The electric foots brightened on the curtain. The orchestra, the boxes, the whole theater, exuded a sense of pressure mounting like steam in a cooker. The curtain flew open again. One by one the actors ran down to the footlights as the pressure erupted in thundering applause.
Lined up on the apron, the supporting cast parted in the middle. A blazing circle of blue-white light struck between them. The star entered through the veranda doors upstage. Everyone was up, yelling and applauding.
When Mrs. Pat reached the blue-white circle and stepped in, waves of sound beat on the walls and frescoed ceiling. The galleryites around Fritzi whistled and stomped and threw empty sandwich wrappers over the rail; no one up there could afford the calla lilies or glads or orchids flying over the footlights from the orchestra.
“Bravo, bravo!”
Mrs. Pat was a tall, pale, long-necked woman of forty-two, with cascades of dark hair and big glowing eyes inherited from her Italian mother. She was literally dazzling in a red-orange gown covered with gold sequins. She had the star quality that riveted every eye to her smallest move; in scenes with other actors she simply made them vanish.
A man rushed from the wings with a dozen red roses. Mrs. Pat took them, smiled, and bowed again. The entire cast bowed together and left the stage. Of course Mrs. Pat had to return, hand in hand with her co-star. She and Mr. Webster bowed. Then he retired, giving the stage to her with a wave and a smile. Mrs. Pat stayed in the circle of the carbon arc, calmly gazing around the theater, graciously smiling to acknowledge the love she heard in the ovation. Fritzi clapped so enthusiastically, her palms hurt.
As the applause diminished, Mrs. Pat raised her hand in farewell, stepped back. The scarlet curtain closed. The carbon-arc spotlight burned a moment longer, as if in tribute. Then it blinked out and the house came up full.
The gallery crowd began a stampede to the exits. A precious program in her hand, Fritzi shoved and elbowed like an experienced New Yorker. Broken peanut shells crackled under her shoes. Her left foot hurt because of a pea-sized darn in her stocking. She still couldn’t sew.
She descended the steep staircase to the beautiful marble lobby, crowded with men in evening clothes, women in furs or gold cloaks with linings of colored satin. It was impossible to tell whether the people were genuinely rich or just “Astorbilts”—gauche pretenders. Either way, they pointed up the poverty of her own appearance. Her high-top button shoes were cheap. So was her gray melton walking skirt and her percale shirtwaist, the white and blue stripes laundered into a gray sameness. Her straw sailor hat was out of season and out of style. Her only decent article of clothing was the brown winter coat from her mother.
Outside, rain pelted Forty-second Street. She’d have to trudge home in that, all the way down to First Avenue near Eighth Street. Paying for public transportation was out of the question.
Under the marquee, whose hundreds of electric bulbs contributed to the dazzle of the white-light district, she secured her hat with a pin and opened her umbrella. Walking east, she passed the Belasco, then Hammerstein’s Victoria at the corner of Times Square. It had been Longacre Square until the newspaper moved uptown and built its pink granite tower over the new subway station. Gaudy electric signs hawked SAPOLIO SOAP, KELLOGG’S CORN FLAKES, ARROW COLLARS.
Horse-drawn cabs and chugging autos with flickering kerosene headlamps filled the night with noise and a miasma of manure and gasoline. White plumes spouted from steam cars. Obnoxious klaxons sounded on little black autos that sped among the others like aggressive bugs—“taxi-meter” cabs, the latest import from Paris.
After a long walk to lower First Avenue, she saw light under her landlady’s door, knocked softly.
“I’m sorry to disturb you this late, Mrs. Perella.”
“Not to worry, was just reading the paper.” Mrs. Perella was a Neapolitan woman of fierce visage but good heart. She liked Fritzi, was tolerant about late rent payments, and took messages on the downstairs hall telephone without complaint.
Hesitant, Fritzi asked, “Did I have any messages this evening?”
Mrs. Perella shook her head, saw Fritzi’s disappointment, and gently squeezed her hand. Fritzi thanked her and trudged upstairs.
Her room at the third-floor front was large, but that was about all you could say for it. Even with the jets unlit it smelled of gas; the building hadn’t been modernized.
Weary and damp, she hung her sailor hat and coat in the wardrobe. Leaning in the back corner was her tennis racket, a 1905 birthday gift from her parents. The ash frame was beveled, the cedar handle finely scored for a good grip; it must have cost ten dollars at least. Carefully brought to New York in her steamer trunk, it had stood untouched since she unpacked. Lawn tennis was a game for those who didn’t have to count pennies.
An elevated train rumbled, approaching from the south. Fritzi pulled the blind. The train went by in a roar and rush of sound; lighted car windows threw patterns across the blind, black-yellow, black-yellow. The floor shook. The pitcher on the washstand danced. She was used to it.
She lit the gas mantle near a crazed mirror and with much reaching and wiggling unfastened the buttons at the back of her shirtwaist. To dress and undress, a single woman needed a maid, a lover, or the talents of a contortionist.
She pulled the waist off sleeve by sleeve. She laid her skirt on top of it on the bed. Underneath her chemise she wore a one-piece undergarment combining drawers and a brassiere top with fancy lace around neck and armholes. Looking at the ceiling, she reached under and unpinned her gay deceivers.
She put on a cotton robe and stretched on the bed, reliving the evening. Mrs. Pat’s performance had produced great excitement while Fritzi was in the theater, but in retrospect it was disheartening. She brooded about her gallery seat and the magic circle of the arc light. The physical distance between them was not great, but for an aspiring actress the gulf was very nearly infinite.
What did it take to leap from one place to the other? She was still searching for the secret. What if she never discovered it? What if she woke up to find her dream nothing more than an adolescent delusion she should have abandoned long ago?
She hardly dared think about that.
12. Fritzi and Oh-Oh
Try one,” Maisie whispered.
Fritzi said, “I’ve only smoked cigarettes a few times. I don’t like them much.”
“Don’t be a stick. These are special.” She showed the colorful packet. “Parfum de Paree. That means scent of Paris.”
It was fifteen minutes until midnight, a day after Mrs. Pat’s performance. The Bleecker House on West Forty-seventh was quiet—nothing to be heard but the distant creak of the old elevator cage. The dingy hall smelled of dust, cigar butts in sand urns, the washing solution the Bleecker seemed to use by the tanker load. Fritzi was used to more frenetic evenings: doors banging, couples checking out at two a.m., whimpers and moans and strident oaths from the closed bedchambers. During a typical night she not only did routine dusting of the hall furniture and fixtures, she jumped from room to room cleaning up washstands and commodes, righting overturned chairs, whipping on fresh bed linen to replace that bearing evidence of recent carnality. She was never bothered by these signs of passion, only bemused and, sometimes, a little envious.
Maisie Budwigg had come down to the third floor from her station on four. It was against the rules, but the maids often ignored that. Fritzi was grateful for a respite.
“Well, come on,” Maisie urged.
“Mrs. Patrick Campbell smokes perfumed cigarettes. They’re very stylish,” Fritzi mused, weakening. “Aren’t they expensive?”
“I’ll say. A guest gave me these. A little reward for a special service.” Maisie winked. Poor Maisie—so hefty and homely, she had to give her favors away.
“All right, I’ll try one.”
“We better go in here. I saw the boss prowling a while ago.”
They hid in a roomy linen closet, the door shut, the bare bulb flickering. Taking matche
s from her apron pocket, Maisie lit two cigarettes. The closet was quickly filled with smoke and an indefinable floral odor. Fritzi took a puff. She didn’t draw the smoke past her mouth, but it was enough to start her hacking and wheezing.
“These things can’t be good for your voice—” she began.
The door opened, startling her. The cigarette hanging on Maisie’s lower lip fell to the floor as she looked over Fritzi’s shoulder.
“Oh-oh.”
“I thought I smelled smoke,” Oliver Merkle cried. He jumped into the closet and did a wild Spanish dance on Maisie’s cigarette. “For God’s sake, what’s wrong with you? We’ll have a holocaust.” Since the floor was linoleum, that was unlikely, but Fritzi quickly scuffed her own Parfum de Paree under her heel. A new aroma now dominated—the whiskey the hotel manager consumed in quantity.
Merkle thrust his head forward and dry-washed his hands. “I won’t stand for malingering.” He grabbed Fritzi’s arm. “You come along to my office. I’ll deal with you later, Miss Budwigg.”
Fritzi said, “I’d prefer to discuss it here, sir.”
“You’ll discuss it where I say.”
Maisie gave Fritzi a look; both knew she was in for more than a reprimand. “I’m the one who lured Fritzi in here to smoke,” Maisie began. But Merkle had already about-faced, gesturing like a general. His pop eyes roved over Fritzi as she passed on her way to the stairs.
On the ground floor, Merkle strutted into his office ahead of her. After Fritzi entered, he slammed the door with a flourish. She listened for the click of the key. Hearing it, she steeled herself.
Merkle casually touched her, gave her a smarmy smile as he walked to his desk, perching on a corner. “Miss Crown—Fritzi. You realize we have rules in this hostelry, don’t you? Without rules we’d have disorder.” Fritzi thought of certain nights when the slamming doors sounded like a gun battle in progress. She deemed it wiser not to remind him.
“I’m very sorry. Please don’t lay the blame on Maisie. I consented to join her in the closet.”
“Blame? Who’s talking about blame? We can work this out. You’re an intelligent girl, not like that cow.”
“Sir, Maisie is a decent, hardworking—”
“Nuts. She gives it away to any two-bit drummer or washed-up actor who asks.” On a sideboard under a stern lithograph of William Jennings Bryan, the perennial Democratic candidate for president, Merkle kept liquor decanters and glasses. He poured two whiskeys, offered her one.
“No, thank you, I can’t.”
“Why not?”
Quickly she said, “I’m reading for an agent in the morning.” It was a convenient fib to shorten the encounter.
“Oh, right, I forgot, you’re a famous star in disguise.” He set both glasses on the desk and moved close. “You’ve committed a serious offense, Fritzi. We have to work things out.” He stroked the sleeve of her black bombazine dress. “Are you willing to work things out?”
“Mr. Merkle, please take your hand away.”
Blowing his boozy breath in her face, he closed his fingers on her sleeve; the pain almost buckled her knees.
“Mr. Merkle, let go.”
“I’m giving you a chance. You’d better take it.” Holding her forearms, he thrust against her. His pop eyes fluttered shut. Fritzi felt something stiff poking her apron.
She had no hat pin for defense, only her athletic strength. She yanked her arms down and lunged backward. When her right hand came free, she swung her open palm into his face. It rocked him, giving her time to speed to the door, unlock it with a twist of the key.
“Goddamn you, change your clothes and get out. You’re fired! You take so much as a rag out of this hotel, I’ll have you arrested.”
White and shaking, she wanted to run. Something compelled her to face him and say, “Mr. Merkle, do you know your nickname in the hotel?”
His pop eyes appeared to vibrate in his head. “Do I want to hear this?”
“Everyone calls you Ollie the Octopus. I’d say that’s an insult to octopuses. Octopi.”
“Get out of my sight!” he screamed. “Try to find another job good as this one. You won’t. You’ll be humping for pennies like your fat friend.”
She couldn’t think of another retort, so she shot her head forward and dry-washed her hands in a perfect imitation of him. Merkle turned red and made gobbling sounds. “You—you—”
Fritzi fled, caroming off the night clerk rushing down the hall in response to the noise. Lord, what have I done?
She left the Bleecker House bedeviled by thoughts of a small rectangular box, tin, hidden in a drawer in her room. Originally the box had contained lemon drops. Now it held all the money she had left—four dollars and change.
In the morning, as she went out to buy a newspaper, Mrs. Perella was waiting by the newel post. The landlady murmured softly about “la pigione.” The rent. Fritzi promised a partial payment, two dollars, by nightfall. Mrs. Perella murmured, “Bèllo, bravo.” Beautiful, excellent. “All my tenants should be as good as you.”
Fritzi searched the columns and that day answered ads for three positions. Dishwasher—she was too well educated. Typewriter in an insurance office—her typing speed was too slow. “Artist’s model.” The grubby room overlooking the Bowery was obviously a front for something else, probably unsavory. The “agent” had pimples and the eyes of a ferret. Merkle and now this; she fled.
That night she paid Mrs. Perella, reducing the content of the tin box by half. Next day she walked to a shop on Second Avenue to pawn her tennis racket. She had surrendered it to the gnomish owner once before.
“One dollar,” the pawnbroker said, starting to write her ticket.
“Mr. Isidor, it was a dollar-fifty last time.”
“I know, Fritzi, but that was a year ago. Things depreciate.”
“I surely hope you won’t sell it. I intend to redeem it as soon as I can.”
He patted her hand. “I believe you. One dollar.”
“I’ll take it.”
She went up to Forty-seventh and peered through the lobby window of the Bleecker House. The dreaded Merkle being nowhere visible, she went in. The day clerk, a friend, told her that within an hour of Fritzi’s dismissal Maisie had likewise gotten sacked. She hadn’t taken it well, had in fact bashed Merkle with an iron skillet from the kitchen.
“The night cook was cleaning up when she asked for it. Soon as he found out why she wanted it, he took it back and gave her a heavier one. Coppers from the precinct came around, but Maisie had already left town to visit relatives in Wyoming.” He winked. “That’s what we told ’em, anyway. Merkle can’t help them. He’s in a Yonkers hospital for an indefinite stay.”
So she wouldn’t be seeing Maisie again. Fritzi was sorry; she liked the fat girl.
She sat in Union Square in the pleasant afternoon sunshine. The dying day washed the square in pale yellows and umbers. Paper trash and pigeon droppings and peanut hulls collected at her feet. The air rang with the curses of cabmen, the clatter of buried traction chains, the neighing of horses, the chanting of newsboys, the violins and squeeze boxes of corner musicians, the horns of taxis, the popping of gasoline engines, clamorous voices speaking foreign tongues—all the music of New York that she loved. Today she didn’t hear it. She was busy marking ads.
On a nearby path a man shouted, “I need four supers.” He held up four fingers. “Pay is sixty cents.” Fritzi guessed the stranger was one of the freelances called super captains. They worked the square around this time every day, rounding up supernumeraries for evening performances.
Fritzi had disliked her work as a super in The Mongol’s Bride. It wasn’t acting; supers never rehearsed. They showed up for costumes and minimal instructions thirty-five minutes before curtain. Most didn’t know or care what play they were in. Many were lowlifes who needed drinking money, and the super captains weren’t much better.
It was no time to be choosy, though. She raised her hand.
The
man came to her bench. He wore an old but clean corduroy jacket and pants, a blue railroad bandanna knotted in the open throat of a work shirt. In his thirties, he had a pleasant face, deeply lined. He tipped his cap.
“Hello, dear. Earl’s my name.” His eyes were oddly unsettling, a strange light brown, gold-speckled.
“Are you hiring for a performance tonight?”
“Yes, but I can only use gents. Sorry.” He smiled. He had a wide mouth, allowing a display of large teeth of spectacular perfection and whiteness. Though his smile made him attractive in a rough way, somehow he scared her.
Looking Fritzi up and down, he said, “I haven’t seen you before. Been missing something. I don’t do this work regularly, you understand.”
“I don’t do it at all if I can help it.” She started to edge away.
He followed. “Actress, are you?” She nodded, kept moving. “Care to join me for a beer after I round up my four?”
“No, thank you.” She spun and hurried off.
When she glanced back, he was coming after her, scowling—offended by her refusal. Others were looking at him; he stopped, yelled after her:
“Go walk the streets, slut, I don’t give a damn.” He pivoted and went off the other way. “Four here, I need four tonight.”
She ran for two blocks before slowing and looking back. Why had the man upset her so? Something about his eyes, his angry insistence—
Or was she reacting too strongly, unnerved by her encounters with Oh-Oh and the Bowery “agent”? Without knowing the answer, she was thankful to escape the stranger and have New York’s teeming crowds around her, hiding her.
13. Smash-up
In the twenty-second lap, Artie Flugel in the little Mason deliberately whipped into a skid ahead of Carl, spewing dust over Carl’s windscreen and blinding him. It was a dangerous trick of experienced drivers. Artie wanted to win not only the purse but a five-dollar side bet with Carl.