Strings Attached

  I’d hardly started working there, and already I wanted to shake up the joint. I wanted control of just one small thing.

  I ducked into a barbershop nearby, a place I knew from Shirley, who had endlessly debated whether she should get the short haircut we were beginning to see on the fashionable girls, the ones who wore cropped black pants and ballet slippers with their fur coats, and sunglasses even in November.

  When I walked out, I had a haircut like a boy, just wisps around my face, and the cold wind on the back of my neck felt like freedom.

  I slammed through my front door two hours later, pirouetted through the hall, and leaped onto the couch. I bounced three times and then fell on my rear like a kid.

  My first callback. And not on a turkey like That Girl From Scranton! But for a real show, A Year of Junes, with a famous director, an up-and-coming choreographer, and real Broadway stars in the cast.

  I’d run almost all the way home. But I’d made sure to stop to buy a postcard of Times Square and a stamp. I’d scrawled White mink and diamonds! on the back, and addressed it to the Florence Foster Studio of Dance.

  In a few weeks, I could have a part. I could quit the Lido and get away from Nate. I had been there almost three weeks already; I’d have almost three hundred dollars. That was walking-away money. Maybe I could really start again.

  With a glance at the clock, I ran for my bedroom. I couldn’t show up at work in dungarees. I was pulling on a dress when the phone rang. I ran for it, hoping it was Billy.

  “Good, you didn’t leave yet.”

  Nate. I sank to the floor, cradling the receiver against my ear as I pulled on my stockings. “I’m late.”

  “I want you to do something for me. Just a little thing.”

  “It’s always a little thing.”

  There was a pause, and I knew I’d annoyed him. “I can’t get to the club tonight. I want you to tell me if Ray Mirto is there. You remember him?”

  “The guy in the red tie.”

  “Just give me a call at midnight. You have a pencil? I’ll give you the number.”

  I wrote down the number. It was a New York exchange, so Nate was in town. “Why do you want to know?”

  “No big reason. I just want to know if he’s around, that’s all. It will help me out. See who he talks to, if you can. If he’s drinking.”

  “What am I, your snitch?”

  “Don’t be crazy. It’s just a favor. Come on, you can’t say you don’t owe me a few.”

  No, I couldn’t say that. That was the problem with this apartment, with these clothes. With the job. With everything. He had me boxed in, and I hadn’t even seen it coming.

  “All right,” I said, and put down the phone.

  “You cut your hair.” Ted Roper put his hands on his narrow hips.

  “We all think it’s darling,” Polly said.

  Mickey broke in. “Honey, it suits you.”

  “I’m not talking to you,” Ted said to the girls, and they all turned and pretended to powder their faces or reach for a cup of coffee.

  He turned back to me. “You’re a Lido Doll. You wear an upsweep. That’s your look. You don’t go cutting your hair without talking to me!”

  “I didn’t know,” I lied. “It was just an impulse. I’m sorry.”

  He nodded slowly, staring at me, as though he was trying to figure me out. “You know, I can fire you.”

  “I know,” I said. I kept my gaze down.

  “Aw, c’mon, Ted,” Mickey said. “We’re not Fords on an assembly line.”

  “Yeah,” Darla said. “Why can’t the kid cut her hair if she wants?”

  He put up his hands. “No ganging up on the boss.” I was off the hook.

  “So what are you waiting for? Get into your costume,” he said. “Full house tonight! They’re carrying in the tables to the front, so watch your step, we’ve got a whole lot less floor out there.”

  It was a packed house. We could hear the noise as we gathered our skirts and headed for the wings.

  Darla fluffed out my skirt for me as we waited for our cue. “So what did he think?”

  “What did who think?”

  “Mr. Benedict. About your hair.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at her, puzzled. Why should Nate have any say-so about my hair? “He hasn’t seen it yet.”

  The band had swung into our cue, and I heard our introduction from Danny, the announcer — Ladies and gentlemen, the Lido Dolls go to Mardi Gras! — and I stepped out into the lights.

  I knew the routine so well now that it was easy to scan the audience and not miss a step. I didn’t see Ray Mirto. The first show was usually full of couples, wives and husbands, young people out on dates, tourists.

  It wasn’t until the second show that I spotted him at one of the tables that had been added as the crowd grew, right on the dance floor. He was with a woman this time, and another one of the men from the night before.

  I would call Nate later, between shows. I would do this favor because I owed him. But I would get to a place where there were no more favors, I vowed, only the ones I wanted to give.

  It was easy to say that while I was dancing, while I was joking with the girls over cups of coffee and plates of food, but when midnight came I had to run to the phone, the one in the hallway where the girls passed back and forth during the break. I dialed the number I’d memorized. Nate picked up on the first ring.

  “He’s here,” I said. “With a date and one of those guys from the other night.”

  “Joe Adonis?”

  “No, the giant one.”

  “Is he drunk?”

  “How am I supposed to know?”

  “Tell me if he’s still there at closing.”

  “You mean I have to call again tonight?”

  “Just a quick one.”

  I waited and he waited. I didn’t want to call again. I didn’t want to be on the end of this string, jerked whenever he raised a hand.

  “Just do it,” he said, and hung up.

  I was still feeling shaky when I hit the street at three a.m. I’d made the call and told Nate that Ray Mirto was heading up to the lounge. I felt dirty, like I was some kind of spy. I was a spy, but it was for a side I didn’t believe in, in a war I didn’t understand.

  Hank was waiting outside the back door. I was never so relieved to see anyone in my life. Hank with his open face, his open life. He wasn’t buried in secrets. He wasn’t tied up in lies. I didn’t deserve his friendship, but I wanted it. I wanted somebody to look at me like he did, like I was good.

  “You look kind of shook,” he said. “Everything okay?”

  “Fine. Just a long night.” I swung into step next to him.

  We didn’t say anything for a few minutes. “You know,” Hank said, “when I was a kid and I had a lousy day and didn’t want to talk or anything, my mom had this routine. I’d have to come up with one thing — just one thing that had made me happy that day. Like, I had pudding with lunch. Or I rattled a stick along a gate on the way home from school. Anything, no matter how little.”

  We took a few more steps. “Actually, something good did happen to me today,” I said. “I got a callback.”

  “Great! You see?”

  We walked a few more steps. “What’s a callback?” Hank asked, and we laughed a little.

  “I went on an audition, and I made the cut. I’m one of three girls up for a part in a new musical. A small part. But it’s good! It’s called A Year of Junes. I get one whole song, and a dance with the lead. And this choreographer, it’s his first show, his name is Tom Cullen — but he’s been doing work in Hollywood, and he’s the next Jack Cole, that’s what everyone says.” As I told Hank the news, I started to get excited again.

  “Jack Cole.”

  “He’s a famous choreographer. But this guy today — you can’t imagine how he makes me move — it’s a whole different extension. You should see what I had to do with my hands! Like this.” I bent my wrists, thrust out a hip, and did a sl
ow slide step. “Hardest audition, I had to changement, changement, aire plié…” I burst out laughing at Hank’s expression.

  “Yeah, I do that every morning when I brush my teeth,” Hank said. “And you cut your hair, too. I like it. It suits you.”

  “Thanks.”

  We were crossing Third Avenue, and a train roared overhead. Hank waited until it was gone. “Okay, we need to celebrate.”

  “But I didn’t get the part yet.”

  “Callbacks deserve celebration, don’t they? Let’s go ice-skating at Rockefeller Center on Monday — after school. You have time, don’t you?”

  “Sure. But I don’t have skates. And… I can’t skate.”

  “Don’t they have ice in Rhode Island?”

  “Sure.” But we never had money for skates.

  “You can pick it up in two seconds. And you can borrow my mom’s skates, or we can rent a pair. Say yes,” Hank urged. “You need a day off, don’t you?”

  A day off from everything. The breeze quickened, and for the first time, I smelled snow in the air. It was almost Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving meant Billy. All of that was ahead, but right now I could take a few hours and learn to skate.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Fourteen

  New York City

  November 1950

  On Monday afternoon I met Hank in the lobby and we took the stairs down to the basement of the building. I stepped into a big room with a painted concrete floor. I followed him past the washing machines and into another room of storage areas separated by chain-link fences. Each apartment had its own space.

  Hank went to the storage unit for 2A. He fitted a key into a padlock on one of the doors and pushed it open. Inside were cardboard boxes, a bicycle, and an overturned chair with stuffing popping out of the seat. The skates were balanced on top of a cardboard box.

  “This is where we come when they drop the Bomb, I guess,” he said. “We’re supposed to duck and cover with the baby carriages and the bicycles.”

  “Hey, don’t forget ice skates and catcher’s mitts.”

  He picked up skates. “Will these fit?”

  He waited while I tried them on. I wouldn’t call Hank’s mother and me a perfect fit, but her skates would do.

  We took the crosstown bus to Rockefeller Center. Hank bought tickets and we laced up our skates. Hank took off quickly, and I stepped cautiously out on the ice. It looked so easy, but as soon as my feet hit the ice they slid out from underneath me and I fell backward with a whoop.

  Hank circled and skated back to me. “Oh. You really don’t know.”

  “You think I was lying?” I shook my head, laughing.

  He held out his gloved hand, and I placed mine in it. “Come on, I’ll hold you up.”

  We made a slow circuit of the rink. After a few turns I understood the rhythm of the motion, how to push off, how to glide instead of taking staccato steps. I let go of Hank’s hand.

  We went round and round, not talking, smiling at everything and nothing — the little girl in the plaid coat, the older couple holding hands in their thick gloves. The music was playing, and people were laughing, and it seemed as though that golden Greek god posing so magnificently behind us was the still center of a quickly spinning world.

  “I hope you get the part,” Hank said. “You were right — I am falling asleep in Science class.”

  I laughed, and I heard it ring out into the cold air, a crack of happiness. I felt at that moment that things were just about to change. I’d get the part, I’d find another place to live. I would be free of all debts.

  I tilted my head back as we skated, looking at all the people lining the railing looking down at us, no doubt wishing they were skating, too.

  A soldier leaned against the railing. He had a camera in front of his face and he was aiming it at the rink. It looked like he was aiming it at me.

  The toe of my skate locked in the ice, pitching me forward. Hank saved me from falling. When I looked back up at the railing, the soldier was gone. Could it have been Billy? That would be crazy — how could he find me in the middle of Manhattan?

  “Tired?” Hank asked, and I nodded. “It’s not too late; we could get a hot chocolate.”

  But I wasn’t feeling carefree anymore. My mind couldn’t hold the blue sky, the sound of the blades against the ice, the pleasure of my body moving in a new way. My heart had seized up like an engine, just because I’d glimpsed, for one second, someone who looked like Billy. “I can’t. This has been lovely, Hank, really, but — I really have to go.”

  We skated off the rink, bumping onto the rubber matting. Hank awkwardly made his way on his skates inside to retrieve our shoes, and I sank onto a bench. I tore off my gloves with my teeth and went to work on my laces.

  “Need some help?”

  I looked up and there he was. All my breath went out in a rush. He seemed so much older in his uniform, with his new short haircut.

  “How did you find me? When did you get here?” I tried to stand, awkwardly, with one skate unlaced, and I had to grab both of his hands to stay upright. Skin against skin, the hard feel of his cold fingers, the look of his mouth — it all sent a charge through my body, and it was all I could do not to throw my arms around him. I wanted to — why didn’t I?

  His face changed a bit. I saw how he’d hoped that I would, but he wouldn’t push me. We were somewhere between sweethearts and friends now. “I went by your place, and you weren’t home, so I waited for a while. I saw your upstairs neighbor and she told me where to find you. You cut your hair.”

  “I just did it. You don’t like it.”

  “Your beautiful hair. I almost didn’t recognize you.”

  “It’s still me,” I said.

  “Kit, I have your shoes.”

  Hank. I had forgotten Hank.

  I twisted, almost losing my balance again. Billy dropped one hand and put his arm around me to steady me, then kept it there.

  In all my imagined meetings with Billy, I had never imagined being this unprepared.

  “Billy, this is my neighbor, Hank. Hank, this is Billy. Someone from home.” I babbled out the introduction. I didn’t say boyfriend because he wasn’t anymore. I wasn’t sure what he was.

  “Glad to meet you,” Hank said.

  “I think I can handle it from here,” Billy replied, taking my shoes from Hank. “Nice meeting you.”

  His voice was cordial but I could see how flattened Hank was.

  “Billy,” I said. “Hank and I came together. We can all walk back together.”

  “Sure, let’s do that,” Billy said. He knelt down to take off my skates. He lifted out my foot and cradled it in his lap. Hank stared down at Billy’s hand on my foot.

  “No, I — I have someplace to go first,” Hank said. “An errand. I forgot. I’ll see you later, Kit.” Hank took his mother’s skates and swiftly knotted them together and slung them over his other shoulder. “Bye.” He turned abruptly and threaded through the crowd, the skates bumping hard against his back.

  “Sorry about that,” Billy said. “He seems like a nice kid, but after all, I’ve traveled on a bus for a million hours to spend time with you.”

  When I stood up, my steps were uncertain, as though I were wearing lifts in my shoes. I could feel the air between the soles of my feet and the ground. It was like something important had altered, like gravity, or the air itself.

  Fifteen

  New York City

  November 1950

  The apartment was dim and chilly. I hadn’t pulled the shades open yet in the living room. I quickly crossed to them, and the even gray light of late afternoon flooded in.

  Billy stood in the doorway to the living room, his cap in his hands. He turned it over and over while he looked around.

  This was it, the moment I’d dreamed of, and I couldn’t seem to move. He was looking at our apartment, the one we’d live in together, only I couldn’t tell him that. I couldn’t tell him that this could be our future, if only we
could say the right words, get back what we had.

  All I knew, standing there, looking across the room at his uncertain face, was that I still loved him. It had been crazy to think that I didn’t. I had run here to New York not just because I was furious at my father. I had run here because I couldn’t imagine being in Providence without Billy.

  Billy’s tie was crooked, and I wanted to straighten it. All those things I could do once, I couldn’t do now. That simple gesture, of straightening his tie, looking up at him, and he would look down and kiss me. Did I have a right to those familiar gestures?

  He cleared his throat. “It’s nice. I didn’t realize you could get such nice places in New York.”

  “I make a pretty good salary at the Lido,” I said. We were talking like strangers. In my head, a counter was whirring. Counting up the lies. “It’s not the Riverbank.”

  At the mention of my old job, he blushed, and I realized that I’d made a mistake. I shouldn’t have brought up something that would remind us of that night. I quickly tossed my coat on the couch. “Should I make coffee?”

  “You drink coffee now? You never drank coffee.”

  “I’m a New Yorker now,” I said. “At least, I’m trying to be. Everybody drinks coffee, not tea. And you can get a bag of chestnuts for lunch and just walk in the park. I’m trying to get up the nerve to go into the jazz clubs in the Village. Maybe we could do that? While you’re here. How long are you here?”

  The question escaped before I knew it. Because what I was really asking was, When do I have to start dreading when you’ll go?

  “I have two weeks,” he said. “But I guess I have to go see my parents. I haven’t really been in touch.”

  I crossed to him and took his cap. Our fingers tangled and he held on.

  “Kit. You don’t know how good it is to see you.”

  “What happens after two weeks?” This was the answer that would hurt, that would take my breath away. “Are you being shipped out?”