China Dolls (42 page)

RUBY

Dying Ashes Will Burn Again

The taxi went in fits and starts down Atlanta’s Peachtree Boulevard. The next few hours were going to be momentous for me, and I was having a difficult time lining up my feelings. I wasn’t at all sure how I’d react when I saw Grace. Last night, Helen had told me a lot of strange things about her. Interesting, chilling things, really, about how she’d turned me in, stolen my part, wheedled her way into Joe’s heart, and then been dumped by him. It was hard for me to believe she could have done all that but, as Helen said, everyone couldn’t be wrong. Two and two always add up to four, but my mind reeled away from the possibility that
any
of it could be true, even though I knew that at least
some
of it must be.

My taxi dropped me off in front of the theater, where a man on a ladder was placing letters on the marquee. Top billing:
GRACE LEE, THE ORIENTAL DANSEUSE, STAR OF STAGE AND SCREEN
. Below that:
MING AND LING—TWO HILLBILLIES FROM THE BURMA ROAD
. And at the bottom of the bill:
PRINCESS TAI, FRESH FROM HER APPEARANCE IN HAVANA
. (Ha!) My agent made it sound like I was lucky to hook up with these performers. I hadn’t heard of Ming and Ling, but as far as I was concerned, Grace wouldn’t be the headliner for long. I
had
to become better and bigger than she was. I had to get my career and life back. Like I said, momentous.

The man climbed down the ladder, paid my driver, and offered me
his arm. “Your trunk has already been delivered, and your dresser is arranging things. Right this way, Princess.”

Princess
. It gave me chills to be called by my title again. I followed the man through the theater until we reached a door with a big gold star and
PRINCESS TAI
written in red glitter. I entered, and there were Helen and Tommy.

“Your bubble is polished.” As Helen spoke, I noticed that she’d put two framed photos on my makeup table: one of Eddie doing the flying splits, the other of Helen and Lai Kai in China. “I’ve fluffed the fans, in case you chose to use them tonight. I’m ready to do your makeup.”

Aah
—the cold of the foundation followed by the pouf, pouf, pouf of the powder against my naked skin ignited physical pleasure in my body. I stared at myself in the mirror. I looked pretty damn good, considering. Just as Helen kneeled before me to glue on my patch, someone knocked at the door.

“Answer it, sweetie, just like I taught you,” Helen told Tommy.

He went to the door, opened it a crack, and delivered a well-rehearsed statement in a tiny yet clearly bossy voice. “No visitors allowed.”

The door swung open anyway. Grace whisked into the room, wearing a gorgeous fur coat, hat, and gloves, and acting like a big star. It was hard to believe she’d once been such a hick.

“Ruby! Gosh, am I glad to see you! Helen! Tommy! This is a surprise! What are you doing here?”

It had been a little more than a year and a half since I’d heard Grace’s voice, and I can’t say it gave me a big thrill.

“I wondered how long it would take the weasel to say ‘Happy New Year’ to the chickens,” Helen mumbled. “This is like opening the door and saying hello to the bandit.”

Helen and her sayings! Gotta love her!

“I hardly know where to start,” Grace babbled on. Was she really that oblivious to the ice in the room? “Ruby, you have to tell me everything. Tommy! You’ve grown so much! How old are you now? Three? Oh, Helen, I can’t believe you’re here! How’s Eddie?”

“He’s fighting in France,” Helen said.

“And Monroe?”

“Still hanging on.”

“Fifteen minutes, people,” someone called. “Fifteen minutes.”

Grace did an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “All right, then. Hey, why don’t the three of you come to my suite after the show?”

Her
suite
?

After Grace left, Helen finished my makeup. We didn’t talk about the Oriental Danseuse. I was tense. I wanted to be better than perfect. I walked alone to the curtain, because Helen’s only request had been that Tommy not see me perform, which didn’t make a lot of sense when he’d just watched her powder me, but what the hell. I’d promised that we’d be together when I got out of the camp, and I’d come through on that promise. Good thing too. That boy of hers … The way he looked she
needed
to get away from her family.

My music started. I placed my bubble just so and glided into the blue light. My skin prickled to have all the men’s eyes on me. For a few moments, the room turned raw and hot. It gave me confidence that I would get back to my full form a lot sooner than Lee and Sam imagined. When I came offstage, the Chinese hillbillies whirled past me. Ming and Ling, who were actually a half-Filipino and half-Irish father-and-son team, wowed the audience with their “Yangtze Yodel.” Those ding-dong daddies had the audience rolling in the aisles. Helen—with Tommy—joined me by the curtain, relieved me of my bubble, and handed me a robe. The hillbillies came offstage—higher than kites from the adrenaline that comes when you go over big. Coming toward us was a jingling, jangling creature in a goofy getup with gilt and bangles and I don’t know what else. It was Grace. Everyone moved aside for her, like she was the Queen of Sheba. She nodded at us.
Thank you, peasants, for your adoration
. Cripes!

She smacked a fake smile on her face, raised her hands up to her head and her fingers into rigid sticks, and then shuffled onstage on bare feet. I stayed by the curtain to watch. What a cockamamie routine! Her style had evolved from her performance in
Aloha, Boys!
The
dance now had every stereotype in the book, but the audience ate it up. And those long nails? Kooky. I may have liked to float above and removed from the earth, but I
lived
in my body. That’s why I could dance naked! Grace may have been technically better, but my dancing was filled with passion. All right, I’ll call it what it was. Sex! No wonder Helen didn’t want Tommy to watch me.

“I guess it’s going to be like old times,” Helen muttered, and I could hear the jealousy in her voice.

“Not at all.” I squeezed her arm. “It’s you and me against
that
out there.”

“Dying ashes will burn again,”
Helen recited.

Another saying! And it was perfect for us.

“Jeez, Helen, it’s good to have you here.” My grin cut all the way across my face.

H
ELEN DIDN
’
T WANT
to visit Grace in her suite after the show.

“Why should we go groveling?” she groused. “Let her come to us.”

“No, we’re going to accept her invitation. I want to hear what she has to say.”

“Fine,” Helen said, but she didn’t sound fine. “That’s just fine.”

Five minutes later, we were standing at Grace’s door. She was as beautiful as ever, even with her hair in curlers under a scarf. She wanted us to sit on her bed, propped against the pillows with me in the middle, like we were still best friends. Ugh, but we did it. Tommy tried to stay awake, but he fell asleep stretched across our laps.

“We have so much to catch up on, but first tell me how you got on the Chop-Suey Circuit,” Grace said. She may have presented herself as more sophisticated than when we first met, but she was no less stupid if she thought we could pick up where we’d left off.

“I wrote to all my friends,” I answered, trying to stay bland, “hoping someone would help me.”

A shiver ran through Grace.

I went on. “I wrote to people we’d worked with, gossip columnists like Ed Sullivan—”

“The skunk who ratted out Dorothy Toy?” Grace sneered.

“Can you believe we lived in the same building with her and didn’t know she was a
Jap
?” I asked.

Grace winced. It killed me to use that word, but I wanted to see her reaction.

“Anyway,” I continued, “most people wrote back to say they couldn’t help me. Some didn’t bother to reply. Helen’s the only one of our old gang who wrote to me when I was in Topaz.”

“We’ve been writing to each other all along,” said Helen. “We’re very close friends.”

Grace leaned across me and tapped Helen on the arm. “You told me
not
to write to Ruby. You said we could get in trouble for writing to her—a Jap, as you put it. Especially me, since I’d lived with her.”

“If you say so,” Helen said, pulling away from Grace’s touch.

“I say so!”

“A story about a tiger can only be accepted as truth when told by three people,”
Helen retorted.

Grace pushed herself off the mattress. Tommy’s slippers fell with two soft thuds. She planted herself at the foot of the bed. “You’re saying it’s my word against yours?”

Helen looked away. Grace’s face sagged. What a good actress.

“I can’t believe this. What did I ever do to you?” she asked.

Helen set her jaw. “You hurt our friend—”

“I didn’t—”

“Keep singing that song, Grace,” Helen said. “It seems to be working well for you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I think you know.”

“Are you talking about the rumors?” Grace asked Helen, disappointment dripping from her voice. “Is that why
you
never wrote to
me
?”

“I wrote you a letter,” Helen replied. “That’s more than you wrote to Ruby.”

“You told me not to write to her!” Grace repeated, practically
shouting. She pressed her lips together and tried to compose herself. “And in case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m as much a victim in all this as Ruby. Do you have any comprehension of what I’ve lost? Our friends stopped speaking to me. I was blackballed—”

Helen cut her off. “Victim?” She spat out the word indignantly. “You promised you’d stay with me, but you deserted me—”

“What did you want me to do? Sit in my apartment until I went broke?”

“You were protecting your own skin—”

“As usual,” Grace finished for her bitterly. “Jesus, you’re worse than George Louie.”

“Let’s not fight,” I said. So all of a sudden I’m the peacemaker, when
I
was the one who was chiseled out of Hollywood, lost Joe, and was sent to a camp. Maybe they thought they knew everything about me, but there was one thing they hadn’t counted on … I was down but not out.

I turned to Grace. “I wrote to Helen when I was released from Topaz and asked her to be my dresser,” I bragged.

Grace’s mood changed in an instant. “How can you afford it?” she asked, competitive as ever.

I blurted the answer. “I’m making four hundred big ones a week.”

Grace frowned. She might have had top billing and a suite, but I was making more money than she was!

“Who’s your agent?” she asked.

“Sam Bernstein. He’s in New York,” I answered, one-upping her again.

“How nice for you,” Grace said. “Well, look, I should be getting to bed. I hope you don’t mind …”

I was glad to be free of the camp, but the idea of spending the next month—and however many shows—with these two was about as tantalizing as being tied in a burlap sack with a bunch of wailing cats. Then Grace did something that really yanked my knickers. She opened her makeup case, rummaged around, pulled out an envelope, and tossed it in my lap.

“Your savings,” she said. “I’ve kept them for you all this time. Now good night.”

W
OULDN
’
T YOU KNOW
it, a week later Grace dumped Max and got Sam to take her on as a client. Cutthroat bitch. Her fee jumped above mine, to which Helen commented, “It doesn’t surprise me. Does it surprise you?” Not one bit, but it didn’t jibe with her taking care of my money or putting my things in storage either.

Sam called to ask if I’d like to be booked on a whole new way-down-south production with the Oriental Danseuse, Ming and Ling, and Jack and Irene Mak’s magic show for an Oriental Fantasy Revue, “singing, dancing, laughing, and magic in one fun-packed hour.”

“Don’t do it,” Helen advised when I told her about the offer. “Grace acts like she’s taken the ladder to the clouds, but I have her letters. She can’t get any other work.”

But when I called Sam back, he laid it out for me straight. “So? Grace has a problem up north. You have a problem too, but not in the south—at least I’m hoping that’s the case. Besides, you’re new to the road. The Oriental Danseuse and the others have recognizable names. You’ll do more shows and get more fans if I book you together. Neither of you is in a position to be choosy.”

“Are you sure Grace wants to do it?”

“She’s the one who suggested it!”

So she was giving me a hand like I did for her when she came back from Los Angeles, but I wasn’t sure I wanted it. I told Sam I needed to talk to Grace before I made my decision. After I hung up, I waited until Helen took Tommy downstairs to the hotel coffee shop for lunch, then I changed into a day dress of blood-red crepe, pinned a pair of gardenias above my ear, and went to Grace’s room. She answered wearing a towel around her dripping body.

“I’m taking a bath,” she said, waving me in.

I followed her to the bathroom and watched as she slipped back into the bubbles.