by P. N. Elrod
She planted a no-nonsense kiss on my lips that everyone saw, perhaps to let all and sundry know the papers had gotten it wrong about her and Grant. I didn’t mind. She finally let me go and turned her blinding smile on Escott. “Charles, I’m so glad you could come, how handsome you look.”
She always seemed to affect Escott’s ability to speak, but he looked pleased. His tuxedo was a conservative black style, no adventurous white coat for him, but it fit perfectly. He took her hand and made a little half bow to kiss it. I’d seen LaCelle and Grant do the same thing, but Americans just can’t seem to get it right. Escott’s version was all homage to and admiration for the lady, not some half-assed attempt to impress her for the man’s own ends.
“And you are stunning as ever, Miss Smythe,” he returned. “I’m quite looking forward to your performance.”
“What’s with the new dress?” I asked. I was worried that in spite of my best efforts I might have damaged the red one somehow.
“I had to get another for the show. All that stuff in the papers spoiled its debut.”
I sort of understood that one.
“Besides,” she continued, “after seeing the photos, I realized how overdressed I’d be. This one’s much more appropriate.”
We both told her she looked great.
“How’re things backstage with you-know?” I asked.
“Just fine. He’s busy getting ready, no time for me. It’s quite a relief.”
“Still want to drop him in a vat of acid?”
“Not drop,” she corrected. “I want to lower him in an inch at a time.”
Escott’s right eyebrow bounced. “My, we certainly are medieval tonight, but with justified provocation, I understand.”
She beamed at him. She loved to hear him talk. “It’s so good to see you again. You must come to the club before the review’s run is over and tell me what you think.”
“I shall endeavor to do so.”
“And now I’ve got to get back before the stage manager has a fit. See you in an hour.” She directed this at both of us, squeezed my hand, and whisked away, leaving behind the rose scent of her perfume.
“Wow,” I said, staring after her in awe.
Escott threw me an amused glance. “Indeed. Though his techniques are less than gentlemanly, one can understand your adversary’s motivations.”
“After tonight he’s going to be just a bad memory.”
The lights flickered, the orchestra’s tuning efforts subsided, and the leader got them started on some bright dance music. It was a full ten minutes before broadcast time, but the crew that made everything work for the performers was still bustling around doing mysterious things with the equipment. The audience sorted and settled themselves, and usherettes in snappy red coats with lots of brass buttons saw to it that the last people found their seats. It was a full house. Grant’s show was very popular.
Five minutes before things started, Archy Grant emerged, grinning and waving. A big cheer went up in response, louder than anything I’d heard for him yet, but this was an expected event, not something impromptu. He introduced himself and asked for the audience’s help with the show, drawing their attention to some boxes hanging over the stage that read APPLAUD and LAUGH.
“I know you won’t need any help from our director to know when to laugh,” he said. “But he needs your help to make sure the show runs within its time limit. So when you see a sign lighting up, that’s when you do what it says. When it goes out, that’s him asking you to hold it down so we can get out the next line in the script. And trust me, you’re all gonna love being in showbiz.”
His delivery was exactly right so the laughs he got came easy. Escott and I were more reserved, Escott because that’s how he was, and me because I still wanted to punch Grant in the nose.
Someone handed Grant a script, and he quickly introduced a number of people who came filing onstage holding scripts, including Bobbi. She got a little extra cheer of her own, accepting it graciously, though this recognition was more a result of the publicity in the papers than anything else.
Silent signals got tossed back and forth between the director and the players. The second hand on a huge clock swept up to twelve, and the band started in on the show’s theme song the way it did every week. I used to enjoy hearing it and hoped I’d be able to again. Sometimes it’s a bad idea to meet the person behind the celebrity.
Everything went smooth; the work they’d put into all the rehearsals paid off. You can mess up a line even reading from a script, but all the performers were in top form tonight, especially Bobbi. Though Grant was the main focus of the show, she easily outshone him, at least in the studio. Whether the spark of her personality was going out over the air or not, we wouldn’t know until tomorrow’s reviews. Then Escott, who was highly critical of performers who were less than the best, surprised me by leaning over while Bobbi was in the middle of a song.
“She really is wonderful, isn’t she?” he murmured, his usually poker-faced expression softened and relaxed. Bobbi could do that to people.
“Amen to that, brother.”
Bobbi finished to rolling applause, then the show paused for a coal commercial, and I thought of Gil Dalhauser and his trucking business. His trucks were the ones that hauled the sponsor’s product all over the county. I started to look around for him, then changed my mind. If he’d been in the audience Escott would have said something. He’d trained himself to have an excellent memory for faces.
“Not too shabby,” I said. “Better than you expected, huh?”
“Well, it is much more interesting to me to see how it’s done rather than merely listen to the results at home. Also, it’s easier to ignore the advertisements while in the studio.”
Escott often got annoyed at the constant ads that paid for the shows and made a point of turning them down when he could. Unless he was especially interested in a program he often forgot to turn the volume back up again.
“There’s something about Archy Grant that bothers me,” he said.
“There’s plenty about him that bothers me. What’s your beef?”
His lips tightened and he shook his head. “He seems very familiar in an odd way. He reminds me of someone, but I can’t think who.”
“Probably of himself. You’ve heard me listen to him a lot.”
“That’s not quite it or I’d have remarked on it before. The radio changes a person’s voice as it filters through a speaker. But in person . . . ”
The station break ended and the players stepped up to the microphones again to do a comedy sketch with Grant about a man trying to teach his dog how to drive. The sound-effects guy had his hands full, especially at the end, with the inevitable car crash and sirens.
“I know I’ve heard that voice before,” said Escott, staring down at the brightly lit stage where Grant stood close by the microphone. “Now, I wonder who the deuce he could have been?”
He followed Grant’s every move, concentrating on each line, laugh, and song, which is the wrong way to go about remembering something. The harder you try, the more elusive the memory becomes. He should have eased back so it could sneak up on him.
I left him to it and let myself enjoy what was left of the hour. It seemed to go by amazingly fast. Bobbi had often described the experience to me, saying it was a very intense kind of living. Sometimes she could remember everything in astonishing detail, and other times she went blank, depending on how much fun she was having. Then she’d have to ask me later how things had looked. Just in case, I took a lot of mental notes for her on this one.
The show ended, the applaud sign flared and faded, the lights went up for the audience, and that was the end of it. Escott said he’d go get the Nash and spare Miss Smythe the walk.
I waited for Bobbi, but not for too long. She was in a hurry to get to the Nightcrawler to catch Adelle’s last performance of the review. I didn’t want to miss it either, being curious to see how such a refined and graceful-looking woman would handle prancing about in a
Chinese dragon head.
“Wasn’t I terrific?” Bobbi demanded when she rushed up to me in the studio lobby. This would be one of those times when she’d recall everything. When that happened, she always knew the quality of her work.
“They’ll have to make up new words for how good you were,” I said, taking her arm, or trying to; she was so full of energy she couldn’t hold herself still and had to dance around me a few times talking a blue streak about the fun she’d just had. In a way I envied her absolute joy and was a little saddened by the knowledge that it was something I couldn’t give her. She’d made it for herself, using her own talent. The closest I’d been to what she had now was years back when I sold my first news piece to a paper, but that seemed small in comparison to her reaction.
People looked and smiled at her, whispering excitedly. A few came up and asked her to autograph their program books. This surprised and pleased her enormously.
“It was so scary, too,” she said to me while scribbling her name with a borrowed pen. “Anything could have gone wrong. I mean, when it happens at the club, then only a couple hundred know the mistake, but on a national broadcast it could be thousands and thousands.”
“Well, now they all know how great you are.”
“Oh, I hope so, I really, really hope so!” she said, looking so alive and beautiful that I felt something crack inside me. It was almost physical, the pain, and I was pretty sure it was my heart breaking.
If this guest spot did result in bigger, more important bookings for her, I might not see her so much, if at all. The big jobs were in New York and Hollywood. She could be gone for weeks, months at a time, traveling, working.
The press of people around her forced me to step back, and I wondered just how far I might have to keep stepping. Looking on from the edge of a crowd could be my new future with her, and I didn’t think much of it. It gave me a tight feeling, like I was strangling, and I had to resist the urge to push through them all, to go to her and sweep her away before I lost her.
But that would have spoiled her moment.
This was Bobbi’s time to shine, not time to drop a cold bucketful of my own self-doubt onto her dreams.
I pinned a smile to my face and waited for the crowd’s flood of adulation to subside. If I wanted to keep her, I’d have to steer clear of anything remotely resembling a leash and trust she would come to me when she was able to do so.
Not an easy thing to do, especially when all of me wanted to rush in for her.
For myself.
“Hey,” she said, suddenly free of the autograph seekers and slipping her arm around mine. “Wake up, Handsome Hank. I thought you were going to protect me from the curious public.”
“Anytime, anyplace,” I told her lightly.
She leaned on me with a satisfied sigh as we walked toward the elevator. “Thanks for waiting.”
“No problem.”
Not the easiest thing I’d ever done . . . but certainly the smartest.
ESCOTT would have played chauffeur right to the end by dropping Bobbi and me at the club then running off to find parking, but she persuaded him to turn his beloved Nash over to one of the valets.
“I’m not going to lose the chance to make a big entrance with two such good-looking men,” she said.
I wouldn’t have called Escott good-looking, but he was certainly distinctive with his height, lean face, and beaky nose, and, of course, a tuxedo always improves any man’s appearance. He assented to her wish and gave up his keys.
We three walked in, with her in the middle, to be greeted in the outer lobby by those invited to the party who had been to or heard the broadcast. Once more I had to step back and give Bobbi to the crowd. Still not easy, but I knew she’d return, and that helped.
We’d arrived just in time for the review’s intermission and threaded our way through the mob to get to Gordy’s reserved table down front. He was there to greet us, and even his normally impassive face had a hint of a smile lurking under the surface. He shook hands with Escott, thumping him once on the arm in a friendly way. It was hard to believe that at one point they’d been on opposite sides of a gun, ready to kill.
“Good to see you. Sit. Have champagne,” he ordered, so Escott sat and let a waiter pour him a glass.
“How’d the show go?” asked Bobbi.
Gordy nodded toward the darkened dance floor. The stage manager had sent someone out to sweep it clean, and he marched back and forth with a dusting mop a yard wide. “Pretty good. They liked her fine.”
“Did you hear any of my broadcast?”
“I had a radio in the lobby bar and listened there. Checked on the review during the coal ads. You were good, kid.”
She heaved a big happy sigh. “Thanks for letting me do it.”
“Be a crime not to.” He turned to me. “That guy Waters came in. I took care of him like you asked. Red carpet all the way. People are thinking he’s some kind of bigwig.”
In addition to a paid-up cab I’d fixed it so Jim Waters could have whatever he wanted at the club and I’d cover it; he was my special guest. Escott warned me such an arrangement could be severely abused, but Waters struck me as being a gentleman and would behave accordingly. Besides, if I was wrong about him, then this would be a fast way to find out. “You’re a brick, Gordy.”
“I been called worse.”
“Where is he?”
“He spotted some guys in the band he knew and went back to say hello. He looks like he’s enjoying himself.”
“Been keeping him company?”
“No time for it, but the girls have been checking on him regular, sitting at the table when they can, making sure he’s happy. I think two or three of them are in love already.”
“Great . . . I think.”
“Is he as good a singer as you say?”
“You’ll find out when I take away all your business.”
“Not unless I hire him first.”
The Melodians, finished with their break, came back to warm up the new crowd. Jim Waters returned from his backstage travels and I introduced him around the table. Bobbi didn’t have to turn her charm on for him, he looked bowled over just from sitting next to her. Our group emptied two bottles of champagne out fairly quickly and Gordy had more brought in, along with a tray stacked with finger sandwiches, caviar, and crackers. Escott dubiously eyed the latter, perhaps, as I was, thinking of our impatient client.
A thought suddenly started running in my head about writing a mystery story; all I had was a title—The Case of the Impatient Heiress—but no plot. It struck me as being a good title; maybe I could do something with it. I borrowed a pen from someone and scribbled on a napkin so as not to forget, then tucked it away in a pocket. Maybe I’d have better luck with a regular mystery magazine than trying to write about man-eating spider gods for Spicy Terror Tales.
A waiter, noticing I was without, put a glass of champagne in front of me. I got a smirk from Bobbi and she whispered that she’d swap glasses with me when she’d finished hers off.
I’d been right about Escott and Gordy talking shop—either that, or each was trying to get information out of the other. News of anything going on in the city was like gold to them. Bobbi filled me in on backstage shenanigans at the broadcast, omitting Archy Grant’s name from the stories until I asked about him.
She gave a little shrug. “He was friendly enough, but pretty involved with doing the show. When anyone mentioned the paper photos, he’d just say that we had a dance or two and that was it.”
“Quite a difference from last night. I think my warning to him via Ike finally got through.”
“Good, but I won’t be completely comfortable about things until you’ve talked to him.”
The orchestra changed its tune and tempo to the overture piece, and the lights went down over the dance floor. When the couples had cleared back to their tables, drunken Bill began making his rounds, asking people if they’d seen his lost love.
“Who’s the guy that
punches him?” I asked Bobbi as Bill went flying.
“It’s a different man every night. The bouncers take turns—at least the ones we can trust to swing and not hit. During rehearsal one of the guys actually connected, so we had to let him go.”
“Not permanently?”
“Nah, but he’s never going to work in a musical in this town again.”
The review proceeded without a hitch, and I had to admit that Adelle surprised me. She’d been so contained and elegant whenever I’d seen her and now capered like a veteran slapstick artist. To be fair, she had worked with Ted Healy on Broadway and some Mack Sennett comedies in Hollywood, so it’d be odd if she hadn’t learned a few things about physical humor.
Lil and Bill made their triumphant exit in the rickshaw, then Adelle eventually returned for her solo, and again for the tea cup number. Bobbi watched everything intently.
I leaned close to her ear. “Don’t worry, she’s not going to take your place.”
“It’s not that. I’m studying what she does different from me and trying to figure out why. It might make me better at what I do when I go back.”
“But you’re already great.”
“She’s got a lot more experience than me. I learned a truckload just doing the rehearsals with her. You can never know too much about your craft. It’s important to study how others work at it.”
I started to say something, then snapped shut. She was so bull’s-eye right, and it wasn’t just for singing and dancing. If I applied that to writing then maybe I could get off my duff and sell a piece.
“What?” she asked, looking at me.
“Nothing. I just need to read more, is all.”
Adelle’s last curtain call brought her a few dozen long-stemmed red roses. She spotted Gordy at the table, waved hard, and blew a kiss at him. He applauded loud and long, slapping his big hands together with bruising force. Definitely a man in love.
Bobbi said she wanted to go backstage to congratulate Adelle. I started to rise to go with her, but she patted my shoulder and told me: “Uh-uh, girl talk.”
No arguing with that. I sank into the chair and watched her walking away. The blue dress did wonderful things the way it slid around her hips.
