The Troupe (37 page)

The idea of losing Colette horrified George. “So you would what?” he asked. “Go on… alone? Without us?”

“Yes,” she said. “I would.”

“But there’s no need for that, is there?” he asked. “I mean, Harry was covering for Kingsley before, maybe he could just continue in the start. Or maybe
I
could cover for him.” He tried not to grin hopefully.

“Monologues aren’t fit for Kingsley’s spot, George,” said Colette. “Nor is piano playing. People want dumb acts when they walk in after intermission. Silent acts, or silly acts. Acts they can ignore.”

“Well, I… I could play very softly,” said George.

“I told you,
no
. That’s not what managers are looking for in that spot.”

“I’m sure we could think of something,” said Franny.

“Is anyone listening?” Colette asked. “Our budget can’t afford the time to let us come up with a new act. I should know. We can’t risk a break in income.”

As Colette spoke an altercation began at the table next to theirs. An elderly couple had just sat down to eat, but both were mortified when they saw the waiter who came to serve them was colored. “I can’t believe the indignity of it,” sputtered the old man. He refused to speak to the waiter at all, and demanded to see the manager. The waiter assumed the most obsequious pose he could, not even meeting the man’s eyes, and bowed away.

They tried to ignore it. Stanley wrote:
YOU WOULD REALLY LEAVE US
?

“I’m saying we may not have a choice, Stan,” Colette said. “We can’t tour with the remaining acts, they don’t align with any spots. No manager would take us on. Almost no one tours with multi-act sets anyways. I’m saying we can split what’s left and go our separate ways.”

Stanley wrote:
AND ABANDON OUR MISSION
?

Her lips tightened. “That was always your mission. Not mine, or anyone else’s. You two barely let us know what was going on all the time, anyway.”

Stanley nodded, dismayed.

At the table behind them the manager had arrived to try to quell the elderly couple’s anger, but the old man was having none of it. “I can’t believe you would allow such a thing,” he said. “This location was said to be particularly esteemed. And to think, I almost considered bringing my grandchildren here…”

“I am so sorry,” whispered the manager. “Sir, I deeply apologize. He’s a new hire, but… but in venues of this type it’s very common to allow coloreds to wait upon customers.”

“What!” said the old man, nearly choking. “Can you possibly be serious? We would never allow such a thing at home! Then is it true that cities have some moral infection in them? Letting negroes in to work in their kitchens, to touch their plates, their
food
?”

The elderly woman gasped as if she’d been injured by the very idea of it. Colette began slowly grinding her teeth.

“I think,” said Silenus finally, “that the issue may be moot.”

“And why is that?” asked Colette.

“Do you really think you can strike out on your own, Lettie?” said Silenus. “Do you think you’d find success as a single act?”

“Are you saying,” she said, “that I don’t have the chops?”

“No,” said Silenus. “I’m not saying that at all. I’m just saying that talent doesn’t overcome everything. There are barriers in the way. Especially for those dreaming of big-time success.”

More pops came from Colette’s mouth as she ground her teeth. “And what barriers are those?”

Silenus sighed and looked at her pleadingly. He attempted a smile. “Come on, Lettie.”

“Don’t come-on-Lettie me,” said Colette. “Not over this.”

“… I absolutely will not stand for it,” the old man was saying behind them. “I’ll have you know my family owns several newspapers in Branson and, yes, even the country, and I will… I will have the name of this establishment in every single one of them!”

“Please, sir, be reasonable,” said the manager, still attempting a whisper.

“We’ve talked about this,” said Silenus to Colette. “You were to stay with me until you’d become strong enough to—”

“Then I’m not strong?” said Colette. “I’m not good enough?”

“Not for the hardship you’d encounter if you went out on your own and tried playing New York,” said Silenus. “Which is what you want, isn’t it?”

Colette crossed her arms. “Others have succeeded there.”

“They were lucky, and they spent years working at it.”

“… Absolute disgrace,” muttered the old woman behind them.

“I’ve spent years with you!” said Colette. “Does that not count?”

“Not in the big time, where you want to go,” said Silenus. “You’d need to establish contacts, build an accepting base.”

“And I can’t do that with what I’m doing now?” she asked.

“You don’t know what you’d be up against, Lettie,” said Harry. “They wouldn’t let you do what you’re doing now. They’d want you to play like… to wear makeup, and be like…”

“Like what?” said Colette savagely.

“… Not fit for such work,” said the old man behind them.

“Like what, Harry?” said Colette.

“Come, now, Lettie…” said Silenus.

“… As if they
belonged
in here, with
us
…”

“Go on,” said Colette. “Say it. Say it, Harry.”

“Colette,” said George. “Please calm down.”

“Stay out of this, George,” she snapped. “Come on, Harry. Go on and tell me what they’d want me to be like.”

The old man behind them stood up. “I refuse to believe that you could have possibly thought this could go unnoticed. This is a moral stand that I take, and I demand you pay attention to me and treat me with some resp—”

“Oh, be
quiet
!” cried Colette. She stood up and spun around to face the old man. Her chair toppled over and crashed to the floor. The elderly couple flinched, and the manager stared at her as if he hadn’t seen her before.

Silenus stood up beside her. “Yes, please keep it down,” he said calmly. “We’re trying to eat over here.”

“What… what are
you
doing in here?” said the manager, staring at Colette. “How did they let
you
in?”

“You see?” said the old man. “Do you see? They’re letting them eat in here, too! I simply cannot believe it!” His wife looked as if she was about to faint.

Colette did not answer. She was staring at the floor. George saw her hands were trembling.

“You are mistaken, sir,” said Silenus. He laid a hand on Colette’s shoulder. “My lovely colleague here is not a negro. She is a Persian, and royalty at that—she is Colette de Verdicere of the Zahand Dynasty, Princess of the Kush Steppes.”

“Is this true?” said the manager.

Colette still did not answer. Her chest was heaving and her eyelids were fluttering. George thought she might start weeping.

“Go on,” said Silenus. “Tell them.”

But Colette did not tell them. She shook off Silenus’s hand, turned around, and walked out without a word.

The rest of the meal was soured by what had happened, and Silenus harangued the manager into giving them a discount. When that was done he dismissed them, sending Franny and Stanley to two separate hotels on the other side of town to avoid any watchful eyes, and sending George back to his secret bedroom in the theater. As to where he himself stayed, Silenus did not say. Presumably with his door he could stay anywhere.

George returned to find the theater was shutting down. He slipped in and wandered unseen up the backstage stairs. When he came before his bedroom door he stopped. There was a scent in the air, like honeysuckle and lavender. He recognized it as the perfume Colette wore so frequently.

George’s sense of smell was just as good as his hearing, and he followed the scent up the rambling stairs of the backstage and eventually came to the door to the roof. He walked out and found the weather was much better than when he’d last been on a theater roof, outside Chicago. This rooftop, however, was a tumbling, decrepit mess, featuring uneven growths of plumbing and sprouts of twisted chimneys, many of which did not seem to serve any function. The theater must have been worked on and reworked on, without anyone’s ever cleaning up the work from before.

He saw a figure standing on one of the more ancient chimneys at the edge of the roof, straddling the gap with each foot on one side. She was in the middle of performing a marvelous and alarming feat of acrobatics: she would shove off with one leg, and while balancing on the other she’d perform a full rotating pirouette on the edge of the chimney. Then she’d smoothly spin around and replace her foot, reassuming the original position.

“Go away, George,” said the figure.

George walked forward, stepping around the dodgier parts of the roof. “Why?”

“Because,” said Colette, “you are interrupting my concentration.”

George did not say anything. She was filthy from chimney ash and breathing hard from the exertion. She had evidently fallen once already, judging from the small scrapes on her hands and their slow, glittering leak of blood. He watched as she did another turn, and another.

“I don’t seem to be,” said George. “But please, come down from there. It’s not safe.”

“I know it’s not safe,” said Colette. “That’s why I’m doing it.”

George winced as she performed the turn again. The chimney looked very unsteady.

“I hate the fucking sticks,” she said to him. “I hate these fucking little people and these fucking little towns and these fucking little theaters.” She did yet another turn. “But do you know what I hate most?”

“No,” said George.

“I hate knowing that they’re probably the same way in the big time,” said Colette. “They’d treat me the same way, wouldn’t they?”

She did three more turns, each one quicker and harder than the last. She wore a grim look as if this was some kind of grave self-punishment to be meted out in solitude. Yet even in these circumstances George still found her powerfully alluring, this ash-streaked girl performing for him on this squalid rooftop.

On the fourth turn the brick she was standing on separated from its mortar and began to rock. She gasped as she tried to steady herself. George did not hesitate. He sprang forward and grabbed one of her arms and heaved her off. She fell on him and they both tumbled to the ground.

“What did you do that for?” she asked as she tried to get off him.

George gasped for breath. When he finally got it back, he said, “You were going to fall.”

“I wasn’t going to fall!” said Colette. “I could handle a brick moving a little! That’s part of the practice!”

She stood up and strode away to the side of the building. To his horror, she climbed up and stood on the very edge, looking out at the street below. “The threat of falling is part of it.”

“Please get down,” said George. “Please.”

“I won’t get down,” said Colette. Then she thought, and said, “But I will sit down.” And, very smoothly, she bent her legs and plopped down to sit on the edge of the roof, her feet dangling off the side. “These little towns,” she said. “They’re killing me, piece by piece.”

George walked over to her, moving much more slowly as he came to the edge. Then he sat next to her, facing inward. “I know.”

“You do?”

“Sure. Small theaters, small applause. I understand how dull it is.”

“That’s not the problem.”

“Oh? Then what?”

She was quiet for a long, long time. She reached up and pulled out
the inscribed, ornate amulet that hung around her neck. “Do you know what this is? What the writing on it means?”

“No.”

She laughed. It had a very bitter sound to it.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Neither do I,” she said.

“I’m sorry?”

“I bought this little trinket in some pawnshop in upstate New York, George. It’s not some royal heirloom. It’s a piece of gypsy junk that just looks pretty.” She turned it over in her hand. “But I didn’t need to tell you that,” she said quietly. “You know I’m not really a princess, right?”

George did not immediately answer her. After a while he nodded. “Well. Yes. I thought it’d be rude to say something about it, though.”

“Do you know what I really am?”

“I don’t understand. What do you mean, ‘what’?”

“I mean what I really am, George. Why I have to make up that princess stuff.”

He was still not sure what she was suggesting. To think of Colette, whom he thought the most beautiful and most frustrating person in the world, in terms of ‘what’ was not something that came naturally to him.

“I’m not from Persia,” she said. “I’m from New Orleans. My daddy was white. But not… not my momma.” She turned to look at him, eyes burning. “Do you see?”

He thought about it. Then he nodded. “Yes. I do.”

“And what do you think of that?”

He shrugged. Then, in a move that evidently surprised her, he patted her hand. “I don’t think anything.”

“You don’t? Why?”

He thought about it for a bit and shrugged again. “I’ve had… a trying last couple of days, Colette. I saw things I never want to see
again. Right now I’m just happy to have a pleasant moment with you.”

Colette was quiet.

“This is why you came up with the princess story, isn’t it?” he asked.

“I didn’t,” she said. “That was Harry. He found me in New Orleans, performing on the street. Said he had an eye for talent, and I had it. Said I could get out, if I wanted.” He noticed she was unconsciously rubbing her upper arm as she spoke. There below her shoulder was a small patch of glossy whitish skin, a winking scar that, to his eye, was about the exact shape of the end of a cigarette. “But I couldn’t just jump into performing. I’d only be able to get on TOBA. You know what that is?”

“Yes,” said George. TOBA referred to the Theater Owners’ Booking Association, which worked the East Coast and served as the circuit for black acts. In vaudeville it was commonly referred to as “Tough on Black Asses” due to its grueling pace and poor pay.

“I was light-skinned enough that he came up with this idea,” said Colette. “I pass as a foreigner tolerably well. I don’t look like most black folks, and who the hell out here knows what a Persian looks like? Plus I speak French pretty good. So instead he dolled me up as royalty.” She cracked a smile. “Smart-ass. Every time, I can’t believe we get away with it. Some negro girl making white people bow to her and buy her drinks. Just because of a dress and a bad accent and a piece of gaudy jewelry.”