“I have a Plan B,” I told Alexandra and Sheryl. “The interior decorator from the Dark Side was telling the truth when she talked Jake and me into buying all our furniture. I’ve been online searching a couple of websites dedicated to hideous household goods, and it looks like those two big sofas and the chairs and tables will bring in about two thirds of what Jake and I paid for them.”
“Francesca, you don’t have to get rid of your furniture,” Alexandra began, but Sheryl broke in fast.
“Yes, she does!” she said, as she looked around with a little shudder. “What about that clock?”
“It’s history.”
“Thank God,” said my stepmother.
“After I sell this crap I can replace whatever I need from a thrift shop—there are a couple of great ones on York Avenue—and I’ll still have money left over,” I went on. “And I have a Plan C.”
Alexandra and Sheryl were staring at me. I think they were a little thrown by this new resourceful Francesca. I know I was.
“Tomorrow morning, first thing, I have to see a woman about a dog,” I said.
Sheryl and Alexandra shot each other looks of concern. I could see where they were heading: Maybe the new resourceful Francesca was starting to crack. God knows, she’d done it before.
“It’s a Yorkie with anger issues,” I explained.
There were more looks exchanged.
“Stop worrying. I’m not getting ready to take another dip in the nut-job pool. I’m not going to cry for three weeks, or hole up with an industrial-sized drum of chocolate Häagen-Dazs. I’m simply going to have a job. Now can we eat our kung pao chicken?”
CHAPTER 24
When I told Abigail Barrow the next day that I was willing to hire myself out as Lancelot’s dog walker, her reaction was downright embarrassing.
“I’ll pay you anything!” she said, as her eyes welled up. “My firstborn if I ever have one. If you ever need a fresh kidney, I’m your girl!”
“How about three half-hour walks a day, five days a week?” I countered. “I’ll charge whatever a regular service gets.”
“Make it seven days a week, and I’ll pay you time and a half on weekends. I need to catch up at the office.”
“WITH THE OVERTIME, that’s even more money than I thought it would be,” I told Annie when I was back in the apartment. “I figured someone who never gets out of the office until after dark would at least take weekends off.” I grabbed my calculator. “With the Lancelot pay and whatever I get for the furniture, we can carry everything except our maintenance. And I’ve got a Plan D for that.” I was so excited I couldn’t stay in the apartment another second. I ran to the closet for Annie’s leash. “You’re going to have to suck it up, babe,” I told her. “You and I are going for a walk. It’ll get me in training for my new gig with Lancelot.”
And maybe it was my imagination, but I think Annie heard something new in my voice, because she began dancing around me the way she hadn’t since she was a pup, and when I snapped on her leash she actually pulled me to the front door. If you’re in a funk that lasts, say, five years and counting, can you depress your dog too?
“I’m sorry I’ve been such a jerk, Annie,” I said, as I tickled her chin. “I’m going to do better. Try to think of me as a work in progress.”
When Annie and I came back from our walk, it was time to put the remaining piece of my survival strategy—that little Plan D I’d mentioned—into place.
“I have to make a phone call,” I said to my dog, as she collapsed on the sofa.
SHOW BIZ ANSWERED on the second ring. “You caught me just as I was heading out the door,” he said.
“But your shift at the center doesn’t start for another two hours.”
“I have to give myself extra time. I don’t know whether it’s all those new budget cuts or what, but it seems like I wait forever for the train these days.”
“Funny you should mention your commute,” I said. “Can we have that cup of coffee today?”
“I get off work at three.”
• • •
“YOU WANT ME to be your roommate?” Show Biz said, a few hours later.
“I have a big room with park views I never use, and I need someone to share expenses with me. You’re already paying rent out in Rockland County. Pay me instead, and you can stop making the trip from hell every day. Sounds like a win-win situation for everyone to me. Unless you hate dogs or watch reality TV.”
“No way, and I wouldn’t be caught dead. You’re offering me a chance to rent that fabulous room at the end of your hall that overlooks the park?”
“Say the word and it’s yours.”
He said the word—along with the amount of rent he was paying, which was enough to cover the maintenance on the condo. We closed the deal. Then Show Biz leaned back in his booth. “Have you ever had a roommate, Francesca?” he asked.
“Do my mother and my husband count?”
“Not really.”
“Then … no.”
“Sharing space has been a lifestyle for me. So let me outline the potential problem areas. There are three. The first two, the kitchen and the bathroom, can be handled with rigid scheduling.”
“I don’t cook. Unless you consider nuking cooking.”
“Never. So this means you won’t be trying to borrow my wok. You may be the roommate I’ve been looking for all my life.”
“You cook Chinese?”
“I’ve been told my dim sum is the best in the city outside of Chinatown.”
“I love Chinese. And I promise to do all the cleaning up.”
We smiled happily at each other. “What’s the third problem area?” I finally asked.
“Dating. And that one we just have to wing. You never know who a roommate is going to fall in love with.”
“No one—in my case. I won’t be dating.” He gave me a that’s-what-they-all-say look. “I am not a cute twenty-two-year-old. I am an overweight neurotic who is no fun—and believe me, when I was married, I tried hard to be.”
“Which kind of goes against the whole spirit—”
“Whatever. I’m a workaholic. I didn’t mean to be, but that’s how I turned out. When things aren’t going well for my work I forget to stroke the guy’s ego. Sometimes I forget he’s alive. I also forget to wash my face and brush my hair. Any man who wants me has serious problems.”
“I think there’s probably a straight guy out there who can handle that.”
“No dating for Francesca. Not without a prefrontal lobotomy.”
He shrugged. “If you say so.”
We ordered Diet Cokes to celebrate our new living arrangement, and then I grabbed a bus for York Avenue.
“I’M GOING TO write the book,” I told Chicky. “And then I’m going to sell it, and I’ll split whatever I get with you.”
“I thought you said there wouldn’t be a market for it.”
“That’s negative thinking. We’re into positive now.”
“I see.”
“Success is our only option.”
“Whatever you say, Doll Face,” Chicky said demurely. Way too demurely.
“You knew I’d find a way to make this all work, didn’t you?”
She looked down at her hands. “I hoped you would,” she murmured.
“No, you knew it. How? Because this isn’t like me.”
“You sure?”
“Chicky, I’m a wuss. Everyone who loves me knows it.”
“Maybe they don’t know the real you. I have faith in you, Doll Face.”
“Why? I really want to know what you saw in me that no one else ever has.”
She paused. “Actually, I think about three thousand people saw what I saw in you, Doll Face. I caught your star turn on YouTube. The one where you dumped water on that skinny woman with the great dye job.”
“Oh—my—God. You saw that?”
“I said to Show Biz, She’s a slugger. That’s what sold me on you.” Chicky leaned over and patted my cheek. �
��See? Isn’t life grand? You do something off the top of your head, never thinking about the consequences, and bingo! Look where it leads. To me and my book—the best thing that ever happened to you!”
She was grinning at me like a pint-sized buccaneer, daring me to disagree. I took a deep breath—followed by a huge swig of Chicky Kool Aid—and I said, “You’re right. This is my lucky day. Now can I have the tapes back?”
“I’m still working on the last one,” she said. She handed me the plastic grocery bags I’d given to Show Biz a couple of days earlier.
“You never unpacked this. You were sure.”
“I’m never sure about anything. I just try to believe.”
IT SEEMED LIKE old times later that afternoon when I finally settled down on my bed with my chocolate bars and diet soda. Lancelot had been a prince on both walks with me, and I had three hours of uninterrupted time before I had to take him out again. I had already listened to the tapes to reorient myself. I opened my laptop.
“After Joe proposed to Ellie and she accepted, they sat in the hotel room in New Palton for a long time without speaking,” I wrote. “Benny was gone. Ellie was carrying his child, and Joe was going to give it a last name. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say.”
CHAPTER 25
New Palton, New York
1919
No matter how hard she tried, Ellie couldn’t keep her eyes off the clock on the wall. It had been exactly an hour and eight minutes since Joe had knocked on her door to tell her Benny was gone. At first she’d been sure that there would be another knock on the door and she’d open it to find Benny standing there. Her brain knew what had happened; she’d refused to do what Benny wanted, and he’d walked. But her heart hadn’t believed it. He was the first man she’d loved. He’d given her roses and brought bright colors into a life that had been so gray. They had been a beautiful couple; people saw them and said they were made for each other. There was no way, argued her heart, that he would throw all that away. He’d come back.
But he hadn’t. She and Joe had been sitting in the hotel room for an hour and—she checked the clock—nine and a half minutes now, and there’d been no knock on the door. Ellie’s heart felt like it had started to bleed.
“We’ll have to find time to get married while we’re on the road.” Joe broke the silence in his matter-of-fact way. “I don’t think we should wait until we finish the tour, because by then it’ll be too close to the baby’s birth.” He was being practical, making plans. And that was good. You couldn’t feel your heart bleeding—not as much anyway—when you were making plans. “We’re playing split weeks on the next two jumps,” Joe went on, “so there won’t be time to get a license. But we have a full week in New Haven. I think it would be best if we did it there.” He paused. “If that’s all right. I mean, if you’re sure this is what you want.”
No, this is not what I want. I’m too young to give up on love, I’m only sixteen!
But there had been no knock on the door—and no Benny.
“Yes,” she said. “I think we should get married in New Haven.”
“Good,” Joe said. He started to leave.
“Where are you going?”
“I have to go over to the theater.”
Then she remembered. “We have to cancel the act.” He nodded. “Isn’t there something else we can do? Could we find a replacement for Benny?”
“Even if we could find someone way out here to stand in, Benny and I did a lot of physical gags. Timing is everything when you’re doing knockaround. It would take days to rehearse a new guy, and we don’t have them.”
“Could we cut all the knockaround?”
“And fill with what? The management is expecting a fifteen-minute routine.”
“So …” She trailed off, and they both looked away. This was going to be a big blow for them. Big-time acts could get away with canceling; sometimes a headliner would walk because he’d gotten a better offer or because he didn’t like his dressing room. But a small-time act like Masters, George, and Doran—which was now just Masters, with Ellie doing a walkover—was expected to be reliable. A small-timer played through high fevers and exhaustion; he went onstage and gave his all when his child was deathly ill or a family member was being buried. That was the code of the small-time: They worked harder and longer and more gratefully than the stars. And a small-time performer who canceled in the middle of a run, leaving the management scrambling to fill his slot, would earn himself a big black mark. News of his default would spread across the show-business grapevine, and people would be reluctant to book him because he couldn’t be trusted.
“Joe, I’m so sorry,” Ellie said. “It’s my fault. If I hadn’t—”
“It’s Benny’s fault, all of it,” he snapped. He headed for the door. “I’m going to tell the stage manager right now. Get it over with.”
It wasn’t fair. She and Benny had made this mess and now Joe was the person everyone in the business would remember as the no-show.
“I’ll come with you,” she said.
He shook his head. “If I bring you with me, I’ll look like I’m too scared to face the music by myself.”
“Why don’t you wait until tomorrow? The theater is dark tonight, and the stage manager might not even be there.”
“The house manager, or someone else, will be. I have to give them as much advance notice as I can, so they can find a disappointment act to replace us.”
After he was gone, she prowled around the room. Finally, to distract herself, she picked up a newspaper and sat in a chair to read it.
And then it hit her. She ran out into the hallway with the newspaper in her hands. “Joe!” she called out. But of course he was gone. The elevator was on the ground floor, so she took the stairs down to the lobby two at a time. Joe wasn’t in the lobby.
“You missed him. He left about ten minutes ago,” said the desk clerk. So she raced out of the hotel.
IN THE BASEMENT of the theater, Joe prepared to knock on the door of the tiny cubbyhole that served as the stage manager’s office. He’d never had to explain himself to a theater management before; he’d never been fined for lateness, or for using racy blue jokes in his act, or for breaking any of the rules that governed backstage conduct. Joe was used to being on good terms with the people who paid his weekly salary; that had always been a big source of pride to him. Until now. Damn Benny! But there was nothing to be done.
“Joe!”
He heard Ellie’s voice behind him and whirled around. She was out of breath, and clearly she had been running to find him. She’d probably come to back him up—even though he’d said he didn’t want her to. He let out an exasperated sigh. He’d meant it when he told her he didn’t blame her for what had happened. But he had wanted her to let him do what had to be done without getting in the way.
“Ellie, I asked you to stay in the room.”
But she waved a newspaper in his face and gasped out, “You’re going to do a single!”
CHAPTER 26
“Have you lost your mind?” Joe demanded. But she was just trying to help, so he made himself add, more patiently, “I know you mean well, but—”
“You ad-lib monologues all the time,” she broke in. “Every time you read the newspaper, you find something to make jokes about. And it’s not just me who thinks you’re funny. Everyone says so.”
She wasn’t thinking straight. It must be the guilt. “Ellie, you know better than this. There’s a big difference between fooling around for the heck of it, to get a couple of laughs, and performing in a theater.”
“Why?”
“It takes months to come up with a good monologue. You have to write it and then work out the kinks. Get the timing and delivery just right.”
“I’m not talking about a regular monologue. This is a whole new kind of act. Every day we’ll get the local newspaper wherever we are and you’ll find the stories that you think are funny. Then you’ll write a routine around them, and you’ll perfor
m it that night onstage.”
“You want me to write a new act every day? And rehearse it? That’s impossible.”
“People won’t expect perfect delivery and timing. Your monologue will go over because it’s about their town and what’s happening in it that day. And you have a way about you onstage. You’re not showy like—” She barely stopped herself from saying Benny’s name. “You’re different from most performers. You’re the fellow who lives down the block, an ordinary Joe. I think if you just walk out onstage and start talking about everyday things, it’ll go over.”
He’d thought about doing a single for so long, and he’d been afraid of it. To be out onstage alone without a partner to fall back on—without even a prop to play with or some music to fill in the silence if your jokes died—that was the toughest kind of act there was.
That’s why the good monologuists, like Jack Benny, are stars, said a mad voice in the back of his head. If you could do it, you’d be one too.
But what Ellie was suggesting—a totally new act every night—that was suicide. No one could carry it off.
But what if you could? whispered the mad voice.
“Just try it!” Ellie was pleading. “It’s better than canceling. What do you have to lose?”
My pride. I’ve never bombed before. But she thinks I can do it.
“I’ll write the material with you,” Ellie said. “It’ll be easier if there are two of us.” He thought about the lines of dialogue she’d added to their act, and how they always got a laugh. But that was a far cry from filling fifteen or twenty minutes every single day. It was crazy even to consider it.
But her lines are funny.
“How am I going to remember that much new material? It’s too much memorizing for anyone.”
“It doesn’t have to be word perfect. It’s only you up there, so you’re not feeding a partner cues. And I’ll sit out in the house every night and be your stooge. If you start to go dry, just look to where I’m sitting and I’ll heckle you and ask you questions that will get you back on track.” She paused. “And the good thing about that is, I won’t be onstage. If I’m sitting in the house like a member of the audience, it won’t matter when the baby starts to show.”
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