Looking for a Love Story (18 page)

WHEN HE CAME
back from the restaurant, Joe raced up the stairs to the Dorans’ dressing room. He started to knock on the door, and then he stopped. What if Ellie wasn’t there? What if her sisters were in the room with her? Somehow he’d just assumed that she’d be alone, but if she wasn’t … He looked down at the parcel in his hand. He didn’t want to embarrass her more than he already had. He’d seen how proud she was. He stood outside the door, not sure what to do. The chorus girls who had been onstage were coming back up the stairs, laughing and chatting, which meant the second half of the show was under way. He didn’t have time to waste; it was now or never. He knocked.

His luck was in. She opened the door. He stole a quick look over her shoulder and saw she was alone. And she definitely wasn’t pleased to see him.

“Can I come in?” he asked fast, before she had a chance to close the door in his face. She studied him for a second, shrugged, and walked back inside the room. He decided that meant yes. Being careful to leave the door open so she wouldn’t think he’d gotten any ideas, he followed her. The little room was furnished with one rickety chair, a mirror that was in need of resilvering, and a
makeup table that would have been small for one person, let alone the three girls using it. It was the kind of bad dressing room that managements assigned to the lesser acts on the bill.

Ellie Doran sat in the chair and looked up at him warily. The fire had gone out of her; her whole body seemed to sag with weariness now, and the bruises around her eye had already started to bloom. Joe opened his mouth and realized he didn’t know what to say. This was a new and unwelcome sensation. He wasn’t in the same class as Benny when it came to smooth-talking women—few men in the world were as gifted as Benny was in that area—but Joe had always been able to hold his own with the opposite sex. He was in show business, for God’s sake! He wasn’t some tongue-tied rube from the sticks; he’d been around beautiful girls most of his adult life. But now, when it was so important to say the right thing … just call him Johnny Hayseed.

“Well?” she said.

“I saw what happened downstairs,” he blurted out idiotically.

“I know.” She turned to stare at the wall. “It was my fault. I know better than to fly at Pa when he’s been drinking.”

“No one should do that to you,” he blurted out again. There didn’t seem to be any way to stop himself.

“It wasn’t as bad as it looked.”

“You’re going to have one hell of a shiner.”

She shrugged again. “Nothing a little greasepaint won’t cover. I’ve done it before.”

She looked defeated sitting there, when she should have been smiling and happy. She was born for smiles and happiness. Joe looked again at his package, wrapped in butcher’s paper and tied with a white string. He held it out to her. “Here,” he said.

She hesitated for a long moment, then she took the package and opened it. “What the …? You’re giving me a chunk of raw
meat?” For a moment he thought she was angry, but then—oh, thank you, God—she grinned. “This is a gift? You couldn’t even have it cooked?”

“It’s for your eye. It’ll help.” He was grinning now too.

“Where did you get it?”

“Across the street. At the restaurant. They thought I was crazy.”

“Aren’t you?”

Maybe about you
. “They understood when I told them I was in show business. You know how that is—civilians always think we’re cuckoo.”

It was the wrong thing to say. Her grin faded. “Yeah, I know civilians,” she said bitterly. She turned away from him. “Thanks for the steak.” He was being dismissed.

“Well, take care of that eye,” he said, back to being idiotic again.

He started for the door, but before he could reach it she said softly, “I know about civilians because I’m going to be one soon.” He came back. “Our act … we’re going to be canceled.”

The stage manager had said she and her sisters would get their pictures back after the second show. That was the way it was usually done; an act was canceled
after
they’d finished performing. It would be mean to do it when they still had to go on a second time. “Who told you?” he demanded.

“When you’ve been canned as often as we have, you don’t need anyone to say it.”

There was resignation in her voice. She’d faced the truth, and as much as he wished it wasn’t so, it would be unkind to give her false hope. “There are other tours,” he said gently. “Other managements.”

“Not for us. Not anymore.” Her eyes started to fill with tears—she wiped them away fast. “Our act is dead.”

“I wouldn’t say
dead
exactly. Your patter … and the movements … may be a little young for you and your sisters…. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about changing—”

“You think I don’t know what we look like onstage?” She cut him off angrily. “You think I don’t know I’m making a fool of myself when I go out there?”

“No, no,” he said hastily. “I’m sure you know how bad … I mean …” He trailed off miserably.

“Yes. I know how bad we are.”

“Then why do you do it?” he heard himself ask.

“Pa.” The one syllable came out as a sigh. “He put the act together when I was six. In the beginning, we were pretty good.” She smiled at the memory. Then she frowned, and it looked like she was going to clam up again.

“I bet you were,” Joe said, to encourage her and keep her talking.

“That was ten years ago.” She closed her eyes. “We’ve grown up since then.”

“You mean your father hasn’t changed the act since you were children?” She shook her head. “But that’s—” He couldn’t find the word for how stupid and wasteful and … downright criminal that was. It was one thing to have an act that wasn’t working and not know why. But to go onstage the way she did, knowing what was wrong and not being able to do anything about it—that went against every instinct he had as a performer. “You have to tell him you won’t do it anymore! You can’t!”

“You saw what happened backstage. You think that’s the only time I’ve been hit? He wants us to keep on being babies. And when he’s been drinking …” She sighed again. “He didn’t drink like that when Ma was alive. Not that I remember, anyway.”

She was looking far off now. He stood very still so he wouldn’t interrupt her thoughts. Anything to keep her talking.

“Pa was in the profession,” she said. “He started in the music halls in England with a single act—a couple of songs and a buck dance—but it was the singing that put him across. Pa had a beautiful voice. He came to this country, and everyone who heard him said it was just a matter of time before he broke into the big-time.

“He met my ma and they got married and she had us kids, and Pa was doing great. He had a booking in New York City; all the important scouts and agents were coming to catch his act. The night before he went on, Ma got sick—the influenza. She got bad real fast. Pa was torn up about leaving her in the hotel room, but this was the chance he’d been waiting for.” Her eyes were sparkling with tears she was holding back. Joe had a feeling she was one of those rare girls who got prettier when they cried. “Pa went onstage and his throat closed up. He tried to sing anyway, he pushed so hard he ruptured something in there—that’s what the doctor said. His voice was gone after that. And Ma never did get better. After two months, she died. I was six, Florrie was eight, and Dot was ten.

“Pa was in a bad way for a while—that was when the drinking really started. But one day he told us we were going into show business. He put the act together for us, and we’ve been touring with it ever since. Ten years.”

“You and your sisters need to stand up to him. Tell him you want a new routine, new costumes—”

“It’s too late for that.”

“If the three of you stand together—”

“We won’t. Florrie and Dot are quitting the act. Florrie’s getting married next July, and Dot found herself a job in a milliner’s shop in Manhattan and she’s moving there. And I”—her mouth trembled—“I’m going back home to Brooklyn to live with Pa. But now there won’t be any act for him to think about. Nothing for him to look forward to.” She couldn’t hold back the tears any
longer. They started to fall; without thinking, Joe moved toward her. “Living with Pa is going to be hell!”

Joe believed her. He could imagine how bad it was going to be. And it shouldn’t be allowed.
No
, he wanted to shout.
You can’t go back and live with that old drunk!

All of sudden, she seemed to realize she’d been spilling her family secrets to a total stranger, and she was embarrassed about it. She turned her back to him. “Thank you for the steak,” she murmured.

He was being dismissed again. But he couldn’t leave.
Let me fix this for you
, he wanted to say.
Just tell me what to do
. But she never would; he knew that about her already. And then it came to him in a flash: Maybe there
was
something he could do to help her. It would take a little work and he’d have to convince Benny to go along, but it might be just the ticket for all of them.

There was a roar of applause from the stage, a hand big enough to carry up three flights of stairs. The headliner act had just finished, and clearly they had killed. The second half of the show was coming to an end. He had to get downstairs fast and start working on Benny. “I gotta go,” he told the beautiful girl. “I gotta find my partner.”

She turned to him and held out her hand, and he’d been right, she was even prettier when she cried. “I’m Ellie.” She smiled through her tears. “Ellen Doran.”

He didn’t tell her that he already knew her name. “Joe Masters,” he said.

Then he ran out of her dressing room and down the stairs.

CHAPTER 17

Joe found Benny in their dressing room, leaning back precariously in a chair with his feet propped up on the makeup table, his eyes closed. Benny hadn’t taken off his dashing white suit, and he hadn’t even put a towel on the chair to protect it. Benny’s mother had spoiled him for so long that now, even though she was gone, he still acted as if he had someone doing his laundry for him. At this rate, his suit was going to need cleaning before they left New Rochelle, which would make a dent in their carefully calculated budget. Joe was the one who had done the calculating, and normally he would have yelled at Benny for being a careless jerk, but Joe was about to propose something that was going to make a much bigger hole in their finances. So he didn’t scold his feckless partner—not even for resting his dirty shoes on their makeup table.

Instead, he put on his own suit for the curtain call, doing it fast,
while, in his head, he ran over the idea he was about to propose. Then he sat in the chair next to Benny and plunged in. “I been thinking,” he began.

Benny sat up. “Me too,” he said. “We’re getting nowhere in this business, kiddo.”

It was the same complaint he’d been making, but this time it seemed to Joe that there was something more urgent about it. Momentarily dropping the speech he’d been about to make, he said, “It’s our material. When we finish this tour, we need to rewrite it. That’s all, Benny. We’re a good team onstage. Our timing is great, and the way we look and sound—all that works.”

For a second Joe thought Benny was going to argue, but he seemed to think better of it. He began patting powder on his nose. “If you say so,” he said.

But that didn’t mean he agreed. And the tricky thing about Benny was, if he ever did quit the act, he’d give his partner the news in his own sweet time, if he bothered to do it at all. Benny hated any kind of unpleasantness. When he was finished with something he just walked away—as dozens of girls around the country had learned the hard way. His favorite method of telling a lady the romance was off was to send her a good-bye note and a red rose to remember him by. That was his signature—one red rose. He gave them to his girls at the beginning of a courtship—and at the end. And whenever he could manage it, the final rose and the accompanying note were delivered after he was safely out of town.

Joe studied Benny out of the corner of his eye. Given his mood, this was the wrong time to make the suggestion Joe had in mind. But if he didn’t say something now, Ellie and her sisters would be packing their trunk and heading back to New York City. “I’ve been thinking maybe we should add something to the act—until we can rework it,” Joe said.

“You got a miracle?” Benny asked. He contemplated himself in the mirror; sometimes Joe thought it was as if he still couldn’t believe how good-looking he’d become and had to reassure himself periodically.

“We need a new finish, something big,” Joe said. “Right now, it’s just me yelling and trying to strangle you—which the audience has been watching me do for ten minutes.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” But Benny had turned away from the mirror and was looking at Joe. He was interested.

“What if we have a girl—a real doll—walk across the stage in front of us?” Eagerly, Joe jumped up and started acting out his idea. “She’s snobby, see? Isn’t going to give a couple of dopes like us the time of day.” He sashayed across the dressing room. “She passes by and we stop dead.” He mimed himself and Benny forgetting their stage battle, their eyes bugging out when the girl came into view. He began improvising lines for the snooty girl and himself and Benny, and as he did it, he found himself getting genuinely excited about the possibilities. He’d come up with this new ending because Ellen Doran was beautiful and sad and he wanted to rescue her. But now he was thinking that adding her to the act might actually help put it over. A little, anyway.