I looked him dead in the eye, and I begged for it like a two-dollar hooker.
After that, it was Katy bar the door.
—
Now that I was infatuated with Anthony, the last thing I wanted to do anymore was go out on the town with Celia, picking up strangers for cheap, fast, pleasureless thrills. I didn’t want to do anything anymore but be with him—pinned to his brother Lorenzo’s bed—every moment that I could get. All of which is to say: I’m afraid I dropped Celia rather unceremoniously once Anthony showed up.
I don’t know if Celia missed me. She never showed any indication of it. Nor did she pull away from me in any notable way. She just went about her life, and was friendly to me whenever we collided (which was usually in bed, when she would come stumbling in drunk at the usual hour). Looking back on it now, I feel that I wasn’t a very loyal friend to Celia—in fact, I’d dumped her twice: first for Edna, and then for Anthony. But maybe the young are just feral animals in the way that they shift their affections and allegiances so capriciously. Celia could certainly be capricious, too. I realize now that I always needed somebody to be infatuated with when I was twenty years old, and it didn’t really matter who, apparently. Anybody with more charisma than me would do the trick. (And New York was filled with people more charismatic than me.) I was so unformulated as a human being, so unsteady in myself, that I was constantly grasping for attachment to another person—constantly anchoring myself to someone else’s allure. But evidently, I could only be infatuated with one person at a time.
And right now, it was Anthony.
I was glassy-eyed in love. I was dumbstruck with love. I was all but undone by him. I could barely concentrate on my duties at the theater, because honestly, who cared? I think the only reason I even went to the theater anymore is because Anthony was there every day, spending hours a day in rehearsal, and I got to see him. All I wanted was to be in his orbit. I would wait around for him after every rehearsal like the most absurd little twit, following him back and forth to his dressing room, running out to buy him a cold tongue sandwich on rye whenever he wanted one. I bragged to everyone who would listen that I had a boyfriend, and it was forever.
Like so many other dumb young girls throughout history, I was infected with love and lust—and moreover, I thought Anthony Roccella had invented the stuff.
—
But then there was the conversation I had with Edna one day, when I was fitting her with a new hat for the show.
She said, “You’re distracted. That’s not the color ribbon we’d agreed on.”
“Is it not?”
She touched the ribbon in question, which was scarlet red, and asked, “Does this look emerald green to you?”
“I guess not,” I said.
“It’s that boy,” Edna said. “He’s commanding all your attention.”
I couldn’t help but grin. “He sure is,” I said.
Edna smiled, but indulgently. “When you are around him, dear Vivian, you should know that you look exactly like a little dog in heat.”
I rewarded her for her candor by accidentally stabbing her in the neck with a pin. “I’m so sorry!” I cried out—and whether it was about the pin-stabbing, or about looking like a little dog in heat, I could not have said.
Edna coolly dabbed at the spot of blood on her neck with her handkerchief and said, “Don’t give it another thought. It’s not the first time I’ve been stabbed, my dear, and it’s probably richly deserved. But listen to me, darling, because I’m old enough to be an archaeological relic, and I know some things about life. It is not that I don’t celebrate your affections for Anthony. It is delightful to watch a young person fall in love for the first time. Chasing your boy about, as you do—it’s very sweet.”
“Well, he’s a dream, Edna,” I said. “He’s a living dream.”
“Of course he is, darling. They always are. But I have a spot of advice. By all means, take that racy young man to bed with you and put him in your memoirs when you get famous, but there is something you must not do.”
I thought she was going to say, “Don’t get married,” or “Don’t get pregnant.”
But no. Edna had a different concern.
“Do not let it capsize the show,” she said.
“I’m sorry?”
“At this point in a production, Vivian, we all must count on one another to sustain a certain degree of judiciousness and professionalism. It may seem as though we are just having some larks here—and we are having larks—but much is at stake. Your aunt is pouring everything she has into this play—heart, soul, and all her money, too—and we wouldn’t want to drive her show over a cliff. Here is the solidarity of good theater people, Vivian: we try not to ruin each other’s shows, and we try not to ruin each other’s lives.”
I didn’t understand what she was on about, and my face must have showed it, because she tried again.
“What I’m trying to say, Vivian, is this: if you’re going to be in love with Anthony, then be in love with him, and who could blame you for wanting your little exploit? But promise me that you will stay with him till the end of the run. He’s a good actor—far better than average—and he’s needed for this production. I don’t want any disruptions. If one of you breaks the other’s heart, I stand to lose not only a surprisingly excellent leading man, but also a damn good dresser. I need you both right now, and I need you to be in your right minds. Your aunt needs it, too.”
I still must have looked awfully stupid, because she said, “Let me put it to you even more plainly, Vivian. As my worst ex-husband—that awful director—used to say to me, ‘Live your life as you wish, my peach, but don’t let it bitch up the bloody show.’”
FIFTEEN
City of Girls was now in the full swing of rehearsals, with the date set for the premiere of November 29, 1940. We would open the week after Thanksgiving, to try to snag the holiday crowd.
Mostly it was going well. The music was sensational and the costumes were choice, if I do say so myself. The best thing about the play, of course, was Anthony Roccella—or at least in my opinion. My boyfriend could sing, act, and dance up a storm. (I’d overheard Billy saying to Peg, “You can always find girls who can dance like angels, and some boys, too. But to get a man who can dance like a man—that’s not easily found. This kid is everything I’d hoped he would be.”)
Furthermore, Anthony was a natural comic, and he was absolutely convincing as a clever delinquent who could hustle a rich old lady into establishing a speakeasy and bordello in the great room of her mansion. And his scenes with Celia were fantastic. They were such a great-looking couple on stage. They had one particularly outstanding scene together, where they did the tango as Anthony seductively sang to Celia about “A Little Spot in Yonkers” that he wanted to show her. The way Anthony sang it, he made “A Little Spot in Yonkers” sound like an erogenous zone on a woman’s body—and Celia certainly responded as though it were. It was the sexiest moment of the play. Any woman with a pulse would have agreed. Or at least I thought so.
Others, of course, would have claimed that the best thing about the play was Edna Parker Watson’s performance—and I’m sure they were right. Even I, in my infatuated daze, could tell that Edna was brilliant. I’d seen a lot of theater in my life, but I’d never seen a real actress at work before. All the actresses I’d met so far were dolls with four or five different facial expressions to choose from—sadness, fear, anger, love, happiness—that they kept in rotation until the curtain went down. But Edna had access to every shade of human emotion. She was natural, she was warm, she was regal, and she could do a scene nine different ways in the space of an hour and somehow make each variation seem like the perfect one.