August had avoided going downstairs as much as possible during the bistro’s development, so when he entered, he was surprised by the swankiness. When the women had dragged in roll after roll of colored canvas a few weeks back, August imagined the place would look like a tatty fortune-teller’s tent, but the bistro was anything but tasteless. The canvas, draped artfully from the ceiling and down the walls, transformed the Scarsenguard’s rather utilitarian basement into a place of enchantment. Huge paper lanterns, delicate as soap bubbles, hung from the ceiling so effortlessly that they appeared to be floating. Elegant circular tables filled the room, though plenty of space was left near the stage for dancing. And the stage! The only other one August had ever seen was upstairs in the proper Scarsenguard Theater. But this one was rounded, smaller, and much closer to the audience. It would be a far more intimate evening, August concluded as he watched the band members, already in place, tuning their instruments. Everyone would feel part of the performance rather than a mere spectator.
Running the length of the right wall of the room was a long buffet covered in billowing white fabric. Behind the table stood a score of female volunteers, each in matching uniforms: light blue button-down shirts, black skirts that were perhaps a hair too short, and rather flirty paper hats. The first three-quarters of the table was devoted to serving sandwiches, while the last quarter of the table held the bar. The Backstage Bistro was a strictly nonalcoholic establishment, so bowls of brightly colored punch sat atop the buffet while the strictly illegal bottles of unmarked booze stood underneath, a finger’s reach away from the deft hands of the bartenders. Though it was a bit pedestrian, August had to admit it had a certain quaint charm. Amiably American.
The air was electric with nerves as it always was at an opening, the difference being that the staff of the Backstage Bistro were uninitiated to the theatrical life and were therefore even more atwitter than a company of seasoned vets would be on such an occasion. Shrill, nervous giggles sounded every half minute or so, while the more level-headed volunteers paced and barked and generally made things worse as they tried to brace for every conceivable mishap.
Finally, when their nerves were frayed to the breaking point, the doors opened, and just before the uniforms started pouring in, the band ripped into a tune so lively that even August had to tap his foot.
As soon as the soldiers entered, the girls swooped in, hooking their arms into uniformed ones and flirting mercilessly. August, who’d only ever encountered strictly scripted seduction, found this off-the-cuff coquetry quite shocking. The boys, however, starved as they were for feminine interaction, lit up like firecrackers, and what with the band blasting away like it was doomsday, the whole shindig was already in full swing before the first batch of guests had filed in.
The evening’s formal entertainment began at nine, and August felt his heart rate rising as a hush settled over the rowdy crowd. What delights would this cozy little stage present? The first performer entered, a dancer with severe black hair and a plunging red gown, and August was already spellbound. When she raised her sharp, angular eyebrow to signal the start of her routine, August barely heard the chorus of whistles or the lusty wailings of the band’s brass section. She dipped and kicked, bending gravity to her will, the diaphanous fabric of her dress trailing behind her, an enchantress, a witch.
The spell was broken by a roar of applause; August even saw one soldier pretending to cough to mask his wistful tears.
Next to the stage came a comedian August had never heard of, though, judging by the thundering cheers he received upon his entrance, August assumed that he was rather famous. His set was no longer than twenty minutes, and though August didn’t understand much of it, as it had an awful lot to do with Germans, Italians, and the Japanese, his sides hurt from laughing.
“Thank you all, that’s my time,” the man said to a chorus of hoots and applause. “I’ve been told I have the honor of introducing your next guests. I’ve also been told to keep my hands off that dancer, but my short-term memory’s been off lately.” He gave a hammy wink. “So please get on your feet while that lovely lady and I get off of ours, and welcome to the stage some of Hollywood’s brightest stars!”
In through the wings came a line of seven of the most elegant people August had ever seen. The women, of whom there were four, were dressed in flawless gowns, cut so exquisitely that August couldn’t imagine them in anything else. The three men wore tuxedos, living testaments to the sartorial arts; August could almost hear Miss Butler clucking with approval.
From the excited murmurs and the flurry of flashbulbs, August gathered that the comedian hadn’t oversold the movie stars, but the boy couldn’t have cared less about the celebrities, because waddling out after these young and glamorous performers came an older man dressed in a tuxedo that was bravely attempting to mask a protrusion of gut.
“Sir Reginald!” August cried over the crowd. He rushed the stage, hurtled over the lip in one bound, and crashed into Percyfoot, throwing his arms around the man’s ample waist as tightly as Othello had gripped fair Desdemona’s neck.
Though August was oblivious, the energy of the room had shifted. Who was this boy? the masses seemed to be asking themselves. Where did he come from? Would it be possible to neck with one of those actresses later? And so forth.
Sir Reginald, reading the room with deft thespian assurance, cleared his throat. “See?” he bellowed to the young woman on his left, an actress named Vivian Fair, a woman so famous that even August recognized her from the covers of magazines Miss Butler left lying about. “I told you I was the bigger star.”
The audience roared, all awkwardness forgiven, and the comedian rushed the band back onstage, where they immediately tore into a frenzied dance tune. The stars glided down into the bistro to mingle, all but Sir Reginald, who hiked August higher up so that he could speak into the child’s ear.
“My god, boy, what an entrance! We’ll make a proper actor out of you yet!”
The two friends shuffled off to a corner table where they could hear each other speak. Sir Reginald nursed an illegal bottle of whiskey and even gave August his first nip. He’d had loads of champagne, of course, and had even sampled gin on two past occasions, but this was his first foray into dark liquor, and though he found the taste deplorable, he did feel rather grown-up about the whole thing.
Percyfoot regaled August with deprecating tales from his time in Hollywood and explained that once he’d heard that the bistro was to open in the Scarsenguard, he bullied and threatened until he was finally invited to join the star-studded lineup of opening-night guests. “None of them had the faintest idea who I was, of course, but I just kept shouting, ‘Jack Warner will have your head,’ or ‘When Mayer discovers how I’ve been treated!’ Laid it on a bit thick, but most people are shockingly daft, don’t you agree?”
The last of the uniforms finally staggered out, and August, Sir Reginald, and Miss Butler retired upstairs to the green room, which had remained unaffected by the Backstage Bistro’s construction. Eugenia was patching up a few volunteer uniforms that had ripped during strenuous dancing, and kindly turning a blind eye whenever Sir Reginald poured August another nip of whiskey.
For his part, August was madly curious about the inner workings of Hollywood. After all, he’d never truly left the Scarsenguard, and his only introduction to the world of cinema had been through Miss Butler’s discarded tabloids. He peppered Sir Reginald with questions about the contents of the magazine he was drunkenly waving about. The war was in full swing, but was sable really all the rage? And that tender young virgin by the name of Vivian Fair taking Hollywood by storm, the one Percyfoot had quipped with earlier that eve, was she really as marvelous as everyone said? Exasperated, the old man snatched the magazine out of August’s hands.
“Bah! Don’t be reading this filth, my boy!” he spat, nearly tearing the pages out of the rag as he venomously flipped through them. “Hollywood! All sex, no substance. And Vivian Fair a virgin? Why, she’s se
duced every man in New York, and half of Hollywood, too. My god!” he cried, expressive eyes bugging from his skull. “Did she really sign with Paramount? That vixen? Impossible!”
Try as he might, August could not get another word from Sir Reginald, who was now engrossed in the magazine he so clearly despised. But August didn’t mind. He watched contentedly as Sir Reginald read the magazine and Miss Butler stitched up a shirt, basking in the comfort of being surrounded by his makeshift family. His eyes heavy, August fought sleep for as long as possible, but the exhaustion brought on by the excitement of the evening and the irresponsible amount of whiskey eventually overtook the boy, and he slipped into a drunken slumber, content.
* * *
The party raged every night at the Backstage Bistro for the next three years. Sir Reginald popped in when he could, but he’d become quite in demand playing secondary characters in war pictures, which were, of course, all anyone was making. He played the salty British general, the salty British POW, or the salty British prime minister.
August, who’d resisted the bistro with arched-back defiance, came to be its biggest proponent. It was there that he learned about popular music, celebrity culture, how to dance, how to swear. He traded conversation with the world’s greatest thinkers and artists, gossiped with the volunteers, and shot the shit with sailors.
And how was August able to maintain his anonymity? Through the snares and sink traps laid by Miss Butler. Though soldiers were, as a rule, even more superstitious than actors, get them away from the terror of battle and they became far more practical. The Scarsenguard Spirit, therefore, finally fulfilled his unfinished business and passed on into the spectral plane. August was now a displaced child—usually French or British, though sometimes a Soviet, depending on Miss Butler’s mood—whom the American government had taken into custody. When asked for specifics about his heritage or lack of accent or any other bit of bothersome minutia, Eugenia would wink and indicate through long-winded monologues that the boy’s parents needed to keep their identities a secret.
Though his horizons were broadening, August did occasionally desire to escape the delirium of the Backstage Bistro. A year or so earlier, when the blasted war showed no sign of relenting, he had taken it upon himself to convert one of the cozier dressing rooms into a space all his own. Why not? There hadn’t been a proper production at the Scarsenguard for ages, and no one else was using it. Books were crammed into every plausible nook, though the rest of the decor leaned more macabre. Several different versions of poor Yorick’s skull had been abandoned in the Scarsenguard’s prop closet throughout the years, and August commandeered all of them, hanging them from the overhead pipes with sturdy twine, while stuffed ravens and garish candelabras left over from a lurid revival of Dracula added their own panache. Eugenia championed the boy’s unorthodox approach to interior design and, to show her support, sewed him a blood-red quilt to throw over the equity cot they’d dragged up the Scarsenguard’s narrow stairwells.
Yet even with his own morbid hideaway, August still felt that something was missing from his life. He needed a new stimulus, a new adventure. Perhaps coming into contact with so many brave young men risking their lives had rubbed off on him, or maybe, now that he’d reached the ripe age of somewhere around eleven, it was simply time for a change. Whatever it was, one night in September, when the bustle of the bistro seemed too much to bear, August sat alone in his room, finding no escape in his books. He missed the sensation of watching live theatre. He longed to see a scorned wife poison her husband or some wealthy family squabble over the contents of a will. Or better still, a swordfight.
Sitting on his bed, knees curled up to his chest, August pondered the small window, the only one in his room. He knew that next door to the Scarsenguard was another theater called the Walsh. Could he somehow make his way over in time for curtain?
The thought was at once dismissed as entirely ludicrous, yet seemingly independent of this conclusion, he found his trembling hands gripping for purchase on his window frame. With a yelp and a hearty tug, August lifted the ancient thing, and a September breeze, the kind that carried more than a hint of autumn on it, poured over his face like cool water.
What on earth am I doing? he thought as he contorted his body to crawl through the opening. His last sojourn into the city had been catastrophic. But that was down at ground level. The loopy iron trellises of the fire escape were now firmly under his palms, and as he gave them a steadying grip, wine-red rust flaked off the railings, floating lazily to the street below. He was outside! Outside! Once his eyes adjusted to the sheer brightness of Forty-Third Street, August saw that the Walsh wasn’t the only other theater on the block. There was a second, and good god, a third! Their names, the Lockwood and the Graff, were lit up in bright bulbs, and hordes of people were making their way into all of them, waving and smiling at the soldiers who were loitering outside the Scarsenguard, waiting for the bistro to start swinging.
There was so much to take in, but buildings blocked most of August’s sight line.
“Imagine the view from the roof,” he whispered, and flew up the treacherous metal stairs. To his dismay, the fire escape ended at the fifth floor; there was no access to the roof. August employed some of the more colorful verbiage he’d learned at the bistro before noticing that the bright sign of the Scarsenguard protruded from the mortar ever so slightly. Slipping his dexterous fingers into the crevices that surrounded the blazing brilliance of the lit-up letter C, August was able to gain purchase and start his ascent. The boy had no fear of heights; he’d been scaling curtains barehanded since he was five years old, and found the meager footholds entirely satisfactory, now leaving the C behind and moving up to the S. In less time than it would take Eugenia Butler to stitch a button to a shirt, August had hauled himself onto the roof, wiping brick grit off his trousers.
When he finally did take in the view he’d risked his life to see, August gasped. Never would he have guessed what existed just outside the walls of the Scarsenguard. So many lights! And people! And sounds! Crowds of crooked chimneys burst from rooftops like the pipes of a haunted organ. Taxicabs painted the streets a vivid yellow, honking their horns seemingly just for the pleasure of it. Buildings were so tall that August had to crane his neck to see their tops. And a half-moon hung orange over the entire scene as if debating with itself whether or not it should turn away from all this captivating madness.
The play he’d snuck out to see was completely forgotten. August stayed on the roof all night, his oddly cloistered way of life forever altered. Here was a boy who’d met Mayor La Guardia, Bette Davis, even the vice president of the United States, but who had never seen a sunrise. When the sun did start peeking over the tops of the buildings, bringing with it the ringing bells of bleary-eyed cyclists already delivering packages, August, more than a bit blurry himself, scuttled down the roof and back into the ghoulish comfort of his room. He slipped into bed, exhausted, but too giddy to fall asleep just yet.
New York City. One look, and August had fallen in love.
* * *
The allures of the world outside the Scarsenguard kept August occupied for the better part of a month. Leaping from rooftop to rooftop and startling flocks of pigeons into flight, he realized Miss Butler’s warnings had been more than slightly hyperbolic. He didn’t hold it against her, however. She was just trying to keep him safe, and honestly, she embroidered reality so often, August wasn’t sure that she knew when she was telling the truth.
After a stretch of time, however, the novelty of fresh air and sunsets wore off, and he remembered why he’d climbed out his window in the first place: to take in a play. August discovered an unlocked window at the theater next to the Scarsenguard, the Walsh. So one fine evening he waited until a few minutes before curtain, climbed out his own window, and with a few gravity-defying leaps, slipped inside the Walsh.
Now to secure a seat. August was creeping past guests, trying to locate an empty chair he might borrow for the performance.
The trouble was, how could he be sure the seat would remain vacant? People arrived at the theater woefully late.
August noticed an unoccupied box seat that had been roped off. A large column ran through the center of the box that made it impossible to see the stage, obviously a botched remodel from when the place had been converted from a vaudeville house to a proper Broadway theater. No one in their right mind would pay good money for a view so obstructed. His lucky stars thanked, August snuck by a blessedly irresponsible usher who was dozing in the hallway and squeezed himself past the column into the box, heart aflutter not from nerves but at the prospect of a play.
The curtain finally opened, and August was treated to his first bit of live drama in nearly three years. The play was entitled A Wardrobe Full of Miracles or an Armoire Stuffed with Dreams. At first he watched with relish, but soon he was forced to swallow the bitterest of pills. The play was bad. Terrible, even.
“Perhaps my expectations were too high,” he said to himself as he passed the sleeping usher he’d snuck by earlier, hindsight revealing that the usher’s slumber was not negligence but a defense mechanism against theatrical dreck. “After all, every play can’t be written by Lillian Hellman.” Though wouldn’t it be divine if they all could?
The next night he decided to see what the Graff, another theater on the block, had to offer, but alack, the staff at this establishment seemed to have a far tighter protocol regarding security; August couldn’t find even a mouse hole to crawl through.
Depressed that he would never wipe the stain of A Wardrobe Full of Miracles or an Armoire Stuffed with Dreams from his memory, he moped into the bistro, where he crashed into a rather oily man who couldn’t have been taller than five feet.
“Watch where you’re going, brat,” the weasel man snarled at August.
“You watch where you’re going!” August retorted, his frustration at the last two eves robbing him of his usual originality.
The Astonishing Life of August March Page 4