Entr'acte (11 page)

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Joyce winced and continued eating, until she felt Muriel’s hand on her arm. This is it, she thought. I’ve broken through somehow.

“What’s all this talk about settling down? Are you getting tired of this life?” There was genuine concern in Muriel’s eyes.

“You could go back, you know. Everyone knows you mostly followed me here to keep me company. You haven’t even seemed interested in theater work since you hooked up with those people in New Jersey.”

Joyce’s mind raced. This was the second time New Jersey had come up, and she couldn’t ask directly about it because she would be expected to know what Muriel was referring to.

“It’s not like it’s a job,” she tried, tentatively.

“It damn well better be, with all the money you’ve been bringing in here. You’ve practically been supporting me lately.

What I make at the candy counter doesn’t even cover the food.”

Aha! Muriel is not performing at a theater at this particular moment, she’s working the concessions. Joyce felt like a sleuth.

“So, what’s running at this theater of yours?”

“”Gunga Din’ for the fourth straight week.” Muriel sounded disgusted. “Goddamn scratch house. They never change the picture. “Gone With the Wind’ is coming out soon, but by the time we play it, everyone will have seen it twice.”

Muriel worked in a MOVIE theater. “What’s going on with your career?” Joyce tried to sound casual.

“My career?” Muriel hooted with laughter. “We’re getting mighty high-falutin’, aren’t we? I’m up for a part in the new Cole Porter show, I’ve been called back twice—you know that. It’s just the chorus, but it’ll be a hit, with Merman set to do it.”

“So, when do you hear?”

“I don’t know. It probably won’t get going until the fall, because the season’s nearly gone and Merman’s still in a show she has to finish.

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“But we were talking about you, Connie. I don’t think you’re happy here. You’re definitely mixed up with the wrong kind of boyfriends—don’t you ever ask anybody where they get their money?”

Joyce decided to take a wild stab. “What do you really think of Eddie?”

“That hood?” Muriel snorted. “You told me he’s no good, and if he doesn’t even meet your standards, well…I’ve never met him.”

Her mind raced. “What do you think of my friends in New Jersey?”

“Your friends? That’s a hot one. You told me you were helping out in some business over there. What is going on? Why do you have to be so damn secretive? We’re all each other has, dearie. I love you, you know that?”

Joyce nodded, her eyes misting over.

“Then why won’t you talk to me about these things? You come and go without a word to anybody. Twice this year the cops have come here asking questions about your boyfriends. And most important, Connie; you just don’t seem happy.”

The two were locked in a delicate dance, each wanting to ask questions the other couldn’t answer.

“I’ll be fine,” Joyce murmured.

“When I get home tonight we’ll do something about that hair of yours,” Muriel said. She got up, picked up her purse and went off to work, leaving Joyce to do the dishes.

* * * *

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She picked up things on the vanity and handled them like lab specimens. There was a beautiful ivory-handled brush and comb set, and several bottles of perfume. The elaborate glass bottles were in all shapes and sizes, but most had thick, clear glass with deep-set ridges.

She pried through desk drawers and in her great-aunt’s nightstand, not sure what she was looking for. There was a copy of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” in the nightstand.

Connie had not been known in the family as an intellectual; this was a queer choice of reading material. Joyce knew that the complex but haunting Irish novel had been banned for many years in the United States.

She inspected the heavy book carefully. As she suspected, several pages were well-thumbed, while whole sections appeared to have been untouched.

Joyce blushed at the idea of invading her relative’s privacy: Connie had been reading over the famed “dirty parts.”

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If her own sister, whom she lives with, thinks I’m Connie, then maybe I am, Joyce’s fevered thoughts raced. But Connie disappeared just three days from now, and wound up dead.

What if I do say I’m tired of life in New York and go back to Maine? Will my family take me in? They wouldn’t know me, but they might accept me as Connie.

Would that save Connie from being killed? Or would that still happen but no one would know because I would be living out her life?

What would happen then in 1986? Who would be born into my family as my parents’ daughter? Are there two of us, or am I Connie, and I’m fated to be murdered, only to come back 47 years from now?

Have I been traveling this same loop between the time

“Connie” gets murdered and “Joyce” is born all along? What happens to me in the meantime, am I really dead?

If I really am Connie somehow reincarnated, why don’t I know more about her, or even feel more sure I am her? If anything, I am sure that I am not her but have only my life as Joyce.

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She tried to focus her thoughts on what she knew for certain about her situation. But, even pacing up and down in front of the vanity and speaking out loud so she would have to form her thoughts more precisely, Joyce could not concentrate.

It seemed like her mind wanted to race ahead. Before she could examine one idea, something else would pop into her head, wild tangents that had little to do with the subject at hand.

Joyce’s rib cage ached but she did not have the aura that usually preceded a seizure. I’ve got to stay in control of myself, she thought, repeating the word “control” like a mantra until she felt calm again.

As if to test a theory, Joyce got up off Connie’s bed and went to her closet, trying on outfit after outfit. All of them fit fairly well; judging by the way some of them hung Connie was a few pounds heavier than Joyce.

Some of the outfits had expensive tailoring and labels that indicated they were custom-fitted for Connie. Those clothes fit Joyce poorly; she guessed that Connie’s bust and hip measurements were about an inch bigger than hers.

The shoes also didn’t fit perfectly. It seemed that for all her size, Connie had long, skinny feet. Her shoes pinched on Joyce.

Connie would have been an imposing woman in her day, at least 5’8 judging by her clothes, and she wore a size 9 shoe.

Most of the shoes had a higher heel than Joyce liked to wear, but there was a pair of saddle shoes, or white bucks, that she found comfortable.

A pale blue jumper with white lace on the collar, an almost Little Bo Peep look, fit Joyce best. Compared with all of the nightclub clothes hanging in the closet, it also suited her.

I can’t fit into Connie’s clothes perfectly and we’re different sizes, so we must be different people, Joyce thought. But even if 102

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that’s true, if I look enough like her to fool her sister, whoever wants to kill Connie could make the same mistake.

There were hatboxes on the floor of the closet all the way in the back, and Joyce started pulling them out and opening them.

For someone whose income was sporadic, Connie sure had a lot of expensive stuff, Joyce mused. Perhaps her boyfriends, however shady they were, at least treated Connie generously.

One hat, in a grey and black striped, octagonal box, was wide-brimmed, with a patch of gauzy netting fixed to its side. It was a relatively plain hat, adorned with only the gauze and a thin red band. The hat itself was beige.

There were several berets, a rust-colored tam and a kelly, perfectly blocked and banded. I’d look cute in this, Joyce thought, and perched the felt hat on her head. She did a George Raft imitation in the vanity mirror.

The last hatbox felt strangely heavy, and Joyce carried it over to the bed and pried the lid off. There was no hat. Inside, wrapped in tissue paper, was a very small revolver, loaded, a box of ammunition, and a leather-bounded book.

Joyce hefted the weapon. It fit her hand perfectly. The pistol grip seemed designed for a woman’s smaller fingers. The weapon even had a kind of pearl-colored material on the grip; Bakelite, an early plastic.

“What would Connie be doing with this?” Joyce wondered out loud. She opened the cylinder; all of the chambers were loaded.

“She must know that her life is in danger. Connie must be hiding out somewhere.”

The leather book held blank, unlined pages. There was some writing scrawled across about half of them, beginning near the middle and running almost to the back of the book.

Many of the notes were illegible, and there were few dates mentioned. Joyce noticed that the name “Elizabeth” was written 103

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in several places, as was the New Jersey city of Hoboken, across the river from New York City.

One cryptic entry sent shivers up Joyce’s spine. “Helped Sondra hide her baby.” Other notations said “Sent Clancey to Dr.

S” and “Mildred sent to Dr. S.”

She rifled through the rest of the book, and then searched the floor of the closet and the rest of Connie’s bedroom for any clue to where Dr. S, or Connie herself, might be found. There wasn’t any.

Her thoughts stumbling over each other in an effort to be heard, Joyce came back into the living room and switched on the radio.

At first, all she could get were bursts of static or piercing whines and whistles as she manipulated the dials. Then, when the needle on the lighted dial reached 760, a kind of mournful music filled the apartment.

When the song finished, an announcer read commercial spots for the Texas Oil Co., Oval tine and Borax in a overheated style.

Then a smoother voice said, “This is WJZ, your National Broadcasting Co. station.

“We return you to our program, “Music for Moderns’. This is the incomparable Hildegard, singing “I’m in the Mood for Love,’

accompanied by the Carroll Gibbons Orchestra.”

In no mood for the lush orchestration that followed, Joyce fiddled with the dials again, until an urgent, hypnotic voice emerged from the static.

The Rev. Charles E. Coughlin, with only the slightest Irish brogue, was speaking about the need for strong labor unions.

A funny subject for a priest, she thought, but sat down in the chair and listened. Father Coughlin called President Roosevelt a liar, said “the New Deal is a bad deal,” and praised Louisiana governor Huey P. Long for “soaking the rich.”

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During a commercial break, the priest’s announcer, Franklin Mitchell, said that this was a repeat broadcast of the sermon the priest had delivered on Sunday, and piously asked for contributions “to further the work of the Shrine of the Little Flower, in Royal Oak, Michigan.”

Joyce was nominally a Roman Catholic, but wasn’t used to priests expressing their political views from the pulpit. She kept listening to the program, using it as a sociology lesson on the era she had fallen into.

She heard Benito Mussolini praised for “the true progressivism of the corporate state” and for creating the National Union for Social Justice. Father Coughlin insisted that body was non-political.

The priest called for the abolishment of private banks and the

“nationalization of resources too important to be held by individuals.” But in the next breath he called the TVA—the Tennessee Valley Authority dam project that brought cheap electricity to Appalachia—“a socialist scam.”

How did this guy get on the radio? Joyce wondered in growing amusement. The nearly hour-long sermon was more political agenda than spiritual guide (the priest mentioned Christ only three times, and then only to back up his point).

His voice rose and fell, from a coaxing whisper to a harangue.

Joyce had not heard of Father Coughlin before, but she felt he compared to the sleazy evangelists who begged for money on television.

Some things never change, she thought, hugging her knees to her chest and rocking back and forth on the chair thoughtfully.

There were some racial epithets, and remarks about the seizing of Jewish businesses in Germany. Joyce had to lean forward to make sure she was hearing right; there was an awful lot of hate spewing out of the radio.

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“What an asshole,” she said in amazement, getting up to switch off the program.

There was a sharp knock on the door, and Joyce froze in fear.

Was it Eddie? The knocking became pounding and became more insistent. Whoever it was had heard the radio, knew someone was home, and was determined to come into the apartment.

Joyce ran back into Connie’s bedroom and pulled out the gun.

Clenching it in her hand, with her arm pressed against her thigh, she stood behind the door.

“Who is it?” she called out, trying to keep her voice steady.

“I’ve got to talk to you,” a male voice said.

“What about?”

“I know the trouble you’re in,” the man said.

“I don’t think you do,” she said grimly.

“I do, Joyce. Let me in.”

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It must be Bart! Joyce thought as she unlatched and swung open the door. But she froze in fear when she got a glimpse of the man standing in the hallway.

The tall, slim black man had most of his head shaved, except for a short bristle cut at the top of his scalp. He wore expensive running shoes, grey chinos and a sweater that looked as if someone had flung different-colored jars of paint at it.

“I’m your buddy from the alley. Remember me now?” the man said, an amused grin splitting his face. He showed Joyce her purse; he had it tucked under his arm like a football.

She stood in the doorway, transfixed, for a long moment. She searched her mind for the proper response. This was the only other person who understood what had happened, but he had already assaulted her once.