by Juliette Fay
The eight-forty-two was in the station, snorting steam from its barrel-shaped smokestack, and they made straight for the first open car. Henry waited for the two women to climb up the metal steps first, his worried gaze scanning the train yard. Millie missed a step, and he caught her, boosting her bottom with both hands.
“Sorry,” he muttered, at the same time she said, “Thanks!”
“Get on, get on!” urged Irene, and with Henry at the rear, the three of them clamored down the aisle. The last bench was empty, and they collapsed into it.
“Lie down,” murmured Henry. “The two of you stick out like goats at a garden party.”
Millie laid her upper body across the seat obediently, and Irene stretched across her with her head on Millie’s hip. Henry tugged his hat low over his eyebrows and looked down, as if he were reading something in his lap. From the corner of her eye, Millie could see him glancing out the window toward Railroad Avenue.
The smokestack let out an enormous huff, the wheels ground to life, and for the second time that day, Millie thought she might go completely insane waiting for a train to get moving. I may never ride the rails again, she thought.
“Damn!” Henry said suddenly, his gaze locking onto something out the train windows.
“What?” demanded Irene.
“He’s out there,” muttered Henry. “Heading toward us . . . looks winded . . .”
“Jesus!” said Irene.
“He’s looking in the windows.” Henry slumped down lower. “Ah, dammit to hell!”
“He saw you!” hissed Irene and popped her head up to look.
Millie sat up, too, and watched in horror as the ungainly man lunged toward the steps of the rolling train car . . .
. . . and then down he went, his large belly slapping into the dust beside the tracks.
As the train left Barney behind, Henry stood up, pointed out the window, and yelled, “Gai kukken afen yam, you putz!”
There were gasps. Millie glanced around. The train car had filled while she lay across the seat, and suddenly all faces were turned toward the three of them—the disheveled bride, the wide-eyed widow, and the man screaming in a foreign language.
“Henry, what in the world?” demanded Irene.
Henry’s cheeks colored, and he looked away. “It’s just something my zayde—my grandfather—used to say. It’s not very nice. Let’s leave it at that.”
Millie grinned. “Tell us!”
“It means . . .” He laughed and shook his head. “It means go do something . . . unhygienic . . . in the ocean.”
Irene said, “Henry!” And then she laughed. A real laugh! Millie wanted to put her hands on those smooth rounded cheeks. She wanted to feel Irene’s laugh.
But she didn’t. She just squeezed Irene’s hand and said, “Sorry, Henry, but I’m pretty sure there’s no ocean around here.”
7
A man usually falls in love with a woman who asks the kinds of questions he is able to answer.
Ronald Colman, actor, producer
They had done it. Escaped with life and limb intact, now bound for Hollywood. As the train barreled through the darkened desert toward the full-color world that awaited them, Irene felt as if she were headed in the right direction for the first time in years.
For a moment, she allowed herself the luxury of daydreaming. It’ll be hard at first, (a weak attempt to corral the fantasy toward some semblance of realism) . . . but then it will be glorious! We’ll wear beautiful clothes and meet fascinating people. We’ll sleep in soft beds, and eat whenever we’re hungry. I’ll collect books, and Millie will collect . . . whatever it is she likes. Henry will buy a car—a convertible!—and we’ll all drive around in the sunshine. People will recognize us and tell us how good, how really downright astonishing we were in our latest movies. We’ll be so happy!
Happy.
Imagine that.
Millie had wiggled out of the wedding dress right there in front of the whole train car (her own dress was underneath) and then immediately fallen into a slack-mouth stupor like a child who’d spent all day at a carnival. Irene preferred to disrobe in private, and went to the train’s washroom to peel off the black dress. She returned to her seat and folded it up . . . for what? The next time the strange events of her life required a fake widow’s costume? But she could never have guessed that she would need one in the first place—in a day that had been one barely averted calamity after another—and so she put the dress into her suitcase, ready for its next incarnation, whatever that might be.
Fast asleep, Millie’s head lolled precariously until it fell against Irene’s shoulder. She generally found Millie’s constant need for physical contact annoying, so she was surprised that this was strangely comforting. Between that and the warmth of the car, she should have been able to drift off.
She felt the train slowing, the wheels beneath her gliding more and grinding less.
“Seligman, last stop in Arizona . . .” intoned the conductor as he made his way down the aisle. He tapped the shoulder of a dozing gentleman. “Seligman?” The man shook his head and closed his eyes again. “Set your watches back an hour. It’s ten-forty-five in California . . . Seligman . . .”
Irene thought Henry was sleeping, too, but he opened his eyes, tugged a silver pocket watch from his inside jacket pocket, flipped up the battered cover, and twisted the stem.
“I would’ve thought you’d have a wristwatch,” murmured Irene. “They’re all the rage.”
Henry held out the timepiece, which was inscribed in an unfamiliar alphabet. Hebrew, she guessed. He’d never actually told her he was Jewish, but after his “ocean” outburst, he’d made that pretty clear. She’d known Jewish performers in vaudeville and could recognize the sound of the language, if not the words themselves. “My zayde’s,” he said.
“Where’s your grandfather now?” she asked.
“He died when I was fifteen. But we were close. Best friend I ever had, really.”
A momentary sadness came over her for the boy he once was, whose best friend had left this world when you needed friends the most: those incomprehensible years of pubescence when you could be giddy with laughter one moment and morose as a mortician the next.
“What do you make of Chandler going to all that effort to find us?” he asked, an obvious change of subject. “And for what? A combined total of about seven dollars in train tickets? Cost him at least a buck and a half to send that fat son of a gun back to get us.”
“I can’t really make sense of it, either. And what was he doing up in the cheap seats at the Orpheum?”
Henry chuckled. “Ah, he was just passing the time till the next eastbound train to meet up with Chandler. Not exactly the hardest working guy when the boss man isn’t around. And suddenly there we were like sitting ducks.”
The train groaned and lurched to life again. Millie slumped forward, and Irene caught her by the shoulders before she rolled onto the floor. She gently lowered Millie’s head onto her lap, and Millie curled her legs up on the bench. “Wish we had a sleeping berth,” Irene said.
Henry frowned. “We’ll be lucky if we can afford breakfast when we stop in Barstow. It’s a shame about that thirty-five bucks. Would’ve come in mighty handy. Course if I’d had some warning that we were jumping ship in the first place, I might have saved a little more . . .”
“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” said Irene. “I’m truly sorry, and now that I’ve said it several times, I’m not saying it again. But I will say this: you’re a big help, and I’m grateful you’re here.”
He gave her a grudging smile, and she sighed and turned to glance out the window though there wasn’t a thing to see. Not so much as a lit lamp for miles in any direction.
“Can I ask you something?”
Irene didn’t like the sound of that. But here they were in the middle of the night, on a train bound for a strange new place. Their fates were entwined, at least for now. “All right,” she said.
“Why did you jump
off that train?”
“Oh, Henry, come on now, I’ve apologized—”
“No, I don’t mean ‘without me.’ I just mean . . . why?”
“Because I had to get out, and Chandler would’ve made it near impossible.”
“I can understand wanting to leave, but why now? You’d been with him for almost a year, right?”
Why, indeed. Her life had taken so many unexpected twists and turns in the last three years, and it all seemed to . . . just happen. But it was a simple question, and he had, in the last twelve hours, earned the right to ask.
“I was in vaudeville.”
“You were?” His face brightened.
“Yes, but only small-time, so please don’t be the least bit impressed.”
“It’s better than what I was doing.”
“Which was what?”
“Trying to get into vaudeville!” He laughed. “Why’d you quit?”
“The act . . . hit some trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
Of course he had to ask. Who wouldn’t? “Well, it was a sister act, and my sister . . . passed.”
The look of shocked sorrow on his face—Lord, she just needed that to go away. She put her hand up, as if she could somehow slow the advance of his sympathy. Sympathy she had no right to.
“Yes, well . . .” she stammered, “. . . anyway. I just sort of drifted from one thing to the next for a couple of years, and ended up . . . where I ended up.”
He nodded, and she thought—hoped—the questions were over for the night.
“So why leave today?”
She glanced down at Millie, curled like a kitten, practically purring.
“Millie?” he said. “But I thought you weren’t even planning to take her with you.”
Irene shook her head. “She’s just so . . .”
He chuckled. “I know.”
“And I couldn’t stand to stick around and watch her turn into . . .” Me, she thought.
“One of them,” he said.
“So I was just going to go.”
“But you couldn’t leave her.”
“She can’t defend herself like . . .”
“Like I can.”
She looked up at him, meeting his gaze for the first time since this whole unnerving conversation started. She saw understanding there, and kindness. Far more than she deserved.
“You could lean your head against my shoulder if you want to sleep,” murmured Henry. “I don’t mind.”
Irene wasn’t the shoulder-leaning type and had every intention of declining his offer. Best not to give false impressions of distressed damsel-hood. Or open a door that should, out of necessity, remain closed. At least for the foreseeable future.
But damn that Henry if he didn’t have the biggest, darkest brown eyes, and shoulders that could hold up a building, never mind her little sandy-haired head. Irene frowned. “Well, only if it’s no bother. I’m fine just as I am.”
“I know you are,” he said, “and it’s no bother.” Without waiting for her decision, he leaned his head against the seat back and closed his eyes.
“Barstow,” called the conductor. “Half hour stop at the Harvey House. Get your breakfast now or wait till lunch.”
Irene’s eyes flickered open. Sun was streaming in the windows, and people were rustling in their seats, pulling on suit jackets or cloche hats.
“Oh, good.” It was Millie’s voice. “Henry, she’s awake, so you can move now.” Irene turned toward Millie’s voice, her cheek warm from its resting place against Henry suit sleeve. “I told him you needed your sleep,” said Millie. “That was a long day you had!” She patted Irene’s leg. “How’s the knee feeling?”
Irene extended her leg out, testing the joint. “Better,” she said.
“Good! Now who’s hungry?” Millie asked, grinning. “I could eat a three-ring circus full of elephants!”
“We have to be careful,” said Irene. “We won’t last long on the twenty bucks we’ve got between us.”
Millie laughed. “Oh, we’ve got way more than that.”
“You only have eight dollars,” said Irene, still a bit annoyed about the hat. “I’ve got twelve and change. Henry, how much do you have?”
“Only about ten.”
“I’ve been keeping the best secret,” said Millie, leaning out to squeeze both of their arms, exposing more of her cleavage than was considered entirely polite. “I was going to tell you after the show, but then everything went haywire with Barney, and after all that running I was so tired. You can barely move in a wedding dress! I bet they’re specially designed so it’s hard to run off if you change your mind.”
“Millie,” said Henry. “What secret?”
She tapped her knees back and forth rapidly like a drumroll, then threw her hands in the air and said, “Ta da! I stole the silver tea set! I bought some silver polish and told Chandler I’d clean it—see it wasn’t just the hat I spent money on, Irene. I told him I gave it to Barney to pack. Then I sold it at the pawnshop in Flagstaff for seventy-five dollars! The guy offered me forty, but I just started putting it back into my suitcase till he said ‘Now hol’ on there!’ ” She squeezed their arms again and let out a squeal of joy. “Let’s get steaks!”
Irene didn’t know whether to laugh or throw her hands around Millie’s neck. She looked at Henry, who had clearly come down on the side of strangulation. “That’s why Barney was after us! Millie, you . . .” he sputtered, “you nearly got us killed!”
Millie’s face fell. “Well, I can’t help that.”
“You can’t help stealing his most prized possession so he sends his goon to track us down like dogs?” He shook his head and muttered, “This kind of meshuggah I cannot take.”
“I’m certainly not your sugar if you’re going to talk to me like that!” Millie crossed her arms.
“I didn’t call you ‘my sugar’!” hissed Henry. “I called you crazy!”
“What’s so crazy about seventy-five bucks, I’d like to know!”
“Millie,” said Irene. “You put us in danger with that stunt. We were all terrified!”
“I wasn’t terrified,” said Millie petulantly. “I mean, I was worried. I wasn’t happy. But I knew it would work out.”
“How in holy hell did you know that?” steamed Henry.
“I don’t know,” said Millie. “I just had confidence.”
“That is far more self-confidence than any person should have . . .”
Irene could hear the words Henry had chosen to bite back: especially you.
“Not self-confidence,” said Millie quietly. “Confidence in the two of you.”
Henry cut his eyes at Irene. He had no snappy comeback to that.
“Millie,” she said, “Where’s the money? Because it’s a lot, and you have to keep it somewhere safe.”
“It’s in the lining of my suitcase, but I’m giving it to you first chance I get.”
“You want me to hold it for you?”
“Not for me, silly. For us. It belongs to all of us.”
Henry shook his head. “Millie, I’m not thrilled with the way it happened, but you cooked up the scheme and carried it off. That’s your money fair and square.”
Millie’s face went wide with surprise then cinched down into fury. “That is not how this works! I got the tea set, but you got me off that train, Irene, and you two wrote that play, and Henry, you carried everything when we were running for our lives. I couldn’t have done any of that without you. It’s our money.”
8
A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure.
Charlie Chaplin, actor, writer, director, producer, on his most famous character, the Little Tramp
As she stared out the train window after breakfast, Millie could hear Irene and Henry talking in low voices about where the three of them might find lodging, and where they would look for work, what kind of money they might need, and what kind of wag
es they could expect. She found it slightly irritating. She didn’t want to think about Hollywood as a place she’d have to plod along, thinking about boring things like where to live. She’d read the magazines; Hollywood was a place where nobody worried about anything!
To distract herself from their tedious talk, she watched as the desert slowly rolled up its skirts to reveal secret hills and forests, and imagined that she was the first person on earth to lay eyes on such a hidden, unpeopled quarter.
But of course she wasn’t. Who had laid the train track, for goodness’ sake? Millie understood reality, of course. She’d had plenty of that at Miss Twickenham’s Finishing School for Young Ladies, which had seemed less likely to “finish” her than to finish her off.
Miss Twickenham—a matronly woman who spoke with an English accent to parents but slid into the speech and behavior of a slaughterhouse foreman when the floors weren’t scrubbed to her satisfaction—seemed more interested in getting the greatest possible amount of work out of the girls than in teaching them social etiquette. There had been plenty of opportunity, and motive of course, to build a rich fantasy life—daydreams and half-made plans that swirled in Millie’s head as she pulled turnips from the gritty soil or stood facing the wall, shoeless on the cold tiles, for the least little infraction. At least then she could be alone with her thoughts; daydreaming was harder while getting lashed with a switch across her bottom for major crimes like whispering to a neighbor during lessons on the absurd variety of ways to fold a napkin. It was a napkin, for goodness’ sake. Its only purpose was to lie hidden across your lap and keep the soup off your skirt when you sat at the table. And after the lashings, she couldn’t sit down anyway.
The train climbed up into a mountain pass, with wondrously tall peaks. Was Hollywood in the mountains? She’d thought it was near the ocean, and that was half the reason she’d wanted to come! She’d spent a summer in Beverly on the North Shore of Massachusetts once and thought it was paradise on earth. But Father rarely came, as he was tending to his horse supplies business. Mother didn’t like the sand in the house, nor the smell of fish, nor the wind—the blissful breezes that blew up from the shore and tickled Millie’s skin and made everything seem so new. And possible.
