Last Dance on the Starlight Pier, page 17
Lily never said very much. Not about herself or, really, much of anything else other than to make extremely odd comments. She’d pop her head into my infirmary and blurt out something like, “There are eighty-five fewer spectators today at three thirty than there were yesterday.” Or “I made two hundred and thirty-two revolutions of the floor last period.”
On Ace’s next visit, while I lanced, disinfected, and bandaged a boil in his armpit, he told me what he knew of Lily’s story.
“I met her in jail in Tucson. We both got pinched for vagrancy. I seen right off,” he growled in his Bronx accent, “that she was, you know, not exactly all there. She was a babe in the woods just waiting to get eaten alive by the wolves.”
With a shrug like it was no big deal, he went on. “So I took her under my wing. Worked out for both of us. Thumbing a ride and putting the touch on farm wives for a handout is a lot easier with a broad. Makes you look like a family man. In exchange, I taught her how to survive in hobo jungles and Salvation Army shelters. Mostly, though, I kept the creeps and the twists from messing with her.”
Ace didn’t know how Lily had ended up in jail with two black eyes and crawling with lice. “I never asked. And she never said. She likes to walk in circles around a floor and I like to eat, and we both hate the rich parasites who are bleeding this country dry. So here we are.”
A few days later Patsy came in alone and, in a nervous whisper, said he’d heard the girls talking about my “secret weapon.”
“So, give it to me straight, Evie,” the funny man said. “What’s the secret the girls are whispering about? Is it bennies? ’Cause I sure could use a pick-me-up.”
“Hell no,” I answered.
Bennies, Benzedrine inhalers, were the newest thing; they pepped a beat dancer up like thirty cups of coffee. I couldn’t blame any of the contestants for using whatever they had to if the alternative was a soup line and a park bench, but I sure wasn’t going to hand them out.
“Nope,” I answered, digging into the secret stash that I’d bought at the Montgomery Ward on Michigan Avenue. There, on top of an out-of-the-way counter, I’d found the only self-service item in the store, deposited fifty-nine cents payment, and, without ever having to so much as ask a clerk, took what I needed. It was an item that had been created by the nurses who served in the Great War: Kotex pads.
I passed one to a highly skeptical Patsy and told him to slip the pad inside his shoe. He did. When he stood, all suspicion faded. “Wowzah, it’s like walking on a cloud,” he sighed. “Evie, you’re a miracle worker. When I win this thing, I’ll make sure you get your cut.”
The next day, Gerta limped in supported by her partner and lookalike brother, Fritz. Gerta had a wicked splinter embedded beneath the thick calluses on the ball of her foot that she’d chosen to ignore because, as Fritz explained, “It is taking five hundred hours to build up such a callus as that. Without this callus, we are not winning.”
Working carefully, I was able to remove the splinter while leaving most of the precious callus intact. Gerta stood, bounced from foot to foot like a prizefighter warming up, and her brother asked, “Ist gut?”
“Ja,” Gerta answered, and the pair left without a word of thanks.
Everyone had stories; from Lily, the former heiress, to Minnie, who’d never worn shoes before. But they all involved hard times and hunger. They all involved the one force that had gathered us together, not just the dancers, but most everyone in the audience as well: the Depression.
The Depression took away jobs and money and, too often, it also took away drive and hope. And all it gave back was time. Time enough to care about a bunch of strangers who could almost feel like family if you watched them orbit a dance floor for days, weeks, months.
Oceans and oceans of endless time.
Enough time for me to start worrying if Sofie would answer all the letters I’d sent her. Enough time to start worrying that she might have cut me out of her life. Enough time to realize how her friendship had made me feel anchored in the world. And how unmoored and adrift I felt without it.
CHAPTER 38
Of course, of all my patients, the one whose story I was most interested in was Zave’s. But he hadn’t visited, and Pops had ordered me to stay off the floor, saying, “I’m working up another scenario. You know? A new angle. So I need you to lay low. Build up the suspense, see? I’ll put you wise as soon as the boys say it’s okay for the Angel of Mercy to reappear.”
So for the next week I snuck in through the staff entrance at the back of the coliseum and, when I did peek out at the action, I was careful to stay hidden in the shadows. Which is where I was when a team of beauticians swarmed onto the floor to set the girls’ hair in pin curls. It was comical watching the stylists follow the contestants around with their new handheld dryers, all of them tripping over the long extension cords snaking everywhere.
And, even though there was always a special “hygiene break,” usually during the wee hours, when everyone showered and the men shaved, Pops still brought in a crew of barbers to trim the men’s hair. And, just for the sheer theatricality of it, every now and again he’d have them shave the boys.
It was a harrowing sight to watch the barbers, followed by a helper bearing a basin of hot water, lather up a contestant who had to keep moving while he was being shaved with a wicked-looking straight-edge razor. Pops never stopped dreaming up gags to keep the customers coming back.
When I worked the night shift, though, I witnessed a completely different world. There wasn’t much to see during the long night hours after the band packed up. And not much of an audience to see it. The only music was provided by a scratchy Victrola, the glaring overhead lights were replaced by dim economy bulbs, the arena darkened, and the spectators who couldn’t afford a bed used the far bleachers for sleep and sex.
Any time after midnight, when there wasn’t a normal crowd to witness them, the sleepwalkers took over. One member of each couple would be draped over his or her waking partner, who would lead the sleeper in a slow zombie shuffle around the floor.
Around three in the morning, the crowd thinned down to the usual late-nighters. Gamblers who cleaned their fingernails with dainty little knives; bookies who worked on their lists of who owed what; bootleggers who napped or passed around free samples; owl-eyed insomniacs. My favorites were the ladies of the night who cried and laughed and drank openly from the bottles their men—customers or pimps—handed them. They always seemed a happy club, putting on their own show, even, or maybe especially, when they were fighting.
The dance marathon was a world unto itself and one, I quickly learned, where women were the true heroes. It was obvious from the start that the women were a heck of a lot tougher than the men. They were the ones who could outlast three partners, soloing until they were either eliminated or they latched on to one of the outnumbered men.
I wished every jackass I’d ever heard gassing on about “the weaker sex” would take a long hard look at Minnie and DeWitt, for example. DeWitt, the big galoot, had an easy eighty pounds on Minnie, but she was usually the one carrying him while he slept. Worst of all, like Minnie said, and like most men, DeWitt was a lugger who flailed and writhed while he slept. Watching them was like watching a tiny jungle explorer battle a writhing python.
As I’d learned, Zave was an exception to the rule. He was such a model sleeper, barely leaning on Cleo, that you’d almost have thought he was awake. Cleo, on the other hand, was a wicked lugger. She became a bony octopus with pointy elbows and fingernails on all eight arms when she slept. Zave had a job avoiding her dagger-pointed nails as she jerked from side to side.
Instead of waking her up, though, Zave would get her repositioned and go on doing what he spent most of the very late and very early hours doing—reading. Zave was a newshound with a special affection for politics and, with a lot of careful folding, he plowed through the morning and evening editions of The Daily News, The Sun, The Times, and as many weeklies as he could get delivered to him on the floor.
The most important fact, though, that I learned about the show as I prowled around with my eyes open and my mouth shut was that Pops was in trouble. Big trouble.
CHAPTER 39
Toward the end of my second week, Pops made the mistake so many others had: he forgot that the canvas “walls” of the infirmary weren’t soundproof.
“Those goddamn guineas got my balls in a vise,” Pops moaned to his trusted right-hand man, Kane. “And they’re squeezing ’em so hard my eyes are popping out of my head. That greedy pipsqueak nephew wants more.”
“But the crowds are good,” Kane objected.
“Not the right crowd,” Pops specified. “Not the ones’ll buy the high-dollar box seats. He wants the swank set to show up the way they would’ve if Capone was here. That damn dago wants his picture in the papers wearing a white fedora with his overcoat draped around his shoulders like good ole Uncle Al.
“He wants the kind of publicity that only comes when important people fill the box seats. How’m I supposed to get the hoity-toities in the door? The Richie Riches can go to the frickin’ opera, the ballet, a bullfight if they want. Jeezum Crispum, Kane, what’m I gonna do?”
Apparently Suits was out there as well, because he chimed in, “The Frozen in Ice gimmick always brings ’em in.”
“No,” Pops answered emphatically. “Not after last time.”
“Come on, Pops,” Kane said. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Minnie was nowhere near dead when we chipped her out.”
“Well, she sure looked it. Hasn’t eaten ice cream since. No, I won’t do that to any of my kids.”
Pops cursed under his breath for a while before continuing. “Those jamokes think I can pull crowds out of my ass. I have to come up with a showstopper. A guaranteed hit. Or my unhappy investors will … Shit, I don’t know what they’ll do.”
“Pops,” Kane asked warily. “What kind of return did you promise them?”
“Christ, you don’t want to know. More than I can deliver in this lifetime. They think I crossed them. That I’m skimming. These are people who do not like being crossed,” he said in dramatic understatement. “They have made that very clear.”
“Are those goons threatening you again?” Kane asked in a growl.
“It’s getting worse,” Pops lamented. “They tell me that Capone isn’t happy. Fudgin’ Al Capone.” He spit the name out like a piece of rotten meat. “The Feds’ve got him locked up in Atlanta and he can still rattle cages in Chicago. And the cage he is currently rattling just happens to be mine. Cripes, if his boys thought it’d make Capone happy, they’d send him my head in a box.”
Suits piped in brightly, “I heard some outfit on the South Side did exactly that thing. Club operator who was skimming. Salvy’s boys decapitated him. Had to dry the head out first ’cause it was bleeding through all the, you know, wrapping.”
“Suits,” Kane said, “you wanna can the decapitation chatter? So, Pops, what you gonna do?”
There was an intensity to the men’s discussion that reminded me of the intensity in an operating room when the docs had to make life-and-death decisions within a matter of seconds. I tensed up just as I would have back then, ready to respond to whatever orders were given to save a patient’s life.
“Christ all Friday,” Pops said. “I don’t know. We kind of already shot our wad with Evie and the ugly duckling stuff.”
“There’s always the Grinds,” Suits suggested. “Zombie treadmills, circle hotshots, dynamite sprints, bombshells, horse races.”
“Yeah,” Kane agreed. “We can cut out all the breaks and do timed eliminations. Make everyone run all out until they drop. Maybe blindfolded. Lot of sweat. Big pileups on the curves. Kids dropping from exhaustion. That kind of heat usually pulls in the crowds.”
“Open those cauliflower ears of yours,” Pops said. “What am I telling you here? This ain’t usual. Making all the kids duck waddle or dance backward or stand on their frigging heads. Even freezing someone alive—none of the usual crapola is gonna cut it with these bloodsuckers. Salvy ain’t gonna be happy with a nice little boost in attendance. A few more bucks. Naw, he needs a gusher of dough. Or his picture in the papers so he’ll look good to Uncle Al, or it is over. Maybe I should just vanish.”
“And put us all out on the streets?” Suits whimpered. “Pops, this is Chicago. I can’t make it out there.”
I thought of all my patients turned out into the night. The vision chilled me.
Pops must have been having the same vision, because he swore, “No, goddammit. No. They can kill me first, but I will never leave my kids in the lurch like that.”
In Pops’s voice, I heard the same melodramatic quaver that Mamie had always used when she was trying to manipulate me into doing what she needed me to do. The thought that this whole scenario was being played out for my benefit occurred to me, but I couldn’t figure out why.
“So?” Kane asked. “What’s your plan?”
Pops snorted a dry, mirthless laugh. “You tell me, Kane, ’cause I am flat out of ideas.”
“Well,” Kane said. “There really is only one surefire, never-fail, crowd-pleaser showstopper.”
I tensed waiting to hear what this showstopper might be.
But Pops immediately vetoed it. “No dice, it’d be too expensive.”
“Not as expensive as a funeral,” Kane snapped back.
“Least not a good one,” Suits added.
“Funny,” Pops said. “You pair of jokers pick now to be funny for the first time in your lives.”
Kane said, “They’d never go along with it anyway.”
“At least, she wouldn’t,” Suits said.
I had a strong suspicion that “she” was me.
“Forget the showstopper,” Pops ruled. “We gotta work with what we have. Kane, you still know that photographer at the paper?”
“Skeezix?”
“Yeah. Rattle his chain. Get him in here tonight.”
“He already said he wouldn’t come unless we had something new for him.”
“Tell him we got a bit so new it hasn’t even opened its eyes yet.”
My skin prickled at this revelation, because I had the sneaking suspicion that Pop’s latest brainstorm involved me.
CHAPTER 40
I was too busy that day helping my patients deal with the aftereffects of a Hungarian goulash that hadn’t been entirely fresh to give any further thought to the promoter’s troubles or wonder what this “showstopper” Kane had referred to was. Or how it involved me.
A few minutes before my shift was up, in the middle of a dance period, Zave appeared.
“Are you sick?” I asked. “Need some Pepto-Bismol?”
“No, I’m fine,” he said, glancing around nervously. “Didn’t touch that stew, but I played like I had so I could warn you.”
“About what? The new scenario Pops is cooking up?”
“How do you know about it? Did Pops tell you?”
“Not exactly. What’s the bit?” I asked, surprised by how genuinely interested I was. “What’s Pops cast me as now?” I was enjoying the feeling of being in the know.
“I’m glad you’re not taking this seriously, because Pops now thinks the whole triangle deal would work better as a comedy bit. Here’s how it’s supposed to play. Cleo’s going to leave me again for the nephew. So I’ll be solo. Then I’m supposed to decide that the sweet Catholic schoolgirl is actually the one for me.”
“I’m not Catholic. Or sweet.”
Zave snorted a laugh at those irrelevant details. “So, once again, you come to my rescue. We dance and…” He dropped his gaze and studied his shoes.
“And?” I prompted after a long moment of silence.
Zave heaved a sigh. “And Pops thinks it’d be hilarious to let you stumble around while Alonzo makes wisecracks about you having two left feet.”
“And then what?” I demanded sharply.
“And then the idea is, you’re so humiliated, you leave. Hopefully, according to Pops’s plan, in tears. One way or another, I’m solo again. This time, right before I’m eliminated, it’s Cleo who comes to my rescue. The nephew, who’s in on the fix, flies into a jealous rage, jumps out of his box seat, and comes down to beat my ass. After that, who knows? All the nephew cares about is getting his picture in the papers. And all Pops cares about is making the nephew happy.”
“So the big showstopper is making a fool of me and getting me to quit?”
“Pretty much.”
Suddenly I felt like an intruder in the little infirmary I’d once thought of as mine, and I wondered how many more times in my life I’d be tossed out of a place where I believed I had belonged.
“Evie, don’t take it to heart,” Zave said. “Pops is desperate. Hell, we’re all desperate. But I can promise you one thing: I will never be desperate enough to do anything that might hurt Denny Devlin’s girl. You can bet your life on that, Evie. I will never hurt you.”
He paused to let that sink in, then continued in a rush, “Anyway, I had to tell you. I hope you don’t quit, but I wouldn’t blame you if you did. I mean, I know that you really are a dancer and I know why you don’t want to dance in front of an audience.”
“You know? About…?” My voice trailed off.
“Detroit? Yeah, there aren’t many secrets on the circuit. When I heard what Mamie made you—a child, Denny’s child, for God’s sake—do, I was furious. Wanted to come down there and give her a piece of my mind.”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “You know Mamie? I thought you said you didn’t know her.”
Zave looked away. “Let’s just say that your mother isn’t exactly my favorite topic of discussion. As for what happened in Detroit,” he continued, anger tightening his words, “I know why you feel the way you do about dancing. About calling attention to yourself. But believe me, Evie, you have no need to feel a speck of shame about that. Mamie’s the one who should be ashamed. She should have gone to jail.”
