by Alan Handley
“But, my God. I just found out myself an hour ago. Talk about small towns knowing everything about you.”
“I wonder if they’ve set the understudies yet,” said Libby. “You know, that might be a job for you, Margo. I’m too young for Randall, but you ought to be about right.”
“Oh, no,” said Margo modestly. “I couldn’t do that.”
“Why not?” asked Libby. “You told me you wanted to get into the theater and you might as well start somewhere. Tim will introduce you to Frobisher, won’t you, Tim? It’s worth a try.”
“Now wait a minute,” I said. “I haven’t even started to rehearse, and already you’ve got me getting other people jobs in it. Come around after I’ve passed my five days, and I’ll see what I can do.” It didn’t hurt to say that much. I certainly didn’t intend to bother Frobisher with stage-struck women I hardly knew, even provided I did get the job.
“That’s a date, Margo.” Libby was persistent for her friends if nothing else. “Now don’t forget, Tim.” I said I wouldn’t, but I fully intended to. She glanced at her watch. “Say, we’d better get going or we’ll be late. Have you finished paying for the drinks, Tim?” I told her I had. “Oh, that reminds me. Something I forgot to tell you. Clues. About Nellie, I mean.”
“Clues,” I said. “What clues?”
“Asking you about the bill for the drinks must have made me think of it. Free association I guess you’d call it.”
“Call what?”
“Well, they did find some money down Nellie’s bazoom, if you could call that clues.”
“Why, darling,” said Margo. “How thrilling. You didn’t tell me that.”
“I just remembered it.”
“Money?” I asked. “How much money?”
“It was just some she was going to pay a bill with. It was there, too.”
“What was it for?”
“Two hundred and seventy-five dollars for a dress from Chez Ernest.”
Chez Ernest was in the Youth and Beauty Book. An appointment that morning.
“Did you see the bill? Was it made out to Nellie?”
“Oh, yes. I saw it and it was.” That didn’t mean much, either. You don’t kill people for intending to pay their bills.
“Well, come on or we’ll be late.”
We were late, but after five minutes of the show I knew it didn’t matter. Probably been better if we’d gone to a movie.
Lucille Blake’s latest tumbril was a high comedy. You can always tell by the terrace in the back of the set. Nick Stein had done well on the seats, and when they’re free it isn’t considered cricket to walk out and you’re supposed to clap a lot at the end, so I got ready to sit through it.
I started thinking over what Libby had said, which, God knows, wasn’t much. Nellie was certainly getting fancy in her old age laying out two hundred and seventy-five bucks for a new dress. I nudged Libby, who, still keeping an eye on the stage, twisted an ear in my direction.
“Do you remember ever seeing Nellie in any other dress but that old moss job she always wore?”
“What?” she whispered and I repeated it. “No, I don’t think I have. Isn’t Miss Blake divine?”
Miss Blake wasn’t divine. She was tired and old and frightened. She played with such desperate determination that you felt she must have some of her own money in the show—which she had. I was relieved when it was over.
We put Margo in a cab and I started walking Libby over to Madison where she lived.
“Timmy, I hope you didn’t mind too much about Margo barging in like that?”
“Who is she? I’ve never seen her around before. She go to Bennington with you?”
“No, she’s a friend of Ted Kent’s, I think. He introduced me to her this afternoon.” Any friend of Ted Kent’s is no friend of mine. “She’s just been divorced or something and wants to act. I think she might do for Randall’s understudy and it wouldn’t hurt you to introduce her to Frobisher.”
“But I keep telling you, I haven’t started work myself yet.”
“You’re just being superstitious and besides, you promised. She is a good type. Why just this afternoon I took her along to the tryouts for the Equity Library shows, you know, those things they’re putting on so agents and people can see you, and Vince Wagner offered her Rosalind in As You Like It the minute she walked into the room. But like a dope she said she wasn’t ready for Shakespeare yet even though that was the lead. Vince, the louse, said I wasn’t the type.”
“I see no reason to encourage frustrated people to take to the theater as a cure for divorce.”
“I don’t see why she’s any different from Maggie.”
“Well, you better take another look, and besides, it’s none of your goddamned business about Maggie.”
“You don’t need to snap my head off.”
“I’m sorry, Libby, but I’ve had a bad day.”
“I’m sorry, too. I didn’t mean to say that about Maggie.” We reached her hotel. “Why don’t you come up for a drink.”
“Won’t Margo be jealous?”
“You can go to hell.” She ran into the lobby.
I bought the next morning’s News and Mirror in the subway station and inside was a story about Nellie with a completely unrecognisable cut of her that must have been all of fifteen years old. The stories in both the papers were about the same. Death was accidental as a result of falling on the spindle…alcohol had been found in her brain and she was known to have been susceptible to heart attacks. Nothing I didn’t already know. But what did puzzle me was that the time of death was set between eight and nine-thirty a.m. Nellie had never in her life been known to be in her office before ten o’clock at the very earliest and what’s more she was warm when I took her pulse and the blood was still oozing out of her. I had learned enough about blood in the army to know there was something screwy somewhere. Who was kidding who?
I was still trying to figure that one out when I opened the front door of the Casbah. Jan, Helga the housekeeper’s little boy, was sitting on the hall stairs playing with something in his hand. I couldn’t see what it was. There weren’t any messages for me in the pigeon holes just inside the door so I started upstairs.
“Hello, Jan. What have you got there?” Jan looked at me gravely. He was about four years old and one of the most angelic-looking children I’ve ever seen. And one of the dirtiest. He held out a cupped hand to me and I started to shake it thinking that was what he wanted. The moment I closed my hand over his tiny one he let out a terrific scream that scared the pants off of me. I let go in a hurry. “What’s the matter, Jan? I wasn’t going to hurt you.” His scream stopped just as suddenly as it began and he started groping around on the floor as though he’d dropped something. I got down on my knees and started to help him search, but I couldn’t see anything. “What is it, Jan? What did you lose?”
“Nana,” he said, feverishly groping around on the floor. “You made me drop Nana.” I couldn’t see anything that looked like a Nana even allowing for baby talk.
“Who is Nana?”
Suddenly he smiled and very gently he put his cupped hand, knuckles down, on the floor and then very carefully raised it up for me to see. “Nana. She’s my friend.” His grimy little hand was absolutely empty. I began to feel a tickle at the back of my neck. He slowly moved his hand to his chest and started to pet nothing with his other hand about five inches from his cupped one, the way you might pet a baby rabbit. I took it that Nana was very, very small.
“Isn’t it a little late for you and Nana to be up?” I could play along with a gag.
“Mummy has a friend with her,” he replied solemnly, not missing a stroke on Nana. Helga frequently had friends, and since she lived in only one room, renting all the rest, it appeared that Jan and Nana would have a long, long play together if I knew Helga.
“Well, good night, Jan.” I started up the stairs.
“Say good-night to Nana,” he said, holding up his palm again. I dutifully said good-
night to Nana and went on upstairs, shaking my head.
I knocked on Kendall’s room to get my key, but there was no answer. And the bum had promised he’d be in when I got back. I tried my door and sure enough he had had sense enough to lock it. No telling where the old lush would be trying to promote drinks now, so I called down for Jan and he came trotting up the stairs, both hands empty this time.
“What did you do with Nana, Jan?” He smiled that secret smile that kids have.
“Nana’s gone.” She apparently could be turned on and off at will.
“Listen, Jan. My door is locked and I haven’t got my key. Would you go ask your mother for the pass key?” He just stood there. “Have you got that? Pass key.”
“Mummy would be mad at me.” I didn’t intend to sit on the stairs all night, too, friend or no friend.
“No, she won’t, Jan. Mummy will understand. Tell her it’s for Tim. She’ll give it to you.” Jan shook his head violently. “I’ll give you ten cents.” His face lit up at that.
“I know where Mummy keeps other key.”
“What other key?”
“Gimme ten cents.” He was learning fast. I handed him the dime and he took off like Moody’s goose down the stairs. In a few seconds he was back and presented me with a key.
“Where did you get this? Mummy give it to you?” He smiled his little smile.
“Secret.”
The key fit and I opened my door and gave the key back to him and he ran downstairs again.
I wondered if Jan or Nana know how to make long-distance phone calls.
CHAPTER TEN
ERNEST, THE OWNER OF that elegantly exclusive gray and smoky-mirrored dress shop, Chez Ernest, used to be a shiny-haired nightclub dancer until he got a little short in the wind and started to bloat. His one-of-a-kind designs are sort of a cross between Valentina and Adrian—line and texture in what I always thought were remarkably dirty colors. I’ve never seen one of his things, outside of blacks or whites, that had an honest-to-God normal color in it. The greens look like verdigris on an old roof and the yellows and reds something he’s found out behind a hospital. But the women love it and think he shrieks with chic.
At ten the next morning, after my sitting with Trindler the photographer, the shop was empty, but at the back, through a partly open door, I could hear Jenny Pittenger’s foghorn voice, so I went in.
Maggie and Jenny and Ernest were draped around the floor of Ernest’s office like a bunch of bung-hole buddies looking at huge watercolor dress sketches spread out on the carpet. There were coffee cups beside them and Ernest handed me one as soon as I came in. I took off my coat and hat and threw them on a couch and joined the others on the floor.
“Good for you, darling.” Maggie smiled at me. “Didn’t think you’d make it. How were the photographs?”
“If the amount of fussing with lights means anything, they should be sensational.” I said hello to Jenny and Ernest.
“My God!” Jenny stared at me through her thick hornrimmed glasses. “Little Sir Horror! What the hell are you doing up at this hour? Thought you were strictly an evening artist.”
“Frobisher’s making an honest man of me. Didn’t Maggie tell you? I’m replacing someone in this new little turkey you’re working on.”
“Well, things are bad all over.” And Jenny went back to shuffling sketches.
She was one of the rudest people in the world, but you couldn’t be mad at her. She wasn’t nasty, she just had the embarrassing habit of saying what she thought. I first met Jenny about eight years ago when I was an usher at her wedding. She’d been almost pretty then, at least pretty enough to get married because her family didn’t have any money, but her marriage didn’t take so she had a career instead of babies. She was a good designer, too, and had gotten to be top-flight the hard way. After staffing for years with Mielziner, during the war she started getting jobs on her own when most of the established scene designers were playing camouflage in the army.
With a snort Jenny tossed the sketches aside. “Look, Ernie, my little waltz, this is all crap and you know it. Reach down in that marsupial pouch of yours and get up something decent. This elderly blond angel on my left is supposed to be attractive, not Electra’s understudy.”
“But, darling Jenny, those are the best I have.” He began picking up the scattered sketches. He held one at arm’s length. “What’s the matter with this one?”
“If you don’t know, dearie, I’m not going to tell you. Come on now, break out the ones you’ve been saving for Hope Hampton. We’re your pals, see? Come on, give.”
“But, Jenny, that’s all I have.”
“Then there’s only one thing to do. Get out your little drawing pad, Mazurka, and create.”
I could see this wasn’t going to help me complete my mission so I got up and wandered around the office.
“Ernie, where do you keep copies…” I started to ask.
“Don’t say that word,” screamed Ernie. Jenny roared.
“I’m sorry. I mean where do you keep sketches of dresses you’ve done recently. Or don’t you make one for every dress?”
“Of course I do,” Ernie said over his shoulder. “They’re in that portfolio by the desk.” He started slashing at an enormous sketch pad with a soft pencil. I found the portfolio and leafed through the sketches. There were hundreds, but, fortunately, on the back they all had the names of the clients who had bought them, and Nellie’s name was on the back of four.
So it was true. But when did Nellie ever wear them? Three of the four were mostly a peculiar shade of dirty magenta that set my teeth on edge. I pulled out one of the sketches and carried it over to Maggie.
“Look, Maggie. What about this one? Don’t you think this would be nice?” She took one look at it and started to say something. I winked at her and she reluctantly picked up the cue.
“Well, yes. Look, Jenny. What’s the matter with this one?”
“Crap!” said Jenny, but she began to study it, too. “Still if you like it, Mag. After all, you’re going to wear it. I wouldn’t, but it’s not too bad with the set.”
“Bad with the set or good with the set,” said Ernie, “you are not going to wear that dress, darling. That model has been sold and I don’t copy my own models. I leave that to others,” he said loftily.
“It’s just too damned bad about you,” said Jenny. “That’s the one we’re going to have. Who got it, anyway?” She turned over the sheet and read the name on the back. “Nellie Brant? Not that old flesh peddler? Thought she was dead.”
“Now that doesn’t prove a thing, Timmy,” said Maggie before I even opened my mouth.
“Doesn’t prove what?” asked Jenny suspiciously.
“Oh, nothing,” I said. “Maggie and I just had a little bet.”
“Is that really who this was for, Ernie?” asked Maggie. “You’re not just making it up?”
“If you let a bag like that wear this little job,” said Jenny, “you’re dumber than I thought. What did she want—a stylish dress to be buried in?”
Ernie snatched the sketch away from Jenny and popped it back into the portfolio.
“It so happens it was for her niece.”
“What does she look like, Ernie?” I asked.
“I’ve never met her. She lives in a one-night-stand called Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and I’ve done several things for her in the last couple of years.”
“Kind of letting the bars down, aren’t you?” said Jenny. “Didn’t know you were in the mail-order business yet. Do send me a catalog. They’re so handy.” This stung him.
“As a rule I build my models on the client, but Nellie is an old friend and I made an exception.”
“Do you do it from measurements?” asked Jenny sweetly. “Or do you just add water?”
“It so happens she is a perfect model size.” He eyed Jenny’s bulk. “Which of course you wouldn’t know anything about.” Jenny slapped him on the back.
“Okay, two-step. You win.”
After a good deal of name-calling a sketch and samples were finally decided on. A sulphur yellow and what was called “greige” was it. Maggie put her foot down on any dirty reds or greens and I backed her up. Ernie promised it would be finished in time for the opening in Wilmington.
“See that it is,” said Jenny darkly. “Or else! And don’t forget my cut, either, you old miser, and now hows about a drink?” Ernie pushed a button and a bar appeared out of the wall. “Come on, kiddies, let’s get stinking.”
“We’ve got to be at rehearsal in fifteen minutes,” said Maggie. “Some other time. Call me and let’s have lunch.”
“I’ll do that.” Jenny poured herself a generous belt. We said goodbye to Ernie and left him looking apprehensively at Jenny, who had already started on her second drink.
I waited till we flagged a cab before I asked Maggie what she thought of the sketches I had discovered.
“Under that moss of Nellie’s must have beaten a heart of gold,” was her comment.
“But two hundred and seventy-five per, just for a niece. Does that sound like Nellie?”
“Don’t tell me you’re trying to find something sinister in that?”
“But can you see those scabby reds and poison greens in the local Hopkinsville juke joint?”
“We all have our little weaknesses.”
But it still didn’t seem in character for Nellie, who had been the hardest woman with a dollar I’d ever met.
No matter how many plays you have been in before, you always get a few butterflies at your first rehearsal of a new one. You take off your hat very carefully so you won’t mess up your hair and you wonder if your shoes are shined enough and your trousers are still pressed and you keep wiping off the palms of your hands so they won’t be like wet fish when you shake hands with people.
The Lyceum Theater stage door is on Forty-sixth Street although the entrance to the theater itself is on Forty-fifth. Maggie and I didn’t say anything as I helped her out of the cab and opened the stage door.