Searching for Grace Kelly (6 page)

“Surprise me.”
Hepburn would have never said that
.

He pulled a draft beer from the tap. “Try this,” he said, sliding it over. He walked down to the other end of the bar, presumably to pour another round for the angry guy in the black-rimmed glasses and his friends.

The beer was acid down her throat, and she gagged. Did people really think this tasted good? She couldn't ever remember beer once being served in her family's house. Or even knowing anyone who drank it. But the foam tickled her throat, and after a few sips she was able to get it down. “Whaddya think?” Pete asked as he approached.

“Delicious,” she said, gulping hard.

She stayed for almost two hours. They talked about New York, then where she'd grown up, where he'd grown up (Philadelphia), her life at Smith, and in a testament to the bravura wrought by beer number two, his nose: “Irish father and Polish mother, what can I say?” She met a poet and his girlfriend who walked in and sat nearby—from Pete's greeting and introduction, they were clearly San Remo regulars—and they regaled her with stories about their recent two months in Italy, where they sailed in Capri while also managing to picnic with a bunch of anarchists, among other pursuits. It was late afternoon by the time Laura strolled back into the Barbizon, where she passed Metzger leaving.

“Package came for you while you were out,” the older woman said, walking past her toward the door. Laura hiccupped, and Metzger whipped her head back.
Please don't let her smell the beer!
But a few seconds later, Metzger was out the door.

Laura went to the front desk to retrieve the package and was handed a long, slender white cardboard box. Undoing the shiny red ribbon, she lifted the lid and parted the tissue paper to find a dozen long-stemmed red roses inside. She extracted the card.

“THERE ARE FOUR LAURAS LIVING AT THE BARBIZON, AND I HAD TO SEND ROSES TO EACH OF THEM TO MAKE SURE I GOT THE RIGHT ONE,”
it said.
“I'M SORRY ABOUT LAST NIGHT. THAT'S NOT WHO I AM. PERHAPS YOU'LL ALLOW ME TO SHOW YOU THE REAL ME.”
The card was signed simply,
“B.”

“Nicola!!!”

The scream sent Vivian bolting up in bed.

“Ni-coh-laaaaaaaaa!!!
Get up! You hear me? You're going to be late for Mass!”

Where am I?

Her temples were throbbing. Oh, the wine last night. She'd known it was a mistake. But he'd insisted, more than once. More than twice. “C'mon,” he'd said, with those ridiculous dark eyes, “just one more glass. What, you got a curfew?”

As a matter of fact, she did. God knows what Metzger's face would look like if she could see her now. Vivian would be not only out of the Barbizon, but probably out of the country, deported. Rubbing her head, she looked around the unfamiliar room, saw sunlight filtering in from around the edges of the pulled window shades. The room was small, plain, with an old but burnished highboy in the corner that had a small dressing mirror hung above it, a pair of black rosary beads dangling down from its corner. The top of the highboy was littered with bottles of half-filled cologne, along with a hairbrush. A faded photograph of three small boys in baseball uniforms was tucked in the lower right of the mirror, which with the rosary beads above it gave it the appearance of a tiny shrine.

His place? Yes, we came to his place after the bar. But where was his place?

“Nicola! If I have to come up those stairs—”

The reply, deep and masculine and slightly accented, boomed from the body next to her in the bed and catapulted her fully awake. “Ma! Okay, okay, I'm up!” he yelled toward the closed skinny white door. “Calm down! I'll be down in a minute!”

He turned toward her, his whisper sleepy and impossibly seductive. “Hey, beautiful.”

“Your mother?” Vivian whispered, pulling the top sheet tighter around her bare breasts. “You live with your
mother
?”

“My parents,” he corrected. “Of course I do. Where else would I live?” He smiled, rose up on an elbow. “Now I gotta get ready for church. Wait here till we leave, then slip out the back door. Don't go out the front. Mrs. Della Pietra next door, she sees everything.” He jumped out of the bed, naked except for his white T-shirt, and padded over to the highboy to retrieve a fresh pair of underwear and socks.

He had the lean, sinewy build of a boy, one augmented in strategic places—the shoulders, the calves, the ass—by the attributes of a mature, muscular man. His skin was a tawny olive, topped by a fulsome mane of black hair that normally curved back from his forehead, though which now, as she watched him rummage through his sock drawer, flopped down into his eyes. He was suave, but strictly in the context of the street. There was something impossibly feral that enveloped him like a fog.

She leaned back into the pillow, trying to decide what to do. Should she start getting dressed now, then perch herself on the end of the bed and wait for the proper clearance to escape the prying eyes of the nosy neighbor? What she wanted to do was laugh out loud and declare, in her drollest Kay Kendall, “I cannot believe that a man who is still living with and going to church with his parents managed to seduce me last night.”

And yet he had. And that wasn't entirely her fault, because it was not simply his physical attributes that had contributed to her decision. Nicola Accardi had become something of a regular at the Stork over the last few months, though his entrance was guaranteed not by his charms but rather the company he kept, a legion of burly, impeccably coiffed men in bespoke suits who were always given if not the best tables, then decent ones. He was clearly a man of some influence, though how he had come by it remained a mystery. He had flirted with her from the start, which wasn't unusual from his sort, the dark and swarthys who were always employed in some vague and questionable business and answered any inquiries about same with Cheshire cat smiles and oily invitations to moonlit dinners. And he'd had money—a good deal of money—and wasn't shy about throwing it around: drinks for that table over there, Cuban cigars for my friends over here, and so on. She had flirted back—she knew her strengths—but kept it at that. Getting involved with customers was a blatant no-no at the Stork; Mr. Billingsley had been known to fire girls for less. And she needed the job. But then Nicola had come last night, and after his entourage had left he'd stayed. And stayed. Until closing. Then after closing. Which, by her estimation, had been about five hours ago.

The Stork had been quiet, the only sounds those of the mop on the dance floor and the dishwashers clitter-clattering plates in the back. Nicola had remained glued in his chair until she'd passed in front of him on her own way out, his hand shooting out from the table, grabbing her by the wrist.

“Give us a song,” he said, smiling up at her.

“What makes you think I sing?”

“I've heard you. I know you sing here sometimes.”

On occasion the boys in the band humored her, allowed her to sing a number after closing. Cesar, the trombonist, would pipe out a few notes, and then the pianist would kick in, and Vivian would slide behind the gleaming silver microphone and close her eyes and picture herself in front of a packed ballroom on a sultry Saturday night, wearing a strapless gown and gloves that snaked up past her elbows. And then, as she would belt out the first few bars of “Night and Day” or “Half as Much,” she was singing not for the old man swabbing the parquet floor, but for the ladies sitting erect in their best dresses and for the men in their suits, the ends of their cigarettes lit up like fireflies.

She was a star.

Vivian had looked around at the boys packing up. “Too late for a private concert, I'm afraid. The guys have almost all left. Besides,” she said, turning back to Nicola, “I'm exhausted.”

He'd kept his hand firmly around her wrist. “You're going back on your word.” He had something, sweetness spiked with a dash of danger.

“How is it that I could have broken my word to a man I've never spoken to?”

“You've spoken to me with your eyes.”

She artfully shook her wrist free, bemused. “That has to be the worst line I have ever heard. Do women actually respond to this kind of drivel?”

He threw his head back in laughter, and she liked it. “You're makin' me work here!”

“Believe me, if you were working for me, love, you'd know it. Good night.”

He jumped up from behind the table and blocked her path. He was tall—at least six three, possibly taller—and his eyes bore into her. “Please,” he said, arms extended. “Just one song. I've had a terrible night. Just sing something for me. One song. And you know,” he said, slowly rubbing her hand in his with his thumb, “I know all kinds of people. Including music people. Maybe I could introduce you.”

She smiled. Intellectually she took it all for what it was, a well-rehearsed empty promise with undoubtedly no basis in reality. But he did keep interesting company. More than that, he kept wealthy company. And even if he was bullshitting her, what the hell, she was English—she had a soft spot for thespians. “One song,” she said. Cesar was still there, as was Joe, the pianist. Vivian tilted her head toward them. “And you'll need to tip the boys.”

He nodded, sat back down. A few minutes later she was in front of the mic, checking to make sure Mr. Billingsley wasn't still around. The owner of the Stork, he was as famous as the patrons with whom he posed for the photographs that lined the walls. He would normally have already gone home, but sometimes he stayed in the back office to check on the night's receipts.

Joe tinkled the opening bars. Cesar softly joined in. Vivian sang.

 

“Meet me tonight in dreamland

Under the silvery moon

Meet me tonight in dreamland

Where love's sweet roses bloom . . .”

 

“Okay, Ruby. I'm going.”

Vivian whirled around to see Nicola's face come back into focus. His hair was slicked back again, and he was wearing his best Sunday clothes. She was still in his bed, the linens now twisted around her. She suddenly felt embarrassed. “Oh, all right, then,” she said.

He leaned back, smiled. “Do you even know where you are?”

“I'm going to say New York. Am I close?”

“Bensonhurst,” he said. “Here's a token for the subway. Just go up the block, make a left, go down two blocks and catch the D back to Manhattan.” He smiled, tousled her mop of red hair, and kissed her. “I'll call you.”

 

Laura was halfway down the steps of St. Thomas Chapel on East Sixtieth when she spied her across the street, casually leaning against the pole of the traffic light smoking a cigarette, wearing dark sunglasses and the fitted black dress she donned every night for work at the Stork.

Laura nodded to a few of the other girls. “Go on ahead, I'll catch up,” she said.

The light turned and Vivian walked over, falling in step with her as they made their way behind the pack back toward the Barbizon three blocks away. Before Laura had a chance to say a word, Vivian piped up. “Don't ask,” she said.

“I don't have to. You're wearing the dress you went to work in last night. And you smell like a tobacco farm.”

“I'm a cigarette girl, remember? Comes with the territory.”

“It comes from staying out all night with God-Knows-Who.”

“Now, don't get all high and mighty, Miss Connecticut. We can't all be good girls from the country. And wouldn't life be boring if we were?”

One of the girls ahead looked back, quickly turning to her two walking mates and laughing. “How did you even know where to find me?” Laura asked.

“Where else would you be on Sunday morning if not the closest Episcopalian church? It's almost an annex of the Barbizon.” She peered up the block at the group in front of them. “Where's Ethel?”

Laura rolled her eyes. This was her own fault. She'd made the mistake of sharing a belief that Dolly would one day end up like Ethel Mertz, and Vivian had howled in laughter, yelling, “Perfect, bloody perfect!” Now she wouldn't let it go. “You need to stop calling her that,” Laura said. “And to answer your question, she's Catholic. She's at St. Vincent Ferrer.”

“Catholic? Oh, what a drag. I'd rather be a Druid. Though I must say, no one wears basic black better than the nuns. Always so drapey.”

“Are you always like this?”

“Like what?”

“Like . . . crazy. You talk like you're in a movie opposite Cary Grant.”

“Oh, don't be so flinty,” Vivian said, hooking her arm through Laura's as they made the turn onto Lexington. “I'll tell you what, no one ever says, ‘Gee, I wonder what Vivian thinks.' Because everyone always knows what Vivian thinks. I'm direct, perhaps to a fault, yes. But don't you agree that we'd all be better off if everyone was a bit more direct, rather than less? Wouldn't there be fewer problems, fewer misunderstandings? And I'll tell you another thing: I'm fun. I may not be the prettiest girl in the room, or the smartest, or God knows the richest. But I am very likely to be the most fun. There's merit in that.”

“I'm sure whoever's place you're slinking back from would heartily agree.”

Vivian laughed. “Oh, well done! See? That kind of reply shows you're already becoming a writer. A comeback worthy of Noël Coward!” She turned her head sharply as they passed a small bakery. “Good God, those muffins smell heavenly.”

“The least he could have done is fed you.”

Glancing ahead, Vivian grabbed Laura by the hand. “Hurry, we need to catch up to the rest.”

“Why?” Laura barked, holding her hat as they bolted across the street.