The War Against Miss Winter (5 page)

“That’s what I hired Jim for.”

I glanced at my watch. It was going on 2:00. Jayne had convinced me to swallow my dignity and go to the audition by invitation at three. “Surely you suspect someone?”

A smile curved across his face, revealing teeth the color of aged pearls. “There’s a man named Henry Nussbaum. I think he may be involved.”

I located another pen and scribbled the name on the pad. “Did Jim talk to him?”

Fielding stood. “I don’t think so. I forgot to tell Jim about him.”

I dropped to the floor. “What do you mean
you forgot
?”

“I’m human, Miss Winter. Sometimes things slip my mind.” He painstakingly removed a stack of bills from the roll of money. His hands shook, animating the paper until it looked as if it was about to take off in flight.

“That’s quite a thing to slip your mind.”

Fielding didn’t respond. Instead, he dropped the money onto the desk. “I trust this will be sufficient to get you started?”

It would be sufficient for many things, including three months’ rent if I got the boot, six months’ rent if I didn’t. “If it’s not, you should consider firing me. How do I reach you?”

“You don’t. If I need to reach you, I will.”

“I’m closing up the office. I won’t be here after tomorrow.” I scribbled my exchange on the back of one of Jim’s business cards and handed it to him. “This is my rooming house. Don’t call before eight or after nine.”

“Don’t worry—I won’t.” Without another word, he hobbled out the front entrance of the office.

I locked the fire escape window and hurriedly went through the files in the outer office, gunning for Fielding’s name. There was nothing there. I’d worry about him later. I silenced the radio as a reedy singer insisted we “praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.” Before I could switch off the lights Agnes appeared in the doorway.

“I didn’t think anybody would be here.” She clung to the placard of her coat as though she feared a breeze would blow it open.

“I’ve been asked to help pack up the office.”

“Oh.” Agnes shifted her pocketbook from one arm to the other. In a week’s time, her laugh lines had turned to crow’s feet and her rosy skin had grown sallow. “Are you going out?”

“I have an audition.”

She nodded again, though her expression hinted that she had no idea what I’d said. Agnes could be jingle-brained, but even this was strange for her.

“What are you doing here, Agnes?”

She stepped into the room and removed her red wool snood. Slowly, she took stock of the work I’d been doing in her absence. Her eyes lingered on Jim’s door before making their way back to me. “I wanted to see if it was real.”

I sank into one of the reception chairs. “You should’ve come to the viewing. It was pretty real there.”

She nodded at the floor. Badly chipped red-painted nails bit into her palms. Her hair was unwashed and unkempt. “I was going to go, I even got dressed, but I couldn’t stand the thought of being there with all those people and none of them knowing who I was.” Her eyes tipped upward to keep tears from tumbling out. “I never minded being his mistress, you know? But now that he’s gone I feel like I’m not allowed to be sad
because he wasn’t really mine.” I didn’t know what to say so I kept silent. “How was it?”

“They did him up real nice.”

She took a deep breath. “I suppose I should clean out my desk.”

“When you’re ready. There are crates in Jim’s…in the other office if you need them.” I rubbed my hands together and tried to think of something comforting to say. Nothing came to me. “Did you recognize the man you passed on the way up here?”

Agnes made a half-hearted attempt to clean her desktop. Pencils were deposited into a coffee cup. Papers were stacked—whether associated or not—into towers with precise right angles. “What man?”

“An older guy with a cane and a beard. He just left.”

“I didn’t pass anybody.”

Could he still be in the building? Or had he ducked into the shadows when he heard Agnes climbing the stairs and waited until she was in the office before he began his descent?

I clasped my hands in prayer. “Do you know if a Raymond Fielding ever hired Jim?”

She shrugged. “Maybe he was one of the fire escape clients.”

“Maybe.” I looked at my watch. “I have another question for you, Agnes.”

“What’s that?”

I pulled on my coat and wrapped my scarf around my neck. “What would shock you?”

She searched the office walls for the answer. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

She jerked a nod. “Between the war and Jim…nothing could shock me.”

“Fair enough.” I retrieved my pocketbook and put on my gloves. “I’ll be back tomorrow to finish the packing. You don’t have to worry about your desk today if you don’t want to.”

Churchill meandered into the room and dove into the potted dieffenbachia. Agnes stared into Jim’s office and I knew she was picturing him at his desk, his voice booming that she needed to get her can in there and
take a letter. “If it’s all right, I’d like a little time alone in here.”

“Sure. No problem. Just make sure you lock up.” I turned to leave.

“Rosie?”

I turned back. “Yeah?”

Agnes’s gloved fingertips danced beneath her eyes, catching tears before they could form. “There’s something I need you to take of care and I’m afraid it’s not very pleasant. I wouldn’t ask you if there were any other option.” Her eyes drifted to the dieffenbachia while dread stripped the room of its heat.

That was how I got a cat.

M
Y AUDITION WAS AT THE
National on East Houston and Second Avenue. I bypassed the physical scrutiny and was asked to do a monologue and sing ten bars of an up-tempo song. As Jayne had forewarned me, I was being considered for two shows: a bleak war piece and a bad musical comedy revival. The director for the war drama was an intense man who looked like he hadn’t slept in two or three years. The director for the musical was much more jovial and well rested. He was a rotund fellow with such a sustained smile that I wondered if he’d just had dental work done.

“Name?” asked the more somber of the directors upon my entrance.

I clicked my heels together in a regrettably Gestapo fashion and stopped in the center of the stage. “Rosalind Winter.” The dramatic director seemed to perk up at the sound of my name, but it was probably just gas.

“I hear you brought a cat to the audition,” said Fat and Smiley. Word had spread fast; Churchill was, at that moment, in the lobby terrorizing the other actors.

“You know what they say,” I said. “Make ’em remember you.”

“What will you be doing for us today?” asked Dull and Dramatic.

“I’ll be doing a monologue from
The Duchess of Malfi
.” Dull and Dramatic maintained his expression. Fat and Smiley became stout and sulky. He was not a fan of Elizabethan tragedy.

“And what will you be singing?” he asked.

“‘Tea for Two’ from
No, No, Nannette
.” Fat and Smiley earned back his name while Dull and Dramatic sighed at the punishment he was going to have to endure. I waited for a sign they were ready, then plunged into John Webster’s poetry. The monologue went off without a hitch. As
I looked into my imaginary Antonio’s eyes and intoned, “The misery of us that are born great! We are forc’d to woo, because none dare woo us,” a single tear slid down my cheek.

I was so feeling the Duchess’s pain that when the accompanist started serving up my tea I couldn’t shake my somber mood. The song was dangerously approaching funereal, so I decided to pep it up with some fancy footwork. Alas, I forgot where the edge of the stage was. As I bounced along to, “Nobody near us to see us or hear us, No friends or relations on weekend vacations,” I lost my footing and fell into the orchestra pit.

I lay immobilized for ten seconds before somebody called out, “Are you all right?” I replied that I was, though, to be square, I would’ve been much better off if the musicians had taken their instruments home.

“Thank you,” I said as I dusted myself off and climbed out of the pit. “Best of luck with your casting decisions.”

They didn’t ask me to stick around.

I gathered my cat and headed home. In the Shaw House foyer I checked my post box. Instead of V-mail from Jack, I had a note from my ma reminding me that if things didn’t work out I could always come home. Since pets were strictly prohibited at the house, before I stepped into the lobby, I shoved Churchill into my bag.

Belle greeted me from the front desk. “Hello, stranger. Long time no see. Why so scarce?”

I froze. It was just my luck she’d be waiting for me. A bottle of Seagram’s said she’d been staking out the lobby since noon. “Oh, you know how it is with the holidays.”

“Get any work?” Belle was wearing a purple velvet robe trimmed in feathers. She had been half of a vaudeville act twenty years and fifty pounds before and was partial enough to the costumes that she continued to wear them on a daily basis.

“That’s a fine how-do.”

Belle stuck a pencil in her hair, where it would likely remain until she rolled over in her sleep. “You know the rules, Rosie. I don’t make
em.”

“By my reckoning, I still have four days left. It’s not going to matter anyhow. I auditioned for two shows today and I fell head over heels trying to get them to cast me. Something’s got to come out of that.”

Belle nodded and didn’t say anything else, which put me on my guard. By this point in the conversation we were usually parrying our razor-sharp wit.

“How’s your new year going?” I asked her.

“Fair. The new ration books are out. Mind the expiration dates.” Rationing rules were more complicated than chess. Just when I thought I’d figured the darn things out, they changed them on me. “Sign in, will you.” Belle passed me a packet of coupons and the house registrar, then receded back into silence. As I scribbled the
R
in Winter, I glommed the reason for her behavior: she pitied me. I’d become like every other girl who was bumped out of the house and never heard from again. I’d entered the path of theatrical failure.

I wasn’t going down without a fight.

“Are these new rules?” I asked. Underneath the registrar was a list labeled George Bernard Shaw House Rules, Revised. Twenty-six numbered laws were crammed onto the page.

Belle nodded and continued her pledge to be kind to the dying.

“You misspelled a word in rule three.”

That did it. “It never ceases to amaze me how you girls can’t remember the rules but you can remember which word I misspelled while typing them.”

“You can’t blame us, Belle. If you want us to remember something like this, you should consider livening it up with a few pictures and more white space.” My bag shifted violently from right to left. I dropped it to the ground.

Belle stabbed the paper with her pudgy index finger. “If you can memorize scripts, you can memorize rules. If you’d read the last set, my revision wouldn’t have been necessary.”

I put both hands over my heart and feigned shock. “I brought
this
on us?”

“I’m not a fool, Rosie. I do pay attention to what goes on around here.”

“Searched my room, did ya?” A yowl of discontent emerged from the floor.

Belle lowered her glasses. “Is your bag meowing?”

“No, but my dogs are barking. I’ve been hoofing it all over town.” I gave my bag a gentle kick. It hissed in return.

Belle produced a second copy of the rules. “Shall I read them to you?”

“What? And spoil the surprise?” I took the list and tucked it into my coat pocket. “I get the gist—no hot plates, no smoking, no alcohol, gentlemen callers are to be received in the lobby, and take to the cellar in the event of an air raid drill. And a happy new year to you, too.”

My mewling bag and I ankled upstairs, where Jayne was stationed before her bureau marcelling her blond locks. The stench of roasting hair filled the tiny space. I greeted her by propping open the window.

“Sorry,” she said.

“It’s not you; it’s this place. If the air circulated once in a while you wouldn’t even notice the smell.” I dropped the bag on the floor and attempted to fan fresh air into the room.

“Did you hear we sank nine Japanese ships?” Since Jack had shipped out, Jayne had fallen into the habit of announcing war victories as though by doing so she could reassure me that Jack was not only safe but had done the right thing by enlisting.

“And how many of ours did we sink in the process?” I asked.

“None that I know of.” She read my mood and left the war behind. “How was the audition?”

“The only way it could’ve gone worse is if I’d accidentally killed somebody.”

“Did you meet Peter Sherwood?”

“He either wasn’t there or was too embarrassed to admit he’d invited me.” The window banged shut, narrowly missing my hand. “In other news, I’m now a detective.”

She set the iron in its cradle and gave me her undivided attention.
“Do I need a drink for this story?”

“I can’t speak for you, but I could certainly use one.”

Jayne tipped us martinis while I told her about my day. As I finished, she shook her head and tsk-tsked the contents of her glass.

“You’re not seriously going to work for this Raymond Fielding person, are you?”

“I sneezed his dough, so I probably owe it to him to do something. I’ll look through the files to see if I can find out what Jim learned, maybe make a few phone calls. After all, the widow McCain asked me to do the same.” I chewed my lip. “Besides, I feel like I need to do this. It’s not like I have anything else to fill my time.”

Jayne nodded solemnly then downed her drink. “Doesn’t it seem strange that he’d ask you to follow up on this when he knows you’re just a file clerk?”

I fished a bottle from the bottom of her closet and refilled our glasses. “Like I said, his main concern was privacy. He didn’t want to start over with another agency.”

“But if privacy is so important to him, wouldn’t it be better to not say anything to you since you clearly didn’t know anything to begin with?”

I was about to ask her to put me wise to what she meant when she squealed. “Rosie! Your bag’s moving!” The valise jerked and let out an unholy cry. I opened the clutch and Churchill leaped from his bing and landed with a hiss on the drapes.

“Jayne, meet Churchill. Churchill, meet Jayne.” The cat dropped to the floor and prowled about the room, gunning for something to attack. When nothing worthwhile appeared, he dashed beneath my bureau and receded into darkness until he was nothing but a pair of golden almond-shaped eyes.

Barely a minute passed before someone knocked on the door. Before we could tell her to scram, the knob turned and Ruby Priest popped her head into the room. “Hello, girls.”

“Hello yourself,” I said. Jayne cheesed the glasses under the bed while I braced the door to keep it from opening any wider. Ruby had been at the Shaw House since July and had already worked more than
any of us. Worse yet, every project of hers was so visible you couldn’t leave your room without being confronted by it. Ruby was on Times Square billboards. Ruby was hawking war bonds with Betty Grable on WNYC. Ruby was modeling dresses in Macy’s newspaper ads. It wasn’t her success that made me hate her; she was one of those women who got everything they asked for without lifting a finger and rather than being gracious about it, she constantly rubbed her achievements in my face. She’d done it so much that she didn’t even have to say anything to make me feel worthless. Like some Pavlovian dog I immediately beefed up my failures in the face of Ruby’s accomplishments.

Ruby flashed me a smile worthy of one of her tooth-cream ads and wrapped a glossy black curl around her finger. “How were your holidays?”

“Fine,” I said. “Thanks for asking.” She was pushing ever so slightly against the door, but I held it steady. “And yours?”

She sighed. “Not much to report.
Night Falls
had its run extended, so I spent a quiet Christmas with Lawrence.” Ruby never talked about her family; nor had she ever gotten a phone call or piece of mail that would’ve verified her ties. It was sad in a way since it was clear Ruby wanted to hear something from someone. She was always the first to the mailbox and the first to the ringing phone. A lesser person might’ve been intrigued by her family’s silence, but I’d assumed her relations were as irritated by her as I was.

I tossed Jayne a look and rolled my peepers. “And how is Lawrence?”

Ruby smiled more delicately and widened her eyes. “Lawrence is wonderful. Naturally he’s still riding high on the tail of our resounding success.”

“Naturally.” I said. “Congratulations, by the way. I heard about your review.”

She pushed her hair back from her face with a practiced gesture. “Which one?”

“There was more than one?” I asked.

“I should hope so. Otherwise, why bother acting?”

“There are people who do it for the joy and the art.”

“Oh, Rosie
dear,
those people—if they exist—don’t live in New York.” She flipped her hair and laughed. I gripped the door so tightly I left fingerprints on the paint.

Jayne cleared her throat and feigned interest in our uninvited guest. “So now that the show’s closed, what are you going to do, Ruby?”

“I’ve hardly had a chance to catch my breath, but Lawrence has a new show he’s finishing that he wants to open in six weeks. He’s offered me the lead.”

My mind rumbled with the unfairness of Ruby’s getting cast in plays that hadn’t even been written yet while I was begging for any theatrical leftover.

As though she heard my thoughts, Ruby turned her attentions back to me. “Did you work over the holidays, Rosie?”

I shifted my sweaty hold on the door. “Not in theater.”

She pursed her lips sympathetically. “That’s right—you have that little secretarial job. Good for you.”

I moved my head closer to hers. “What the deuce does that mean?”

“Just that I know it’s been a while since you had an acting job, so it’s good you have something to fall back on.” She paused and ate up the ire that leached from my body. “I hope you’re not offended by my saying that. I’m trying to think positively.” Her mood shifted faster than a baby on vaccination day. “Say, I have a famous idea! Why don’t I talk to Lawrence about casting you in the new show? I’m sure it wouldn’t be a big part, but Belle won’t care.”

“That’s a great idea,” said Jayne. I ducked behind the open door and shook my head so fast my ears rang. “That is,” said Jayne, “it would be a great idea except Rosie has a job.”

“Is that so?” asked Ruby. I gritted my teeth. This wasn’t the sort of thing I could get away with lying about. There may have been an endless amount of theater in New York, but it wouldn’t take much for Ruby to verify if I had a paying gig.

“Sort of,” I said. “Nothing’s official yet, but it looks very promising.”

“What’s the show?”

“I don’t want to say yet—don’t want to jinx it. You know what, Rube? I’m exhausted and I think I want to call it a night. It was good seeing you.” I tried to push the door closed but was interrupted by Ruby’s pale well-toned arm.

“I forgot to ask,” she said. “Did I hear a cat in here?”

I put my forehead against the door. “No. What you heard was an extraordinary imitation of a cat. Do it again, Jayne.”

Jayne’s mouth dropped open and her eyes became wide and empty. On cue, Churchill began to cough up whatever he’d devoured in my bag.

“It
is
a cat!” Ruby pushed all of her weight against the door, shoving me out of the way.

“Ruby,” I said. “If there is a cat in here—and I’m not saying there is—we’d appreciate it if you kept this between…”