The Winter of Her Discontent (3 page)

“You enjoy my gift?” asked Al.

If he was going to lie to us, if he was going to make us feel like we weren't wanted, I was going to do the same to him. “Sorry, but I didn't see any point in keeping it. I'm not a big fan of ill-gotten gains. I chucked it the minute you turned the corner.”

The copper kept hold of me and pulled me out of the chair and away from the table with a gruffness that wouldn't have been necessary if I were twice my size. “It's time for you to go.”

Jayne's heels click-clacked behind me. I turned around in time to watch Al stare into the gasper's rising smoke, a sad smile quivering on his lips. “You two take care,” he whispered as the guard pulled me out the door.

 

We didn't sleep that night, or rather I couldn't sleep, and I wasn't about to let Jayne do so without me. Instead, we sat across from each other in a red vinyl booth at Louie's—a hash house with long hours and low prices—and picked apart everything we'd just seen until it was too frayed to stand up on its own.

“I just don't get it,” I told Jayne for the hundredth time. “That wasn't Al.”

She sighed, her sleep-bleary blue eyes no longer able to focus on me. She stirred condensed milk into a mixture of coffee and chicory, as though she hoped that the act of moving spoon around in the cup might reinvigorate her. “We barely know the guy, Rosie. Sure, he helped us out, but that doesn't mean he's not capable of cutting someone down.”

It was a terrifying statement that neither of us wished to explore for fear of what would happen if we held it up to the other relationships in our lives. If Al could be a killer, what dark secrets did Tony B. harbor?

“He went to prison for a woman,” I said. “A guy who's willing to commit a crime and do time to keep a girl around can't be a killer.”

Jayne held her breath and downed the java like it was castor oil. As soon as it was drained, she landed the cup on the saucer with a rattle. “Can't he? If he's willing to steal to keep her, he might be willing to put the curse on her to make sure she doesn't leave.”

I couldn't answer that. The door to Louie's tinkled softly as a soldier came in with a garishly dressed date. She was in her early twenties—give or take—and her hair was dyed Rita Hayworth red. She wore a yellow dress that was so tight a mermaid would've found it snug and walked in such a way that every curve jutted out in a grotesque parody of woman. While the soldier had eyes only for her, she scanned the room looking for the next mark to land when this one was spent.

“And how does a guy like him get hooked up with Paulette Monroe?” I asked.

Jayne raised an eyebrow and leaned, unsteadily, toward me. “From what I heard tell she wasn't afraid to do whatever needed to be done to get to the top.”

There was a word for a woman like that: employed.

“That's all well and good, but Al doesn't know the first thing about theater. How was he going to advance her career?”

Jayne wiped the table with her napkin, then carefully folded it and set it beside her cup. “Maybe Al has connections we don't know about or maybe he lied to her to get her interested.”

I tried to imagine him using his relationship with us as an aph
rodisiac.
An actress, huh? Two of my pals are actresses
. “He wouldn't do that. He's…Al.”

Jayne tipped her head toward the ceiling as though by doing so she could summon the patience she needed to keep listening to me. “We should go,” she said. Outside, the sun poked its head above the night's horizon and I suddenly felt like I could fall asleep on the table. Instead, Jayne and I linked arms, hit pavement, and made it into bed just as the sun finished its rise.

 

Paulette's picture was in a place of pride at the Shaw House. All of our 8 x 10s lined the foyer, but hers was the first mug you saw when you entered the front door. She was easily the prettiest among us, but she was the kind of pretty that reminded you of someone else. More than one person had paused at her photo and tried to recall where they knew her from. Was she in
Moon Over Miami
? No, that was Betty Grable. What about
Skyline Serenade
? No, that was June Haver. Even if you couldn't figure out who she was, one thing was clear: if this girl wasn't a star yet, she was destined to become one.

For someone who'd never met Paulette, I'd long held mixed emotions for her. Part of me considered her an idol, someone whose success I should aspire to. And part of me resented her and her smug smile for constantly reminding me that she had made it out of the Shaw House and into Hollywood. Many a drunken night I'd stumbled into the house and offered her photo a sneer for its silent reiteration of what I didn't want to face: she was on her way to making something of herself and I was a big fat nothing and likely to stay that way. Paulette's death didn't change that for me. In some ways it made it worse. If someone like Paulette couldn't have a happy ending, who's to say there was any hope for the rest of us?

 

The next morning Jayne and I were awoken by Ruby's squeals of joy. Normally, it was a sound I would've ignored, but she'd chosen
to do it in our room while throwing our drapes open and letting the afternoon sun in.

“Wake up, sleepy heads—I have news.” She rapped a folded newspaper against the iron footboard of my bed.

“And I have the urge to kill,” I mumbled.

“It's one o'clock,” said Ruby, her horror at our sleeping to such a late hour almost pushing the mirth from her voice. “And while you two were sleeping away the day, I've just been cast in Walter Friday's
Goin' South
!”

I shot Jayne a glance and we both silently acknowledged what had come to pass: while we were bemoaning Al's fate, Ruby had learned of Paulette Monroe's death and scooped up the part before the body was buried.

The move was cold, calculating, and void of empathy. And I couldn't believe she'd done it before I could.

“I thought you were doing the tour,” said Jayne. She'd been in a show with Ruby for the past six weeks. It was the theatrical equivalent of ice cream on apple pie—a pro-American war piece that was overly sweet, awfully familiar, and left you feeling a little sick afterward. As the war worsened, attendance figures dropped faster than bombs during blitzkrieg, so the playwright decided that what the show really needed was to go on the road to all those small American towns that would appreciate its message. Ruby had been getting a lot more press than Jayne, and since my roommate was still speaking to Tony at the time, Jayne opted out.

“I decided against the tour,” Ruby told us now. “The part was awfully small and, really, I couldn't stand the thought of performing for people who might not appreciate a truly professional production.” She was dressed to the nines in a green wool suit. Churchill, sensing her apparel lacked a certain accessory, left the bed and rubbed his head against her pencil skirt.

“And what did Lawrence have to say about that?” I asked. Lawrence Bentley, the playwright and darling of Broadway, was Ruby's on-again, off-again beau. From the look on her face, it was clear he was off-again.

“Who cares? If I never see that self-absorbed hack again, it will be too soon.”

I would've rolled my eyes, but I didn't have the strength. “Isn't that what you said the last time you broke up?”

“This time it's for keeps.” She put her hands on her chest to signal that she was about to make an important announcement. “I've met someone new.”

I pictured a fly caught in the silken tendrils of her web. “Surely Lawrence isn't going to let your absence go unpunished. Like it or not, he's got a lot of pull in this town.”

“Yes, so much pull that he's been drafted.” Ruby nudged Churchill with her shoe and the cat skulked away. “I doubt he'll have time to say anything about me. He knows it wouldn't make sense for me to languish on tour when I have so many other opportunities. Besides…”

“Yes?” I said on cue.

She squinted in a wholly unappealing way. I thought she might be constipated until a tear winked at me from the corner of her eye. I wasn't moved. Ruby could summon tears faster than General MacArthur could hail a cab. “It's only fitting that a friend of Paulette's takes over for her. It's what I would want someone to do for me if I met some terrible fate.”

“How very generous of you.”

She dashed the tear away with a flick of her fingers. “Don't mock. I'm working for scale.”

That
was
impressive. Ruby normally made more money than any other person in a production. Her willingness to work for scale meant either she really was trying to honor a dear friend's memory or she knew that working for Walter Friday could give her the boost she needed to write her ticket to Hollywood.

“I wasn't aware you knew Paulette,” I said.

“We never met, but we have many friends in common. And I can't tell you the number of times people have compared me to her.” I could see that. Like Paulette, Ruby was an up-and-comer who'd paid
her dues with a résumé as long as my arm. She'd make it big, if someone didn't kill her first.

Jayne threw her hands in the air. “Well…congratulations.”

“Make sure you congratulate Minnie when you see her.”

“Did she get cast too?” asked Jayne.

“In a small part,” said Ruby. “But we need to celebrate our victories no matter what the size.”

I snorted at that. “I'm sure she'll appreciate your heartfelt huzzahs. So what is this show anyway?”

“Something brand-new and very exciting. It's a musical about four sisters who inherit a plantation house located near an army base in South Carolina. The songs are very clever, and Friday intends to revolutionize the musical.”

“And how is he going to do that? Take away the music?”

“No.” Ruby clucked her tongue at me. “He's adding a corps de ballet to the show.” She retrieved the newspaper from the crook of her arm and turned the page to “News of the Rialto.” “As a matter of fact, there's an open call for dancers tomorrow at noon. Full scale for rehearsals and performances.” She tossed the newspaper on my bed. “Of course, I'm sure neither of you is interested since it would be terribly beneath you.” Were Ruby a normal mortal, sharing this sort of information may have seemed generous and kind. But we knew her better than that. She didn't expect us to go to the audition, but she did hope that by telling us about it we'd spend the rest of the day wondering if all we were good for were lousy chorus parts. You had to admire the broad—it took a lot of moxie to make others feel so bad about themselves without expending any effort.

“Thanks for the heads-up,” I told her. “But we'd hate to overshadow you like that.”

She responded with a sneer and wiggled out the door, her hem coated with cat fur.

“How does she get these parts?” I asked Jayne.

She went to her dresser and with a sigh began untangling her blond bird's nest. “You have to admit she's talented.”

“I don't have to admit any such thing.”

While Jayne got ready, I lolled about the room, unwilling to get up and start a day that was rapidly passing us by. I thought about Al in his eight by eight cell, his only contact with the outside world being a window the size of a dinner plate. He probably hovered in what little sunlight it provided the way Churchill did, greedily hoarding the warmth for the few hours he could feel it.

My eyes fell on the newspaper Ruby had left behind. There it was in black and white: “Walter Friday's
Goin' South
Loses Lead Actress.”

“It could be fun,” I said.

“What?”

“
Goin' South
.”

“It's a corps de ballet, Rosie.”

I knew what she was saying. Dance choruses were one thing—almost every actress I knew could fake their way through one of those. But a corps de ballet? It wasn't just a regular old dance chorus dressed up with a fussy French name. It demanded legitimate dancers—the kind with years of ballet training.

I'd been in choruses, and while I wouldn't win any awards for my hoofing, I was passable. But my trying to be in a corps would be like Mickey Rooney trying to join the marines.

“I hear you,” I told Jayne.

While I couldn't cut it in a corps, Jayne was one of those rare actresses who'd managed to transgress the invisible gulf between actor and hoofer. She was a damn fine dancer—often to her detriment. She was pretty enough to stop traffic and had plenty of natural talent, but she'd also been given a voice that was pitched so high that half the time only dogs could hear her. She was working on it, as best she could, and she was such a nice person that most directors were willing to overlook her vocal limits and give her a chance. On more than one occasion, though, she'd been bounced from a speaking part to a dancing role when the director got wind that her footwork had no such shortcomings.

“You're not doing anything right now,” I said.

Jayne paused, hairbrush in hand. “Rosie…”

“What?”

She turned to me, a scowl slicing her pretty face in half. “I know what you're up to. You want me to audition for that show for one reason—Al.”

“Actually two reasons: I also enjoy irritating Ruby.”

The show Jayne had just left should have been the part of a lifetime, but it was made somehow less so when Ruby outshined her in a tiny role Lawrence Bentley added at the last minute. Rather than resenting Ruby for it, Jayne did what she always did—suffered in silence and convinced herself that she didn't deserve any better than what she got.

Despite this, the possibility of seeking revenge made her buoyant. “It would bug her, wouldn't it, knowing I was there, squealing about what she's really like?”

“One can hope. Plus, Walter Friday's involved, and it wouldn't hurt to meet the guy.”