American Dreams (10 page)

'His

stage manager's inside,' Lorenz said. 'He'll hear you one at a time.

The part's Allyson, the sister of the divorcing husband. She's kinda high strung, has one pretty good scene, four pages. Take five minutes, look it over, we'll start with Miss Abrams.'

Fritzi was third to read for the paunchy stage manager, who had a face like granite. He sat in the middle of the audition room in a straight chair.

Shorty Lorenz read the male part, Allyson's brother. Fritzi stumbled over words -- the playwright's diction was clumsy -- and pitched her voice too high; she made a mess of the reading. At the end, however, the granite face cracked and the stage manager shook her hand with a fatherly smile.

'What's your name again?'

'Fritzi Crown.'

'Nice reading, Fritzi. We'll phone you tonight if we want you to come back.'

'Thank you, sir.'

Lorenz called Pauline next. She breezed past Fritzi as if Fritzi were invisible, and of no consequence in the competition.

That evening Fritzi sat in the second-to-last row of the Lyric Theater's upper balcony. Her ticket had cost sixty-five cents, fifteen cents more than usual. Orchestra seats were five dollars, not one was empty. Only stars of the magnitude of Mrs. Patrick Campbell could inflate prices and fill a house.

The Second Mrs. Tanqueray was hurtling toward its conclusion. Mrs.

Pat had made her tragic fourth-act exit moments ago. Paula Tanqueray had been undone by her past -- a revelation that she'd once 'kept house'

with an army officer who later formed a romantic attachment with Tanqueray's daughter from a first marriage. The daughter rushed on It stage and cried, ''I've seen her! It's horrible!'

Tanqueray's bachelor friend recoiled. LShe -- she has--.?'

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Striving

^Killed herself? Yes -yes! - so everybody will say."1

Fritzi felt faint, whether from excitement or starvation, she didn't know.

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Since Sunday midnight she'd had only weak tea and some stale kaiser rolls thrown out by the dining room of the hotel where she worked. She preferred not to eat before readings. Hunger sharpened a performance, while too much food made an actor sluggish. She hadn't eaten after the Lorenz reading because she couldn't afford it.

Tanqueray's daughter wrung her hands. lBut ~ I know I helped to kill her--1

Fritzi strained forward. There wasn't a sound, a stir, anywhere but the lighted drawing room far below.

'-- if only I'd been more merciful!1

The daughter fainted gracefully onto the ottoman. The audience gasped.

The bachelor friend hesitated, then strode to the open door and gazed out, his face and stance perfectly conveying consternation, and horror.. . .

A red velvet curtain flew across, ending the play.

Fritzi's pulse raced; her temples throbbed. She'd seen great ladies of the stage but never a more sensitive or commanding performance than Mrs.

Pat's.

The electric foots brightened on the curtain. The orchestra, the boxes, the whole theater, exuded a sense of pressure mounting like steam in a cooker. The curtain flew open again. One by one the actors ran down to the footlights as the pressure erupted in thundering applause.

Lined up on the apron, the supporting cast parted in the middle. A blazing circle of blue-white light struck between them. The star entered through the veranda doors upstage. Everyone was up, yelling and applauding.

When Mrs. Pat reached the blue-white circle and stepped in, waves of sound beat on the walls and frescoed ceiling. The galleryites around Fritzi whistled and stomped and threw empty sandwich wrappers over the rail; no one up there could afford the calla lilies or glads or orchids flying over the footlights from the orchestra.

LBravo, bravo!1

Mrs. Pat was a tall, pale, long-necked woman of forty-two, with cascades of dark hair and big glowing eyes inherited from her Italian mother.

She was literally dazzling in a red-orange gown covered with gold sequins.

She had the star quality that riveted every eye to her smallest move; in scenes with other actors she simply made them vanish.

Adrift in New York 57

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A man rushed from the wings with a dozen red roses. Mrs. Pat took them, smiled, and bowed again. The entire cast bowed together and left the stage. Of course Mrs. Pat had to return, hand in hand with her costar.

She and Mr. Webster bowed. Then he retired, giving the stage to her with a wave and a smile. Mrs. Pat stayed in the circle of the carbon arc, calmly gazing around the theater, graciously smiling to acknowledge the love she heard in the ovation. Fritzi clapped so enthusiastically, her palms hurt.

As the applause diminished, Mrs. Pat raised her hand in farewell, stepped back. The scarlet curtain fell. The carbon-arc spotlight burned a moment longer, as if in tribute. Then it blinked out and the house came up full.

The gallery crowd began a stampede to the exits. A precious program in her hand, Fritzi shoved and elbowed like an experienced New Yorker.

Broken peanut shells crackled under her shoes. Her left foot hurt because of a pea-sized darn in her stocking. She still couldn't sew.

She descended the steep staircase to the beautiful marble lobby, crowded with men in evening clothes, women in furs or gold cloaks with linings of colored satin. It was impossible to tell whether the people were genuinely rich or just 'Astorbilts' - gauche pretenders. Either way, they pointed up the poverty of her own appearance. Her high-top button shoes were cheap. So was her gray melton walking skirt and her percale shirtwaist, the white and blue stripes laundered into a gray sameness. Her straw sailor hat was out of season and out of style. Her only decent article of clothing was the brown winter coat from her mother.

Outside, rain pelted Forty-second Street. She'd have to trudge home in that, all the way down to First Avenue near Eighth Street. Paying for public transportation was out of the question.

Under the marquee, whose hundreds of electric bulbs contributed to the dazzle of the white-light district, she secured her hat with a pin and opened her umbrella. Walking east, she passed the Belasco, then Hammerstein's Victoria at the corner of Times Square. It had been Longacre Square until the newspaper moved uptown and built its pink granite tower over the new subway station. Gaudy electric signs hawked SAPOLIO SOAP, KELLOGG'S CORN FLAKES, ARROW CO1 JARS.

Horse-drawn cabs and chugging autos with flickering kerosene headlamps filled the night with noise and a miasma of manure and gasoline.

White plumes spouted from steam cars. Obnoxious klaxons sounded on 58

Striving

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little black autos that sped among the others like aggressive bugs - 'taximeter'

cabs, the latest import from Paris.

After a long walk to lower First Avenue, she saw light under her landlady's door, knocked softly.

'I'm sorry to disturb you this late, Mrs. Perella.'

'Not to worry, was just reading the paper.' Mrs. Perella was a Neapolitan woman of fierce visage but good heart. She liked Fritzi, was tolerant about late rent payments, and took messages on the downstairs hall telephone without complaint.

Hesitant, Fritzi asked, 'Did I have any messages this evening?'

Mrs. Perella shook her head, saw Fritzi's disappointment, and gently squeezed her hand. Fritzi thanked her and trudged upstairs.

Her room at the third-floor front was large, but that was about all you could say for it. Even with the jets unlit it smelled of gas; the building hadn't been modernized.

Weary and damp, she hung her sailor hat and coat in the wardrobe.

Leaning in the back corner was her tennis racket, a 1905 birthday gift from her parents. The ash frame was beveled, the cedar handle finely scored for a good grip; it must have cost ten dollars at least. Carefully brought to New York in her steamer trunk, it had stood untouched since she unpacked. Lawn tennis was a game for those who didn't have to count pennies.

An elevated train rumbled, approaching from the south. Fritzi pulled the blind. The train went by in a roar and rush of sound; lighted car windows threw patterns across the blind, black-yellow, black-yellow. The floor shook. The pitcher on the washstand danced. She was used to it.

She lit the gas mantle near a crazed mirror and with much reaching and wiggling unfastened the buttons at the back of her shirtwaist. To dress and undress, a single woman needed a maid, a lover, or the talents of a contortionist.

She pulled the waist off sleeve by sleeve. She laid her skirt on top of it on the bed. Underneath her chemise she wore a one-piece undergarment combining drawers and a brassiere top with fancy lace around neck and armholes. Looking at the ceiling, she reached under and unpinned her gay deceivers.

She put on a cotton robe and stretched on the bed, reliving the evening.

Mrs. Pat's performance had produced great excitement while Fritzi was in the theater, but in retrospect it was disheartening. She brooded about her gallery seat and the magic circle of the arc light. The physical distance between them
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Fritzi and Oh-Oh

59

was not great, but for an aspiring actress the gulf was very nearly infinite.

What did it take to leap from one place to the other? She was still searching for the secret. What if she never discovered it? What if she woke up to find her dream nothing more than an adolescent delusion she should have abandoned long ago?

She hardly dared think about that.

12 Fritzi and Oh-Oh

4r I Try one,' Maisie whispered.

A Fritzi said, 'I've only smoked cigarettes a few times. I don't like them much.'

'Don't be a stick. These are special.' She showed the colorful packet.

'Parfum de Paree. That means scent of Paris.'

It was fifteen minutes until midnight, a day after Mrs. Pat's performance.

The Bleecker House on West Forty-seventh was quiet -- nothing to be heard but the distant creak of the old elevator cage. The dingy hall smelled of dust, cigar butts in sand urns, the washing solution the Bleecker seemed to use by the tanker load. Fritzi was used to more frenetic evenings: doors banging, couples checking out at two a.m., whimpers and moans and strident oaths from the closed bedchambers. During a typical night she not only did routine dusting of the hall furniture and fixtures, she jumped from room to room cleaning up washstands and commodes, righting overturned chairs, whipping on fresh bed linen to replace that bearing evidence of recent carnality. She was never bothered by these signs of passion, only bemused and, sometimes, a little envious.

Maisie Budwigg had come down to the third floor from her station on four. It was against the rules, but the maids often ignored that. Fritzi was grateful for a respite.

'Well, come on,' Maisie urged.

'Mrs. Patrick Campbell smokes perfumed cigarettes. They're very stylish,'

Fritzi mused, weakening. 'Aren't they expensive?'

'I'll say. A guest gave me these. A little reward for a special service.'

Maisie winked. Poor Maisie - so hefty and homely, she had to give her favors away.

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Striving

'All right, I'll try one.'

'We better go in here. I saw the boss prowling a while ago.'

They hid in a roomy linen closet, the door shut, the bare bulb flickering.

Taking matches from her apron pocket, Maisie lit two cigarettes. The closet was quickly filled with smoke and an indefinable floral odor. Fritzi took a puff. She didn't draw the smoke past her mouth, but it was enough to start her hacking and wheezing.

'These things can't be good for your voice--' she began.

The door opened, startling her. The cigarette hanging on Maisie's lower lip fell to the floor as she looked over Fritzi's shoulder.

Vhoh:

'I thought I smelled smoke,' Oliver Merkle cried. He jumped into the closet and did a wild Spanish dance on Maisie's cigarette. 'For God's sake, what's wrong with you? We'll have a holocaust.' Since the floor was linoleum, that was unlikely, but Fritzi quickly scuffed her own Parfum de Paree under her heel. A new aroma now dominated - the whiskey the hotel manager consumed in quantity.

Merkle thrust his head forward and dry-washed his hands. 'I won't stand for malingering.' Fie grabbed Fritzi's arm. 'You come along to my office. I'll deal with you later, Miss Budwigg.'

Fritzi said, 'I'd prefer to discuss it here, sir.'

'You'll discuss it where I say.'

Maisie gave Fritzi a look; both knew she was in for more than a reprimand.

'I'm the one who lured Fritzi in here to smoke,' Maisie began. But Merkle had already about-faced, gesturing like a general. His pop eyes roved over Fritzi as she passed on her way to the stairs.

On the ground floor, Merkle strutted into his office ahead of her. After Fritzi entered, he slammed the door with a flourish. She listened for the click of the key. Hearing it, she steeled herself.

Merkle casually touched her, gave her a smarmy smile as he walked to his desk, perching on a corner. 'Miss Crown - Fritzi. You realize we have rules in this hostelry, don't you? Without rules we'd have disorder.' Fritzi thought of certain nights when the slamming doors sounded like a gun battle in progress. She deemed it wiser not to remind him.

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'I'm very sorry. Please don't lay the blame on Maisie. I consented to join her in the closet.'

'Blame? Who's talking about blame? We can work this out. You're an intelligent girl, not like that cow.'

'Sir, Maisie is a decent, hardworking--'

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61

'Nuts. She gives it away to any two-bit drummer or washed-up actor who asks.' On a sideboard under a stern lithograph of William Jennings Bryan, the perennial Democratic candidate for president, Merkle kept liquor decanters and glasses. He poured two whiskeys, offered her one.

'No, thank you, I can't.'

'Why not?'

Quickly she said, 'I'm reading for an agent in the morning.' It was a convenient fib to shorten the encounter.