The Winter of Her Discontent (22 page)

Our job didn't end with food prep. We also had to monitor the restrooms for cleanliness. Zelda approached the men's room door and
knocked. When no one replied, she sent me inside. “I'll do the ladies. Just lock the door, make sure there's paper, and wipe down the sink. If it takes more than two minutes, you're working too hard.”

I did as she said. Although the evening was only an hour in, the place was already tattered. I picked up the garbage, mopped up the vanity, and neatened the various pamphlets and flyers left for the serviceman to peruse. Most described opportunities for soldiers in the New York area, including discounts they should be taking advantage of during their leave. An illustrated red pamphlet with a come-hither blonde on the cover enticed the reader with the title
Sex and This War
. It wasn't the steamy read I thought it would be. “Don't drink too much,” it warned. “Beware loose women. It would be a shame to miss out on Victory because of VD.”

Apparently the war wasn't the only thing soldiers had to fear.

“Learn anything?” asked Zelda when I was done.

“Men have bad aim and syphilis is more dangerous than the Solomon Islands.”

Zelda threw her head back and laughed. “Ah yes, the army's latest concern is the evil that women do.”

“And what is it we're supposedly doing?”

“Oh, you know.” I didn't get a chance to find out what I supposedly knew. The crowd erupted onto its feet and gave the performers a standing ovation.

“So now what?” I asked.

“Now the work ends and the fun begins.”

As the performers took their bows and left the stage, the musicians took their places and with no introduction struck up “I Left My Heart at the Stage Door Canteen,” the Irving Berlin song that had become the club's anthem. A mass of humanity rushed the dance floor, and I watched in amazement as people who hadn't known each other seconds before held each other close enough that they could feel the beating of each other's hearts. The soldiers were a mix of officers who wore their ranks upon their shoulders and the newly enlisted who had their hearts upon their sleeves. Despite the differences in
experience, they all had a similar wide-eyed stare that took in the humble surroundings with a kind of awe that made it clear they were trying to remember it for posterity. This girl, this song, this moment, would go into a foxhole, onto a plane, below a ship's hull, and help them make it through some dark and terrible night.

“When the song ends, get ready for a flood of men to come your way,” said Zelda.

“So I just dance?”

“And talk. Honestly, most of the fellows in here are more interested in conversation than fancy footwork.”

There were many things I felt equipped to do in life, but talking to strange men wasn't one of them. “What do I talk about?”

“Whatever they want.” She put her chin to her chest. “You have talked to a man before, haven't you?”

“Ha. Ha. I just meant what sorts of things should I talk about?”

“Family. Pets. The latest Glenn Miller platter. Whatever hits you.”

As she described, as soon as the band played the last note, these once-intimate couples parted ways and began searching for new partners. I'm sure there must've been some who stayed with whomever they'd just been dancing with, but to my perspective it seemed like everyone was searching for someone better than the one they'd just held. Either that, or they were trying to cram an entire lifetime's worth of romantic experience into a single night.

“Would you care to dance?” A man in a navy blue sailor suit paused before Zelda and me. I assumed he was talking to her, until Zelda's elbow told me otherwise.

“Me?” I asked.

He nodded and offered me his hand. For a split second I thought about refusing him and holding out for someone from a branch of the military that didn't also house my ex. I didn't want to start the night off with a black mark against me, though, so I followed him onto the dance floor and we began a cautious foxtrot to “Somebody Else Is Taking My Place.”

“You're a good dancer,” he said.

“Could I quote you on that? There's a certain choreographer who'd be shocked to hear it.” The air turned hot and humid. Cigarette smoke dimmed what lighting there was until it seemed as though we were dancing through a haze.

“You got a name?” he asked.

I don't know why I lied. Maybe I believed that if I used a name other than my own I wouldn't be betraying Jack. “Delores.”

“Delores what?”

“That's enough for now,” I said. “We have rules about surnames. What do I call you?”

“My friends call me Peaches.”

“You're kidding, right?” I was a tall woman, but Peaches towered above me. He wasn't wiry but so solidly built he almost seemed like another species.

“Why would I kid about a thing like that?” he asked.

“'Cause you don't strike me as the kind of man who fits that kind of nickname.”

“We all give one another nicknames based on where we're from. I'm from Georgia.” He had a nice Southern lilt. It didn't soften his voice the way the accent usually did but made everything he said feel more rounded and substantial.

“So you ended up with Peaches because Georgia was already taken?”

“No, but it didn't seem advisable to let the men call me by a woman's name.”

“You're right—Peaches is much more manly.”

His hoofing became more confident. He'd spent a lot of time on the dance floor, probably far more time than I had.

“I haven't seen you here before,” he said.

“That's because it's my first time.”

“Lucky me.” He was handsome in a plain sort of way, a man who would be beautiful to his wife but would never cause hearts to pitter-patter from the big screen. Not that I was going to win any prizes myself. “So what brings you here?” he asked.

“A couple of girlfriends with a regular appointment.”

“So you came unwillingly?”

“I wouldn't say that.” Just like that I lost the gift of gab. I thought about the topics of conversation Zelda had proposed to me, but the idea of bringing up any of them seemed horrible. Instead, I eased my hold on Peaches and rested my head on his shoulder. We danced for a few measures like this and for one wonderful moment I closed my eyes and imagined I was at Nick's on Seventh Avenue and Grove Street, a club Jack and I used to go to that had the best swing music in town.

“I'm navy,” he said.

My head snapped up. “I know. Was I supposed to ask that?”

“Most girls usually do.”

Strike one for me. I didn't even ask the right questions. “And what do you do for the navy?”

“Bomber pilot mostly.” He winked at me. “It's terribly dangerous.”

A bomber pilot named Peaches. Swell. “So I'm supposed to be impressed?”

“Most girls are.”

Despite what appeared to be derision that I wasn't asking the right questions or viewing his answers with the requisite amount of awe, I got the impression that Peaches was pleased I wasn't behaving like
most
girls. This intrigued me. And worried me.

“I was shot down a month ago,” he said.

“Then how is it you're dancing here with me?” I asked.

“I'm lucky, I guess. The crash banged me up enough that they gave me two weeks of liberty Stateside, but not so much that I can't cut a rug.”

“Two whole weeks. What does it take to get a month?”

“You don't want to know,” he said. “What do you do?”

“When I'm not tripping the light fantastic with strange men named after fruit, I'm an actress.”

“Movies?”

“Why does everyone always ask that?”

“Was that the wrong response?”

“No. Yes.” I was feeling more like myself. “It's just that I'm a stage actress and that's all I've ever wanted to be, yet everyone acts like performing in the movies is a loftier goal and those of us on Broadway are just biding time until Hollywood comes knocking.”

He shook his head and clucked his tongue. “It's the same with being a navy pilot. Everyone wonders why I didn't go out for the air force.”

“Really?”

He broke out a brilliant smile. “No, I just wanted to make you feel better.”

I swatted him playfully.

“Are you in anything now?” he asked.

“Only the greatest disaster in Broadway history.”

“Wow, then you
must
be good. I'd love to take you out to dinner sometime.”

His failure to segue into the invitation threw me for a loop. My confidence left me as fast as it had come. “That might be hard. I hear you fellows are pretty wrapped up with that war thing. Unless you're suggesting I wait until it's over.”

“Would you?”

I looked around the room for Zelda and Izzie. Each of them was occupied with a soldier, fighting their own battles over what to say. “I'm a very impatient woman.”

“In that case: I meant now.”

“Don't think bad of me, Peaches, but this is my first night here and I don't want to get tossed from the joint for violating the rules out of the gate.”

“So you've got a guy?”

It would've been the easiest thing in the world to say yes, but I couldn't. Not because it was a lie, or even because there was a chance Peaches and Jack had encountered each other, but because I believed I'd renounced my claim to Jack the day I decided not to write to him. “No, I just have a strong sense of what's right and what's wrong.”

He swung me around and dipped me. “Rules are meant to be broken.”

I became upright again. “And so are hearts, but that doesn't mean I'm ready to sacrifice one to the cause.”

“Don't you want to do your part for the red, white, and blue?”

“I thought I was.”

He pulled me close to him, and his hand brushed the bare skin at the top of my back. “One dance is hardly going to push us toward victory.”

“But a full meal will?”

“It's like the posters say, ‘Food will help us win the war.'”

“You're a persuasive man.”

“That's why I'm an officer. If you won't eat with me, why don't you tell me when you'll be here again? At least then I can eat in your presence and get another spin on the dance floor.”

It was hard to say no to a man in uniform. It's not like I was wooed by his fancy dress duds, but like Zelda said, the thought that he was about to go back to whatever godforsaken place he was stationed in and might never set foot on American soil again was a compelling reason to give him whatever he wanted. I couldn't go my whole life withholding the things that gave other people pleasure.

“I hadn't planned that far ahead,” I said. “Why don't you pick a night and I'll make sure I'm here?”

“Saturday,” he said with a grin.

I danced once more with Peaches, this time to “The Boys Will See Us Through.” I might've gone for a third spin if Elaine hadn't tapped me on the shoulder and told me there were dishes that needed to be washed. I excused myself and spent the next half hour elbow deep in sudsy water. I was about to return to the dance floor for another whirl when the clock above the stove caught my eye. It was a quarter to ten. If I didn't meet Jayne as agreed, she'd have an ing bing. I left the kitchen, caught Zelda's eye from across the room, and cocked my head in the international sign for
I need to get out of here
.
Now
.

“I was wondering where you were hiding, Delores.” Peaches was back.

“More dishes than hands, I'm afraid.”

“You seem to be the only one in here actually working.”

“Come now: Hedy Lamarr is carving ham, and I think I saw Leslie Howard spiking the punch.”

He offered me his hand. “Got time for another dance?”

“I'm afraid not. I promised I'd get a friend out of a fix at ten. It was swell meeting you.”

“You make it sound like it's the last time. Don't forget about Saturday night.” He differentiated the days of the week on an invisible calendar hanging in the air before him. “That's this Saturday night, the day after tomorrow.”

“Saturday's the day before Sunday, right?” I tapped myself on the head. “Don't worry—once it's in here, I never forget.”

“And don't plan on leaving early. My heart can't take that.”

“Agreed.” I gave him a firm handshake and a quick salute, then joined Zelda at the coat rack. “I've got to blow,” I told her. “I promised Jayne I'd meet her for drinks at ten.”

“You can't leave without telling me how you made out.”

Across the room Peaches was talking up another girl, a blonde in a skin-tight pink sweater who didn't look a day past eighteen. “I danced. We talked. It wasn't so terrible.”

“Are you going to see him again?”

“If I say yes, I'm breaking a rule.”

“So no then?”

I winked at her before dashing up the stairs and onto the street.

U
NFORTUNATELY THE
T
AP
R
OOM'S BRIGHT
light policy had ended at about the same time as the dim-out began. In its place were heavily shaded wall sconces and candles that provided just enough light for a waitress to make it to your table without spilling your drink, but not quite enough for her to be able write down your order. I arrived ten minutes late and stood at the entrance to the restaurant and scanned the crowd. Every man in New York had taken out a woman who looked exactly like Jayne. I eliminated them one by one until I found Garvaggio crammed into a corner booth with his back to the wall. Jayne was at a safe distance from him, and their table was littered with empty glasses and half-filled ashtrays.

I'd tracked her down, but I needed a plan. Pretending to casually bump into her was way too amateurish—even in times of war a woman didn't go to a supper club by herself. Claiming I'd been sent to retrieve her after getting word that her mother was sick seemed too obvious and would only invite further inquiries that might create problems for Jayne later on. I decided to go with devastated best friend searching for a beloved shoulder to cry on.

I ducked into the ladies' room and locked myself into the stall. I thought about Greta Garbo's death scene in
Camille
and managed to squeeze out a tear that vanished as soon as it appeared. Next I summoned the last days of Pip, a rat terrier I'd loved as a child and who'd met an unfortunate end beneath the wheels of an ice truck one hot summer's day. Poor Pip didn't do the trick though—there was too much distance between my memory and my emotion. It was time
to bring out the big guns. I closed my eyes and replayed Jack's last words to me as he boarded the bus to the navy yard, his final stop before he climbed aboard a frigate and hit the ocean. He'd been cold and cruel that day, out of retaliation, no doubt, for my own frosty response to the news of his departure. As the bus pulled away, I realized how ridiculous it was to hold a grudge against him for enlisting. It was too late, though. He was gone.

That did the trick. I was crying. Then I berated myself for using such an awful memory to pull this cheap stunt, especially after I'd spent the evening in the arms of another man. This made me sob even harder. I was a terrible person. I couldn't even give my memories the respect they deserved.

Maybe this was the evil Zelda was alluding to.

Before I lost my nerve, I left the bathroom and cut back toward the main entrance to the restaurant. Desperate for a prop, I pulled Ruby's unmailed letter out of my pocketbook and smashed it into my hand. With mounting hysteria, I approached Jayne's table and caught her eye.

“Rosie? What are you doing here?”

“He's done it,” I said. I squeezed the letter into a ball. “I just got a Dear Jane. He couldn't even wait until his leave to break up with me.”

“No!” She left her seat and wrapped her arms around me. I upped my sobs, and she whispered beneath the din, “It's about time. I was about to fake a fever.”

I continued my display of woe. “I'm so sorry to bother you. I didn't know what else to do. I was afraid if I stayed home by myself I'd…I'd…” More tears. I was getting good at this.

“It's all right. Shhhhh…” She pried the V-mail from my hand and held it out of my reach.

“Those are his last words to me!”

“And that was the last time you're ever going to read them. He's not worth this.”

“I thought we'd be together forever! I don't know how I can go on without him.” I pounded my chest. I wailed. I was Medea clutch
ing the corpses of my children. “Now I've ruined your evening. You must hate me.”

“We don't. Do we, Vinnie?” Jayne elbowed Garvaggio in the ribs, though how she made contact with him through all those protective layers of blubber was anyone's guess.

“No problem, doll,” he said by way of consolation. Apparently his acting ability only extended to pretending that Gloria had talent. “Why don't you join us?” He attempted to make more room in the booth, but all he really achieved was bumping his belly into the table. The empty glasses danced before settling back into stillness.

“Oh, I couldn't join you. I'm miserable company.” Translation: I didn't want to. I wanted to grab Jayne, hit pavement, and find out what he had told her before I arrived.

“I insist,” said Garvaggio. “One drink. It'll take the edge off.”

The thing about men like Garvaggio was that they're impossible to say no to. It's not that they're particularly persuasive, but everything they said and did carried with it the air of a threat. It was a phenomenon I'd noticed with Tony before and, to a lesser degree, Al. A made man could be as soft as a bunny, but because he was what he was, you always felt like you had to do what he said, just in case.

My ma was like that, too, and she wasn't even Italian.

“How about a smell from barrel?” he asked.

I assumed he was offering me a drink. “All right.” I slid into the booth next to Jayne and found her hand. “I'll take a martini. Dry.”

One way to determine a man's power was how quickly he could get service workers to respond to him. Tony could raise an arm and a waitress would be at his side within seconds. All Garvaggio had to do was wiggle a finger.

He ordered my drink, and the three of us sat in silence. Although my tears had stopped, the heavy emotion that had brought them on hadn't. Jack's departure weighed on my mind. I fumbled for conversation to distract me.

“What do you think of the show?” I asked. “Are you happy with how it's going?”

Vinnie smiled. One of his bicuspids was malformed, and it gave him an inadvertently terrifying quality, like an otherwise friendly dog burdened with fangs. This was the spot where he normally rested his cigar, since there was not only room there but the malformed tooth easily locked onto the stogie and held it in place.

“I think it's going great,” he said out of the side of his mouth. “Couldn't be happier.”

“Is this the first show you've been a part of?”

“Nah. I've backed lots of stuff.” He swirled a rocks glass full of whiskey.

“Anything I would've heard of?”

“Doubtful. Most of 'em were a while ago.” His hand slid toward Jayne's and made tentative contact with it. I could feel her stiffening beside me, and so I did the only thing I could possibly do to help her: I started crying again. This time there were no real tears, just loud, fake sobs. I wasn't going to continue mining my memories of Jack for a man who thought our current production was going great.

“Rosie.” Jayne freed herself from his touch and put both hands on me, safely out of his reach.

“Here I go again.” I blew my nose onto a cocktail napkin. “I just can't bear to see you two…knowing I'm alone…it's just so…” I buried my head in my hands and made a general spectacle of myself.

“We should go,” said Jayne. “Thanks for the drinks, Vinnie. And the conversation.”

He tried to stand, but he was wedged in too tightly to move. “You want a ride? I got a car out front.”

“Thanks, but I think Rosie's going to need some fresh air to get this out of her system. See you tomorrow.”

Jayne kept her arm wrapped in mine, and I feigned misery until we reached the subway platform. There, like two toddlers whose inconsolable sorrow was zapped by the promise of a lollipop, we snapped our heads up and shared a grin.

“For a man who tops three hundred pounds and is missing a tooth, he's surprisingly charming,” I said.

“And fast. If I ever get stuck alone with him again, I'm wearing pants.”

We boarded the train and made it past the derelicts, factory workers, and good-time girls who made up the subway's population at this hour.

“Brilliant performance by the way,” said Jayne. “I actually felt bad for you when you first showed up.”

“It was either that or tell him your mother had just died.”

She searched the subway car and knocked on what she thought was wood.

“Did you learn anything?” I asked.

“A little. I mentioned Paulette. Asked him what he thought of her. It was weird. He knew who she was, of course, but I didn't get the feeling she'd ever stood out to him. Certainly not like a dame he'd been seeing after hours.”

I found us two seats and pointed them out to Jayne. “Maybe he's put enough distance between him and her to make it seem that way.”

“Maybe. I said I was kind of scared to join the show after what had happened to her. He assured me I was safe, says there's lots of security going on behind the scenes that I don't even know about.”

Someone had abandoned a newspaper on the seat. I picked it up and attempted to fold it. “That's a funny thing to say.”

“How so?”

“Paulette's supposed murderer is in jail, a fact he certainly knows. Don't you think he'd tell you there was nothing to worry about since the bum was locked up?”

Jayne frowned. “Maybe he was more interested in using my fear to get close to me, you know, like ‘Don't you worry, this big strong man will protect you.'”

The column on top of the folded newspaper was the “News of the Stage.” The writer had gotten wind of Olive's exit and my entrance and pithily captured the event with the headline: M
USICAL
C
OMEDY
T
HREATENED WITH
T
OO
M
UCH
D
RAMA
: W
ITHOUT
W
RIGHT
W
HAT
E
LSE
W
ILL
G
O
W
RONG?
I flipped the page and eyeballed an article on a
U-boat battle in the North Atlantic. The navy was reporting casualties. Great. “Did Garvaggio say anything else interesting?” I asked.

She examined her nails. She'd painted them Jungle Red for her night out with Vinnie, though in either her haste or her anxiety she'd smeared them before they'd completely dried. “Not really. I asked him what he does with himself when he's not at the Bernhardt. He says he's got a number of other businesses demanding his attention.”

“But he didn't tell you what they were?”

“Nope.” She cleaned the color from her cuticle. “I might be easier to talk to than Gloria, but he had no intention of sharing anything with me. What is this anyway?” Jayne shifted in her seat, setting off a chorus of crinkling paper. She put her hand in her skirt pocket and pulled out Ruby's V-mail.

“A letter Ruby asked me to mail.”

“And which you promptly forgot to.”

“It's her own fault: she knows I'm unreliable.” I folded the sealed letter in half and put it in my coat pocket.

“How was your evening?”

I stretched my legs. After a day of rehearsal and an evening of dancing, every part of me hurt. “I spent the last five hours at the Stage Door Canteen washing dishes and dancing with a navy pilot named Peaches.”

“Cute?”

Was he? It was getting hard for me to remember. “Persistent. He expects me to be there on Saturday.”

“And judging from your tone, you won't be.”

I hadn't been planning on standing him up, but now that there was distance between him and me, it was easy to imagine doing exactly that. “Would it be terrible of me if I didn't show?”

“It wouldn't be the greatest thing you've ever done. What's the harm of going there and dancing with him again?”

I traced an engraving on the back of the seat in front of us. Someone had drawn a heart with the initials E.F. in the center. “I don't want to give him the wrong impression.”

“Don't worry, I don't think he'll ever think you're a good dancer.”

I tapped her knee with mine. “Very funny. You know what I mean.”

She was silent for a moment. “If you're really not interested in him, you should let him know. If you're not interested because of Jack, I think he deserves to know that too. There's enough lying going around right now.”

Pity she hadn't told me that before I gave him a phony name.

“Would you go with me?” I asked.

Jayne's head dropped to her chest. “Rosie…”

“I rescued you tonight, remember?”

“You were fifteen minutes late.”

“But I came, didn't I? I came, I rescued, and I cried like a baby.”

She lifted her head and rolled her eyes at the ceiling. “All right, I'll go. I've always wanted to see what the Canteen was like.”

“And while you're at it,” I said, “could you be sure to call me Delores?”