The Queen of Tuesday

by Darin Strauss

  She is an optimist. This is a party about buildings going up and buildings coming down. So she turns to look at the Manhattan skyline, that dapper eyeful. It seems, blazoning up in the distance, so much more sumptuous than the New York she walked through, that hive of yells, trolleys, odors, soup kitchens, car horns, dog mess, sirens, taxis, people people people.

  “Do you know why I was talking to her?” Desi’s saying. His hand travels, slowly, down his face. “To Nanette Fabray?”

  “That nice, juicy pair of Tony nominations she has flopping out her dress?”

  Desi sighs. Without resentment, he reminds his wife that Nanette Fabray—and, come on, sweetie, why would you forget this—Nanette Fabray is married to Dave Tebet.

  “I want to believe this plan is the best plan, Lucille,” Desi says. Like everyone who has lost or nearly grabbed real success, Desi Arnaz considers himself wronged by the world.

  (Dave Tebet is a big shot at NBC.)

  “It is,” she’s saying, reaching for a smoke. “It is the best plan.”

  “You make it cost so much to plan with you.”

  She understands the caliber of her siege artillery. It is not in her nature to silence her own guns. But she does.

  “Sorry,” she says through the smoke of her smoke.

  “Fine,” Desi says. His anger just goes.

  He is five-nine, seven years younger than Lucille, and what you notice is the bullish sensuality. She touches his face.

  “It’s the best plan, all right,” she says. “ ’Cause it’s the only plan either of us could think up.”

  When he smiles, she just loves him. Lucille does not have the stage yet to show viewers how it’s done. To show that a couple is a performance. That you can have a quick jump from fighting to partners. They will make their ideas of marriage into the universal idea of marriage. As long as Desi doesn’t stop to talk to a new woman.

  “Here’s to long shots,” Desi’s saying, on the move once more. “I’m going to find some big and scary wigs and do the plan.”

  “Wait,” she says. “Wait.”

  She wants to remind him to find her buddy Gale Gordon, whom she has cast in the plan’s supporting role. (Gordon, an actor, is supposed to walk by at the right moment and nonchalantly mention what a million-dollar idea Desi has.)

  But Desi’s off again. Holding back, Lucille raises a bare shoulder to her own cheek and feels the echo of the slap. Just for a moment, with nobody looking, she relaxes from the work of hiding panic and shame.

  * * *

  —

  THE BIRDS ABOVE Ocean Beach see the drum-shaped premiere lights slide glamour beams along the clouds. The birds see—with a clapped paper bag sound of wings passing—a giant steel-and-glass pavilion, all a-sparkle. The birds see Ziegfeld girls, restaurateurs, a late-arriving Broadway impresario exiting his pleasure sedan. That wind picks up, goosebumping eight hundred arms. The birds see pinups, radio luminaries, heartthrob clarinetists. They see the covetous attractive charmers who take root in the soil around celebrities. (These are the career fawners—the money-takers.) They see Bing Crosby in the flesh. And Ted Mack. And Mary Martin holding Vic Damone’s thick arm. They see clothes as a standard and elegant repression. They see the boardwalk as a splinter that pokes the beach in the eye.

  The steel-and-glass pavilion is five acres wide and will remain so for the next hour.

  * * *

  —

  “FOR YOU, MISS BALL.” It’s the kid with the gloves. Back again and carrying two red bricks—holding one out for her. “Ready?”

  Lucille’s gaze takes a bounce over the sand. She’s looking for Desi over by the white-linen tables that mark the limit of the party. It’s where the night’s top dogs have gathered.

  “May I, um, let you in on a secret, Miss Ball?” the kid says.

  There’s Desi—stopped at the shoreline to look at the Ferris wheel. The red brick feels surprisingly heavy. The Ferris wheel is a giant iron dandelion with its fluff blown away.

  “Jesus, Dez,” she whispers. “Do something.”

  “It’s, um, almost time, Miss Ball.”

  Desi’s drawn back from the three powerful men who, drinks in hand, appear to be talking all at once. There’s gray, dapper Frank Stanton, president of CBS, and Columbia Records’ Edward Wallerstein. And Fred Christ Trump, the thin, balding real estate man. It’s Trump’s party, his beachfront, his night. All three impose their status on the landscape, their comfort. It is Stanton whom Desi will have to convince. The vibe the men give: decorated battleships, cheered at some victory anchorage, accepting ticker tape after a lifetime of service. And then there’s Dez.

  “Thanks, kid,” Lucille says, acknowledging the brick at last.

  Yesterday her manager had warned: Don’t fool yourself, no chance in hell the networks play ball, better not to bother. And now, here she is, slapped, feeling marked, holding a brick for some reason.

  But no one became great listening to her manager’s warnings.

  Right before Lucille decides to go to Desi, he strides off again. He’s rejoining Nanette Fabray, who’s standing alone; maybe this was a planned rendezvous.

  “Would you get a load of that,” Lucille says.

  The kid is nervous, but he focuses on Lucille to make up for it. She is nervous. Her cigarette is out but still clenched between her fingers, its gray pine cone of dead tobacco. (The kid’s name, not that she asked, is Philip.) He works to depatsy his presentation. Throwing back his shoulders, he sees a rescue coming.

  He asks: “Want to meet my brother?” He does not add: “Because if I’m too young to make it with you, I’d like to know someone who does.”

  Lucille looks at him. No. She wants that not even a little.

  “Well, kid,” she says. “What kind of gloves does he have?” And her peripheral vision itches, right as the brother comes up. “Oh,” she says.

  It’s not that Lucille is anti-Semitic. (1949 is not long after those Auschwitz photos; copping to anti-Semitism is about as big a setback as having a Jewish surname.) Even so, Lucille has told herself she is not attracted to Jews. Or hasn’t been since Pandro Berman and Mack Gray—big men in the way she likes those who happen to be Jewish. But now she has seen the brother. And her mouth peeps open—a red gum–like pop from her lipstick.

  “Oh,” she says again.

  The kid’s brother Isidore—Izzy to his crowd, now eating a deviled egg—approaches with a blip in his stride. This gives his large body a haphazard charm.

  “Well, look at this, Phil,” the brother says, wiping his hands on his lapels. “You made a friend.”

  Maybe he’s a studio executive I don’t know about, Lucille hopes, fearful that he’ll see the red in her cheek.

  “I’ve seen you before,” Isidore says. “But not in real life, I’m guessing.” Lucille transfers the brick from one palm to another, feels the grainy weight. She shakes Isidore’s hand the way a man would.

  “What’s real life?” she says.

  “Whatever this isn’t.”

  He seems preoccupied, as if he’s also listening to a radio in a room down the hall. As she talks, Isidore looks not at her eyes but at her mouth. (The kid Phil has been thrown from the saddle of this conversation. He is as far away now as someone can be while standing here.)

  She turns to hide the slapwarm cheek. “So, besides hard labor on ladies’ ankles, what is this party?” She has to tilt her head back to meet his eyes.

  “I’ll show you a secret,” Isidore says.

  He’s got Johnny Weissmuller shoulders, a Cary Grant chin. Wearing his hat pulled low, he’s good to look at—imperfectly good. He has known stress; it’s fanned in arrows across his brow. (Most of the men she knows look wrinkled only when you see their newspaper spreads crushed and tossed in the trash.)

  “Oh, you’ve got a secret, have you?
” she says.

  Is she flirting? She doesn’t know. This man will not be pushed over. Suddenly, Isidore is leading her to the pavilion, Coney Island’s giant steel-and-glass centerpiece. Philip has been abandoned, left to his gloves and idolatry. “Come,” Isidore tells her. Meanwhile, her fingers nibble at his sleeve—the only way for her to keep pace. He’s going fast, and she’s following.

  “Come.”

  * * *

  —

  “STOP!”—LUCILLE WILL SAY. “Not tonight, Dez!”

  Here is what will happen in about twenty minutes. Lucille will step between her husband and Isidore. “Stop!” she will cry. It will be easy to see big public scenes in Desi’s attitude, to see fisticuffs; his eyes open insanely—the whites visible above and below. Fighting words will come.

  “I’ll chin you right now!” Desi will say.

  But before this, the entire party knows that something else is about to happen.

  * * *

  —

  SOMETHING IS ABOUT to happen. The shimmery Pavilion of Fun, with its thousand moon-holding windows, looks huge and dignified, even on pegs. People crunch by. Guests, waiters and captains, the crowd hustling closer, climbing stairs from the beach. It’s almost time. The pavilion, like a royal at the guillotine, awaits the blade.

  This is why the press has come, and politicians, celebrities, the supermen of city real estate and industry. To witness a New York relic meet its theatrical end.

  And they’ve come also to assert their place, to shine their status. “See that, Lucille?” Isidore says.

  When Fred Trump bought this entire area in one swoop, he knew everyone would tsk-tsk. He planned the eradication of a landmark. He also knew he could undercut the scandal by sweeping people up in a fantasy. No one knew they wanted to demolish a building until the doing it revealed the desire. (Watch City Hall get torched? Nah. Light the fuse yourself? Let’s make an evening of it!) People love to get swept up. Like all myth-makers, Fred Trump takes the thing at hand and spins a fairy tale. And so: all these bricks. And a crystal palace that smacks of bygones.

  Isidore and Lucille are standing at a bar set up on the sand. There’s a liquor skyline on the counter: whiskey bottles, gin and scotch, champagne, amber, green, the works.

  Isidore hands Lucille a glass of champagne, then gestures at her brick. “To me, my guess is, you’re a seasoned clay-tosser.”

  “First time I’ve heard that one,” she says smiling, nodding, frisky eyes. “No, I came to take care of something kind of difficult.”

  The moment is sweet. Except there is the sense that his gaze is trying to hoard all that is between them. But that man thing of not wanting to be seen doing it brings the sweetness back.

  “Nothing too serious, I hope,” he’s saying. “I don’t mean to pry.”

  Hmm. This human quality, the unasked question of You okay?, is the thing her husband hasn’t shown tonight. She feels compelled to share her plan. Ever since her CBS Radio show was canceled, she and her husband—because the executives at CBS were so stubborn—have decided…

  No. He’s a stranger. Not going to share things yet. “Got a gasper?” she says.

  Putting down his brick, Isidore scrabbles through his pocket. “Here’s my deck”—holding out his pack of Chesterfields.

  A cig is passed; looks are, too. Eyes brightened by match flame.

  “Thanks, kid,” she says. “You know—”

  Isidore jumps in. “You’re married?”

  (Later, she’ll remember his smile here. The wolfish curve of it.)

  She asks, well, is he not married? And he shrugs, yeah, yes, almost ten years. The exchange is quick. So, where is she, in that case. My wife? Well, who else—do tell; where’s the little woman? After just the shortest hesitation, Isidore says, “Couldn’t make it.” (He doesn’t mention that he proposed to his wife at Coney Island.)

  “Ah.” Lucille inhales, exhales, and there’s glamorous smoke.

  She resolves not to call this man Isidore, doesn’t like the Ellis Island stamp on it.

  Her brand of cigarette is Fatima—a Madcap Bride sponsor—but now as he bends to pick up his brick, she tastes Isidore’s Chesterfield.

  “So, what do you like to do?” she says. “Have any talents?”

  He decides to be serious. Thinks about saying, I dream I’d written The Naked and the Dead.

  “I like to scribble, to be honest,” he says.

  She was looking at her cigarette, ignoring his answer. “Hey? Tell me what to name you,” she says.

  He is, for the first time, confused by her.

  “You know,” she says. “A nickname. A nom de beach. Something.”

  His mind goes empty; he stalls: “Hold on…”

  “Yes!” She laughs, charmingly, lifting a hand to soften the teasing. “Hold on.” Her eyes seem washed in naughtiness. “Interesting name. If I ‘hold on,’ what will I find in my hand?”

  Isidore can feel this all the way down. But then his face goes thoughtful. “Tonight, you’ll get whatever difficult thing it was you came for, I bet,” he says, then smiles again. “Though you never told me your plan to get it.”

  When Lucille was a kid upstate, her crush Ted Sward dropped the cloth napkin he’d used to wipe catsup off his mouth; Lucille had skedaddled across the cafeteria, snatched up the gory rag, and kept it in her bedroom—the gusto and scrapbooking of the lovestruck. Feeling stirred by a napkin. Love at first sight is a dopey promise. Lucille’s legs are now shaky. What is it? You’ll get whatever difficult thing it was you came for, I bet. The wideness of the shoulders when a man stands close and takes hold of your gaze. Also he said that perfect thing.

  “It’s just a scheme to land a television program,” she says. “Well, but a person does have to stand up for herself. It’s true! No one else does. They just run to some other schmo who’s learned to stand up straight. I hope the CBS executives—”

  “They’d be idiots,” he says with such joy it’s impossible not to fall for him, at least a little, “not to want you.”

  “Well,” she says. Don’t kid yourself, Lucille; no chance in hell the networks play ball. “Everyone says they’re likely to play ball,” she tells him.

  “Of course.”

  Torch flames take bows up and down the boardwalk. Isidore cannot stop looking at her.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Lucille says to him.

  But I don’t know what I’m thinking, he thinks. Thoughts I shouldn’t be.

  She says, “You’re thinking my husband is right over there.”

  Oh. Isidore has forgotten to be aware of the husband. Isidore is aware of her elbow in his hand.

  “But it’s all right,” she’s saying. “Once in his life, Hold-on, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead.”

  Jeez-o-pete, she thinks. She loves Desi, and isn’t a cheater. (Where is Dez?) She and Hold-on look each other in the eye. But she wouldn’t. Maybe Hold-on has missed the connotations. Married women flirt—but behind a guardrail. You can throw bread to them, you can buy popcorn while you watch, and then stroll to the next exhibit.

  They have staggered closer to the Pavilion of Fun; Lucille nods at it.

  “Get a load of that glass,” she says. “Take away the glass, what would you have?”

  Now here’s a test, she thinks. If he says something wrong, or maybe just anything at all, the moment’s frail perfection will go to pieces.

  He lets his hand fall from her elbow. (Could Hold-on have missed the connotations?)

  The orchestra has moved; it’s seated here, sweating out jazz. The beseeching puffs of brass, the drum’s confident, sexual tuh-t-tomp! The horns beg you to fall in love; the beat demonstrates how to express it.

  She is an actress and can wear the mask that improves the scene. The mask might become do
uble-sided; an actress can look, even to herself, like whatever person the scene needs her to be.

  The music and wind rip at Isidore’s words—“…Wait, did you say CBS is…?”—but Lucille can get enough of what she needs from the happy look on his chin and the laugh he barely keeps in check. So the perfection of the moment holds.

  Hold-on squeezes her arm again.

  Men do business, fine, she thinks. Let Desi handle it….

  An actor she recognizes passes. The man’s tuxedo tie is undone. This party seems to be unraveling. The sound of sand tramped under formal shoes. People moving fast now, mostly in pairs. And this, she and Isidore, is her pairing.

  For once, Lucille has gone silent and smiley.

  Over her shoulder, Lucille sees Desi through layers of shoulders and faces. Desi is on the beach, crossing a dance floor that hasn’t been used yet—what a ham he is, she thinks fondly, and wonders if he’ll do a little shuffle. He is looking around for her, in his thick-necked way. The ocean smashes at the sand.

  Desi is alone, Nanette Fabray nowhere in sight. Hold-on still, lovelily, has her arm.

  “Well,” Isidore’s saying, “you can throw or not throw the brick”—looking toward the pavilion—“but that thing’s coming down.”

  It has started to drizzle. Isidore fails to see Desi making his way to them. Isidore’s attention is pulled to someone else moving through the crowd: “Let him pass!” “Mr. Trump!” The orchestra quits playing. The alto player takes the opportunity to wrist at some sweat on his forehead. Voices repeat other voices, which is how a crowd begins to realize it’s a crowd: “Let him pass!” “The host, the host.” And finally, at the entrance to the Pavilion of Fun, there emerges Fred Trump, balding and mustachioed. Hurrying, hurrying. He is quite thin. This moment—all of it, Lucille Ball, the pavilion, the jazz orchestra, Desi, this whole corner of sand and ocean—is his.

  Even the waiters stop and watch. The cigarette girls, hair peeking out from their caps, cover their trays and wait. The man of the hour astaires up the steps. He stands at a little dais near the doorway—someone showing brisk resolve in a boring suit.