Kiss Your Elbow (14 page)

O
F COURSE IT NEVER
occurred to either of us to telephone first to make sure, so we didn't find out till we got all the way up to the public library that the back newspaper file department is closed on Sunday.

“A pretty how-do-you-do! Now what?” said Maggie. “Go back to the Brevoort and have me watch you stuff yourself some more?”

We were standing in front of the information desk feeling a little letdown. But people seemed to be taking books out under their arms—those departments were still functioning on Sunday—and there were books that had, at least, the casts of all the plays, if not the reviews. That might help some. Like those Burns Mantle
Best Plays of
things. Maggie had mentioned them only the other night. Maggie sighed and obediently followed me up to those caverns where you get books. After duly looking it up on index cards and filling out the little slip, we waited in another enormous room until our number flashed on the indicator and we were presented with
Best Plays of 1934.

Seeing the titles of the best plays brought 1934
back with a rush. The theater was all very glamorous then. I had seen all the plays listed as best, too.
Dods-worth
and
Ah Wilderness
and
The Shining Hour
and The Green Bay Tree and
Mary of Scotland.
I was afraid
A Kiss Thrown In
would seem pretty pallid by comparison.

Sure enough, listed in the back was
Front Page Stuff
with the cast of characters and a brief synopsis. Kendall was there and Nellie and then at the bottom where the “also among those present” were grouped together, one name came whirling up at me. Instead of calling it the chorus, the boys and girls in
Front Page Stuff
were classified “Headliners and Featurettes,” pretty fancy, that. There among the names of the six headliners was the baby we'd been looking for. The last five letters of a six-letter word beginning with B. Robert LeBranch. I felt the library light up like a pinball machine.

“Now, at least we know his name,” I whispered to Maggie. “All we've got to do is find him. Chorus Equity'll be sure to know. Have you got a pencil?”

“What for?”

“I want to copy down the rest of the cast.”

“Don't be silly. I'm a taxpayer,” said Maggie and she took the page and ripped it out of the book. I was aghast. “Come on, we've got to get going. If we're late again we are both definitely out of a job.” She handed me the page. I furtively stuck it in my pocket.

“Maggie, you shouldn't do that,” I said.

“I always do. You wanted those names, didn't you? Come on.” We left—me expecting any minute a guard
would tap me on the shoulder and beckon me to follow him to some dim vault in the public library where they do awful things to people who tear pages out of
Best Plays of 1934.
“You can't take books out of the reference room, can you?” she said when we were safely through the turnstiles and out on the steps. I admitted you couldn't. “Well then, we're late now and would be a great deal later if you'd written all that stuff out. Don't make such a thing of it.” We beat it for the Lyceum. It didn't seem possible that I could be so shocked. People could kill other people or throw acid in their face, but people didn't tear pages out of library books.

The rehearsal seemed endless. We were having straight run-throughs now, but Greg insisted that we stand by the entire time, which seemed rather pointless to me, but he said those were Mr. Frobisher's orders, so I didn't quite quibble. During the first and second act I went out to the pay telephone in the hall and tried to find some of the
Front Page Stuff
cast in the phone book. A few of the principals were listed but I figured they'd be the least likely to remember a member of a chorus fourteen years ago. The principals speak only to themselves and sometimes not even that. The bit players ignore each other and try to talk to the principals, and no one ever speaks to the chorus except possibly the baritone or the comic who tries to sleep with every one of the chorus girls before the show closes and, more often than not, succeeds—particularly when he can get them fired if they aren't susceptible to his charms. On an off chance, I even called
Chorus Equity, but there was no answer. Only one of the headliners and featurettes was listed, which, considering it was fourteen years ago that the show played, was not too surprising. The single exception was a Peter Peters who had a dance studio on West Twenty-third Street. The life span of a chorus boy or girl is comparatively short. The girls, I suppose, manage to marry someone and can leave off their girdles for good, but I never can figure out what happens to superannuated chorus boys as a rule. Mr. Peters had apparently opened a dance studio. But the rest of them must get into a final Off-To-Buffalo and just keep going, or else get in the road company of the
Student Prince.
I dialed Mr. Peter Peters's number and he miraculously not only answered the phone but was the same one that had been a headliner.

“Yeah,” said the soft, rather high voice of Mr. Peters. “I was in that show, so what? You trying to collect dues for something? You're a little late, bud.”

“No,” I said, “I'm just trying to find someone else who was in it and you're the only one I could find with a phone.”

“My God, that was ages ago. Who are you trying to find?”

“A Mr. Robert LeBranch. Do you remember him?”

There was a long pause. Finally…“What do you want him for?”

“I'm from out of town and wanted to look him up.”

“Who'd you say this was calling?” I gave him the name of my character in the show, Dan Kelley. “A friend of his, you say?” I repeated that I was.

“Sorry, fella. I don't know. Haven't seen him since the show.”

“Well, thanks anyway.” I started to hang up.

“Wait a minute. What'd you say your name was?” I told him again. “Kelley, eh? Hoofer?”

“No. Just a friend.”

“What are you doing tonight? Why don't you drop around for a drink? I can ask around. Might find out something for you. We could have a couple of laughs—see some sights.” My quest for Mr. LeB. seemed to be widening my circle of acquaintances.

“Thanks. I might do that. What time?”

“Anytime. I'll be here. You got the address in the book. I live in the back of the studio. The later the better, it'll give me time to ask around.”

“Okay, I'll do that.”

“It's a date.”

“Yeah. See you later. Goodbye.” I hung up the receiver and turned to face Maggie's amused look.

“Get him!” she said. “Got a date with a chorus boy, have you? What are you going to do? Drink champagne out of his slipper?”

“Oh, shut up.”

“What did you find out about our mutual friend Mr. LeBranch?”

“He remembers him. Think I'll drop over after rehearsal and see what he knows. I tell you what I wish you'd do for me.”

“I think he'd rather you went alone.”

“Never mind about him, but tomorrow morning I
wish you'd go to Chorus Equity and find out what you can there.”

“I've got a fitting at Ernie's tomorrow morning.”

“Well, do it before that. And while you're at Ernie's find out what else you can about that niece of Nellie's. I still can't get over that. Maybe Ernie was lying.”

“Okay, boss. If I'm good can I have a drink out of the office bottle like a real private eye?”

“We'd better get back onstage or there won't be any bottle at all. They must be almost through with the second act.”

We went back and rehearsed and sat around and ate and went to Frobisher's apartment and sat around and rehearsed and then just sat around.

Just as we were saying good-night, Mr. Frobisher called us over and told us we could forget about the five-day clause. We were in! I could have kissed him, and Maggie did.

Up until that minute I had half expected Greg or Mr. Frobisher to give me the old line about “It has nothing to do with your performance, but the author feels you're just a little too old for the part, I'm sure you'll understand,” and then you say that of course you understand perfectly and it's quite all right and thank you so much, and you leave with your eyes tight and your mouth set in a deathlike grin and you get somewhere alone just as fast as you can and get as drunk as you can afford.

But evidently I had become a member of what the ads would call “a distinguished cast” and I was sure of at least two weeks' salary. I had a few bubbles in my shoes
and decided to skate on over to Twenty-third Street while I still had them. And to celebrate I stopped for a couple of drinks on the way.

T
HE
P
ETERS
S
TUDIO WAS IN
a second-floor loft over a store selling dress trimmings. The store windows glittered with sequins even in the feeble light of the streetlamp. In a little entrance at the side of the trimming store was a push button under a card saying “Peters Dancing Studio.” I pushed the button and waited.

I felt I knew pretty much what to expect. You don't hang around the theater for over ten years without getting to know the stereotype of the chorus boy. I had imagined from his voice that Peters was going to be that stereotype. But, whatever I was expecting, I was wrong.

Peters opened the door and I thought, at first, I had made a mistake. He was a good-looking, practically blue-shirt lead, curly red hair—almost crew-cut—a good pair of shoulders under an open-collared shirt. No rings. No bracelets. If I hadn't known he had been in a show fourteen years ago I would have guessed his age at about twenty-five. I must do more dancing, maybe I can knock a few years off me. The only thing that gave him away was his voice and his eyes—they were both a little too soft, and he had that trick of widening his blue eyes to punctuate his sentences.

We shook hands and he said that he hadn't expected me to drop in, really, and I said I hadn't expected to, really. I followed him upstairs and through a big empty room with a huge mirror on one wall and a battered piano with a portable victrola on top of it against another. He lived in the rear of the studio and it was fixed up very comfortably. Long monk's-cloth curtains completely covered the high windows and a studio couch had a monk's-cloth slipcover. A folding screen partially hid an icebox, stove and sink kitchenette. Low, modern, paint-it-yourself bookcases were filled with books and records and the white walls were plastered with photographs—mostly of male dancers with a few of the more angular females of the Martha Graham school, as well as scattered wrestlers and prizefighters popping their oiled muscles and puffing out their chests. There were also a couple of production flashes of different shows. I began to get hopeful when I saw those. Maybe Bobby LeB. was one of the toothy gents making that stock pose with the top hat, cane and modernistic background that dancers seem to love so.

Peters was apparently getting more hopeful, too, and had broken out a bottle of good Scotch. He went behind the screen and got ice and soda and came back with a couple of stiff ones. I sat in an armchair and he arranged himself on the studio couch. I noticed that my drink was about twice as dark as his. Evidently he was under the impression that we were in for a nice, long evening.

I asked him about the dancing-school business and he was quite amusing telling me about it. Most of his pupils were children and all doomed to go through life with their
mothers convinced that they were better than Shirley Temple and Margaret O'Brien put together. It was, he admitted, quite a racket. You charge them a tidy sum for the lesson and twice a year you'd give a recital and the little kiddies would have to sell so many tickets or they couldn't be in it. Or, if they were, only as background. A specialty in a Peters recital came high in tickets. Besides that, they would have to buy costumes, which was another rake-off for him. All in all, it was a very profitable business, but, of course, not very satisfying to the “inner longing,” if I knew what he meant. And I did.

He was about to go more deeply into his inner longings when the phone rang. I studied the pictures on the wall while he answered it. I gathered one of his friends was determined to come up and see Peters, and Peters was just as determined that he shouldn't.

“I tell you I won't have you coming up here.” He all but stamped his foot. I caught his eyes and he shrugged resignedly. “Yes…yes…later…No, I tell you it's simply out of the question.” And he slammed the receiver back on the cradle. “You'd think people would know when they're not wanted, wouldn't you?” he said. “
Mais non.
Some people never learn.” He came back and sat down and I asked him about Bobby.

It turned out that Peters hadn't known him too well. They'd dressed in the same dressing room with the rest of the headliners in
Front Page Stuff,
but he didn't see much of him outside the theater.

“Bobby was more the social type,” Peters said with a double-header widening of those blue eyes. “I don't
wonder that he gave up the theater, he was a lousy dancer really. How well did you know him?” There was a sidewinding look with that one.

“Oh, I never knew him at all, really. He's just a friend of a friend back home that asked me to look him up.”

“And where is back home, Mr. Briscoe?”

“Indiana,” I said. I don't know why. “Evansville, Indiana. I've never even seen Bobby, you know, and I'm curious to know what he looks like. Is one of those him?” I nodded to the wall. Peters got up from the couch and took one picture down and handed it to me.

“That's the headliners. Of course, we were just called that in the show. We weren't a standard act.” He rested his hand on my shoulder as he sat on the arm of my chair and with his other hand he pointed out the third man from the left. “That's Bobby.”

So that was Bobby LeB. His face had about as much expression as one of those animated dolls that hold up placards in cheap store windows. The kind of doll where the eyebrows swivel up and down and the head turns back and forth. The smile was just as frozen and the hair just as painted, black and straight, the face perfectly smooth, eyebrows sharply arched, but, then, the picture had been taken in stage makeup. You could see the black line around the eyes and the carefully bowed mouths. The headliners were all about the same height, all dressed in evening clothes and standing one in front of the other with the left leg pointed forward and the left hand holding the elbow of the man in front. The right hand was waving a top hat. Just the usual corny dancer picture.

I didn't know whether I would be able to tell that face again if I saw it or not. It might have changed a great deal and with all the goo you couldn't tell what the real face looked like, anyway.

“Have you any idea how I could go about finding him?” I asked when I had finished looking at the picture.

“No. I'm sorry but I can't imagine where you could look.”

“Evansville is going to be terribly disappointed. Well, thanks for the drink. I've got to be going.” I started to get up, but his arm very gently held me back in the chair.

“Going? Going where?”

“I've got to get an early start in the morning back to Evansville.” I shook his arm off and got up. He didn't try and stop me this time. I didn't particularly want to get on the muscle about it so I pretended I hadn't noticed. I put on my coat and hat, which I had thrown on a chair when I came in.

“But you can't go now. I mean, I thought we might make the rounds. I know some amusing places. I'm sure you'd like them.”

“Some other time,” I said. “I'm tired. I had a busy day. Thanks for the drink. Good night.”

He didn't bother to see me to the door so I walked through the studio and let myself out and walked down the stairs and on out to Twenty-third Street.

It wasn't till I walked half a block that I realized that I hadn't been so smart after all. I couldn't be sure, but thinking back, I seemed to remember he had called me “Mr. Briscoe” and I had told him my name was
“Kelley.” Another thing, the cast in the Burns Mantle collection had listed six names for the headliners and that picture Peters had shown me had eight little smiling faces all in a row.

I couldn't understand why he had bothered to tell me anything in the first place and then asked me up. Why that? If he wanted to lie about it…But there's a lot of things I don't understand, and I gave up Mr. Peters as one of them.

I could see the neon light of an open all-night one-arm joint a block west so I went in and had some fried eggs and coffee. The coffee was bad and the eggs had been around much too long and it made me sick to my stomach. I left in a rush and the fresh air and sudden misty rain felt so good, I decided to walk up to the Twenty-eighth Street subway station. I couldn't face right away that subway smell and those little piles of wet sawdust the cleaning people plant now and dig later.

It says somewhere that there are about eight million people in New York, but you'd never guess it tonight. At two-thirty, Ninth Avenue was as empty as Twenty-third Street had been.

About Twenty-sixth Street, I began to get dizzy and little sparks were swimming around in my eyes. The eggs must have been older than I thought. I stopped walking and, in a little alleyway, leaned up against the side of a building. I pressed my forehead against the stone and the coolness helped for a moment, but then my mouth started filling with saliva and I simply stood there—waiting to be sick.

I didn't hear footsteps behind me. I didn't hear anything. I just leaned against the wall with my neck wide open for a rabbit-punch—and it came.

My forehead ground against the rough stone as I slid down the wall to my knees and keeled over on my back. I choked and vomited. Something kicked me a couple of times in the ribs and I spewed again. I tried to get up, but a hand like a brick slapped against my face and I fell back.

There was water in the alley. I could feel the coldness soaking through my clothes. I lay there gasping for breath. My eyes wouldn't focus; the stringy wetness all but blinded me. I was vaguely conscious of a couple of looming shapes standing over me silhouetted against a patch of glow between building walls. One of the shapes presently kicked me in the groin. Red searing pain exploded in me and I doubled up, grabbing myself. There was a sharp click and in the dimness I thought I could make out the glitter of a knife blade. I went through all the business of yelling but I couldn't be sure any sound came out of my throat at all. One of the shapes had a voice. It said softly, “Hold it, someone's coming.” A foot crashed on the backs of my hands and I was out for the count.