Looking for a Love Story (32 page)

“My friend who I love.”

He rolled it around in his mind for a second. “All right,” he said. And he kissed her. Which led to another kiss. Which led to the bed, which was interrupted by Ellie, breaking away. “Baby,” she said, and pointed to the child, who had wandered into the room.

“We have to do something about the way we live,” Joe muttered.

“Benny wants to be a part of her life, Joe.”

“For the moment. Until something new and more exciting comes along. Then he’ll forget about her.”

“But he doesn’t know that. Right now, he thinks he wants her. And me.”

“A ready-made family. Benny always was on the lookout for a shortcut.”

“He can hurt us.”

“Only if we let him.”

“How can we stop him?”

“I’ll have to reason with him.”

Ellie didn’t believe anyone could reason with the new, imperious Benny. But the next morning, Joe announced that he was going out for a while, and she knew he was going to talk to Benny.

JOE LEFT THE
boardinghouse and turned south on Broadway. He’d heard via the ubiquitous grapevine that Benny was living at the Hotel Astoria, which was right around the corner, but Joe had another errand to run first—down on Fourteenth Street. He paused for a second and looked up. The famous lights of Broadway weren’t shining from the theaters now, but the names of the stars—those who had made it big enough to play this street, which was the biggest of the big-time—were up on the marquees. There they were, spelled out in foot-high letters above the traffic of everyday mortals. Joe turned his gaze down to the street swirling around him. He’d always loved New York City, and for as long as he could remember he’d dreamed of taking it by storm. When he was a kid he’d hung around the Knickerbocker Hotel dining room and Rector’s Restaurant to watch the stars sail in for supper after their shows had come down. He had imagined doing that himself one day. He’d pictured himself casually handing off his coat to the hat-check girl and laughing at the jokes told by the maître d’ as he was escorted to his regular table. The Knickerbocker Hotel was an office building now, but he’d planned to take Ellie to Rector’s after his act opened at the Jefferson. He’d been saving up for it. But he wouldn’t do it now.

Joe took one last look around him. He knew what he had to do;
that decision was already made. But once it was done, there would be no turning back. He’d known this since yesterday, when Ellie came back from her luncheon. After she’d left the hotel room to meet Benny, he had paced around the room for so long it was a wonder he had not worn the pattern off the rug. He’d made bargains with God during the hour and a half that she was gone—something he had not done since he was a child—vowing to do whatever God required, if Ellie would just come back to him. And then she had walked back in. She’d stood framed in the doorway for a moment while she pulled off her gloves, and seeing her standing there he’d known he would go back on every promise he’d ever made to let her go easily if she wanted to leave him. He would fight for her and their daughter with everything he had. But then he’d learned that he didn’t have to fight, because she was staying. Because she loved him. And then she’d told him about the threats Benny had made. That was when he’d known what he had to do. Joe started walking south on Broadway.

He had finished his business and was back uptown by lunchtime, so he did a quick check of the spots he’d heard were Benny’s favorites and finally ended up standing in front of Neely’s glass door. He peered through the big front window of the restaurant and saw Benny sitting at a table with a group of friends. There was no point in going inside and making a scene, so he moved to the side of the building and leaned against it to wait until Benny came out. But Benny had seen him through the window, and he came outside right away.

“I suppose you want to see me,” Benny said.

“Yes.”

“We need to get some things straight.”

“I agree.”

“I told Ellie and I’m telling you. I’m not going to let you raise that little girl. She’s my daughter.”

“That’s not what her birth certificate says.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, you know the truth!”

“But no one else does.”

“All anyone has to do is look at her to tell she’s mine. She looks like me.”

“I think my daughter looks like her mother; Ellie has blond hair and blue eyes. But I think Baby’s going to be short—like me. You’re how tall? Over six feet, aren’t you?”

“The women in my family are small.”

“What a coincidence.” Joe had been resting his back against the building, and now he leaned forward. “Here’s the way it looks to me, Benny. Ellie and I will both lie. We’ve been married for four years, and people are used to thinking of us as a couple. If you try to claim our little girl is yours, you’ll look like a fool. And you won’t like that; you know you won’t.” Joe paused. “You can’t prove you’re the father. Give it up.”

“You think I’m going to let you get away with this?”

“If you’re smart.”

“How are you going to support them? Because I promise you, if you do this to me you won’t work again.”

“We’ll be just fine.”

“Doing what?”

“None of your business.”

“You won’t be opening at the Jefferson next week, Joe.”

“I know. I went there this morning and canceled.” Joe turned and started walking back toward Pastor’s Boardinghouse.

“She’ll never stop loving me!” Benny called after him. “I know her. She’ll get tired of you, and she’ll want—” He never said what she’d want. Because that was when Joe turned back and punched him.

•   •   •

“YOU STARTED A
fight with Benny in the middle of Broadway?” Ellie demanded. She’d grabbed a chunk of ice from Mrs. Pastor’s ice box and was chipping it into small pieces to make a pack to press on Joe’s rapidly swelling eye. “Are you crazy?”

“Been wanting to do it for four years.”

“But you canceled the Jefferson. Do you know what that means?”

Joe stood up and walked to the window. He looked out at Forty-fifth Street for what seemed to Ellie like a very long time. “We’re out of show business,” he said. He kept himself turned away from her. He didn’t want her to see his face.

“But you were just getting started,” she said. “Joe, you don’t have to quit. Benny can’t keep you from working forever.”

“No. But he can make it tough for a while—I don’t know how long. We’d be on the small small-time—maybe even on a couple of Death Trails—playing tank towns, five shows a day. Staying in dirty rooms, doing the long jumps, worrying about the next meal. You know what it’s like. If it was just you and me, we’d take it. Wait it out until something broke again. But we have a little girl.” He still hadn’t turned to look at her.

“You’re quitting for her and she’s not—” Ellie started to say, but he stopped her.

“Don’t tell me she’s not mine. I’ve already heard that today.” He finally turned. “And Benny is right. Anyone who looks at her and knows him will see the resemblance. Do you want that for her, all that gossip? Do we want Benny playing father of the year—when it’s convenient for him?”

“No.”

“If we’re in the business, we’re going to keep running into him. We need to live somewhere out of the way.”

“But you’re so good in the act—”

“I can live without it. But not being with you?” He looked into
her eyes. “Ellie, I’ll never tell you I can’t live without you. I could if I had to—and you could live without me. But I just don’t want to.”

It wasn’t the kind of declaration of love you wanted to hear when you were young and foolish. But it had been a long time since Ellie had been that. Joe would never sing a corny love song for her, or buy her a silly present he couldn’t afford. But he’d always been there with whatever she needed, starting with the first time she’d met him, when her pa gave her the black eye.

Ellie picked up the bowl of ice, dumped it in the basin, kissed Joe on the back of the neck, and started out of the room. Joe turned to see her opening the door.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“To get you a piece of raw steak. You’re going to have one hell of a shiner.”

CHAPTER 33

“What did Joe and Ellie do next?” I asked Chicky.

“What time is it?” Her voice on the phone sounded groggy.

“I’m not sure. I just finished writing the last section and there aren’t any more tapes. You said you were going to make more, but you never gave them to me.”

“It’s five in the morning, Doll Face.”

“Okay. That sounds about right.”

“I don’t do early morning anymore. In case you haven’t heard, I’m very old.”

“You didn’t tell me the end of the story. I don’t know what happened after Joe and Ellie quit show business.”

Chicky took a moment. “Do you know how to operate a car, Doll Face?”

“I can drive six to the ground, and I once took a Bentley out on
the Four-oh-nine in LA during rush hour. The car had not been adapted yet for the American market, so the steering wheel was on the right. Why?”

“Because I can get us some wheels and there’s something I want you to see.”

THAT WEEKEND, CHICKY
and I drove an ancient Honda—courtesy of the grandson of one of the Swinging Grandmas—up the Taconic Parkway to Millertown, New York.

Millertown was established as a port on the Hudson River when New York was still a colony, long before the hey-let’s-go-dump-tea-in-Boston-Harbor movement. The town consists of two main drags running parallel to the river, and a couple of side streets that intersect with them to form the ubiquitous northeastern town square, with the requisite white clapboard churches flanking it, along with a minuscule fire station and a tiny town hall. There are other streets that intersect with the intersecting streets, so that a small residential area radiates out from the square. The train used to stop in Millertown, but it doesn’t anymore, and whatever industry kept people in the area employed has long since vanished.

Chicky had given me this history on our trip north, so when we reached Millertown I was expecting to find one of those sad little villages whose time has passed. Not so. It took us fifteen minutes to find a parking space, and once we hit the sidewalk it was clear that the place was thriving. There were cute little clothing and home goods shops, art galleries, several antiques stores, and the old railroad depot had been turned into a school that proudly bore the name
MASTERS ACADEMY
. I figured this was the engine behind the town’s prosperity.

“Academy of what?” I asked Chicky.

“That’s the next part of the story.”

“Which you are not going to tell me until you are good and ready.”

She patted my cheek. “You’ve come to know me so well. Look to your right.” We were standing in front of a building with a neon sign above it that read
MILLERTOWN DINER
. It looked like one of those boxcars you see in antique postcards; it was small and squatty, painted lime green, and loaded with immaculately maintained chrome trim. A plaque proudly displayed on the front door identified it as one of the few remaining Silk City diners still standing in the country. According to the brief history written on the plaque, these diners, which were popular in the 1920s, were inspired by railroad dining cars, and today they are considered to be architecturally significant. This one was a historic landmark.

“Come on,” Chicky said, and led me inside.

The booths on either side of the diner were full. Every seat at the counter was taken. The three chairs in the small waiting area were taken too. “People still love this place,” Chicky said happily. She turned to a kid who was manning the ancient cash register. “Hey, Pabir,” she said, “how’s your granddad doing?”

“Omigod,” said the kid. He rushed around the counter and he and Chicky hugged and did some how-are-you-it’s-been-forever dialogue; then he turned to the kitchen and unleashed a cascade of a language I didn’t understand, which was followed by a man and two women racing out of the kitchen to hug Chicky some more.

The older of the two women was wearing a cook’s work apron over a sari, and Chicky introduced her as the wife of the man who had purchased the diner from her back in the fifties. “Samir retired a couple of years ago,” Chicky explained. “But Aditha is still coming in every day to make the pies.” As everybody beamed, I glanced at the old-fashioned dessert case, where my eye was
caught by a clone of the killer lemon-meringue pie Chicky had baked when Show Biz and I had our party.

“And Grandma makes the curry too, the best you ever had,” Prabir assured me.

“I want to show Doll Face the Wall,” Chicky said. She led me to the back of the diner, where there was a glass case full of pictures hanging on a wall. The photos were arranged chronologically, starting in the late twenties, and they all featured Joe Masters on a platform in a spotlight, with a mike in his hands. Standing nearby in each picture was Ellie. As far as I could tell, this show, or whatever it was, had been a yearly event in town for quite a while. As time passed, Joe’s hair had started to recede and he had developed a bit of a paunch. But in the last picture Ellie was still a slim beauty with just a touch of gray in her reddish-blond hair.