by Craig Rice
He uncovered the package from the bottom. We saw the pale-blue enamel base, the bulging bowl.
“It’s the toilet!” we exclaimed in chorus. “But where did you…?”
“Don’t ask too many questions,” Moey said meaningfully.
“It ain’t hot, is it?” Gee Gee asked.
“Whadya mean hot?” Moey was indignant. “Who dya think’d go around copping a can?”
Gee Gee tried to mollify him. “I only meant, how come you got it so quick, and how come you got it anyway?”
“Well, it’s like this.” He opened the coat of his suit and twined his thumbs around the pink suspenders that had pictures of mermaids painted on them. “I got a pal in the business, see. And when Biff is in the saloon getting a quick one, he tells me how you dames are squawking about the old can and how everybody’s chipping in to get a new one. So I think of this pal of mine, known him for …”
“Get to the blackout,” Dolly said irritably.
“Like I said,” Moey continued after a withering look in Dolly’s direction, “I get in touch with this pal of mine that I’ve known for years. Him and me used to work together in the old days. When we go legitimate he took up plumbin’. Natcherly I think of him and whatdya know? He gives me it wholesale!”
Even Dolly had to admit that it was wonderful. Gee Gee threw her arms around the candy butcher and kissed him on the forehead. I couldn’t get that close to the suit but I yelled my thanks.
“No one but you would think of getting it wholesale,” I added admiringly.
Moey preened himself a bit. “Only suckers pay list prices,” he said. “This little job sells for seven-fifty without the seat. My pal gives me it for four bucks and throws the seat in gratis. Not only that; I can save ya dough on the installation, too. A regular plumber would soak ya about ten skins, but my guy’ll do it for half. He don’t belong to no union.”
“That’s out!” Jannine jumped to her feet. She had just been elected secretary to the president of the Burlesque Artists’ Association and she took her job seriously. Her eyes sparkled as she went into her speech.
“Plumbers got a union. We got a union. When we don’t protect each other that’s the end of the unions. Remember what we went through before we organized? Ten shows a day, no extra pay. Fired without even a day’s notice? Seventeen dollars a week for the chorus girls? Forty hours a week rehearsal?”
Dolly said in a dispirited tone, “Hooray for the B.A.A.”
Alice gave Jannine a baleful look. “Do we have to lithen to all that again?” she said.
“No you don’t,” Jannine answered. “But no yellow-bellied scab is walking in this room while I’m here!”
“So all right.” Moey was getting annoyed. “Pay the ten bucks!” He went out, slamming the door behind him.
“Now look what you’ve done,” Gee Gee said. “Now we gotta move this damn thing ourselves. You and your ‘fellow workers tonight’ dialogue.”
“It’s unite. Not tonight,” Jannine replied with dignity. “And anyway, I’d rather move it myself than have a nonunion odor in the room.”
For all her big talk, Jannine was quite small. When the Columbia was the theater in New York, she was featured as ‘The Darling of the Runways.’ When you consider that the fire department made us take out the runways several years ago and that the Columbia had been torn down for over ten, it made Jannine a little old for the type of work she did. That week, for instance, she was doing “Won’t Someone Please Adopt Me and My Baby?” She wore a short baby dress and carried a huge rag doll! When she stripped the dress, the audience got a flash of diapers pinned on with an oversized safety pin. If they were insistent enough she’d strip the diapers, too, but it took a lot of coaxing. The last few years she’d been finishing with the diapers on.
She looked funny, pushing and tugging away at the blue monument that stood in the middle of the room. We all got up to help her.
Gee Gee was panting a little from the exertion when she said, “You know what we oughtta do? We oughtta have a regular unveiling.”
“Oh, yeth!” Alice clapped her hands gaily, “Like when they unveil thtatueth of generalth and hortheth and thingth.”
“We’ll make it a party,” Gee Gee announced, “very exclusive.”
“Just us actors,” Sandra added.
“And the stagehands,” from Jannine.
“You gotta invite the candy butchers with Moey getting the throne,” Dolly reminded us. She turned to me. “You get the waiters to bring the food.” I nodded, and she told Sandra to do the invitations. Jannine was to get the plumber, of course.
“And on account of Louie being in the liquor business,” she said to La Verne, “and you being so friendly with him, you get the beer and stuff.”
We played a midnight performance on Saturdays and there was an hour and a half between the first and the last show, so we decided to have the party then. That was our regular party night anyway. The Saturday before, we had had spareribs. The actors had carried their food right on stage with them because they were so afraid that by the time their scene was over the ribs would be gone.
The law since then was: “No spareribs in the theater.” I thought a Chinese supper would be a good idea. The actors couldn’t carry that onstage.
My menu planning was interrupted by the stage manager shouting, “Overture! The music’s on.” He threw open the door and stomped in. “I don’t like to bother you dames, but there’s a show going on,” he said sarcastically.
As stage managers go, Sammy was about average, but that isn’t saying very much for him. I’ve worked for a lot of them and I haven’t found one yet that didn’t think he owned the theater and everybody in it. Sammy was all right until he was annoyed. But he annoyed easy. He yelled at Dolly as she flew down the stairs. “You miss that opening and I swear I’ll dock your salary.”
Then he picked up the bedspread that Gee Gee was crocheting and began idly unraveling it as he read the newspaper clipping that was pasted on the wall.
“This damn raid’ll hurt business,” he said, shaking his head sadly. He put down the spread and felt behind the mirror for the bottle. With his thumb he flipped the patent top open and tilted the bottle to his lips. “Yep,” he said, after clearing his throat, “soon as the jerkers think we’re cleaning up the show, business takes a dive.” He put the bottle back and without another word left the room.
A faint odor of “Tweed” went along with him.
“I guess he’s sore because Moss didn’t invite him to Moore’s,” Gee Gee said rather sympathetically. She hadn’t seen the unraveling act or her tone wouldn’t have been quite so soft.
“Well, if I’d known I was going to have a hangover like this,” Sandra moaned, “he coulda gone in my place. I wish to Gawd he did have it.”
Gee Gee put her fingers to her lips and tiptoed to the door. Sammy was quite an eavesdropper and she wanted to catch him in the act. This time he was too quick for her; by the time the door was flung open he was halfway downstairs.
Chapter Four
The kitchen porch of the Chinese restaurant faced our dressing-room window. Before the big fight with La Verne and the waiters they used to send the food to us over the roof.
The fight occurred during an Indian-summer hot spell. The waiters used to stand out on their porch to cool themselves, and we kept our windows open for the same reason. They looked in. I always admitted that part, but I haven’t seen a man yet that wouldn’t look at a dressing room full of half-naked women when he had a chance. La Verne was the only one who made a scene about it. She stormed around calling them hopheads and yellow perils and threatened to have them deported.
One day I asked her why she didn’t undress away from the window as the rest of us did.
“Why should I?” she screamed. “I guess I can dress and undress where I want to. It’s my room, isn’t it?”
“Sure,” I said, “it’s your room. But that’s their porch, too, and they’re probably a damn sight warmer in their hot kitch
en than you are in the theater.” I should have known better than to appeal to La Verne. She had a heart, but it operated on the cash-register principle.
She wound up throwing a Coca-Cola bottle at one of them. It caught him on the side of the head and knocked him out. The other waiters called a cop and for a few days merry hell was popping. La Verne had to pay a ten-dollar bill for bandaging the Chinese waiter’s head, but that didn’t include a splint to patch up our beautiful friendship. They wouldn’t deliver any more groceries across the roof unless I called them. How I rated I don’t know, but every time I called “Hola ma,” they answered me.
I waited until Friday night to order the food for the party. A small white-coated figure appeared on the porch and returned my greeting.
“I want twenty-five dinners for tomorrow night.”
He went into the kitchen. I waited a moment. Then the screen door squeaked and he reappeared. He had a pencil and a pad of paper in one hand. The other held a small box. In a ray of light from the kitchen door I watched him as he crossed the roof.
“You want regular forty-five-cent dinner or special?”
“Special,” I answered. “Ten orders chicken sub gum chow mein, six orders shrimp fried rice.”
“Lot water chestnuts,” he added. The pad of paper rested against the window sill and a delicate brown hand wrote the Chinese version of twelve egg rolls and ten orders of roast pork. “You want mixed fruit?” he asked.
“Yes, and tea and rice cakes. Everything.”
He finished writing the order and put the pad and pencil in a pocket of his coat.
“Tomorrow night,” I said. “Eleven-thirty sharp. O.K.?”
He nodded for an answer. Then I saw the box again. It was wrapped in loose foil and he was offering it to me. “Ginseng root,” he said in carefully spoken English. “Grows only under the gallows where men have died. You eat it. Live forever.”
Before I could tell him that it didn’t sound like a good idea, he had forced the package into my hand and was gone.
“Hola ma,” I called. “Hey, come back.” The white coat gleamed like phosphorus. There was the sound of soft slippers crunching the gravel on the roof and the screen door squeaked again as he disappeared into the kitchen.
With the package in my hand I went over to the shelf. I didn’t want to open it in front of the girls, but I was too curious to wait until I got out of the theater. It was heavy and had been sealed with red wax. I held it up to my ear and shook it gently.
“What if it’s a bomb,” I thought. “Or what if poisonous air comes out when I open it?” I don’t know how long I stood there turning the gift around in my hands, and the thoughts of sudden, horrible death around in my mind.
Gee Gee’s petulant voice brought me back. “I asked you twice already,” she said, “what’s in the box?”
She raised an eyebrow and looked at me skeptically when I explained that it was a root that the waiter had given me and that it grew under the gallows where men had died.
“He said if I ate it I’d live forever.”
She burst out laughing at that and turned to the girls. “Gypsy’s got a new John.” She took the package from my hand. “The Chinese waiter just gave her a weed that’s guaranteed to make her live forever.”
The girls gathered around her as she broke the seals. The first one was brittle and snapped off easily. The second she had to pry off with a nail file.
I suddenly wanted to get out of the room. My common sense told me that my fears about the box were stupid and childish, but I couldn’t help it. I was frightened. “What if there is one flower in it?” I thought. “One flower that would disappear like dust when the air hit it.” Then there would be a sickening sweet odor, bitter almonds maybe, and before we knew what had happened, we would be dead.
She had removed the lead foil and held up a tin box for the curious girls to examine. The tin box was also sealed. Great chunks of brick-red wax were on either side.
I wanted to stop her, but already she had begun to lift the top. There was no flower, no needle dipped in poison, no bomb; just a cotton-lined box with two long, dried roots embedded in the fluff. The roots were tied at the top with a piece of cord.
It was by this cord that La Verne lifted the gift from the cotton. She held it for a second and watched it sway back and forth. “Look! It’s shaped like a man,” she said.
Alice shivered. “Ugh. It’th dithguthting. Put it back in the box.”
La Verne still stared at it, her green eyes wide and glistening. “Not so much like a man,” she whispered. “More like the skeleton of one.” With a cautious finger she touched the bleached, bonelike root. The pupils of her eyes dilated. She pushed the root to set it in motion again. Her heavy breathing was the only sound in the room.
She said, “A skeleton hanging from the gallows. Let me keep it, Gypsy. It fascinates me.”
“Oh, cripes!” Dolly exclaimed. “Give her the damn-fool thing. I’m going to take a drink.” She pushed a chair aside with an angry gesture.
The girls went back to their make-up places silently. Dolly finished her drink and pulled a step-ladder in front of the toilet door. She lifted a large box of laurel leaves and a hammer to the shelf that stood away from the ladder steps, then emptied a box of tacks in her apron pocket, took another quick drink, and began climbing the unsteady steps.
“Queer for roots,” she mumbled, with a look at La Verne. “That’s a new one.”
La Verne didn’t answer and for a few minutes only the sound of Dolly’s hammering disturbed the quiet of our dressing room.
Suddenly Gee Gee nudged me. When I looked up, she indicated the door with a jerk of her head. Sandra caught it just as I did.
Framed in the doorway was a picture of dethroned royalty if I ever saw a Norma Shearer movie. Not that the woman who stood there looked like Norma Shearer; more like Nita Naldi maybe. She wore a black velvet Russian costume trimmed with caracal. The hat, a high Cossack affair, was fur, and she carried a huge caracal muff. She wore red leather boots with black tassels in front.
Not one of us opened our mouths. We just looked.
“Vere iss the star’s room?” The accent was a cross between Russian and Dutch comic.
We were still speechless.
Dolly was the first one to get on with it. She teetered dangerously on the ladder. Her mouth was full of tacks and they made her speak indistinctly.
“There ain’t a star’s room,” she said. Then, with a friendly smile: “There ain’t a star either. We’re all getting forty per.”
“How interesting,” said the woman in the Russian getup. But she said it like you say, “How dull.” She looked at Dolly with a half smile on her long, thin face. “And who are you?” Her dark red lips barely moved, but one side curled up a little.
Dolly wasn’t sure if it was sarcasm or not. She spat the tacks out of her mouth one by one before answering. “I’m Dolly Baxter, Dynamic Dolly,” she said. “And who are you?”
The woman threw back her head, her eyes half closed. “I’m the Princess Nirvena,” she announced, “the star of this theater starting tomorrow.” She let her eyes survey the crowded room. “Vere do I dress?”
She stood there waiting, as though we should all knock ourselves out helping her to a chair, or go into a deep curtsy.
Sandra suppressed a little giggle. “Well, that is the choice spot in the room.” She tossed a thumb in the direction of a littered space next to the grimy sink. “It’s so convenient, ya know.”
The water stain had streaked the. broken mirror. Some stockings were soaking in the sink, and a constant drip, drip was proof that very soon it would flood over.
The Princess ignored Sandra and the basin. She was looking at me, and at that moment I recognized her. She quickly averted her face, but it was too late.
“Didn’t we work together in Toledo?” I asked innocently.
She stared at me as though I were some biped prehistoric marine mammal.
“I haff ne
vair been in—how you say—Too Ledo. Always I haff danced for royalty. Then the revolution and poof! It is gone. Now the Princess Nirvena throws pearls to swine.” That was her exit line. Before we could answer she was gone. Nothing but a heavy scent of perfume to remind us that she had ever been there.
For a moment I thought I might have been mistaken. The blue-black hair, the dark skin, the thick-lidded eyes were different, but still …
Dolly snorted. “Royalty, my ass!” With one bang of the hammer another leaf was nailed to the top of the door. “She’s a phony if I ever saw one.”
The accent floated up to us from the stage. Gee Gee ran to the door to listen.
The Princess had found Sammy, the stage manager. “Do you tink that I would dress in sooch a place? I, the Princess?”
“That’s the only room,” Sammy said apologetically. “There’s another room in the basement, but you wouldn’t want to dress there. It’s damp and …”
“I don’t care vot it is,” the Princess trilled. “I would rather dress in a pigsty than with those women.” Her voice faded away.
Gee Gee turned away from the door. “I guess they’re on their way to the rathole downstairs,” she said, an unholy gleam in her eye.
I knew why the Princess wanted to dress alone and it had nothing to do with anyone in our room. Besides me, that is. It takes more than black hair dye, body stain, and an accent to fool Mother Lee.
“She kind of has pigs on the brain.” Gee Gee’s voice broke up in a laugh. “Throwing pearls to ’em and would rather dress with ’em.”
Dolly mumbled a curse. “Broke my favorite nail.” She examined the finger closely. “Way down below the quick, too.” She waddled down the ladder and handed Alice the hammer. “Now you, angel pants,” she said. “I’m pooped.”
Alice took her place on the ladder and Dolly gave orders to follow out her design.
“It’s supposed to be a bower, ya know.”
Alice nodded knowingly and the steady bangs of the hammering kept the conversation down.
A little later Mrs. Pulsidski came in. She was the underwear woman who once a week made the rounds of the theaters. She made beautiful underwear but she was such a groaner that I usually had to get out of the room while she was there.
