady the romance was off was to send her a good-bye note and a red rose to remember him by. That was his signature—one red rose. He gave them to his girls at the beginning of a courtship—and at the end. And whenever he could manage it, the final rose and the accompanying note were delivered after he was safely out of town.
Joe studied Benny out of the corner of his eye. Given his mood, this was the wrong time to make the suggestion Joe had in mind. But if he didn’t say something now, Ellie and her sisters would be packing their trunk and heading back to New York City. “I’ve been thinking maybe we should add something to the act—until we can rework it,” Joe said.
“You got a miracle?” Benny asked. He contemplated himself in the mirror; sometimes Joe thought it was as if he still couldn’t believe how good-looking he’d become and had to reassure himself periodically.
“We need a new finish, something big,” Joe said. “Right now, it’s just me yelling and trying to strangle you—which the audience has been watching me do for ten minutes.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” But Benny had turned away from the mirror and was looking at Joe. He was interested.
“What if we have a girl—a real doll—walk across the stage in front of us?” Eagerly, Joe jumped up and started acting out his idea. “She’s snobby, see? Isn’t going to give a couple of dopes like us the time of day.” He sashayed across the dressing room. “She passes by and we stop dead.” He mimed himself and Benny forgetting their stage battle, their eyes bugging out when the girl came into view. He began improvising lines for the snooty girl and himself and Benny, and as he did it, he found himself getting genuinely excited about the possibilities. He’d come up with this new ending because Ellen Doran was beautiful and sad and he wanted to rescue her. But now he was thinking that adding her to the act might actually help put it over. A little, anyway.
“It’s like we’re hypnotized,” he said eagerly to Benny. “I’m so stunned, I drop you. You hit your head on the piano.” He acted out Benny’s head hitting the keyboard. “Then I slam it a couple of times because I’m too busy watching the girl to pay attention to what I’m doing.” He demonstrated the business with plenty of mugging. “We follow the girl offstage with our tongues hanging out,” he finished breathlessly. Benny gave him a knowing smile.
“I bet you have a girl in mind, right, Joey?”
There was no point in beating around the bush. “You know the Dancing Doran Sisters? In the number-two slot? They’re getting their pictures back tonight, and the act is breaking up. The youngest one doesn’t want to go home—I think there are some troubles there. But she doesn’t have any other choice.”
“The youngest one? That’s the blonde?”
Joe nodded. “I don’t know how good she is as an actress, but it’s not like she’s got to be Sarah Bernhardt to walk across a stage and be snooty. If we put her in the right clothes, and fix her hair—”
Benny’s smile widened. “Yeah. She is a doll.” So he’d seen her on the train platform too. He leaned back again and smiled.
“You like the idea?” Joe held his breath.
Benny shrugged. “What can it hurt?” he said.
Joe couldn’t believe it had been this easy. For a second he thought about bringing up the subject of Ellie Doran’s salary and how they were going to pay it, but he decided to quit while he was ahead. Benny spent lavishly on himself, but he watched his pennies when it came to anyone else; there were several restaurants on Forty-second Street where his reputation as a lousy tipper was well known. Mentioning money might give him second thoughts. Besides, Joe had been thinking that he’d like to take care of Ellie out of his own half. It would make his finances tight, but he wasn’t a big spender like Ben
ny. And he could picture the day when she found out about his generosity. Not that he’d tell her—certainly not right away—but these things did have a way of coming out.
“Well, this is great, just great!” he said heartily. “I’ll go upstairs right now and give the poor kid the good news!”
“I have a better idea. Let’s wait until after the second show and tell her together. We can take her out to supper to celebrate.”
“Fine. Whatever you want.” And if Joe felt let down because he’d have preferred to tell Ellie by himself, without Benny, he told himself this wasn’t the time to quibble with his partner about anything.
• • •
THEY ONLY HAD a couple of hours between performances, but when Benny disappeared after the curtain came down, Joe didn’t think anything of it. Benny often liked to get out of the theater and walk around between shows. Meanwhile, Joe was planning the celebration supper for Ellie. He decided they’d take her to the restaurant where he’d bought the raw steak—it was the best one in the neighborhood. He wanted their celebration to make her feel like a queen.
Once, when Joe was a kid—maybe six or seven—he’d earned a dime running some errands for one of the guys in the neighborhood, and he’d bought a Christmas present for his mother. It was a pin in the shape of a butterfly with big yellow stones on it. When he looked back, he realized what a foolish gift it was because where would she ever wear such a showy thing? But when he was seven, he’d only thought that it was beautiful, and he couldn’t wait until the twenty-fifth of December to see her open the box. He was feeling the same kind of childish anticipation now as he thought about telling Ellie that he and Benny were offering her a job. His mother had cried when she’d seen her present all those years ago, and told him he was her son from heaven, and remembering that made him even more eager to give Ellie the good news today. But he had to wait until he and Benny could do it together. He had promised.
Somehow he managed to get through the second show—their act went over better than usual—and the last curtain call. It wasn’t until he was onstage taking the company bow that he realized Benny wasn’t there. In fact, the last time he’d seen Benny was onstage when they finished their act. It wasn’t important, he told himself. Benny had missed the final curtain call before, usually because he’d gotten tied up flirting with some girl. But as soon as the heavy velvet curtain had hit the stage floor for the last time, Joe pushed his way through the crowd of performers milling around and rushed up the stairs to their dressing room. Benny wasn’t there. But his white costume had been tossed over a chair, which meant he’d changed into his street clothes. Joe wiped the stage makeup off his face, changed into his own street clothes, and went up to Ellie’s dressing room. He found Florrie and Dot packing their trunk. They’d been canceled, they told him. Their pa was already at the railroad station, and they were taking the last train back to New York that night so they wouldn’t have to spend their money on a hotel room. But Ellie wasn’t going with them.
“She went out for supper with someone,” said Florrie—or was it Dot?
“She’s not coming with us to New York,” said Dot—or Florrie. “She’s got a new gig, and she’s staying with the tour. She’s welcome to it. Thank God I’m getting out of this rotten business.”
Suddenly all the pieces fit together. He knew where Benny was—and who he was with. Joe ran downstairs, out of the theater, across the street, and into the restaurant where he’d bought the steak.
Benny and Ellie were sitting at a table near the window. He’d ordered root beers for both of them. Benny saw Joe first. For a moment, Joe thought he wouldn’t look him in the eye. But then Benny gave him the big care-for-nothing grin that Joe knew only too well. It was the grin Benny used when he was going after what he wanted, and to hell with anyone else.
Ellie spotted him and called out, “Joe!” He made himself walk over to the table. Ellie was bubbling over. “Joe!” she cried, “Benny had the most wonderful idea, and you’ve got to say yes. He says you will, if I ask you, so please, please, please, Joe!”
So she begged him to let her have the job he’d created for her—the job he and Benny were supposed to offer her together. “Benny says it won’t cost you a thing,” Elllie went on, bubbling. “He’ll pay my salary out of his half. I told him I don’t need much—”
Joe couldn’t listen to any more. “We’ll both pay you, Ellie.” He cut her off. “It’ll be a three-way split.”
He stood there as she heaped thanks on him. After which she hopped out of her seat to throw her arms around him. But it wasn’t the embrace he’d anticipated, because she wasn’t hugging the man who’d rescued her—that role had gone to Benny. Joe had been cast as the sidekick who was going along for the ride.
And throughout it all, Benny was watching him and enjoying it, because he knew there was nothing Joe could do. If Joe tried to tell Ellie that putting her in the act had been his idea, she’d think he was trying to steal Benny’s thunder. Or that he was jealous. If Joe confronted Benny with his betrayal later on, Benny would say, “I was just trying to make a little time with her, Joey. I didn’t know you had a yen for her.” But of course he had known.
Benny liked competing with other men for the attentions of women. Every time he won—and he usually did win—Joe knew it helped erase memories of the time when he had to beg girls to have a soda pop with him. And there was a special reason why Benny would try to make time with a girl Joe liked. It had taken Joe a few years to realize that his partner envied him. On the surface that idea seemed ridiculous; Benny had it all over Joe in the looks-and-charm department. But Benny could never forgive Joe for having a mother who had adored him without question when he was a kid. Joe’s mother had died several years ago, but Benny still begrudged him that.
Now, as Joe stood at the table and looked at Ellie, he wondered once again why the hell he put up with Benny—even though he knew all the reasons. Then his heart sank. Because not only was Ellie gazing at Benny as if he were every hero in every storybook she’d ever read, but she was holding the red rose Benny had run out to buy for her between shows. And Joe knew from experience that she was a goner. But then as he watched Benny lean across the table toward Ellie, Joe thought there could be one more reason why Benny had gone after her. Maybe she was the one girl who could actually matter to him. Because even at her young age, there was something about her, something more than her extraordinary beauty. Ellie Doran had class. And Benny had always said that when he finally settled down, the girl would have to be a lady.
Joe sighed quietly. It would take a lifetime to try to untangle the reasons why Benny did the things he did, but right now, there was work to do, because they had to have a new ending for the act written and rehearsed by tomorrow evening.
He sat down at the table. “Welcome to the act, Ellie,” he said, to the girl who should have been gazing at him like he was her hero. “I guess now we call it Masters, George, and Doran.”
CHAPTER 18
It took me a week to finish writing the first two chapters of Chicky’s memoir. When I came to the end of the tapes she’d made for me, I felt like someone had cut off my supply of chocolate.
“I know it’s just a vanity project,” I told my mother on the phone. “I know I said I wasn’t going to get emotionally involved, but—”
“Not getting emotionally involved is a load of crap,” Alexandra broke in. “Of course you are—it’s your work, for God’s sake!”
“It sounds like vaudeville was like American Idol!” Sheryl said, when I called her in Pasadena. “I bet a publisher would see that right away.”
“I’m not even thinking about a publisher—and I’ve warned Chicky not to. This job is about paying the bills,” I said. But after I hung up, I couldn’t shake the thought that maybe there could be a chance….
“I feel the way I did when I wrote Love, Max,” I said to Pete, when he checked in from Tanzania.
“So what’s the problem?”
“I di
dn’t say there was a problem.”
“Francesca, I’ve known you all my life.”
“I’d hate it if something happened and I couldn’t finish the book.”
“What might happen?”
“Nothing. Not anything.”
But that wasn’t exactly true. And Annie picked up on my tone of voice. After Pete and I finished talking, she went into Lassie Urging Timmy to Speak Mode. This is when she fixes me with an unwavering stare and waits for me to spill. “Chicky hasn’t paid me yet,” I confessed. “And I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to nag her.”
Nag, said Annie’s stare. My kibble costs fifteen bucks a bag.
I called Chicky.
“Doll Face!” said the husky voice that was so familiar to me now. “How are you doing?”
“Not too bad. Look, Chicky—”
“You get started writing yet?”
“Yes. And—”
“You really did? So soon? You’re a treasure.”
“Well, I don’t know about that—”
“Take it from me. Talented, smart, and a hard worker. That’s a winning combination, Doll Face. I knew I was right to put my faith in you.”
“About that, I …” But I couldn’t bring up money after what she’d said. Not on the phone; it would be way too cold. “I’d love to show you what I’ve written so far,” I said.
“Come today,” she said. “I’ll make us tea.”
“Stop looking at me like that,” I said to Annie, after I’d hung up. “I know I wimped out.”
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