Stage Door Canteen (34 page)

He kept the prospect of ham and cheese with pickles, potato crisps and a stiff drink, in mind all the way up in the apartment elevator. He let himself in, checked the blackout shades in the dining room to make sure they were drawn, and turned on the lights. Mrs. Haller was out for a change, probably celebrating Christmas at a party, he told himself. On impulse, he went into the living room with its windows facing the river and the far stone cliffs of northern New Jersey. The Christmas tree was a bare, fragrant shape in the dark, waiting to be decorated. He lingered for a moment, enjoying the sweeping view of the river before pulling the shades. He remembered the fireplace. There was always a fire laid, the logs stacked, although he couldn’t remember it having been lit in all the weeks he’d been there.

What the devil, he told himself as he took out his lighter and touched it to the rolled up newspapers, it’s bloody Christmas. He stood watching as the flames licked at the paper, then caught the underside of the well dried-out logs. He hadn’t stood before a fireplace with a fire burning in it for ages. Since, actually, the last time he was home.

He didn’t want to think about things like that. Abruptly, he turned and headed for the hallway and the bathroom at the far end of the flat, and a hot shower.

A half an hour later, clean, warm, restored and feeling a new man, he was making his sandwich in the kitchen when he heard the locks of the front door clicking.

David felt a moment of unaccountable unease. The notion of the fine shot of whisky and supper before a roaring fire in the living room had so possessed him he’d forgotten his landlady.

He realized he had to think of an excuse for building the fire, certain now it was not in the same category as kitchen privileges. He waited, knife poised over the sandwich on the drain board.

She appeared in the doorway. For a moment the sight of her, dressed to the nines for a party somewhere with great glittering dangling earrings, shining fair hair to her shoulders, slim body in a clinging black silk dress, the wafting of expensive perfume, took him by storm. He blinked.

“Oh, you,” the beautiful Mrs. Haller said, unsurprised.

She swayed, laying her hand flat on the counter top beside the slices of ham to steady herself.

He peered at her, seeing what he’d missed the first time. Mrs. Haller was not herself. Something had happened. There was more than the scent of perfume in the air. One could not miss the glazed look in those emerald eyes, or the melted lipstick in the corners of her mouth. His landlady, he gathered, was mortally, visibly, incredibly, pissed.

Or as the Americans would say, stinking drunk.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day,

Their old familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet,

The words repeat,

Of Peace On Earth, Goodwill To Men

—Christmas Carol

EIGHTEEN

Sardi’s, one of the great restaurants of the theater district and a famous hangout of New York stage people, was the place chosen by Rodgers and Hammerstein for their Christmas party for the cast of Away We Go. A well-dressed crowd of over a hundred filled up one of Sardi’s private dining rooms. Brooks Atkinson and several New York theater critics had been invited for the event, as well as gossip columnists Louis Sobol and Walter Winchell, neither of whom showed up, and Theater Guild Producers Theresa Helburn and Lawrence Wagner, and a Canadian millionaire who came with them and who was rumored to be a new backer. The party began at six o’clock, but many guests were late because of the snowstorm. Dick Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein and their wives were hosts. The Sardis, Vincent senior and Vincent junior, outdid themselves for their old friends by miraculously circumventing rationing and wartime food shortages. There was a lavish buffet, plenty of butter, unlimited coffee and sugar, and Long Island duck a l’orange subsituting for the traditional meat course. “Hey, honestly, who would miss a thick, juicy prime rib?” Howard da Silva deadpanned. Everyone laughed. After coffee and dessert Dick Rodgers sat down at the piano and played Christmas carols. Most of the singers in the cast gathered around, going from God Rest You, Merry Gentlemen, to a wild and raucous Jingle Bells. The ballet settled at the open bar with some members of the orchestra and proceeded to get noisily drunk.

Under cover of the singing, Marty Levin and his wife Miriam steered Jenny out into the corridor, followed by Ralph Biggs, who played Ado Annie’s father in the show, and Lee Dixon.

“Are you all right, Jenny darling?” Marty pushed her up against the wall and held her to keep her upright. A waiter passing with a tray stared at them. “Okay now? You gave us a scare there for a minute.”

“Breathe deep,” Miriam told her. “Poor sweetie, she nearly passed out. It can be very traumatic, getting a shock like that.”

“For God’s sake, what happened?” Lee Dixon hovered, bewildered. “Will somebody tell me what’s going on? I saw you all leaving in a rush. What’s the matter with Jenny?”

“They let her go,” Ralph Biggs told him. “Richard Rodgers sent Ockie to break it to her. Marty saw what was happening, she was knocking back one drink after the other, and he and Miriam grabbed her and took her out here in the hallway. I think she ought to go home.”

“I don’t want to go home.” Jenny was not yet incoherent, but she wanted to be. “Why would I want to go home? I think I should have another drink.” She turned shakily to Marty’s wife. “Please, Miriam, could we send someone for a drink for me? I think I’m drinking rye whiskey. Straight, with some sort of chaser.”

“I’ll go get it,” Ralph Biggs told her. “Miriam’s right, just take deep breaths, sweetheart. You’re as white as a sheet.”

Marty said to Lee, “Dick Rodgers gets Ockie to do the rotten hatchet work. But then of course nobody expects Dick to do it in person.”

“Oh, shit,” Lee blurted. “He did that here? At the Christmas party? Why didn’t they just stab her through the heart and get it over with? At the damned Christmas party!” He couldn’t get over it. “If they did that to me I’d punch somebody in their fucking face!”

Marty’s wife shushed him with, “Lee, be still. You’re still working for them, remember? Darling,” she said to Jenny, “you’re not going to be sick, are you? Maybe you should go lie down someplace.”

“No, I don’t want to go lie down, I really want a drink.” Actually, she was numb with shock. “You know, I just think it’s better for me to get drunk. Really drunk.”

“So,” Marty said to Lee, “he tells Jenny that they are replacing her. She says he was very nice about it. Hah, is Ockie ever anything but nice? He tells her they have someone new for the part named Celeste Holm, that she impressed Reuben and Dick Rodgers during the auditions. Those auditions advertised as being for understudies, remember? What Reuben and Dick liked so much about Miss Holm is that she had Ado Annie down pat the first time. Plus she gave them a demonstration on how to summon pigs.”

“It’s hog calling, Marty,” Lee supplied. “Jenny could have done that if they’d asked her, but they didn’t give her a chance! Did Mamoulian say anything to her? He owes her an explanation.”

“I don’t know how to do a hog call, Lee,” Jenny said, swaying a little.

“Jenny, you can do anything if they just tell you.” His voice rose. “It’s just not fair! And if they do this to you, they can do it to the rest of us, did you ever think of that? Our asses could be out of the street tomorrow.”

The older actor cocked an eyebrow at him. “Lee, calm down, you are not doing Jenny any good. Jenny’s agent will be looking around for other shows for her. Darling Jenny is a wonderful talent. Look, the part of Ado Annie is not Magnolia from Showboat, is it? Ockie saw Jenny in the revival and loved her. We are all wonderful, actors are wonderful, but there are parts some of us can’t do, right?”

The dancer was adamant. “Jenny can do anything, Reuben just didn’t give her a chance! The bastard stayed on her back all the time.”

“I’m going to a bar somewhere,” Jenny said loudly. “I need more drinks. I feel like I want to die.”

“Oh, my God, darling, don’t talk like that!” Miriam looked at her husband over Jenny’s head. “We should take you home. Look, even with all this snow Vincent Sardi can get us a taxi, can’t he? Yes, you definitely should have someone with you so you can go home.”

Jenny pulled away. “Please, don’t act like I’m going to slit my wrists, I don’t think I can stand it. I’m not a basket case. I’ve only lost my part in a brilliant new show with Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein that we all worked on so hard. And now I’m out of it! The only thing down the drain is four months of work and hopes and dreams. I deserved to lose, actually,” she said, unable to stop sobbing, “because I’m no hog caller. No damned lousy hog caller at all!”

Ralph Biggs came back with Jenny’s drink. Miriam Levin grimaced. “Did you have to make it a double?”

“Miriam, she lost her part in the show and wants to get drunk. Believe me, I know the feeling.”

Jenny grabbed the rye and water and downed it. It felt like fire inside, quick and burning as though it would have no lasting effect. But it would.

“I’ll go and see about a cab,” Marty said, looking grim.

A half an hour later the taxi made its way up Broadway in the deepening snow and Jenny was quieter, mainly because she had cried so much that she couldn’t cry anymore. She sat between Marty Levin and his wife, Miriam, who held her hand. There wasn’t much to say. Jenny didn’t want to be assured again that Dick Rodgers and Reuben Mamoulian had really treated her abominably. Not even from sympathetic friends like Marty and his wife. She didn’t want to hear, either, that she shouldn’t have been let go, that she’d been doing a wonderful job. They all knew she’d been having trouble. It was useless for them to pretend it wasn’t so.

A terrible despondency gripped her. She couldn’t fight off the feeling now that she no longer had a role in Away We Go. That she no longer shared the excitement with the rest of the cast that the show might be a hit after all. She’d been so happy that her role would keep her busy so she wouldn’t miss Brad so much. Now it had all been snatched away. Oh God, she agonized, what was she going to? Everything had collapsed. Her work, and the pleasure she got from it. All hope of happiness. The end.

When they got to Jenny’s apartment building on Riverside Drive Miriam decided she would wait in the taxi and not come up. The snowstorm would make it almost impossible to get another cab. Marty would see Jenny up to her door.

“No, please,” Jenny told them. She got out and closed the cab door before Marty could follow her. “It’s very sweet of you, but I’m all right. You’d better go back to Sardi’s. I’m sure everyone has heard what happened by now, so tell them whatever story sounds the best. Tell them I’m okay.”

Marty rolled down the cab window and Miriam leaned across him to say, “Darling, are you sure you can get to the elevator by ourself? Marty, why don’t you—”

“Miriam, I’m not that drunk. Really.” She couldn’t keep down a small hiccough “Well, okay, just a little.”

“It was a stupid idea,” Marty said, “to break this to you at the Christmas party, for God’s sake. I know Dick probably put it off until the last moment, that’s the way he does things. He steps on people. I blame Ockie, too, he could have done it differently.” He leaned out the window as the cab started to pull away from the curb. ‘There are going to be a lot of people upset over this, Jenny sweetheart.”

“I hate to leave you like this,” Miriam cried. “Go in right away out of the cold, Are you sure you’re all right? Where’s your doorman?”

Jenny waved her hand. “We haven’t had a doorman since Pearl Harbor. I think he enlisted. Yes, I’ll go in. Goodnight.”

She started across the snowy sidewalk to the front door. Miriam was right. She was drunk enough to stagger.

In the elevator, she stared at herself in the mirror panel. Crying had washed away her mascara, leaving raccoon-like shadows around her eyes. She pushed back her hair with both hands. Her image in the mirror looked terrible.

The elevator deposited her at her floor. As she unlocked the front door and it swung open she saw there was a light in the kitchen. A flickering glow in the front room was visible from the vestibule. A fire in the fireplace.

Jenny dropped her coat on the chair in the foyer and started unsteadily across the dining room. The swinging door to the kitchen was propped open. She could see the captain. He’d had a shower as his black curly hair was wet and hanging down over his ears. He was wearing a gray, institutional-looking bathrobe. Barefoot, standing at the stove. A bottle of Scotch was on the drain board.

He stood holding a butcher knife. They stared at each other for several long minutes. “I was just fixing a sandwich. It’s ham and cheese, actually.” There was a minute’s awkward silence. “Will you—ah, join me?”

Jenny put her hand on the sink to steady herself. She knew she was required to say something. Oh, no, thank you, I was just on my way to bed. Don’t forget to put out the light. But she wasn’t up to it. “Watch out,” she cried, “the milk is boiling over!”

He jumped. “Shit!” He grabbed the saucepan handle and cursed loudly when it burned him. He had enough presence of mind to grab up the kitchen towel. He wrapped it around the handle.