City of Girls

by Elizabeth Gilbert

  “You can’t make money without spending money, Olive,” Billy reminded her. “Anyway, I’ll spot you.”

  “I like that idea even less,” Olive said. “And I don’t trust you to deliver. Remember what happened in Kansas City in 1933.”

  “No, I don’t remember what happened in Kansas City in 1933,” said Billy.

  “Of course you don’t,” Peg put in. “What happened is that you left me and Olive holding the bag. We’d rented out that massive concert hall for the big song-and-dance spectacle you wanted me to produce, and you hired dozens of local performers, and you put everything in my name, and then you vanished to St. Tropez for a backgammon tournament. I had to empty the company’s bank account to pay it all back, while you and your money were nowhere to be found for three solid months.”

  “Geez, Pegsy—you make it sound like I did something wrong.”

  “No hard feelings, of course.” Peg gave a sardonic grin. “I know how you’ve always loved your backgammon. But Olive’s got a point. The Lily Playhouse is barely in the black as it is. We can’t go out on a limb for this production.”

  “Naturally, I’ll be disagreeing with you now,” said Billy. “Because if you ladies will go out on a limb for once, I can help you to create a show that people will actually want to see. When people want to see a show, it makes money. After all these years, I can’t believe I need to remind you of how the theater business works. Come on, Pegsy—don’t turn on me now. When a rescuer comes to save you, don’t shoot arrows at him.”

  “The Lily Playhouse doesn’t need rescuing,” said Olive.

  “Oh, yes, it does, Olive!” said Billy. “Look at this theater! Everything needs to be repaired and updated. You’re still using gaslights, practically. Your seats are three-quarters empty every night. You need a hit. Let me make one for you. With Edna here, we have the chance. But we can’t go slack on any of it. If we get some critics in here—and I will get critics in here—we can’t have the rest of the production looking ramshackle, compared to Edna. Come on, Pegsy—don’t be a coward. And remember—you won’t have to work as hard as usual with this play, because I’ll help you direct it, like we used to do. Come on, honey, take a chance. You can keep on producing your catchpenny little shows and creeping along toward bankruptcy, or we can do something great here. Let’s do something great. You were always a reckless dame with a buck—let’s give it a go, one more time.”

  Peg wavered. “Maybe we could hire just four additional dancers, Olive?”

  “Don’t you let him Ritz you, Peg,” said Olive. “We can’t afford it. We can’t even afford two. I have the ledgers to prove it.”

  “You worry too much about money, Olive,” said Billy. “You always have. Money’s not the most important thing in the world.”

  “Thus speaketh William Ackerman Buell III of Newport, Rhode Island,” said Peg.

  “Give it a rest, Pegsy. You know I never cared about money.”

  “That’s right, you never cared about money, Billy,” Olive said. “Certainly not to the extent that those of us who forgot to be born into wealthy families care about it. The devil of it is—you make Peg not care about money, either. That’s how we’ve always run into trouble in the past, and I won’t let it happen again.”

  “There’s always been plenty of money for all of us,” said Billy. “Stop being such a capitalist, Olive.”

  Peg started laughing and stage-whispered to me: “Your Uncle Billy fancies himself a socialist, kiddo. But apart from the aspect of free love, I’m not sure he understands its principles.”

  “What do you think, Vivian?” asked Billy, noticing for the first time that I was in the room.

  I felt deeply uncomfortable being pulled into this conversation. The experience was something akin to listening to my parents argue—except that there were three of them now, which was extra disconcerting. Certainly over the last few months I’d heard Peg and Olive arguing about money plenty of times—but with the addition of Billy into the story, things had gotten more heated. Navigating a dispute between Peg and Olive I could handle, but Billy was the wild card. Every child learns to negotiate delicately between two bickering adults, after all, but among three? This was beyond my powers.

  “I think you each make a strong argument,” I said.

  This must have been the wrong answer, because now they were all irritated with me.

  In the end, they settled on hiring four additional dancers, with Billy picking up the tab. It was a decision that left nobody happy—which is what my father might have called a successful business negotiation. (“Everyone should leave the table feeling as if they’ve gotten a bad deal,” my father once taught me joylessly. “This way, you may rest assured that nobody was taken for a ride, and that nobody can get too far ahead.”)

  THIRTEEN

  Here was another thing I noticed about the effect that Billy Buell had upon our little world: with his arrival at the Lily Playhouse, everyone started drinking more.

  A whole hell of a lot more.

  Having read this far, Angela, you may be wondering how it was physically possible for us to drink more than we already did, but here is the thing about drinking: one can always drink more, if one is truly committed. It’s just a matter of discipline, really.

  The big difference now was that Aunt Peg was drinking with us. Where once she’d stopped after a few martinis and had gone to bed at a reasonable time—as per Olive’s strict schedule—now she and Billy would head out together after the show and get three sheets to the wind. Every single night. Oftentimes Celia and I would join them for a few drinks, before heading off to make revelry and trouble elsewhere.

  If at first it seemed awkward for me to be gadding about town with my plainly dressed middle-aged aunt, the awkwardness soon faded when I learned what a gas Peg could be in a nightclub—especially once she had a few drinks in her. Largely this was because Peg knew absolutely everybody in the entertainment business, and they all knew her. And if they didn’t know Peg, then they knew Billy, and wanted to catch up with him after all these years. Which meant that drinks arrived at our table in snappy time—usually accompanied by the owner of the establishment, who often sat with us to gossip about Hollywood and Broadway.

  Billy and Peg still looked so mismatched to me—he, so handsome in his white dinner jacket and slicked-back hair, and she in her matronly B. Altman dress and no makeup whatsoever—but they were charming, and wherever we went they quickly ended up the center of any gathering.

  And they lived large. Billy ordering up filet mignon and champagne (he often carelessly wandered away before it was time to eat the steak, but he never neglected to drink the champagne) and inviting everyone in the room to join us. He talked nonstop about the show that he and Peg were producing, and what a smash hit it was going to be. (As he explained to me, this was a deliberate marketing tactic; he wanted to get word out that City of Girls was coming and that it would be good: “I have yet to meet the press agent who can spread gossip faster than I can do at a nightclub.”)

  It was all fun, except for one thing: Peg was always trying to be responsible and head home early, while Billy was always trying to get her to stay out late. I remember one night at the Algonquin when Billy said, “Would you like another drink, my wife?” and I saw a look of real pain cross Peg’s face.

  “I shouldn’t,” she said. “It’s not good for me, Billy. Let me collect my thoughts for a moment and try to be sensible.”

  “I didn’t ask if you should have a drink, Pegsy; I asked if you wanted one.”

  “Well, of course I want one. I always want one. But make it a mild one, please.”

  “Shall I cut to the chase and order you three mild ones at the same time?”

  “Just one mild one after another, William. That’s how I like to live my life these days.”

  “To your very good health,” he said, lifting his glass to toast her and then waving to get the waiter’s attention. “As long as the man keeps ’em coming, I might be able
to survive an evening of mild cocktails.”

  That night, Celia and I peeled off from Billy and Peg, to go have our own adventures. When we stumbled home at our standard gauzy-gray presunrise hour, we were startled to find all the lights on in the living room, and an unexpected tableaux within. There was Peg sprawled out on the couch—fully dressed, unconscious, and snoring. She had an arm flung over her face, and one of her shoes was kicked off. Billy, still wearing his white dinner jacket, was dozing in a chair next to her. On the table between them was a pile of empty bottles and full ashtrays.

  Billy woke up when we walked in and said, “Oh, hello girls.” His voice was slurred, and his eyes were Bing cherries.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, in my own slurred voice. “Didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  “You can’t disturb her.” Billy waved an arm vaguely in the direction of the couch. “She’s pickled. I couldn’t get her up the last flight of steps. Say, maybe you girls can help me . . . ?”

  So the three of us drunks tried to help an even drunker person get upstairs to bed. Peg was not a small woman, and we were not at our strongest or most graceful, so this was no easy operation. We more or less dragged her up the stairs the way you would transport a rolled-up carpet—thumping our way along until we reached the door to the fourth-floor apartments. I’m afraid we laughed like sailors on leave the whole time. I’m also afraid that was an uncomfortable trip for Peg—or that it would have been uncomfortable, had she been conscious.

  And then we opened the door and there was Olive—the last face you want to see when you are at your drunkest and most guilty.

  In one glance, Olive took in the situation. Not that it was difficult to read.

  I expected her to strike out in anger, but instead she dropped to her knees and cradled Peg’s head. Olive looked up at Billy, and her face was overcome with sorrow.

  “Olive,” he said. “Hey. Look. You know how it is.”

  “Please get me a wet towel, someone,” she asked in a low voice. “A cold one.”

  “I wouldn’t know how to do that,” said Celia, sliding down the wall.

  I ran into the bathroom and flopped about until I could solve the problem of how to turn on a light, how to procure a towel, how to turn on a tap, how to discern hot water from cold, how to soak the towel without also soaking myself (I utterly failed at that step), and how to find my way out of the bathroom again.

  By the time I got back, Edna Parker Watson had joined the scene (wearing an adorable red silk pajama set and a lush gold dressing gown, I couldn’t help but notice) and was now helping Olive drag Peg into her apartment. The women, I’m sorry to say, looked as though they had done this before.

  Edna took the damp towel from me and pressed it against Peg’s forehead. “Come now, Peg, let’s wake up now.”

  Billy was standing back a bit, wavering on his feet, looking green around the gills. He looked his age, for once.

  “She just wanted to have some fun,” he said weakly.

  Olive stood up and said—again, in that low voice—“You always do this to her. You always give her the spur when you know she needs the reins.”

  Billy looked for a moment as if he were going to apologize, but then made the classic drunkard’s mistake, instead, of digging in. “Ah, don’t blow your lid about it. She’ll be all right. She just wanted to have a few more when we got home.”

  “She’s not like you,” Olive said, and unless I was mistaken, her eyes were sprinkled with tears. “She can’t stop after ten drinks. She never could.”

  Edna said gently, “I think it’s time for you to go, William. You, as well, girls.”

  The next day, Peg stayed in bed until late afternoon. But aside from that, business went on as usual, and nobody mentioned what had transpired the evening before.

  And by the next night, Peg and Billy were out at the Algonquin all over again, buying rounds for the whole house.

  FOURTEEN

  Billy had committed the outrageous act of calling auditions for the play—real auditions, advertised in the trade papers and everything—in order to get a higher class of performer than the Lily was accustomed to.

  This was a wildly new development. We’d never had auditions before. Our shows always got cast through word of mouth. Peg and Olive and Gladys knew enough of the actors and dancers around the neighborhood to be able to pull together a cast without anyone having to try out. But Billy wanted a better class of performers than what we could find within the perimeter of Hell’s Kitchen, so official auditions it was.

  For an entire day, then, we had a stream of hopefuls pouring into the Lily—dancers, singers, actors. I got to sit with Billy and Peg and Olive and Edna as they reviewed the aspirants. I found it to be such an anxiety-producing experience. Watching all those people on the stage who all wanted something so badly—so glaringly and openly—made me nervous.

  And then, very quickly, it made me bored.

  (Anything can get tedious after enough time, Angela—even watching heartbreaking acts of naked vulnerability. Especially when everyone is singing the same song, doing the same dance steps, or repeating the same lines, hour after hour.)

  We saw the dancers first. It was just one pretty girl after another, trying to stampede her way into our new chorus line. The sheer volume and variation of them made my head spin. Auburn curls on this one. Fine blond hair on that one. This one tall. That one short. A big-hipped, huffing, snorting, dancing dragon of a girl. A woman who was far too old to be dancing for a living anymore, but who had not yet boxed up her hopes and dreams. A girl with sharp bangs who was so awfully severe in her efforts, it looked like she was marching, not dancing. All of them breathlessly hoofing with all their hearts. Puffing away in a hot panic of tap dancing and optimism. Kicking up great clouds of dust motes in the footlights. They were sweaty and they were loud. When it came to dancers, their ambitions were not merely visible, but audible.

  Billy made a slight effort to engage Olive in the audition process, but the effort was futile. She was punishing us, it seemed, by barely watching the proceedings. In fact, she was reading the editorial page of the Herald Tribune.

  “Say, Olive, did you think that little birdie was attractive?” he asked her, after one very pretty girl had sung a very pretty song for us.

  “No.” Olive didn’t even look up from her newspaper.

  “Well, that’s all right, Olive,” said Billy. “How dull it would be if you and I always had the same taste in women.”

  “I like that one,” Edna said, pointing to a petite, raven-haired beauty throwing her leg over her head onstage as easily as another woman might shake out a bath towel. “She doesn’t look quite as desperate to please as the others do.”

  “Good choice, Edna,” said Billy. “I like that one, too. But you do realize that she looks exactly like you looked, twenty-odd years ago?”

  “Oh, dear me, she does a bit, doesn’t she? That would be the one I was drawn to, wouldn’t it? Heavens, I’m such a vain old bore.”

  “Well, I liked a girl who looked like that back then, and I still like a girl who looks like that,” said Billy. “Hire her. In fact, let’s be sure to keep the height down on all the chorus girls. Make them all match the girl we just picked. I want a bunch of cute little brunette ponies. I don’t want any of them dwarfing Edna.”

  “Thank you, love,” said Edna. “One does awfully dislike being dwarfed.”

  When it came time to audition the male lead—Lucky Bobby, the street-smart kid who teaches Mrs. Alabaster how to gamble and who ends up marrying the showgirl—my attention was miraculously and quite suddenly restored. Because now we had a parade of good-looking young men gracing the stage, taking their turn singing the song that Billy and Benjamin had already written for the part. (“In summertime when days are nice / a fella likes to roll his dice / and if his baby doll’s a bore / he likes to roll a little more.”)

  I thought all the guys were terrific, but—as we have established—I wasn’t that discerning in
my taste for men. Billy, though, dismissed them one after another. This one was too short (“He’s got to kiss Celia, for the love of God, and Olive probably won’t let us invest in a stepladder”); this one was too all-American-looking (“No one’s going to buy that corn-fed midwesterner as a kid from a tough New York neighborhood”); this one was too effeminate (“We already have one boy in the show who looks like a girl”); this one was too earnest (“This ain’t Sunday school, folks”).

  And then, toward the end of the day, out of the wings came a tall, lanky, dark-haired young man in a shiny suit that was a bit too short on him in both the ankles and the wrists. His hands were stuffed in his pockets, and he had a fedora pushed way back on his head. He was chewing gum, which he didn’t bother to conceal as he took the spotlight. He was grinning like a guy who knows where the money is hidden.

  Benjamin started to play, but the young man put up a hand to stop him.

  “Say,” he said, staring out at us. “Who’s the boss around here, anyhow?”

  Billy sat up a bit straighter at the sound of the young man’s voice, which was purest New Yawk—sharp and cocky and lightly amused with itself.

  “She is,” said Billy, pointing to Peg.

  “No, she is,” said Peg, pointing to Olive.

  Olive kept reading her newspaper.

  “I just like to know who I gotta impress, you know?” The young man peered closer at Olive. “But if it’s that broad, maybe I should just quit right now and head home, if you see my point?”

  Billy laughed. “Son, I like you. If you can sing, you’ve got the job.”

  “Oh, I can sing, mister. Don’t you worry about that. I can dance, too. I just don’t wanna waste my time singing and dancing when I don’t gotta sing and dance. You hear what I’m saying?”

  “In that case, I amend my offer,” said Billy. “You’ve got the job, period.”