Entr'acte (17 page)

She recommended instead the Automat, partly because she wanted to treat, and partly because she wanted to see it. So they ambled the several blocks to the closest outlet, and changed a dollar bill into coins at a booth by the door.

The sound of jingling coins and metal sliding over metal filled the place with a happy, almost musical din. People sat at long rows of tables lined with rickety chairs, elbow to elbow with strangers having a cheap lunch.

Joyce selected a grilled cheese sandwich, an apple and a bowl of cream of celery soup. She wasn’t quite quick enough opening the door to the compartment holding her sandwich. She dropped the 20 cents down the slot, and heard the coins fall with a satisfying plunk.

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But the door had to be opened with one motion, or the coins fell into the box and the levers reset for the next purchaser. Bart had to call one of the cafeteria workers for help when he couldn’t pry the sandwich out of the compartment.

When they were seated, Bart laid his hand over hers and looked Joyce in the eye. “This was why I wanted a quieter place,”

he started awkwardly. “I have something to tell you.”

She waited expectantly, but her friend’s eyes indicated this was not going to be good news.

“I think Connie is already dead,” Bart blurted out. “Clancey, that woman at the party last night, had been pregnant. She had an abortion at a place in New Jersey that Connie had recommended.

“She said that Connie brought her over and stayed with her after it was done, while she rested up at this “clinic.’ Connie told Clancey that she had, um, missed a few months, and was worried that she might be, ah, expecting too.”

Joyce completely missed Bart’s discomfort with his subject matter to zero in on the key issue. “How could Connie be dead? She was last seen coming out of the Empire Theater—tomorrow.”

“I know that’s what you told me, but people can be mistaken about something like that. It could have been yesterday they saw her, or last week. It could have been someone who looks like Connie.”

Bart took a loud sip from his coffee cup. “It could have been you,” he reminded her.

Joyce’s mind raced. “How do we know Connie is dead?” she asked.

“We don’t,” Bart said. “All Clancey was able to say is that Connie had planned to get help at the clinic, if she was pregnant.

That was about a month ago, and Clancey said she heard later that a dancer had died over there, and that the whole thing was being hushed up.”

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“What kind of name is Clancey for a girl anyway?” Joyce exclaimed suddenly. “Who is she to be spreading rumors like that?” Joyce was flooded with fear, but also with loyalty for the relative she’d never known.

“The thing is, all those names in Connie’s book are women who had gotten themselves into trouble that way. Having a baby if you’re a dancer, if you’re not married, is pretty much the end of things,” Bart said.

Joyce nodded.

“Your great-aunt apparently found herself a job bringing

“clients’ to this Doctor S., and staying with them while they recovered. That was why she tended to disappear for days at a time and was so secretive about where she went,” Bart said.

“If we lined up the dates of her absences with the times these women had their abortions, I bet the times would match up,”

Joyce mused. “This Dr. S. must be the one who kills her.”

“Maybe,” Bart said. “It turns out he is no doctor at all. He had a year of medical school and then he left. It seems he enjoys surgery. This type of operation, well, it’s pretty basic but he still managed to “lose” some patients.

“Clancey thought that at least one other time a girl bled to death after the “doctor’ got through with her,” he said. “The conditions at his place were rather primitive, but the secrecy surrounding the whole thing helped him to hide his mistakes.”

“Exactly where is his place?” Joyce asked. “It might be a good idea to look for Connie there, if it isn’t already too late.”

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For years she had accepted the fact that her great-aunt had been murdered, but now, with some small chance to intervene, Joyce found herself desperate to try to save Connie’s life.

“It’s over in Hoboken. Clancey was good enough to give me the directions as best as she could remember them,” Bart said.

“There’s more,” he said, draining off his coffee.

“More? What else could she be mixed up in?” Joyce had the feeling that if she ever did find Connie, she would like to slap her silly for being such a problem.

“Clancey had the idea that Connie didn’t really understand what was involved in getting rid of an unwanted baby,” her friend said. “She seemed to think something was being done to keep a baby from coming, but not that one was already forming.”

“Didn’t she see….?”

“Apparently not,” Bart said, anticipating the question. “I also learned from some friends of mine that Connie was dating a shady character, a real tough guy.”

“That must be Eddie,” Joyce said. “My grandmother has been warning me about Eddie, how he’s no good and how I shouldn’t give him the time of day.”

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“Do you have a last name?” Bart sounded concerned. “Giving some of these hoods the air isn’t healthy.”

“I don’t know his name and I don’t care to know,” Joyce said as they stood to leave. “All I’m concerned with is saving Connie, if we can. If she’s still alive we have a day.”

“You’re forgetting that we may not be able to interfere at all, if it’s her fate to die,” Bart said. The bright summer afternoon belied his chilling words.

They walked toward the theaters, past a candy and cigar store.

Joyce ducked inside, pulling Bart with her. “I want to buy a pack of Lifesavers candy for the show,” she said.

“They have those, right?” she asked. The glass case was filled with rows of fireballs, jawbreakers, button candy, little caramels on sticks, lollypops and—in a corner by themselves, roll candies including Tootsie Roll, Rollos and Lifesavers.

She pointed to a pack of butterscotch, and slapped a nickel on the counter. Rows and rows of colorful tins behind another counter caught her eye.

“That’s tobacco,” Bart whispered discreetly. The man standing in front of the humidor holding boxes of cigars and jars of pipe tobacco snickered into his sleeve.

Joyce walked over to the counter and confidently asked for a tin of Forest and Stream tobacco.

“We have Prince Albert in a can, if madam is interested,” the clerk snickered again. Bart came up to her and glared at the man, who brought down the brand Joyce had asked for.

She picked up the package and studied it closely, turning it over in her hands. “I’ll take it,” she said finally.

“Very good,” the clerk murmured politely, keeping his eyes down as he rang up the purchase. He scooped up several books of matches and tossed them into the bag. “Anything else?” he asked.

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“Can I see which Hi-Plane pocket tin you have?” She studied and rejected the package brought down from the shelf. “Do you have “Master Mason’ in either a flat pocket or an upright?” she asked.

The clerk scanned several rows of shelves, reaching up and rearranging some of his stock for a better look. The requested item couldn’t be found.

Bart looked at her quizzically.

“My father collects tobacco tins,” she said. She opened the hinged lid, careful not to tear the blue tax stamp, and dumped the contents into a trash can.

“Doesn’t he want the tobacco?” the clerk asked.

“No, he doesn’t smoke,” Joyce said simply. “But this tin is rare because it shows two men in a canoe pulling a trout from the river with a net. The latest price guide says it’s worth $350.”

The two men scanned the shelves, with a section full of Forest and Stream tins with the same picture. They just shrugged at each other.

“Not a bad investment for a dime, huh?” Joyce said happily when they reached the street. “Now, if I can just get it to him,” she said, her face clouding.

“Forest and Stream is a big selling brand,” Bart said. “A guy next to me in the pit smokes it. Want me to ask him for his empties?”

“Sure,” Joyce said. “But most of them just show the pheasant against the sky or the fisherman wading in a stream. Those are much more common; they’re only worth $50 now.”

“What’s that other brand?” Bart said, amused.

“Master Mason’ was only around two or three years. The tin used many different colors, blues, creams and crimsons. It was a masterpiece of lithography, and worth more than $1,000 in good condition to a collector in my father’s time.”

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“I’ll keep my eye out for it,” the musician said wryly.

They were in front of the Majestic, where the matinee crowd for “Stars in Your Eyes” was pushing through the doors.

“This will be great,” Joyce bubbled. “I’ve never heard Merman except on records or on…”

“Television?” Bart finished as her eyes widened in surprise.

“It’s on display at the World’s Fair. I figured it was something that would catch on—movies in your own home. Hey, you think I should buy stock in the National Broadcasting Company?”

“That would be a great idea, although you’d have to hang onto it awhile,” Joyce laughed. “RCA, the Radio Corporation of America would be a good bet too. They will make the best sets—

receivers.”

“I’m really late,” Bart said. “I have to run, but I’ll meet you right here when your show lets out. The running time is 10

minutes longer than mine.”

Joyce nodded, and Bart called out “wait for me,” as he ran down the street.

Her seat was near the middle of the main floor in the cavernous theater, a bit to the left side of the stage. The overture was unfamiliar but spirited.

She scanned her PLAYBILL to confirm her hunch that she was seeing several future film and stage standouts among the large cast. Dan Dailey, Mildred Natwick, Mary Wickes, Nora Kaye and—in the chorus—noted choreographer of the 1950s and ’60s Jerome Robbins strutted his stuff.

The musical was hilarious. Merman was a Hollywood star, ironically something she would never be in real life. Her studio had assigned a “troubleshooter” to keep her happy. That part was played by a rubber-faced Jimmy Durante.

Merman and Durante were obviously having fun all afternoon, even though the end of the relatively brief run was in 160

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sight. They must have ad-libbed furiously on “It’s All Yours,”

because Joyce noticed just the slightest pauses as each professional lobbed lyrics at the other.

Merman, who appeared to loud applause, was already a bonafide Broadway star after “Anything Goes” five years earlier.

She wasn’t particularly well-served by the score, by the team of Arthur Schwartz and Dorothy Fields. There were some good numbers that Merman, with her clarion voice, helped put over.

“This is It” and “Just a Little Bit More” late in the first act Joyce thought were particularly effective.

There was a running gag about the number of assistant directors working on a film—Joyce counted six tripping over each other. And Merman spent most of the show winning back her boyfriend from a foreign rival, played by Tamara Toumanova.

As the lights came up and Joyce made her way up the aisle she was flush with the realization of having seen one of the country’s greatest musical comedy stars in her prime.

She was playing a mental game with herself, deciding whether she’d visit Bernhardt in Paris first, Ellen Terry or Edwin Booth if she could go back further, when she was swept up in the crowd outside the lobby doors.

The wave of people pushed and shoved, and deposited Joyce just inside the stage door. A doorman wearing a green visor was standing at a podium desk, but he was busy sorting mail and didn’t glance up.

She took in the bare-brick entrance way, with the call board and wire cage for securing deliveries and turned to leave.

But more people came in from the street and pressed in behind her. They were chatting away at each other and moving forward. Joyce found herself backing up the three short stairs leading to the dressing rooms.

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Joyce back down the end of the long hall until she stood in the open doorway of the last room.

She’d pulled herself together and was ready to squeeze her way back through the narrow corridor when a strangely familiar voice boomed out, “Hiya kid!”

Joyce looked around, the others had gone into a dressing room across the hall. Ethel Merman, sitting on a plush pink chair in front of a brightly lit vanity, was talking to her!

“Didja catch it?” Merman asked, nodding with her head toward the direction of the stage. Her speaking voice still sounded like her native Queens.

The actress was dabbing cold cream on her chin. Layers of pancake makeup were still on her face, and heavy black lines were drawn-on eyebrows.

“Did your sister get the news?” Merman asked. “She’s in the chorus of the next one.”

Joyce looked around. There were people milling in the hall again, but they all had their backs to the door. Joyce nodded, dumbly.

“We get through here on the ninth,” the actress said.

“Rehearsals are going to start right away on “DuBarry Was a Lady.” We’ll do New Haven and Philadelphia first and come into New York late in the fall.

“Cole has worked up a great score—listen to this,” Merman commanded. She blared out the first few bars of “Friendship, friendship, it’s the perfect blend-ship” in that unmistakable voice.

People stopped and stuck their heads into the dressing room, smiling and bidding for Merman’s attention. She ignored them.

“This show’s going be a hoot. I play a nightclub star and the washroom attendant dreams that I’m Madame DuBarry and he’s Louis XV,” she said. “He wins $75,000 in the Irish Sweepstakes and that sets him off.”

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Joyce smiled broadly, thrilled to realize that the first lady of Broadway musicals was talking to her as a peer. She could see the excitement in Merman’s eyes talking about her new show.