you’ve seen someone’s head blown up to the size of a movie screen, seen him kissing legends — well, it didn’t matter that you’d also seen him hungover in an undershirt. He still had glamour.
We lived in a rooming house with flimsy screen doors that let in black flies and mosquitoes with the size and accuracy of dive-bombers. There was a faint smell of mildew, spiders in the bathroom, and mice in the kitchen.
It had been the best summer of my life.
I was accepted. It didn’t matter that I got the smallest parts or was stuck in the chorus. I got to be onstage, dancing in the musicals. I got to run lines with the ingenue in the early mornings, grabbing a Dixie cup of coffee and complaining with the others about the lack of sleep.
The last show had gone well, and there was a bouncy, boisterous atmosphere that night. Some nights were golden, not a missed cue, not a word wrong, and the audience was in a mood to be amused. Jeff Toland had proved that he was still a star, throwing himself into the songs with the abandon of the twenty-five-year-old he was supposed to be playing.
I had been a part of that energy that night, and it felt like the biggest luxury to indulge my exhaustion and yet not go to bed. There would be no rehearsal tomorrow, no set building, no rushed breakfasts and skipped lunches and quick swims in the ocean. There was only packing up and heading home. Underneath the jokes, there was tension, too. The Korean War had started in June and the young men were worried about being drafted. We were all heading into an uncertain fall.
But a movie star was working hard to make us forget it. Because of Jeff, everything was heightened — we laughed more, we listened harder, we told our best stories, and suddenly the cast forgot moments of jealousy or irritation and complimented each other. Jeff lolled in his chair, a slight, amused smile on his face, telling anecdotes about directors and stars and his early days on Broadway while we crowded close, everyone flushed and beautiful that night from the lights of the candles and the cigarettes.
Suddenly, the chatter fell silent, and Jeff’s head dropped back. “Look at that big fat moon,” he said. “I love a big fat moon.”
We all dutifully tipped our heads back. Someone sang out “Some enchanted evening” in an exaggerated basso, like Ezio Pinza on Broadway.
Jeff Toland looked down and held out his hand to me. I took it and we rose together and began to dance. The singing turned from a clownish operatic parody to a sweet lush melody, as all the voices joined in. Jeff played to the crowd, twirling me out occasionally, showing me off.
He looked into my eyes and winked. I caught his mood and I saw what he wanted me to do, act like lovers. We danced close and dreamy, perfectly in step, exaggerating the romance for the crowd.
When the song ended, he didn’t just stop dancing, he unfurled me, then gave me a mock bow as the group burst into applause. I grabbed the cuffs of my shorts and pretended to curtsy, and everyone laughed.
Jeff said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the next Broadway star.”
Everyone applauded. It was a joke, but a generous one, and I curtsied again.
This was as magic as real life ever got.
Then I stopped smiling because I saw a dark figure standing by the trunk of the big elm tree — Billy.
He stared at me for just a moment. Then he turned his back and walked away.
I looked for Billy for an hour, by the theater, by the beach. I didn’t sleep much, thinking that he’d come to me. The doors of the rooming house weren’t locked; he could walk right in.
I finally fell asleep as the wind picked up, curling around my bare toes in bed and leading me to pull up the cotton cover. For the first time, I could smell the end of summer.
The next morning I waited in my room while I heard doors slamming and taxis pulling up. I had said my good-byes last night. A sense of dread filled me, and I wondered if I’d see him this morning.
This summer had been one of missing Billy. There was only one phone in the rooming house, and we were rarely there to answer it. Messages were supposed to be written down and put on the