they also sold old wedding gowns and occasionally a really spectacular couture dress, picked up from some Upper East Side estate sale.
I couldn’t stay away from the place.
I once bought the most vividly violet-colored Edwardian dress for Celia at Lowtsky’s. It was the homeliest looking rag you ever saw, and Celia recoiled when I first showed it to her. But when I pulled off the sleeves, cut a deep V in the back, lowered the neckline, and belted it with a thick, black satin sash, I transformed this ancient beast of a dress into an evening gown that made my friend look like a millionaire’s mistress. Every woman in the room would gasp with envy when Celia walked in wearing that gown—and all that for only two dollars!
When the other girls saw what I could make for Celia, they all wanted me to create special dresses for them, as well. And so, just as at boarding school, I was soon given a portal to popularity through the auspices of my trusty old Singer 201. The girls at the Lily were always handing me bits of things that needed to be mended—dresses without zippers, or zippers without dresses—and asking me if I could do something to fix it. (I remember Gladys once saying to me, “I need a whole new rig, Vivvie! I look like somebody’s uncle!”)
Maybe it sounds as if I was playing the role of the tragic stepsister in a fairy tale here—constantly working and spinning, while the more beautiful girls were all heading to the ball—but you must understand that I was so grateful just to be around these showgirls. If anything, this exchange was more beneficial for me than it was for them. Listening to their gossip was an education—the only education I had ever really longed for. And because somebody always needed my sewing talents for something, inevitably the showgirls started to coalesce around me and my powerful Singer. Soon, my apartment had turned into the company gathering place—for females, anyhow. (It helped that my rooms were nicer than the moldy old dressing rooms down in the basement, and also nearer to the kitchen.)
And so it came to pass that one day—less than two weeks into my stay at the Lily—a few of the girls were in my room, smoking cigarettes and watching me sew. I was making a simple capelet for a showgirl named Jennie—a vivacious, adorable, gap-toothed girl from Brooklyn whom everyone liked. She was going on a date that night, and had complained that she didn’t have anything to throw over her dress in case the temperature dropped. I’d told her I would make her something nice, so that’s what I was doing. It was the kind of task that was nearly effortless, but would forever endear Jennie to me.
It was on this day—a day like any other, as the saying goes—that it came to the attention of the showgirls that I was still a virgin.
The subject came up that afternoon because the girls were talking about sex—which was the only thing they ever talked about, when they weren’t talking about clothing, money, where to eat, how to become a movie star, how to marry a movie star, or whether they should have their wisdom teeth removed (as they claimed Marlene Dietrich had done, in order to create more dramatic cheekbones).
Gladys the dance captain—who was sitting next to Celia on the floor in a pile of Celia’s dirty laundry—asked me if I had a boyfriend. Her exact words were, “You got anything permanent going with anybody?”
Now, it is worth noting that this was the first question of substance that any of the girls had ever asked about my life. (The fascination, needless to say, did not run in both directions.) I was only sorry that I didn’t have something more exciting to report.
“I don’t have a boyfriend, no,” I said.
Gladys seemed alarmed.
“But you’re pretty,” she said. “You must have a guy back home. Guys must be giving you the pitch all the time!”
I explained that I’d been in girls’ schools my whole life, so I hadn’t had much opportunity to meet boys.
“But you’ve done it, right?” asked Jennie, cutting to the chase. “You’ve gone the limit before?”
“Never,” I said.
“Not even once, you haven’t gone the limit?” Gladys asked me, wide-eyed in disbelief. “Not even by accident?”
“Not even by accident,” I said, wondering how it was that a person could ever have sex by accident.
(Don’t worry, Angela—I know now. Accidental sex is the easiest