“Whatchoo want from me? Is a war on, and is winter besides.”
“What can you do to make me look younger?”
“Take off my glasses.”
We started up again just as Jewell was painting her mouth. “They do that on purpose!” she shrieked, spitting out a mouthful of beauty. “And I’m trying to conserve the stuff.”
“Okay, people!”
Laszlo stepped into the car. Those of us who weren’t quite covered yet didn’t holler; Laszlo is management. He was concerned with quality control and felt he had to check to be sure we had our stockings painted all the way up, and on both legs, to say nothing of whether the seams were straight. The girls did this, too, but he pointed out that since he’d had experience in the publicity department, he was the expert. He lingered over Sissy’s stockings, which were distinctive. The whole business of painting in the seams entertained her so much that she always had Misty paint bunnies on as well. This was a complete waste of effort. They’d look at Sissy’s legs bunnies or no bunnies.
Once inspection was over, Laszlo straightened up, wiped his mouth off, and clapped his hands some more. “Okay, people! You know the drill, don’t you?”
We did, but the last person who’d said so had been sent home. “You two,” he explained, pointing at Olivia and Velvet. “Go out first, during the intro. Take Lorenzo with you.”
The rest of our cast had been loitering at the open door keeping an eye on Laszlo’s inspection, just to see if he needed assistance with the brain work. The old character objected, “I thought we agreed young Bevis would go out with the first assault.”
Bevis’s head came up. He obviously hadn’t been included in “we.”
Laszlo whirled. “What’re you doing in here? This is the women’s car. We’re going with the contrast: the elderly with the youngish. Then you...”
He pointed at Jewell, who shook her head. “I think I...”
“Don’t think,” he snapped. “It’s my job to do the thinking for this troupe. Your job is to stand against the doorway with your eyelids down and your tits up. Come on, people! We’ll never get the job done if you aren’t going to take direction! And if you can’t take direction, you’re in the wrong business. This is for Uncle Sam, people. Bevis comes in next, just ahead of Baby Eloise.” He gave The Child Star a warm smile before adding, “With you guys.”
Jewell glared at Sissy and me but had no time to snarl or froth at the mouth. Laszlo went on through the whole program, grabbing our shoulders and pushing us here and there in imitation of the program on the platform. He told us where to stand, how to stand, when to smile, and when to sing what, repeating all instructions several times, with little variations as these occurred to him.
His uncle actually let Laszlo direct a film once. He turned out to be bossy and incompetent, but in spite of that, Tiger Lady of Toongan lost money, and the experiment had not been repeated. He released his frustrations and unused talent for confusion by bossing the help. It didn’t really matter much what we did on the platform anyhow, so long as bonds got sold and the local Chamber of Commerce got its picture taken with us. Anything that went right Laszlo would take credit for, and any uncomfortable developments would give him something new to shout at us about.
He drilled the big names most, especially The Child Star and, because we’d be going out with her, Sissy and me. Jewell’s scowl deepened.
But when the train slowed, she wore a bright, cheerful smile. We all wore bright, cheerful smiles. You’d have thought we were escapees from the local smiling academy.
“Kindly get that elbow out of my midsection; I may wish to use it at dinner,” growled Edwin Lorenzo through his bright, cheerful smile as we crushed into the caboose, kicking furniture aside.
“Prices are supposed to be lower out here,” Olivia murmured to me past her bright, cheerful smile. “Think we’ll get time off to buy supplies?”
“Laszlo’s keeping a tight rein,” I told her through a bright, cheerful smile of my own. “He’s not going to allow us a break for recreational hoarding.”
As the train slowed still more, we could make out the sound of the French Willow band. We could also hear the weather that was waiting outside.
Jim sidled up to The Child Star in what he no doubt thought was a very private move. “Here,” he whispered, giving her a wink and something else as well.
“Oh,” she said, studying the weapon.
“It’s a slingshot,” he explained, holding up his hands to shield her from the view of any Nazi spies who happened to be standing in a direct line with his hands and the slingshot.
“Yes,” she agreed, voice and face equally lackluster. “I had one in Baby Eloise on Aloha Island. What do you want me to do with it?”
He was baffled for a second but remembered she was not in on his intelligence reports. “Just keep it till I get a picture. And these.” He handed her some small rocks.
Her forehead wrinkled a little, but she nodded. They’d taught her never to express an opinion or a preference. Slingshot and ammo were tucked away without comment.
But her eyes narrowed as we came to a halt and she saw the banners and crowds waiting out there. Red, white, and blue letters shouted, “Welcome, Baby Eloise!”
She sighed. “All those people think they love me. And they don’t know me at all.”
I hadn’t been meant to hear that. I gave her a squeeze on one shoulder. She winced and moved to her position in line. When I realized she thought I’d squeezed a bruise on purpose, to make her get ready, I had to take three deep breaths. And Laszlo thought this was for his benefit and patted me on the thigh.
The door opened, and we had a job to do. A blast of wind hit us, half ice and half cheers. We put our heads down and shoved out into it, like clockwork figures.
We started with songs from the last war — “Over There,” “Kit Bag,” “Tipperary” — working up, of course, to “We Did It Before and We Can Do It Again.” The crowd could sing along with those, drowning out the fact that very few of us had made it in musicals. They didn’t really care. Life was different out there; we were interrupted by cheers instead of by “Cut! Wrong again!”
They all looked just the same in every depot: the clubwomen, the kids with their autograph books, the old men in old uniforms. Gangling youths gangled on all sides, hoping to get close enough to say something to those of us who had been on magazine covers.
Most of them, though, were there for The Child Star. And she was suddenly there for them. Dimples had blossomed out of a desert. Her smile exposed glistening teeth to the sleet and screaming wind. And when her little fists prompted the crowd through “The Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming,” the wind was drowned out. She bounced, she danced, she spun. She spoke to them all at once, seeming to address each one personally, her hands behind her back and her knees bent over just ever so, lest someone notice that Baby Eloise was taller than she had been in 1938.
I had seen her do all this before. But there was more to it now. When General Lorenzo’s beleaguered battalion was rescued in that silly skit by Special Courier Bevis’s secret weapon (Baby Eloise leaping out of his knapsack to announce that the folks back home were buying lots of bonds, so everything would soon be peachy), my eyes picked up things they hadn’t before. There was the way Bevis held the knapsack. There was the way The Child Star adjusted her pose now and then when Bevis accidentally touched a bruise.
None of that was part of the show; these weren’t the kind of things the audience wanted in French Willow. We were allowed to let our eyes water when the wind hit them, especially during the mayor’s speech about our boys over there and our noble effort to drum up support. And when he helped dump out the fan mail that showed how much the people of French Willow and its environs appreciated our work, some of our squeals were real. He’d let some fall under the train; that was how many we’d have to replace before the next stop. Between the coal and the envelopes, I wondered whether the government was really coming out ahead on this trip. Even the stamps had to add up to something, if only three cents each.