American Dreams (15 page)

'How fast were you going?'

'The officer said seven miles over the fifteen-mile limit.'

'Send me the ticket, I'll fix it. I'm a village trustee.'

'That's why I mentioned it. Thanks ever so much.'

Sykes brought up a forthcoming banquet of the Employers'

Association, leaving Carl to his food and awkward attempts to chat with Grosse Pointe Games

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Tess. The conversation shifted to the presidential election. Theodore Roosevelt had personally chosen the Republican candidate, his successor; both Clymer and Sykes were Bill Tail stalwarts, predicting a sure defeat
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for 'that liberal radical Bryan,' in Clymer's words. He said that the perennial Socialist candidate, Debs, was an even worse menace, and should be brought to heel, 'preferably with tar and feathers.'

'No, shoot him,' Sykes said. Carl said he didn't know much about politics, but his older brother knew Gene Debs and considered him an honorable man devoted to change by nonviolent methods. Sykes looked at Carl as though he came from the moon.

Carl had had enough. He excused himself from coffee in the front parlor and rose to leave. Lorenzo Clymer shook his hand, thanked him for coming, said he'd be happy to see Carl anytime, which was an obvious lie.

Clymer was already absorbed in the Detroit Evening News by the time Carl walked out of the parlor witih Tess.

Wayne Sykes followed them. Carl's present lay on a marble-topped table in the hall. 'Where'd this come from?' Sykes said.

'Carl brought it,' Tess said. Sykes wasn't a complete dolt; he saw the lightning flash in her eye and responded with an insincere smile.

'Very thoughtful. May I try one?' He opened the box, popped a chocolate into his mouth. 'Tasty. Never had drugstore candy before.'

Carl's neck turned red above his collar. Tess took his arm, steered him to the door. 'Try several, Wayne. Meanwhile, excuse us.'

They hurried down the walk to the gate. 'Oh, Carl, I do apologize.

Neither of them was at all nice to you.'

'Guess I'm not too good at any of the games they play out here.'

'Wayne was awful. I expect he thinks you're competition.'

'For what?'

The,' Tess said, linking her arm with his. 'Keep walking. He's on the porch, watching us.'

They turned right toward the main avenue. Darkness closed around them, relieved by patchy moonlight falling through trees all but bare.

Tess's round bosom pressed gently against Carl's sleeve, arousing him.

'Did Wayne make you angry?'

'I wanted to pick up a chair and knock his brains out.'

'Well, you're a true gentleman to hold back. You hide your temper well.'

'It cuts loose when I'm really and truly provoked.'

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'Does that happen often?'

»

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'Every five years maybe.'

At the corner of Grosse Pointe Drive he said, 'I'll go on from here.' He faced her in the leafy shadow of a moonlit tree. He felt the warmth of her breath, savored the faint scent of orange blossom on her skin. He wanted to gather her in his arms, kiss her, but he dared not be too forward. The evening was already somewhat of a disaster.

'Look, Tess. Your father doesn't think I'm worth a nickel - no, let me finish. I'm just not his kind of person. If I'm going to see you again, we should meet somewhere else. Anywhere but here or your house in town.

She reached for his hand. 'I think so too. I know a dozen places in Detroit where we can be out in the open, but by ourselves.'

'Would you like that?'

She lifted her beautiful face in the moonlight.

'I would, very much.'

'How can I get in touch without causing trouble?'

'You can write notes. No one looks at my mail. Do you have a telephone?'

'Not

where I live. The landlady has an arrangement with the widow next door, for emergencies. I can go to the public exchange, though.'

'Call during the day, when Father's downtown.'

'One way or another, I'll be in touch.'

'Soon, I hope. Good night, Carl.' On tiptoe, she brushed her lips against his cheek, then turned and hurried away toward home.

Carl fairly danced all the way to the Interurban. He thought no more about Sykes the boot licker, or of the possible consequences of the goodnight kiss, except for the joy it promised.

17 Bad Omens

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In a Ninth Avenue saloon, at a table overlooked by framed chromos of a prizefighter and a racehorse, the man baptized Cuthbert Mole ate stew and drank pale ale. 'Cuthbert Mole' was the ugly egg from which the bird of plumage Hobart Manchester had hatched himself at eighteen. It was either change the name or be laughed at forever.

Hobart was an only child. His parents were shareholders in a seedy Bad Omens

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stock company based in Warwick, Oxfordshire. Mowbray Mole died of drink when Cuthbert was fifteen, his mother, Eurydice, three years later.

Young Cuthbert buried her and fled Oxfordshire for London, having awarded himself a new name.

After a rugged apprenticeship he achieved a measure of success and bought a heavily mortgaged theater in St. Martin's Lane. A year ago, a series of disastrous productions had forced him to put the theater on the block. He sold everything, including a cottage hidden in a wood in Kent where he entertained privately. With a portmanteau and a treasured makeup box inherited from his father, he crossed the ocean in steerage, to the land in which so many millions of others had found opportunity.

Every farthing he'd salvaged after his string of West End flops was sunk in this production of the Scottish play. Expenses were strapping him, particularly the salary and housing demands of Mrs. Van Sant. He had reluctantly telephoned, pleading delays caused by conferences with the scene designer (a fiction - scenery was coming out of a rental warehouse).

After enduring several paragraphs of abuse, he agreed to move his leading lady to a suite at the Hotel Astor.

He tried to convince himself that it was a sound investment. Mrs. Van Sant wasn't an especially good actress. Nor was she one of those players such as Mrs. Patrick Campbell - able to save even the most dismal vehicle.

But she had a following, on both sides of the Atlantic. She would draw.

She could be a terror in rehearsal - as if he hadn't terror enough producing a play cursed from the night it opened at Hampton Court in 1606.

Unfortunately, 'that play' was eternally popular. Even those who believed in its evil aura were induced to stage it. If this production flopped, however, he was bankrupt, finished.

He sopped up stew with stale bread and comforted himself with one fact. He had his cast. The last person, Miss Crown, had signed this morning.

He had praised her audition lavishly, concealing the real reason he was delighted to have her. She came cheap, a mere thirteen dollars a week. Miss Murphy was engaged for fifteen, the experienced Miss
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Whittemeyer for seventeen-fifty.

Charming child, Miss Crown. Not beautiful in the conventional sense, yet there was something damnably attractive about her. A warmth, a winning sprightliness. Lovely eyes too.

The piano player came out of the gents'. After a few warm-up runs, twangy because of the piano's mandolin attachment, he played 'The 92

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Mansion of an Aching Heart.' The waitress stopped. 'Another ale, dearie?'

'Indeed, yes.'

'Anything else you'd like, later on, when we close?'

'Oh, no! Thank you very much.'

He kept thinking of Miss Crown, and smiling. It had taken colossal nerve to mimic Miss Vole on the telephone. Miss Vole knew all the tricks for upsetting and upstaging her competition. No crime there, but she used those tricks viciously, he'd quickly observed that.

Miss Crown's impersonation had actually fooled him for a moment. He only hoped she'd be competent on stage, and his other actors too. He'd have trouble enough with his leading lady, and the dark demons that had haunted the Scottish play since Shakespeare's day.

What to do for the rest of the evening? Perhaps a nickelodeon - the little pictures amused him. Two slices of bread remained on his plate. Glancing around, he slipped them under his cape and left.

Fritzi arrived at the Novelty at nine a.m. the following Monday, the first day of rehearsal. The doorkeeper looked out of the cubby, where he sat scratching the neck of the overweight calico. Fritzi introduced herself.

'Oh, I remember you, miss. Foy's the name. Most call me Pop. You're a whole hour early.'

'I've learned it's a good idea to get the feel of a theater. That's a handsome cat. What's her name?'

'Queen Gertrude. I wanted another black one when Cyrano died, for black's the luckiest color for a theater cat. Just didn't have the heart to turn this one away when she wandered down the alley.' Queen Gertrude miaowed and arched against his hand. 'Go on in, you're not the first.'

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In the dark auditorium, Fritzi spied someone under the balcony. She stepped through a semicircle of chairs on stage. 'Hello?'

'Hello, yourself. Who's that?'

'Fritzi Crown.'

'Are you one of the three ladies in our coven?'

'Yes.'

The spiky-haired actress with the wall eye came down the aisle. 'Ida Whittemeyer, welcome.'

'Thank you. You came in to study the theater too?'

'I did. It's useful to get a fix on the size, how voices carry. And it's good luck.' Miss Whittemeyer trouped up the steps to the stage. 'For this little Bad Omens

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adventure we need it. They say the first time they gave the Scottish play, the boy actor playing Lady M fell ill and the Bard himself had to read the part. It's been an accursed script ever since. Actors have gotten hurt, maimed, even killed doing this play.'

'But you took the risk.'

'I need the work.'

'So do I, Miss Whittemeyer.'

'You must call me Ida. My right eye's the good one.'

By ten the full company had assembled -- thirty-one adult actors and two boys with loud, obnoxious mothers. The stage manager, a stringbean named Simkins, called them to order. As if on cue, Manchester bounded on stage.

'Good morning, good morning. All present, are we?'

'All but Mrs. Van Sant,' Simkins said.

'We shall begin without her.' He strode to the apron, hands clasped behind his back. 'Members of the ensemble. We are met in a great endeavor, about to labor together on one of the supreme works of stage literature.

I have every confidence that our efforts will be rewarded critically and at the box office. To ensure an auspicious start, this morning I donned the very tie I wore on the occasion of my professional debut in London.

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Notices were extremely favorable, and the tie has brought me good fortune ever since.'

He touched his outdated teck cravat, two crossed tabs of dingy brown fabric with a greasy sheen. Fritzi noticed a rabbit's foot hanging on a chain stretched across Manchester's considerable paunch. It seemed she was swimming in a sea of superstition.

'I wish to say a word about the text, which I have personally adapted and condensed. You will discover that I have eliminated the character of Hecate. Shakespeare's authorship of the Hecate material is suspect. So are the scenes with the weird sisters, but the public expects those.'

A noise at the back of the hall interrupted him. Manchester peered.

'Who is there?'

A galleon of a woman sailed down the aisle. Halfway to the stage she stopped and planted a tall ebony walking stick surmounted by a large gold knob.

'You have two eyes, Hobart. Use 'em.'

'Mrs. Van Sant. You are late.'

'We were detained outside,' the woman said in a foghorn voice. She pointed her stick at a young man following her. 'This is Charlie, he's a 94

Striving

bellhop at the Astor. Take a seat, Charlie. Don't speak. Mr. Manchester can get quite cross in rehearsal.'

Charlie waved and did as he was told. Handsome and muscular, he wore a cheap green suit and derby. Sally Murphy tweaked Fritzi's arm.

'One of her lovers, don't you suppose? They say she has dozens.'

Eustacia Van Sant was about Manchester's age but a head taller. She had an enviable hourglass shape, and a squarish face softened by wide lips and brilliant dark eyes. Vivid hair of the shade Fritzi called Irish red contrasted dramatically with her black velvet cape and dress. A scarlet dust ruffle flashed under the billowing skirt. Her hat was a large black velvet Gainsborough, ornamented with ostrich plumes. Altogether, it was a dated look, but it flattered her figure especially her spectacular bosom.

Manchester said, 'Permit me to make something clear, madam. We have a mere five weeks until opening night. I expect all players to be present at the hour specified for rehearsal.'

'Oh, stuff that, Hobart. I told you, we were detained.'

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'By what, may I ask?'

'The hearse.'

Manchester gaped. 'Hearse, did you say?'

'Just outside. There was a copper with the undertaker's men. He refused to let us enter until they carried out the corpse.'

Gasps and exclamations. Fritzi felt her pulse speed up. Manchester squeaked, 'Corpse?"1

'Some bookkeeper chap in the front office. Keeled over on top of his ledgers, dead as Jacob Marley'

A chill seemed to invade the theater. Manchester threw a look at Pop Foy, who was standing stage left. Foy nodded. 'It's true. Poor fella was only forty.'

Manchester pulled out a big kerchief and swabbed his cheeks. 'Tragic.

But it has nothing to do with us.'

'It may,' Ida Whittemeyer whispered. 'It's the Scottish play.'

Manchester moved the actors to the semicircle of chairs on stage. They read the play from sides. Hobart and Mrs. Van Sant knew long passages from memory.

Fritzi was fascinated by Manchester's leading lady. She had great energy. Coupled with her deep voice, it achieved a powerful effect. Not on a dark, suave-looking man named Mr. Scarboro, however. He was their Bad Omens