Last Dance on the Starlight Pier, page 9
Sighing heavily, as though I’d snookered him into a bad bet, he glared my way and growled, “Okay, Florence Nightingale, if you’re really legit—”
“I am as legit as gravity, buster,” I snapped back. After three years of putting up with the Director’s torment, it felt great to stand up to a bully.
“Okay, here’s the scoop. I got a regular with a bum ankle. It’s not a setup. He is not trying to bring heat. He is—”
“Zave’s the star of the show,” Suits put in. “Our golden boy. Dames love him.”
“And,” Wyatt continued, “aside from a few bums looking for a place to flop, our daytime crowd is nothing but dames. Housewives, mostly. Come evening, when the mamas go home to make dinner, we get the working crowd. Secretaries, waitresses, busboys, soda jerks. The guys hoping someone will get in a fight with one of the floor judges. The dames, they all come for Zave.”
“In short,” I cut in, “you need someone with actual medical expertise to save your star.”
“You’re a mouthy broad,” Wyatt observed.
Suits, still watching the clock said, “Pops, we’re running out of time.”
“All right. All right. Jeez, you sure ain’t what I would’ve ordered from Central Casting, but if you can get Zave back on the floor, the job is yours.”
“Uh-uh,” I objected. Knowing I had Wyatt over a barrel, I said, “Not until you square up with Mr. Bennett.”
“Oh for crying in a bucket,” Wyatt hurled back. “Now you’re puttin’ the squeeze on me too?”
“Pops,” Suits implored, holding his watch up to show the seconds ticking away.
Exhaling like a leaking tire, Wyatt pulled out a money clip, peeled off some bills, and flung them at Jake with the order, “Pay off the boys in blue and keep the damn lights on.”
Jake snatched up the money, then tipped his chin toward the big clock: the seconds were ticking away.
I straightened my uniform and, more for Wyatt and Kane’s benefit than Jake’s, I told him, “See you soon. I’m going to go get that job.”
I ran back out.
I was going to get that job.
CHAPTER 19
The PA system crackled to life and Alonzo announced breathlessly, “Folks, Pops has just given me the good news that real help has arrived for our Handsome Hoofer!”
A chorus of female shrieks interrupted the emcee.
Heads swiveled in my direction as I rushed across the brightly polished floor.
Agnes glowered as I approached.
Alonzo continued mouthing the lines Wyatt fed him. “Pops Wyatt spares no expense in providing the best of medical care for his kids. And that is why he has brought in a highly trained specialist, Nurse Evie Grace, to take over for Agnes.”
Agnes reacted with shocked anger to the surprise announcement.
“So let’s give a big hand and a heartfelt farewell to Agnes for all her great work.”
For a moment, the burly fake nurse attempted to resist the three trainers who closed in to “escort” her off the floor. After a futile struggle, and lots of cursing, most of it directed at me, they wrangled her out the swinging doors.
“Can our highly trained specialist work a miracle?” Alonzo asked. Every eye in the house was fixed on me. “Let’s watch Nurse Evie Grace perform her magic.”
With the entire audience tracking my every move, I approached the fellow in the third cot, this so-called star Zave, who still had his back to me. I recalled Sister T’s lectures on how important it was to make a good first impression.
“Confidence in the healer,” my favorite instructor had taught us, “is the essential first step in healing.”
With as much authority as I could muster, I asked my newest patient, “May I examine your ankle?”
Zave propped himself up on an elbow and glanced over his shoulder at me.
He had what Mamie always said was the basic ingredient of It. “A memorable appearance. Either memorably different or memorably good,” she’d stipulated. I wouldn’t say that Zave was classically good-looking, but he was striking in a memorable way. Tall and lean with broad shoulders, expressive eyes, and a world-class smile. Though the parts were all fairly unremarkable on their own, somehow they fit together in a remarkable way. Even wracked with pain, he was, unequivocally, a star.
“Let’s just have a look first, shall we?” I asked gently. After Agnes’s “care” he was justifiably skeptical.
“You’re the boss,” he hissed through a tight smile, playing to the gaggle of twittering girls massed at the edge of the floor. Though I knew the effort cost him, he joked loudly, “Just wrap it up to go, Nurse.”
He shot the girls a cocky grin and a wink and they dissolved into squeals.
As carefully as I could, I slipped off his shoe and sock and pushed up the leg of his trouser. The crowd gasped. Zave’s ankle resembled a blue-and-purple python. His ankle and foot were swollen so badly that they made his toes appear dwarfed and stubby next to the distended flesh above them.
“It looks a lot worse than it is,” Zave assured his distraught fans. The effort of his charade of nonchalance exacted a toll. Sweat sheeted his face and the color continued to drain until it approached an alarming pallor dangerously close to the grayish white of a patient going into shock. His eyelids drooped. I checked his pupils: they were suspiciously shrunken.
“How’s our boy doing?”
I started at Pops’s booming question. Standing right behind me, he asked, “You out of Ace bandages? ’Cause our star needs to be out on that floor in…” He checked the clock. “Seven minutes and thirty seconds. That’s when this break is over, and if he’s not dancing by then, the judges will have to eliminate him.”
With all the urgent authority I could muster, I said, “This man cannot put any weight on that foot. Not in eight minutes. Not in eight hours. If you’re lucky and the injury is treated correctly, my patient might be back on his feet in eight days.”
“Look, sister,” Wyatt said. “He isn’t your patient because you’re not my nurse. The deal is, you’re not anybody’s nurse unless you get Zave on his feet and dancing or hobbling or whatever. Cleo can carry him for a few periods.”
I assumed Cleo was his partner, still resting in the girls’ quarters until the break ended.
Zave struggled to prop himself up on his elbow. “Sure,” he agreed. “Cleo and I have done it before. She’ll carry me and I’ll hardly have to put any weight on it. Tell Suits that I need another jolt of happy juice. Suits?” he asked, glancing around. “Where’s Suits?”
“No,” I stated firmly. “You already have way too much juice in your system.”
Blinking as though he’d just noticed me, Zave asked, “And who are you again?”
“I’m your nurse and I’m telling you that you cannot go on dulling the pain enough to dance. You have to stay off that ankle. End of discussion. Period.”
“Period?” he repeated, smiling. The no-nonsense manner that I’d used to quell the veterans of the Great War on my rotation through what we called the “mustard-gas ward” merely amused him.
And then he told me something that no one had told me since I was four years old. “Nurse Evie, you’re cute. Help me up. Cleo’ll be back soon. I gotta get on the floor.”
“You can’t,” I argued, even as he levered himself into a sitting position.
Suits jumped forward, ready to help him to his feet.
“Stop,” I ordered. “Just hold it right there. If you’re determined to do this…”
My voice trailed off and, pointing at the soda vendor, I hollered at a couple of trainers, “Bring that tub of ice over here.”
The trainers hesitated, until I barked “Now!” They snapped to then, and, with the vendor’s help, fetched the sloshing tub. I cradled Zave’s swollen foot and guided it toward the tub. His eyes popped wide open and he sucked in air through his clenched back teeth when I plunged his foot into the freezing water.
“I’m sorry,” I said, impressed that he was able to hide what had to be agonizing pain and keep on smiling, even if it was through gritted teeth. “This isn’t how I’d choose to treat you, but if you’re determined to continue, we have to get the swelling down so that I can wrap your injury properly.”
“No problem, Nurse,” Zave said. “Frozen solid beats throbbing any day. Ain’t that right?” he called up to his concerned fans. “Can’t feel a thing. Ready to dance all night.”
The girls cheered.
Wyatt, one eye on the clock, the other on me as I knelt beside the tub, carefully monitoring Zave’s ankle, called out, “You got two and a half minutes, Nurse. Start wrapping him up.”
“The swelling hasn’t gone down enough.”
“Yeah, well, he’ll have plenty of time for that when he’s sleeping on a park bench after he gets eliminated. Him along with all my other horses who’ll be living on the street when the show closes. Because of you.”
As dumb and unfounded as that pronouncement was, the responsibility for all the regulars’ shaky futures still suddenly landed squarely on my shoulders. As carefully as I could, I lifted Zave’s dripping foot from the freezing water.
“How’s it look?” Zave asked.
“Better,” I answered. “But can you stand another minute in the ice water?”
“Nurse, I grew up on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. This feels like bathwater to me.” He plunged his foot back in.
Onstage, Alonzo hoisted up a bell, rang it, and announced, “All right, folks, there it is, your two-minute warning. Our trainers are rushing into the locker rooms right now to wake up those sleepy kids, tie on their shoes, and get them back on the floor before I have to sound the elimination siren at nine o’clock. You all know the rules; any contestant who is not on the floor, dancing with his or her partner when that siren goes off, will be eliminated.”
“Wrap it,” Wyatt ordered.
“One more minute,” I begged.
“You got no more minutes,” the promoter rasped. “Get my boy back on that floor or you’re fired.”
“As you already pointed out, Mr. Wyatt, I don’t work for you,” I answered. “And this man’s health is my responsibility.”
Zave put his hand on my shoulder and whispered, “Thanks for looking out for me, Nurse. But, seriously, I am so blotto, I won’t feel a thing.”
“That’s what I’m worried about. You could end up with a permanent injury.”
“Ninety seconds left,” Alonzo called out. “And, oh-oh, folks, there he is. You know him, you hate him, His Obnoxiousness, the meanest judge in the business, a man so heartless he makes Herbert Hoover—”
A cascade of boos for the president who refused to help starving citizens interrupted the emcee.
“—look like a sweetheart of a fellow. I give you our own head judge, making his first appearance tonight. Say hello to ‘King Kong’ Kane.”
It was the bank vault from Pops’s office. The boos rose to a crescendo when Kane stomped to the center of the floor holding a steel yardstick that he flicked about like a riding crop.
The doors swung open and the contestants shuffled in. The guys were bleary-eyed and rumpled, their hair sticking out every which way. The girls hid their exhaustion better, with fresh makeup, neatly combed hair, and big smiles. A couple of trainers dragged in a lanky guy I recognized as the wise guy, Patsy. He remained fast asleep even as the trainers put him on his feet and dumped him into the arms of his mousy partner, who, though wobbling beneath his weight, somehow managed to hold him upright.
All the other pros—Minnie and DeWitt, Ace and Lily, Gerta and Fritz—no matter how played out they were, brightened the instant they stepped in front of the audience. But no one outshone the last contestant to appear on the floor. She was a Kewpie doll of a girl with a headful of peroxided curls and the face of a shopworn angel. She strutted in with hands held high, grinning into the blazing overhead lights, waving for all she was worth.
“And here she is,” Alonzo announced. “Zave’s partner, our very own Cleo.” The applause thundered as she beelined straight over to Zave, who still had his foot in the icy water.
Kane made a theatrical show of counting the dancers on the floor. Scowling with fiendish glee and rubbing his hands like the villain in a melodrama, he pantomimed that there were only seventeen couples.
“Oh no, folks,” Alonzo warned. “King Kong is on the warpath now. We’re missing one couple and we’ve only got seventy seconds left on the clock. His Obnoxiousness just can’t wait to eliminate the latecomers. Who’s missing?”
The crowd screamed as one, “Zave.” Feet stomped on bleachers in time with the chant, “Zave! Zave! Save Zave!”
“Less than one minute. Will our sweethearts make it back onto the floor?”
“Can you get it wrapped in under a minute?” Zave asked, pulling his foot from the water.
“Just watch me,” I answered, already drying his foot. I’d wrapped enough ankles during three seasons of South Texas football that I could do it blindfolded. Which was good since Kane was now breathing down my neck and yelling that time was running out.
The crowd booed the floor judge’s attempt to rattle me.
“You all know how much King Kong hates what he calls the Pretty Boy,” Alonzo said. “He is dying to eliminate Zave. Can our Angel of Mercy work fast enough to save him? Can she save Zave?”
The chant started up again.
“Save Zave! Save Zave!”
Working swiftly, I took two wraps to secure the bandage, and then started figure-eighting up Zave’s ankle. I was just about to secure the clasps when Kane purposely bumped into me and the remaining bandage rolled free.
The crowd groaned.
I snatched the roll up before much could spiral loose.
“Oh no,” Alonzo moaned. “We are running out of time.” He stood and put his hand on the crank handle of the siren.
“Get a move on,” Cleo commanded.
“We gonna make it?” Zave asked with an offhanded bravado I had to admire.
“You can bet on it,” I assured him as, keeping the bandage smooth and just taut enough to maintain a solid pressure, but not enough to impede circulation, I twirled the rest of the wrap on. I scrambled to hook the two silver clips on to hold the stretchy bandage in place and was attaching the last one when Alonzo started cranking the handle hard as a German butcher grinding sausage. The siren shrieked. Cleo grabbed Zave and hauled him up as I shoved his shoe back onto his foot. At the exact instant that the siren fell silent, Zave was officially on his feet.
Kane growled with frustrated rage.
With Cleo bearing much of his weight, she and Zave joined the dancers rotating around the floor. After a couple of sedate orbits, Zave did something that, given the state of his ankle, bordered on the miraculous. He actually danced.
Knowing the pain he was in, I wouldn’t have believed the transformation if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. He straightened his spine, lifted his shoulders up and back, snapped to attention, twirled Cleo out, and rock-stepped her back into place.
Zave was a good dancer. An exceptionally good dancer.
An eerie sense of déjà vu swept over me when Zave lifted his head with a triumphant smile and the spotlight bathed him in its adoring glow. He was suddenly so familiar that I wracked my brain trying to remember when I’d seen him before, because I was absolutely certain that I had.
“Our nurse has done it,” Alonzo exulted. “Nurse Evie has saved Zave.”
The audience burst into applause and began shouting, “Nurse Evie! Nurse Evie!” and I was thrust back into the thing I’d despised since Detroit: the full glare of an audience’s attention.
Once again I was the Pint-Sized Pavlova and I had pleased the frightening creature that was an audience. The long-dormant performer’s instincts that Mamie had beaten into me awoke and I gave the crowd what they were calling for. With Zave directing the applause my way, I grinned. I waved. I took a bow. I didn’t know if I was falling back into a dream or a nightmare when Wyatt yelled out over the din, “Come on back to the office. Oh, and one other thing.”
“What?” I yelled back.
“Call me Pops.”
CHAPTER 20
“We put on twelve feeds a day for the dancers,” Pops, sitting now behind Jake’s desk, instructed me. “Three meals and snacks. Staff only gets fed three times. You choose when. Smart ones pick the big feeds. Pays four bits a day. No laundry included.”
“Fifty cents?” I balked. “No dice. You said the pay was seventy-five cents. I need at least a buck a day, or I walk.”
“A dollar a day? Hasn’t anybody told you there’s a Depression on? I’ll go seventy-five cents and you’re robbing me. We’ll talk raise if you keep Zave on his feet. You start as soon as Suits shows you around. Suits, show the greenhorn around.”
“This civilian?” Suits sneered, jerking a thumb in my direction. “Where do I start? Telling her what a two-a-day is?”
“Don’t bother,” I said. “Last few years I worked the vaud circuit I was doing five-a-days.”
To their skeptical stares, I affirmed, “That’s right, houses we played, they turned the audience over five, six times a day. And there were some mighty hard days when I worked every single scene switch.”
For one second, neither of the men spoke, then, disbelieving, Pops asked, “You saying you came out of vaud?”
“Born in a trunk.”
Eyes narrowing, he asked, “What’s your last name?”
“Devlin.”
“I thought so,” Pops burst out, slamming his palms down on the desk. His expression shifted from that of a chiseler always looking to get the jump to an unabashed fan as he waved at my face and asked Suits, “See the resemblance?”
“To what?”
“Denny Devlin, greatest hoofer ever lived, you moron. That’s right, isn’t it?” he asked me. “You’re Dandy Denny Devlin’s kid?”
I nodded.
“Well, for crying out loud,” Pops exploded. “Why in Sam Hill didn’t you say so in the first place? Suits, she’s genuine vaud. In his prime, Denny made Astaire look like a lummox. Christ on a cracker, kid, this is gonna be old home week for you. Half my regulars come out of vaudeville.”
