Vivian In Red (27 page)

Milo dug in his suitcase for a fresh shirt at least. Before he stepped into his bathroom he turned back. “Vivian? Can I ask you something?”

There was no movement or answer from her curled-up form.

“Are you…” Milo struggled for the word he wanted. He couldn’t just ask if she were nuts, a person didn’t ask a girl a thing like that. Anyhow, maybe it was all just headaches, and lots of high-pitched emotion. “… Are you ill, somehow?”

“Yes,” she answered, then, projecting her voice firmly as if she were swearing in court, “I am.”

Vivian appeared to be asleep when Milo left to walk back to the theater, his head jarring with every footfall, his temples exploding with each honk of a horn. At least he wouldn’t have to work much, he figured, since his lyrics seemed to be in fine shape. As he approached the stage door, he realized his work on the show was essentially over. He’d expected relief, after all the frantic writing and rewriting in the last weeks, to have the end before him. What he felt was a yawning fear, like he got a glimpse of if he happened to stand too close to the train tracks on the elevated platform, and the crowd jostled him.

He strode right up to Mabel, who was the costumer but seemed to be more or less in charge of Vivian as errand girl. It was his misfortune that the director was standing behind her, and whirled around on Milo.

“I knew it,” he snapped, overhearing Milo making excuses for Vivian. “She’s fired. She can come with us back to New York but I never want to see that broad again.” Mabel herself was glowering, muttering, “I could have gotten ten girls to take that job who might have cared enough to keep it.”

“You don’t understand!” Milo gulped, remembering her smeared face, her gauzy slip. She had seemed so broken and vulnerable when he left her on that bed. “She got mugged, see. Purse-snatched. Guy shoved her hard to the ground, too. I saw her leave McHugh’s last night and it was all my fault, I thought she had an escort but she didn’t.”

Mabel’s face softened. “Oh, the poor dear! Is she all right? Should we send over a doctor to her room?”

“No!” Milo answered too quickly. “I mean, she wasn’t seriously hurt, I saw her just in the lobby. She was trying to come in to work, see, but she was so tired and shaken up that I told her she should go upstairs. I told her I felt sure you’d understand, and that the show was mostly done by now. Heck, the lyrics seem to be okay so if you need something, send me, right, Mabel? Milo Shirt isn’t too proud to go buy more sequins.”

The director’s eyebrows seemed to form one flat line across his face. For every part of round Mabel’s face that beamed understanding and sympathy, the director oozed skepticism. Then he drooped and huffed out a breath. “Fine. You tell her I hope she ‘recovers’ soon, Short.”

Mabel was twittering away at his elbow. “Should she go to the police? I suppose there’s not much sense in that, though maybe she should if her purse turns up. Did it have much money in it? Poor thing, no wonder she doesn’t want to come in, I wouldn’t either, why it would scare me out of my wits! We’ll have to make sure all ladies have someone to walk with them from now on, goodness, I thought we were in a decent part of town, but these days I guess everyone gets a little desperate…”

Milo nodded his assent to everything, not hearing a word. He’d never been a liar, but here he’d gone and done it. It was a good thing, a mitzvah, one could argue. He saved Vivian’s job, and surely whatever had gone wrong she hadn’t done on purpose. And it had been true what he’d said about it being his fault. He’d seen her leave in a state, but he’d let Allen and Fink and the stardust of famous Cole Porter talk him into letting a woman walk alone in the wee hours of the night in a strange city. She could have been mugged, or worse, and it would have been his fault.

By the time Milo agreed to go get sandwiches for the chorus girls, he’d convinced himself the story he told was true.

All the coffee on the Eastern seaboard couldn’t have cured Milo’s headache, and as the show’s second night unspooled in front of him, he couldn’t remember to be impressed that he’d been invited to sit in Max Gordon’s balcony seats. McHugh had joined them, and Dorothy Fields.

Milo would’ve thought that the previous night’s river of booze would have swamped the whole cast and ruined the show for good, but somehow everyone pounced on their roles with new fervor at that afternoon’s run-through. The chorus girls in particular had been dancing their routines in an upstairs rehearsal space until they could’ve done it blindfolded, he heard the director say.

And it was showing on this second night’s performance. The costumer had fixed whatever the problem was that caused George Murphy’s pull-away rags to not pull entirely away the first night. Even Bell’s voice sounded clearer and stronger.

But not here to witness it was Allen. Milo had been the one to bring cash down to the jailhouse to bail him out and drag him, still half-drunk, back to the hotel. He’d been arrested for public drunkenness, for having decided to take a piss under a streetlamp, which wouldn’t have been so terrible except that when a copper hollered at him, Allen turned to face him and pissed all over the officer’s polished black shoes, and threw in some colorful remarks on the policeman’s questionable parentage and ethnicity.

Gordon had jammed a wad of bills into Milo’s fist, saying, “You get that partner of yours dried out, or no one’s going to want to bother with that drunken sonofabitch again in his natural born life.”

Milo had been too angry to bother talking to Allen, who was still pickled at any rate. He was beginning to think longingly of his first days at Harms, just playing tunes by ear on the piano, going home at night to his mother’s cooking, and making just enough money not to be embarrassed of himself.

What was so wrong with that? The manager at Harms would never take him back, but they might take him on staff at Remick’s now, or some other publisher, writing lyrics even. He could wish Allen best of luck and dust his hands of the whole business, and while he was at it, put some real estate between himself and Vivian. She was a pretty girl, to be sure, and charming when she felt like it. But as he’d already said, he was Jewish and she wasn’t, but more to the point, she was trouble. She tripped some kind of protective switch in him, which made him want to push up his sleeves and stand in front of her, arms wide and chin out. He didn’t figure this was love exactly, seeing as how when they were apart what he felt was a kind of relief, and a low hum of fondness. He’d seen love closer up now that his brother, Max, had been seeing a girl named Miriam from down the block. Those two spent every moment together they could, to the point where she was in the shop so much people assumed she worked there, when she just wanted to be close enough to receive his smile.

No, this wasn’t exactly love, Milo figured, but it was a tangle all the same.

An eruption yanked him away from thoughts of Vivian. In a moment his ears had organized the sound into what it was: a roaring ovation. George Murphy had just sung the last notes of
Hilarity
. The audience was losing their minds, standing, clapping, whistling. The dancers and Murphy were frozen in place, yet even from as far as back as Milo was in the balcony, he could see their chests heaving, knew how hard they were sweating, because he’d seen it before, up close. The lights dimmed at last, but the next bit couldn’t start, the audience was still hollering, as the players on stage scrambled in the soft gray dark to get out of the way, ready for the next number.

Max Gordon leaned back from his seat in front of Milo. “Hey, Short? This here is what they call stopping the show.”

R
esting on the front stoop of the townhouse, I let the late September breeze push my hair back from my face. Now that I know my grandfather is seeing things, I feel haunted, too. Every time Grampa Milo’s gaze rests too long on any one spot, my breathing starts to shallow out and I have to remind myself not to show it: project calm, serenity. For his sake, if not mine.

I’ve got to tell Uncle Paul what I’ve noticed. It’s only right.

Grampa is hallucinating. He’s seeing things that aren’t there. His mind is going.

Several times this week, Paul turned to stare at me and ask if I needed something, what I was about to say. And each time I’d shrug and claim to be distracted, or just say “nothing,” losing my nerve for confessing what I knew about Grampa’s strange episodes. What if they sent him away to some institution? Or doped him into a stupor? And then Uncle Paul would just nod and go back to whatever he was doing: paperwork for Short Productions, or arguing with his wife under his breath as if Esme, the nurses, and I weren’t there to notice. He’s plenty distracted himself.

It’s a plausible enough story that I’d be distracted, after all. Aunt Linda had popped in to the townhouse while Daniel was helping me with boxes and by the way her eyebrows shot halfway up her head it’s safe to say she found his presence both surprising and fascinating, and no doubt she told Joel immediately, and via Jessica it would have spread like a virus to Eva and Naomi.

I wish I’d missed Daniel that day. Just another couple of hours and I’d have been gone. Sure, he might have tried to call for me here, but I wouldn’t have to take that call; not being my own house, I don’t answer the phone here. I’ve been switching to using my cell phone for the book calls, so I can go wherever I like, though I’m not great at keeping the battery charged, and sometimes I have to pace around to find a good signal.

Instead he turned up as I was packing, and he insisted he help me, and he reminisced, and kissed that one spot on my neck, just below my ear, that he always used to. When he reached for my hair to pull it out of the way I wanted to punch him, but I also wanted to let him embrace me. Instead, I pulled back a fraction of an inch, and pushed my hair back into place. I had the sensation then of a jarring crack inside; my two warring halves breaking apart.