When Billy argued that six more dancers would make the show feel more like a spectacle, Olive said, “Six more dancers adds up to money we don’t have, with no discernible difference to the play. Rehearsal salaries alone are forty dollars a week. And you want six more of them? Where do you propose I get the funds for this?”
“You can’t make money without spending money, Olive,” Billy reminded her. “Anyway, I’ll spot you.”
“I like that idea even less,” Olive said. “And I don’t trust you to deliver. Remember what happened in Kansas City in 1933.”
“No, I don’t remember what happened in Kansas City in 1933,” said Billy.
“Of course you don’t,” Peg put in. “What happened is that you left me and Olive holding the bag. We’d rented out that massive concert hall for the big song-and-dance spectacle you wanted me to produce, and you hired dozens of local performers, and you put everything in my name, and then you vanished to St. Tropez for a backgammon tournament. I had to empty the company’s bank account to pay it all back, while you and your money were nowhere to be found for three solid months.”
“Geez, Pegsy—you make it sound like I did something wrong.”
“No hard feelings, of course.” Peg gave a sardonic grin. “I know how you’ve always loved your backgammon. But Olive’s got a point. The Lily Playhouse is barely in the black as it is. We can’t go out on a limb for this production.”
“Naturally, I’ll be disagreeing with you now,” said Billy. “Because if you ladies will go out on a limb for once, I can help you to create a show that people will actually want to see. When people want to see a show, it makes money. After all these years, I can’t believe I need to remind you of how the theater business works. Come on, Pegsy—don’t turn on me now. When a rescuer comes to save you, don’t shoot arrows at him.”
“The Lily Playhouse doesn’t need rescuing,” said Olive.
“Oh, yes, it does, Olive!” said Billy. “Look at this theater! Everything needs to be repaired and updated. You’re still using gaslights, practically. Your seats are three-quarters empty every night. You need a hit. Let me make one for you. With Edna here, we have the chance. But we can’t go slack on any of it. If we get some critics in here—and I will get critics in here—we can’t have the rest of the production looking ramshackle, compared to Edna. Come on, Pegsy—don’t be a coward. And remember—you won’t have to work as hard as usual with this play, because I’ll help you direct it, like we used to do. Come on, honey, take a chance. You can keep on producing your catchpenny little shows and creeping along toward bankruptcy, or we can do something great here. Let’s do something great. You were always a reckless dame with a buck—let’s give it a go, one more time.”
Peg wavered. “Maybe we could hire just four additional dancers, Olive?”
“Don’t you let him Ritz you, Peg,” said Olive. “We can’t afford it. We can’t even afford two. I have the ledgers to prove it.”
“You worry too much about money, Olive,” said Billy. “You always have. Money’s not the most important thing in the world.”
“Thus speaketh William Ackerman Buell III of Newport, Rhode Island,” said Peg.
“Give it a rest, Pegsy. You know I never cared about money.”
“That’s right, you never cared about money, Billy,” Olive said. “Certainly not to the extent that those of us who forgot to be born into wealthy families care about it. The devil of it is—you make Peg not care about money, either. That’s how we’ve always run into trouble in the past, and I won’t let it happen again.”
“There’s always been plenty of money for all of us,” said Billy. “Stop being such a capitalist, Olive.”
Peg started laughing and stage-whispered to me: “Your Uncle Billy fancies himself a socialist, kiddo. But apart from the aspect of free love, I’m not sure he understands its principles.”
“What do you think, Vivian?” asked Billy, noticing for the first time that I was in the room.
I felt deeply uncomfortable being pulled into this conversation. The experience was something akin to listening to my parents argue—except that there were three of them now, which was extra disconcerting. Certainly over the last few months I’d heard Peg and Olive arguing about money plenty of times—but with the addition of Billy into the story, things had gotten more heated. Navigating a dispute between Peg and Olive I could handle, but Billy was the wild card. Every child learns to negotiate delicately between two bickering adults, after all, but among three? This was beyond my powers.
“I think you each make a strong argument,” I said.
This must have been the wrong answer, because now they were all irritated with me.
In the end, they settled on hiring four additional dancers, with Billy picking up the tab. It was a decision that left nobody happy—which is what my father might have called a successful business negotiation. (“Everyone should leave the table feeling as if they’ve gotten a bad deal,” my father once taught me joylessly. “This way, you may rest assured that nobody was taken for a ride, and that nobody can get too far ahead.”)
THIRTEEN
Here was another thing I noticed about the effect that Billy Buell had upon our little world: with his arrival at the Lily Playhouse, everyone started drinking more.
A whole hell of a lot more.
Having read this far, Angela, you may be wondering how it was physically possible for us to drink more than we already did, but here is the thing about drinking: one can always drink more, if one is truly committed. It’s just a matter of discipline, really.
The big difference now was that Aunt Peg was drinking with us. Where once she’d stopped after a few martinis and had gone to bed at a reasonable time—as per Olive’s strict schedule—now she and Billy would head out together after the show and get three sheets to the wind. Every single night. Oftentimes Celia and I would join them for a few drinks, before heading off to make revelry and trouble elsewhere.
If at first it seemed awkward for me to be gadding about town with my plainly dressed middle-aged aunt, the awkwardness soon faded when I learned what a gas Peg could be in a nightclub—especially once she had a few drinks in her. Largely this was because Peg knew absolutely everybody in the entertainment business, and they all knew her. And if they didn’t know Peg, then they knew Billy, and wanted to catch up with him after all these years. Which meant that drinks arrived at our table in snappy time—usually accompanied by the owner of the establishment, who often sat with us to gossip about Hollywood and Broadway.
Billy and Peg still looked so mismatched to me—he, so handsome in his white dinner jacket and slicked-back hair, and she in her matronly B. Altman dress and no makeup whatsoever—but they were charming, and wherever we went they quickly ended up the center of any gathering.
And they lived large. Billy ordering up filet mignon and champagne (he often carelessly wandered away before it was time to eat the steak, but he never neglected to drink the champagne) and inviting everyone in the room to join us. He talked nonstop about the show that he and Peg were producing, and what a smash hit it was going to be. (As he explained to me, this was a deliberate marketing tactic; he wanted to get word out that City of Girls was coming and that it would be good: “I have yet to meet the press agent who can spread gossip faster than I can do at a nightclub.”)