Vivian In Red (25 page)

The stage darkened, and a spotlight came up on George Murphy, dressed like a ragamuffin, reading a prop newspaper, slouched on a stoop.

Murphy raised his face in a crooning lament, as the stage began to fill with leggy chorus girls dressed in racy costumes meant to both look like rags and show off their gams.

Herbert Hoover said he knew our bleak Depression wouldn’t last

The Prez said we’d be on our feet instead of on our….keister.

Franklin Delano said, “Hey, Friend! You know, happy days are ’round the bend!”

Well I say, “Sure enough! The little guy gets it in the end…”

At “end” the girls all bent forward and popped their tuchuses straight up in the air.

No more worries about money, honey, cuz we’ve got no more to count.

About your rent, say, pal, don’t fret! That landlord will kick you out!

When a guy comes by to give you a dime, just say no to that charity!

Tell us a joke, sing us a song, and let’s live on hilarity!

Now in the instrumental break, the tap dancing girls surrounded and obscured Murphy. Milo knew what was happening back there; the costume gals had rigged his rags to rip right off of him, revealing a tux underneath. The girls melted away just in time for the next few bars.

Tired of breaking your back all day to earn a dollar?

Fear not, here comes your boss to grab you by the collar!

With no time to lose and nothing to gain, I see it all with such clarity

Let’s get married, sweetheart, and we can just live on hilarity!

At this Murphy grabbed around the waist a girl who had danced in from the wings, wearing a sort of wedding veil made out of newspaper. Now the tempo slowed down and Murphy danced and sang the next part with the girl in his arms, throwing in plenty of suggestive leers to make Milo’s lyrics seem naughtier than they really were.

Freedom’s what you got when you’ve not a pot to piss in

Liberty for you and me, there’s all day free for kissin’!

No pennies to pinch, no floors to scrub, I say count yourself lucky, bub

If all you’ve got is nothing, there’s nothing to be missin’!

The chorus girls kicked and shimmied, and Murphy danced and trotted his way among them. Milo laughed out loud that the words he’d scribbled in that tiny office with Allen, for fun on a slow day, were now being belted out by none other than Broadway star George Murphy, fresh off of his turn in
Roberta
, while a dozen dancing girls frolicked around him.

Murphy’s voice vaulted and somersaulted through the house as he drew out the long notes of “missin’” far longer than seemed strictly natural, then took a big, obvious breath in the middle to go a little longer, which made Milo laugh each time.

The company exploded in a frenetic dance as Murphy melted back into the crowd for the big finish, where he climbed back onto the stoop. He began the final refrain slower, almost tenderly, before picking up the pace on the final two lines.

I suppose I’d like something to eat besides the sole of my shoe

And a roof would keep out the rain, but who makes me smile? It’s you!

Working’s a chore, eating’s a snore, who cares if a paycheck’s a rarity?

If I get hungry I’ll eat my words, so darling, let’s live on hilarity!

The chorus girls collapsed into their final poses of admiration for Murphy and his paper-veiled girl, clutching one another on the stoop. In the silent moments that followed, the echoing notes trailed into the air, and Milo was sitting close enough to hear the dancers’ panting, and see their heaving chests.

Goose bumps chased each other right up his arms.

The director broke the silence. “Outstanding, everyone. Really terrific. Girls, remember to keep those smiles big as can be during the release, Murphy, you could be faster getting that contraption off, we need this to skip right along…”

Milo tuned him out, trying to get back those last seconds when everything was sharp and bright like sun through crystal, and all his fear had fallen away, if only long enough to savor that, for the first time, everything made a kind of sense.

The next night at Jimmy McHugh’s house, everyone involved in
Hilarity
got drunker or sicker or both with each tick of the second hand toward the time when the next day’s morning paper would be handed to an errand boy outside the
Boston Post
on Milk Street, who’d hotfoot it to the house and the first real review would be read aloud, so all could hear at once if they were to be failures.

Milo was asking the rehearsal pianist, Finkelstein, if it was always like this.

“Like what?” he asked, swirling his ice cubes in his whiskey.

“Everyone’s so nervous. It feels funny in the air, even. Like there’s either going to be a parade or a brawl at any minute.”

“Oh, that. Sure, normal. Makes not much difference to me as I’m just one of the hired hands. Two hired hands!” He held up his hands with long, delicate fingers, much as he could with a rocks glass in one fist. “You know I used to work on Tin Pan Alley? With McHugh over there. He helped me get this job. Thought he might cut me in on some of his songs, too, but that ain’t never gonna happen.”

“Cut you in?” Milo put his own drink down, deciding against adding gin to his queasy stomach.

“Yeah, you know, on the songwriting credit. I helped him out with one or two melodies. Course it wasn’t much help, so I can’t complain. Still, it sure woulda been nice.”

“Is that his wife with him?”

“Nah. That’s Dorothy Fields, in from California. She’s the daughter of Lew Fields, you know, the vaudevillian. She’s writing with Kern now, but she worked with McHugh a lot, a while back. Remember ‘I Can’t Give You Anything But Love’?”

“Oh yeah! Sure, great tune.” Milo cocked his head. “They seem awful cozy.” They weren’t doing anything all that much that Milo could see. But she was turned toward him, standing very close, and they were sharing glances, eye-to-eye, like they had a secret language that didn’t even need words.

“Some people think they’ve been making more than music together, if you catch my meaning. They barely see their own spouses. But who knows?”

“I don’t know why my mother is in such a hurry to marry us off. Seems like more trouble than it’s worth to me.”

“I bet Vivian would toss on a wedding veil for you… Or maybe not.” At saying this, both men had swept their gazes around the room in search of her, and found her sitting almost in the lap of Mark Bell on a divan near the living room doorway. “Huh, I should have guessed. She’s been hanging around his dressing room lately. Guess you’re out of it, Milo.”

“I was never in it, Fink. You know how it goes, I gotta find myself a nice Jewish girl; better yet, let my mother find one for me.”

“You run across any with rich fathers, throw them my way, huh, pal? I’m so sick of piano playing. I’d like to just get behind a desk at some family business somewhere, only my family doesn’t have any business anywhere.”

“What you got against this gig?”

“I got a good ten years on you, Milo. And I’m still just fingers on the keys to them. I’m never going to get to write a show, or sing, or act. And it gets old, sitting there on that hard bench, watching everyone all around you live the life you ain’t never gonna have.”

Milo was about to ask how that happened, how his chances blew by him already, when Allen burst into the room, waving a paper. “It’s in!” he shouted, then the paper slipped out of his hand. Vivian was quickest off the mark and snatched it up, rattling through its pages and ignoring Allen’s woozy attempts to grab it back.

The phonograph stopped with a loud rip, and conversation dried up, and every face in the room turned to Vivian like flowers to the sun.

She cleared her throat and began to read, in an overly projected, affected high-class accent she must have thought fitting for the crowd.

“
Let’s Live on Hilarity? Let’s not.
That’s the headline,” she explained, and a groan rolled through the crowd. Milo put his head in his hand. He hadn’t considered how a newsman might make fun of the show’s name.

Vivian read on with less verve now that the acidic headline had seeped the joy from the room.
A new Max Gordon production has opened for previews at the Colonial Theatre, with some old Broadway hoofers and crooners, and a new team of songwriters the Great White Way has never heard of before, and may never hear of again.

Allen cursed, loudly, and glanced around as if looking for something inexpensive to break.

The revue is a herky-jerky affair with some topical songs and some standard numbers meant to be crowd-pleasing, but the performances don’t have the polish that one expects for a professional show, even a show in previews. Dancers at times crashed into each other, and a costume mishap for George Murphy marred what was otherwise a lively and tuneful number that gave the show its name. In particular, the lyrics to the title number were clever and comically lowbrow, with an ending both sad and unexpected.

But the efforts of these new songwriters, Bernard Allen and Milo Shirt—

Laughter raged throughout the room, charged with relief there was some other reaction to be had other than angry weeping.

Vivian tossed her hair impatiently and waited for the giggles to recede. “Pardon me, I should have corrected it as I read aloud. “…
Milo SHORT, will be wasted if the powers that be can’t shape up the show with enough snap and pizzazz to keep the seats filled and the audience clapping at curtain call.”

McHugh himself walked up then and seized the paper from her hand. “Never mind, sweetheart, we get the idea. Anyone want to read more, you’re welcome to it. After I’ve finished, that is.” McHugh turned his backside to the crowd and pantomimed wiping his ass, to more laughter that held a hint of wild, barely contained hysteria. He threw it at the ground and there was a pause long enough for about four heartbeats before several people grabbed for it once, including Mark Bell, still at Vivian’s elbow. He’d been trying to read over her shoulder.

“Champagne all around! We’re still alive and that’s saying something.” McHugh waved his hand, and waiters appeared from somewhere in the recesses of the house bearing trays of glittering champagne flutes.

Vivian and Mark Bell were holding hands by now. Milo was glad she seemed happy, but worried the director who’d barely given her a job would consider this fooling around with the talent. Then again, Bell was second-tier, and everyone was tanking up enough that no one seemed likely to notice or care.

Allen stomped over and slapped him on the shoulder hard enough that Milo’s gin—he’d picked it back up with swimmy relief at not being personally thrashed in print—spilled out onto McHugh’s thick rug.

“You lucky sonofabitch,” he slurred.

“Lucky? Me?”

“You, in the review. About the only nice thing that ratface critic said was about you.”

“Yeah, swell, only he couldn’t spell my name right so everyone thinks a Mr. Shirt wrote that song. Anyhow, he said your music was tuneful. That’s nice.”

Allen waved his hand. “They’ll call anything tuneful that doesn’t sound like a bucket of rocks being dragged across stage.”

“So we’re doomed?”

McHugh himself appeared before them. “Doomed! Far from it, my lads.” He was affecting an old country Irish accent, and waving over a waiter with champagne. “It all depends if the people stay away, boys. Sometimes bad notices are death to a show, other times it doesn’t seem to matter and nobody knows why, not that they don’t make themselves crazy wondering. If anyone knew, every show would be a hit. Well done, Milo Shirt.” McHugh winked.

Milo shifted his weight, felt like McHugh was a schoolteacher he wanted to please. “Thanks for having us at the house. It’s a nice place.”

“Is it? I suppose so. I’m not here much, you know, usually the missus is in residence, but she’s gone out to the country visiting friends. But when I heard Max here was in town, I wanted to throw him a nice bash. Hey, look alive, friend,” he said, addressing Allen now, patting his shoulder. “By the end of tomorrow that newspaper will be garbage, but
Hilarity
will be in front of a whole new crowd. You’ll see, you’ll forget all about it by lunchtime.”