Vivian In Red

by Kristina Riggle

  McHugh himself walked up then and seized the paper from her hand. “Never mind, sweetheart, we get the idea. Anyone want to read more, you’re welcome to it. After I’ve finished, that is.” McHugh turned his backside to the crowd and pantomimed wiping his ass, to more laughter that held a hint of wild, barely contained hysteria. He threw it at the ground and there was a pause long enough for about four heartbeats before several people grabbed for it once, including Mark Bell, still at Vivian’s elbow. He’d been trying to read over her shoulder.

  “Champagne all around! We’re still alive and that’s saying something.” McHugh waved his hand, and waiters appeared from somewhere in the recesses of the house bearing trays of glittering champagne flutes.

  Vivian and Mark Bell were holding hands by now. Milo was glad she seemed happy, but worried the director who’d barely given her a job would consider this fooling around with the talent. Then again, Bell was second-tier, and everyone was tanking up enough that no one seemed likely to notice or care.

  Allen stomped over and slapped him on the shoulder hard enough that Milo’s gin—he’d picked it back up with swimmy relief at not being personally thrashed in print—spilled out onto McHugh’s thick rug.

  “You lucky sonofabitch,” he slurred.

  “Lucky? Me?”

  “You, in the review. About the only nice thing that ratface critic said was about you.”

  “Yeah, swell, only he couldn’t spell my name right so everyone thinks a Mr. Shirt wrote that song. Anyhow, he said your music was tuneful. That’s nice.”

  Allen waved his hand. “They’ll call anything tuneful that doesn’t sound like a bucket of rocks being dragged across stage.”

  “So we’re doomed?”

  McHugh himself appeared before them. “Doomed! Far from it, my lads.” He was affecting an old country Irish accent, and waving over a waiter with champagne. “It all depends if the people stay away, boys. Sometimes bad notices are death to a show, other times it doesn’t seem to matter and nobody knows why, not that they don’t make themselves crazy wondering. If anyone knew, every show would be a hit. Well done, Milo Shirt.” McHugh winked.

  Milo shifted his weight, felt like McHugh was a schoolteacher he wanted to please. “Thanks for having us at the house. It’s a nice place.”

  “Is it? I suppose so. I’m not here much, you know, usually the missus is in residence, but she’s gone out to the country visiting friends. But when I heard Max here was in town, I wanted to throw him a nice bash. Hey, look alive, friend,” he said, addressing Allen now, patting his shoulder. “By the end of tomorrow that newspaper will be garbage, but Hilarity will be in front of a whole new crowd. You’ll see, you’ll forget all about it by lunchtime.”

  He swept away, collecting Dorothy Fields from a conversation with Gordon on the way to the living room doorway, to greet an odd-looking man with a wide mouth, dark hair, and a very fine suit.

  “Well, throw me overboard, if that isn’t Cole Porter,” muttered Fink, who’d materialized next to Allen.

  Milo had just been handed a thin flute of champagne, the unfamiliar bubbles tickling his nose. “No fooling?”

  Allen squinted. “Well, whaddya know.”

  Fink snorted and shook his head. “Have you ever seen his wife? She’s a looker. What a waste.” Allen nodded his agreement, but Milo asked, “How do you mean, a waste?”

  Fink answered, still looking at Porter, “Such a great-looking woman, and rich, too, wasted on a man of his proclivities.”

  “What proclivities are those?” asked Milo.

  Fink and Allen both turned to Milo, their faces bookends of amused disbelief.

  Milo said, “What? What are you looking like that for?”

  Fink and Allen traded a look. “He doesn’t know,” Fink said. “You tell him.”

  Cole Porter was in the doorway talking to McHugh, when he leaned over and planted a smooch on a nearby young man’s pink cheek, and all of them laughed: McHugh, Dorothy Fields, Porter, and his friend. It looked playful, the kind of thing two men having a laugh could put over as nothing, if you were trying to be discreet.

  “Oh!” blurted Milo, tugging on his necktie. “Oh. No one needs to tell me, I get it.”

  “Jeez, Milo, don’t you ever get out of the house?”

  Before Milo answered, he considered his time at school, then home studying at his mother’s insistence, then working in the shop. Otherwise he only saw people he waved to in the neighborhood and at the deli, and at the synagogue. Until his job at Harms, he’d barely left the few-block radius of his parents’ Bronx apartment.

  “No, I guess I really don’t,” Milo answered.

  “Welcome to the world, Milo,” Allen said, throwing his arm around Milo and planting his own smooch on the side of his face.

  Milo laughed and pushed him. “Get off, you smell like rum.”

  “Funny, because I’ve been drinking vodka.”

  “Look!” Fink pointed. “Cole’s going to the piano. Hot damn, this is going to be good.”

  The crowd all seemed to close in slightly on Porter, but gradually and sideways, as if they didn’t want him to notice how eager they were. Max Gordon was no slouch and Hilarity had some Broadway names, but because the production had been tossed together hastily, many of the people around were new, and properly awed, but just savvy enough to take a cue from their experienced friends and not gawk like rubes.

  Porter launched into “You’re the Top,” taking his right hand off the keys to beckon to Irene May, who’d sung the torch song in the show. She was wearing a long light purple gown, and sashayed up to the piano to start singing the girl part.

  Porter then pointed at Mark Bell, who looked like he was about to piss himself before he scrambled up to the piano and slipped a companionable arm around the waist of Irene.

  Despite the thinness of Bell’s voice, and the sporadic giggling of Irene, the crowd was rapt. When they’d sung all the published verses, Porter launched into the melody again himself, and started throwing out even more verses none of them had ever heard. The crowd was drunk on starshine and delight.

  Fink leaned over. “I hear he does this all the time. He can make up new words to anything, his own songs, other famous ones. This guy’s never going to stop writing hits, I bet. He’s …”

  “Indefatigable,” Milo said.

  “Look at Professor over here,” chimed in Allen.

  “What do you think I was doing all that time not leaving the apartment? I was studying.”

  Fink pointed to Vivian, who was sweeping out the door of the house, her scarlet mouth set in a hard line, her jaw tight; Milo had only caught sight of her green dress hem and one trailing shoe. “What’s with Miss Adair, anyway?”

  Milo made to follow, but Allen grabbed his arm. “Don’t you dare. You’re not her father, you don’t need to chase her every time she storms off somewhere.”

  “And you don’t need to tell me where I can and can’t go.” Milo shook off Allen’s arm.

  But Allen made another grab for his elbow. “What’s your beef? We’ve got a party here stacked with talent, people good to know if we’re ever gonna work again, whatever happens with Hilarity. Remember how I got us this job? At a party. Mixing in with these types. And that review just said to all these people in here what a swell job you did, and now you’re going to vanish after some dame? Some dame who isn’t even your girl, as you’re always saying. She probably just went to buy some smokes or something. Let Bell worry about her, he’s been trying to get his hand up her dress all night.”

  “I just feel kinda responsible for her.”

  “Why? Dammit, Milo, why?”

  Milo opened his mouth to answer as Cole Porter finished up his tune on the piano. McHugh plopped down on the piano bench next to him and was showing him their review. A surge of heat crashed over Milo’s neck and he tugged his necktie again. Cole Porter was reading his name! McHugh pointed back over his shoulder at Milo, Fink, and Allen. Porter raised his glass and call
ed out, “Bravo, Milo Shirt!” to a fresh wave of giddy laughter.

  He couldn’t, just then, remember why he felt responsible. After all, she’d followed him to Hilarity, just like she’d followed him to Harms. Sure she was nice to him on his ill-fated day at Remick’s, but what did he owe her for that? And why was she forever dashing off someplace anyway? He glanced around the room for Bell and didn’t see him. Well, that solved the mystery right there. He probably left a few minutes later, allowing for some discreet distance, seeing as Bell was in fact married.

  Milo downed the rest of his champagne and swallowed a belch that tickled his nose like a sneeze, just as McHugh waved him over to the great Cole Porter for a proper introduction.

  “Attaboy, Shirt,” said Fink, giving him a light shove between the shoulder blades.

  Two hours passed, and Milo’s face hurt from laughing and his head hurt from gin. Everything in McHugh’s Boston townhouse seemed brighter, louder, and closer than it ought to be. Everything people said was funnier, every song played that much more brilliant. Allen, by this time, was asleep on the sofa, having started up with the gin earlier and with genuine zeal. Milo had worried about moving him, but Fink waved his hand dismissively; McHugh wouldn’t care. Happened all the time.

  Cole Porter had left some time earlier, and Milo expected the party might cool off, but his presence rang out like a sustained echoing note and buoyed the crowd, determined to forget its lukewarm review despite knowing they’d have to do another show the next day.

  McHugh, perhaps conscious of this, had begun passing out strong coffee to all those left standing.

  “Hey, Short.” Milo turned to see the ruddy, thin face of Mark Bell. He looked around for Vivian. Bell went on, “I meant to say thanks earlier for changing that note for me. Much obliged.”

  “That wasn’t me. I wrote the words.”

  “And damn fine words they are!” he shouted. “Who you looking for? You keep looking behind me, I feel like I’m getting mugged or something.”

  “I thought Miss Adair was with you.”

  “Vivian? Not me. I like the blondes. Plus I think she’s older than me.” Bell wrinkled his nose.

  “Well, where did she go off to, then?”

  “The hotel, I’m sure. Where else would she go?”

  “I’m going to call it a night, Mark. Don’t forget to have a coffee before you go.”

  Milo itched to get out, but did his duty putting in rounds of farewells, though he’d see most of the bunch of them the next day for the next show. McHugh near about shook his arm right off his elbow and gave him some more “buck up, pal” platitudes.

  It was a half hour after he decided to get out before he finally did, the cold Boston air slapping him hard when he stepped outside.

  He walked the blocks back to the hotel peering at every bench and in every doorway. Something about Vivian’s exit gave Milo a funny feeling in his gut.

  He saw no sign of her on the way back to the hotel, nor in the hotel lobby or its bar. He grilled the desk clerk with a description of Vivian.

  The clerk had frowned and finally said, “Oh yes, I do remember her. She was carrying her shoes in her hand, which I thought was odd, considering the weather.”

  “Carrying her shoes?”

  “Sure, right in off the street. She must have been walking right on the concrete. Probably got tight, I guess, but I saw her get on the elevator. I’m sure she’s fine now, sir.”

  Milo’s forehead ached from squinting to see better, and the top of his head throbbed with gin and champagne and raucous laughter and singing that still rang in his ears. If that was a cast party after a poor review, he doubted he’d survive a good one.

  The elevator boy confirmed the shoeless dark-haired beauty going upstairs and making it to her correct floor, so Milo relaxed enough that he could stumble into his own doorway and fall asleep immediately and fully clothed on top of the bed.

  Milo awakened to pounding on his door. He leapt out of bed and for frantic, sweaty seconds thought the marshals had come to put his family out on the street: the piano, the wireless, his mother’s pots and pans.

  He shoved his glasses onto his face and the room sharpened enough that memory pierced the gin-soaked haze: Boston hotel room. Hilarity.

  He pulled open the door without looking or asking who was there.

  Vivian shoved her way past, Milo noting with alarm she was only wearing a slip. “Vivian! What are you doing here?” Milo turned his head and shoved a blanket at her. “Kid, cover yourself up here. What’s going on?”

  He felt Vivian remove the blanket from his hand. He turned back to see her regarding it curiously, like she wasn’t sure what it was. She looked down at herself and her eyebrows went up, as if somehow her dress had vanished. Then she shrugged and draped the blanket around her like a robe.

  Milo turned to face her fully. Her hair was in disarray, and her makeup was still on but smeared all over, as if she had tried to wipe it off, and failed. She was not wearing shoes, but she was wearing stockings, which were shredded up, with runs zipping up her legs.

  “What happened?” Milo asked, gulping hard.

  “I’m not sure,” she said, her voice vague and soft. “Mark and I…we had some words out on the street. He went back inside, and I got to the hotel, but that part I’m not so sure about.”

  “What do you mean not sure about?”

  She cocked her head, looking past him to the molding on the ceiling. “I woke up like this. Wearing my slip, my stockings. My shoes were broken. Must have broken off a heel walking home. My feet are in a state, as you might imagine. I must have walked for blocks out there. Milo, I need you to tell them I can’t come in today. Make up a story for me, will you? Something better than a headache, or a hangover. I know everyone else will be working hung over anyway.”

  “Are you? Hung over?”

  “No, I didn’t drink more than a couple glasses. No, this is….something else.”

  “What else? What happened to you, I don’t understand? Did Bell try something funny?” Milo squeezed his hands into fists. If that slimy wop…

  “No,” she sighed, flopping onto Milo’s bed. “Though he could have tried anything he liked, which I made perfectly clear.”

  The blanket had slipped out of place as she flopped down, exposing the lightly freckled skin over her ribs. Milo looked away. “Okay, I’ll tell them something, but you’ve got to go back to your room now.”

  “No, I think not.” She rolled over and curled up.

  “No, really, you’ve got to. I don’t want people to think…”

  “Would that be so terrible?” she spoke without facing him. “Would it be so unthinkable?”

  Milo first thought of his mother, realizing of course word of this would never reach her. How would it? Down at the kosher deli? He had a sense of being far away from his family, then, the tailor shop and the Bronx and the synagogue seeming remote and fantastical, belonging to another life and another Milo who minded the store so Max could sew and measure.

  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…”