“THE SHOW WAS FUNNY,” Mary acknowledged on the train that Friday. “You were funny.” Her smile turned downward as it had in her young womanhood — but it was a smile; it was.
Teddie, sitting, looked away when they came, and banged her forehead against the hip of an attendant. After a while she stopped banging. The weather was mild for January; they sat on metal chairs in the brown garden. The paint on his chair was chipping. At these prices, you’d think … It was better not to think.
YOU KNOW SOMETHING? He depends on you! Maybe you depend on each other.
And maybe she too endured a mutual dependence, a marriage of convenience, a spousal alliance like his with Happy. Poor Happy — overbearing mother, two greedy ex-wives, years on the circuit, years in radio, and then, at last, seized by the new men of the New Medium.
Joss was doing third lead in a musical at that time, playing a father-in-law. The thing was holding on. Demobilized servicemen liked it. People were traveling again: out-of-towners liked it. It gave him a chance to hoof a little.
Happy called him. “The Happy Bloom Hour needs you!”
“My face on a screen?” Joss said. “I can’t see that. I was a flop in Movieland …”
“It’s not the same, kid. This screen is just a postcard. People aren’t looking for handsome on it. They’re looking for uncular.”
“What?”
“Like an uncle,” screamed Happy.
“Avuncular.”
“Sure, what you say. That turkey you’re in, Joss … how long can it last? Television: it’ll be forever. Us together.” Joss said he’d think about it. “Yeah, think. I’ve got your shtick worked out already. You’ll be mute, won’t even have to smile.”
Once, early days, they had a near disaster on camera. A guest came on drunk; he flubbed, froze, fell over the cables, passed out. And one of the girls had a hemorrhage backstage and was rushed to the hospital. The props were in the wrong places because they had not yet found the Brigadier. They had to improvise an entire number. Happy wriggled into his tuxedo and pulled on a pageboy wig, blond. Joss grabbed a tweed jacket from the assistant producer. He came on slowly, the love-struck, ruined professor. He sat down heavily at the stage upright piano and played “Falling in Love Again.” The orchestra kept still. Happy leaned against the piano and sang the song with a Marlene Dietrich accent, nice, Ws and Rs pursed just as Joss would have done them, corners of the mouth compressed. The wheeled camera came close and Joss saw that it was focusing on his own face and he squeezed out some water. The papers made a lot of them that week, Mr. Bloom and Mr. Hoyle, bringing sensitivity to burlesque, melding tragedy with comedy, mixing tears and laughter, all that stuff.
Dear Mr. Hoyle,
What an article, that one in the Post, telling secrets, all about Happy Bloom’s writers, and the people who have quit, and the ones who have stayed. And the rehearsals in the Hotel Pamona. Fans will be hanging around the Pamona all day now, won’t they?
The rehearsal site had been known for months. Fans already hung around. But unwigged and un-made-up and bespectacled, Happy Bloom was as anonymous in a New York hotel as he was in his Brooklyn house of worship. At five o’clock he whisked unnoticed through the side door, a revolving one.
I myself will be in the lobby of the Pamona next Monday, April 13th, at noon.
The Lady in Green
ON SATURDAY:
“Lunch? Monday? Out?” screamed Happy.
“Can’t be helped,” Joss said. “You fellows work on the patter number — I’m not in it.”
And then Happy, in one of his turnarounds, said, “My dentist is threatening me like the gestapo, all my gums are falling out. Okay, everybody goes out to lunch on Monday. Paolo will kill himself when he doesn’t find us. Don’t bother to come back until Tuesday morning. My dentist will bless you, Hoyle … But we start at eight on Monday, not nine,” he yelled.
Monday they did start at eight, and at quarter of twelve the gang skedaddled, kids on holiday. Only Joss was left.
He straightened his tie and adjusted his blazer in front of the big mirror. First position, second, third … He grasped the barre and raised his right leg, high. It might be a good bit: mournful male balletomane. Would it be funnier in whiteface? Suppose he played a bum trying to play Ghiselle? A church bell rang. He was so sallow. Still on one foot, he let go of the barre and pinched his cheeks; he had seen Mary do that twenty years ago. He resumed his normal stance, left the room, shut the door and locked it.
He rode the elevator to the lobby.
The elevator doors parted. He stepped out.
On a chair beside a palm, facing not the elevators but the registration desk, sat a female in glasses. The forest green of her jacket and pleated skirt hinted more at uniform than suit. Her legs were bare. Her ankles were warmed by bobby socks. She looked about fourteen years old.
Joss walked slowly forward. She had a bony nose with a little bump. Her dark hair was curly and thin. She was probably Jewish or one of those hybrids. He looked at the feet again. One laced shoe had a thickened sole and heel.
Her age had angered him, and now her defect turned anger into fury. It was a familiar tumble. Whenever one of his brothers showed up at the door — just a loan, Joss, something to tide me over — he was only vexed. But: I have kids, Joss — when he heard that he wanted to kill the jerk, and then he wanted the jerk to kill him.
He paused, waiting for his rage to peak and subside. Meanwhile the girl took off her glasses. He walked forward again. He slipped behind her chair and placed his hands over her eyes. Unstartled — she had perhaps sensed his approach — she placed her hands over his. For a few moments they maintained this playful pose. Then he slid his avuncular hands from beneath hers. He glided around to the front of the chair and stood looking down at his correspondent.
“I am Jocelyn Hoyle,” he said.
“I am Mamie Winn.” Her gaze didn’t falter. Her small round eyes were a flat brown. She put on her glasses again.
“You haven’t had lunch, I hope,” he said. “Tell me you haven’t had lunch.”
“OTTO BELIEVES that young people should be introduced to alcohol early,” Mamie said to Joss across the booth, and then she said to the waiter who was inquiring about drinks, “Kir, please.”
“What?”
“White wine with a splash of cassis.”
“Forget the cassis, Mamie,” Joss said. “Draft for me,” he said to the waiter. Perhaps Cassidy’s had been a mistake. He wondered if he could be arrested for plying a minor. He didn’t know her age exactly; that would be his defense. He did know she was in tenth grade, the prosecution would point out. The waiter served the drinks.
“Otto?” Joss inquired.
“He lives in the next apartment. From Vienna. The University of Chicago is the only true American university, Otto says. All the others imitate European ones. So I want to go to Chicago.” She sipped her wine, leaving lipstick on the glass. She had much to learn about cosmetics. “Is your daughter in college?” she asked.