Vivian In Red (39 page)

In her sitting room, he found his tie on the floor in front of the sofa and his hat on the table. He tucked the tie into his shirt pocket. Vivian by then emerged from the bedroom, walked straight to him, and pressed her lips into his with ferocity. Then she jerked back and shoved Milo lightly with her flat palms. “Time to go.”

Minutes later, Milo scurried out the door and jogged down the steps, running back over the events from the day in his mind, shaking his head at all that had happened, all that he’d done. Milo Short would never be the same after a day like that.

Milo slammed his way back into his own apartment. His phone was ringing as he walked in, but he ignored it, locking himself in and drawing all his curtains.

Today would be all about work. He’d finish that last blasted song and get away from Allen for good. He couldn’t remember much of what he’d written the night before, to say nothing of whether any of it was decent. Not for nothing it was progress, though, and that counted for a hell of a lot. He ought to buy Vivian some flowers for her inspiration.

Milo stepped into his tiny bathroom to wash his face and shave, at least. He let the water run cold, splashing his face and letting it run over his wrists. It wasn’t yet noon, but the air outside was already shimmering with heat.

After he’d cleaned himself up some, Milo changed into fresh pants and an undershirt, skipping anything else in the privacy of his own apartment. He set about making himself some coffee, then sat down at his little kitchen table to look at the lyrics with sober eyes.

That morning, Vivian had made to tear the lyrics out of her steno book and hand them over, until she realized something she needed to keep was on the reverse side of one of the pages. In her excitement to begin, she hadn’t noticed. “Oh, I’ll copy it over fresh for you anyway, without all my scribbles,” she’d declared, and hurriedly written a clean copy for Milo, tearing it out with a flourish. She’d then tucked it, folded, into his front pants pocket, making Milo gasp.

Vivian’s handwriting was angular and sharp, aggressively slanted, but perfectly readable. Beautiful, really. Much nicer than Milo’s crabbed-looking scrawl, anyhow.

He shook his head. How pickled had he been? Half the rhymes he didn’t even remember. Either they were Vivian’s ideas, or he was so tight he had invented rhymes he could not recall. He took it as a warning against hitting the bottle so hard lest he go the way of Bernard Allen.

A gentle knock shook his concentration. Milo put the paper down and yanked open the door, half hoping to see Vivian there, finished with her appointment—

He stumbled back two steps. Allen, reeking of booze and sweat and smoke, did not wait for an invitation before crashing through the doorway.

“Why aren’t you answering your telephone, Short?”

“I wasn’t home.”

Milo stood as far away from Allen as his modest apartment would let him.

Allen flicked a glance at him, then began pacing the short length of the room. “I’m not coming near you, don’t worry. I’ll never touch you again, not even shake your hand. Here, you left your notebook.” He dropped the notebook on Milo’s sofa, and backed away, raising his hands as if someone were aiming a pistol at him.

Allen continued, “I’m just gonna beg you to finish the show. Just let’s finish this show, and maybe we can work together again some more, if I promise not to go near you. We can work separate, and get together when we have to at the theater rehearsal rooms, or when my wife is at home, because that’s the other thing, I sent her a telegram begging her to come home to the city. I’m doing lots of begging around now. I threw out all the booze and I swear I’m going off it now, for good and permanent.

“Only, I can’t be alone, I see that. I can’t be alone, ever, because if I do, I do terrible things.”

Allen screwed up his fists and pushed them hard into his eyes.

“Hey,” Milo said, “take it easy.”

“Just tell me we can still work together. Please. It’s bad enough what I did, but if I ruined the only good thing in my life, our songs, I’ll never forgive myself. Never.”

“Sure, okay, we can still work together. I don’t hate you.”

Allen choked back one sob, and took one step toward Milo. Seeing his friend recoil, Allen halted, drooped, and took a long, slow step back.

Allen cleared his throat and took out a damp handkerchief. He wiped his face roughly. “My wife should get back in a couple days. Maybe you can come over for some coffee and we can finish the last song.”

Milo nodded, and Allen seemed to be waiting for something, but when nothing else happened, he dragged himself to the door and out without a backward look.

When the door clicked shut, Milo exhaled, realizing he’d been holding his breath almost the entire time Allen was there. The poor schmuck was so wretched, so miserable, that Milo couldn’t shun him forever, especially considering he owed his whole career to Allen. But could they really work together, like before? Could Milo sit beside him on the piano bench like they always used to? Could he sit on that couch and make polite conversation with Dorothy Allen, knowing what he knew?

Vivian may have thought that drowning herself was preferable to slinking back to her sister, but just then Milo envied her ability to shake everything off and vanish into some Midwestern city. In that moment, he’d have liked nothing better than to dust his hands of the whole lot of them. But where else would he go? Where else would he even know how to live? And more to the point, he could never leave his family, who were by now almost entirely dependent on him.

Milo sat back down at his kitchen table, picking up the pencil he’d dropped in frustration, before going over to Allen’s place. For a moment before he began writing, he stared at that pencil, and imagined himself then, not twenty-four hours before, no notion at all of what lay ahead.

He turned his attention back to Vivian’s writing. He squinted now at the words, the night’s memories fighting back through his hangover. He frowned with the struggle toward clear recollection. Some of these rhymes were Vivian’s, it seemed. But how many? Which ones, exactly?

An errant image, of sheet music with the credit line “Lyrics by Milo Short and Vivian Adair” flashed into his mind. He laughed and shivered at once. Preposterous! An erstwhile secretary and errand girl cut in on the credit. Max Gordon, and the director, they’d dismiss it as nonsense, no doubt, lust-crazed Milo wanting to impress a girl, or take pity on her. And Allen…with what he thought of her, Milo dared not imagine his reaction to her name on their song. They might not even let him do it, it’s not like he went down to the music publisher himself to file paperwork or whatnot. He just wrote the songs and sheet music turned up in stores, somehow or other.

And what they would think of him for needing help from that dame! They’d truly believe he’d gone soft in the head if he couldn’t even finish one show without some girl… His name would be mud, and in a business built on connections, your name was everything.

Milo ran his finger down the paper. He still needed several more lines, and he could tell right off others were just not singable, and that’s not something a person can fix unless you’ve written songs before and watched actors try to put them over. And he’d have to continue to refine and polish, with Allen at the piano, then during rehearsals and maybe even at the tryouts. Hell, he wasn’t even one-quarter done, no matter how much Vivian may have helped him, for one night, in his drunken creative frenzy.

Milo shook his head and remembered the brewed coffee, rising to get himself a cup before it turned bitter. It didn’t matter. The point was to finish the job, rid himself of
The High Hat
once and for all.

T
he cab lets us off at the corner. Alex places the box on the curb and holds his hand out to help me step out of the car, as if he’d been doing this all his life. He has to stoop so low, tall as he is, it almost looks like a bow. Despite our serious mission, I allow myself a brief smile at the accidental courtliness.

After sorting through Vivian’s things, Alex and I had sat on the floor in front of the big windows, as I pointed out landmarks and tried to orient him to the city. We agreed with little discussion to bring the box to Grampa Milo the next day. I didn’t bother with any more protests that Vivian might have been just a secretary, just a fan. I’d offered again to get Alex tickets to a show, played awkward concierge and tried to recommend things he could do in the city, but he waved them all off, promising he’d come back another time.

Our knees bumped into each other once or twice as we sat cross-legged, but I didn’t feel like scrabbling away, establishing a moat of personal space. It might have been because Alex had already begun to assume a sort of cousinly friendliness with me. He also carried an innate stillness about him. I unwittingly found myself comparing him to Daniel, who was energetic and restless even in quiet acts of intimacy like holding hands or embracing. Alex seemed content just to sit and stare at the darkening sky, and the glowing lights of the city. He leaned back on his palms, stretched his legs out in front of him, and gazed. Whether his mind was on the city, or back home with his anxious, orphaned mother in Michigan, he didn’t say. I didn’t ask.

“Are you sure I should be here?” he asks me now for the tenth time, adjusting his grip on the box.

I’d insisted that Alex come, because he had as much to do with the box, with the story, as anyone. Because Vivian is long gone, but he is here, with her genes and DNA spiraling away inside him.

“We love guests,” I tell him, trying to lighten his mood. “If my grandmother were alive she’d stuff you with food. I always used to tell people to only take about half of what you’ll want to eat, because she’d press more on you, no matter how many times you claimed you were stuffed. Prepare yourself to be grilled by my girl cousins if they’re here, only because they do that to every heterosexual male within a mile of me.”

“How do you know I’m not gay?”

“Well, then you have a marvelous alibi.”

“I’m actually not, but I could pretend, to fend them off…”

“Be my guest. Okay, here we are.”

Alex tips his head up, his mouth open slightly with a faint grin. “Wow. It’s great. Like something out of a movie.”

The white limestone building is in fact lovely and historic, but so are all these buildings on this block I’ve been visiting the whole of my life. I swallow a “thank you” because what, like I designed the thing? It’s not even my house.

I shove the door open and call out. Esme greets us, and doesn’t mention this tall, long-haired stranger I’ve brought in, though her gaze lingers on him for an extra second or two, and the box for a second or two after that.