as I was still standing there wondering what to do. My purse had been in the car, my suitcase, everything except the sweater in my hand.
She tipped her sunglasses down. Even in the middle of my misery, I reminded myself to remember that gesture. She looked so racy and confident.
“Looks like you need a ride after all.”
“Thanks.” I tossed my sweater in the backseat. Daisy headed down the Cape highway, driving fast and expertly, talking the whole time. I let the talk go on. I was thankful not to think.
We were almost at the bridge when I saw something pink suddenly fly by the window. I turned back and saw the scrap of fabric stuck on a bush. Another white blur — a shirt — flew by.
“Son of a gun,” Daisy said. “What’s going on?”
Clothes were flying out of the window of a car up ahead. A multicolored skirt. A pair of blue shorts. A white bra.
They were my clothes. Up ahead, Billy must have been grabbing items from my suitcase and tossing them out the window. I stared as my sleeveless madras shirt got impaled on a bush. A sneaker flew out and bounced on the shoulder.
“Somebody’s going to need a new wardrobe,” Daisy said.
She hadn’t recognized my clothes. I was grateful. I watched it all, the wardrobe I’d saved up for in my job at the luncheonette, the soda I’d wiped up, the rolls I’d sliced, the coffee I’d slopped into cups. Getting up to open the place at six. Soaking in a tub to get the grease out of my hair and off my skin. All those days and nights. Out the window.
He’d known it, too. He’d known how hard I’d worked. Now something else was flying by, too. Paper, ripped into pieces.
I knew what they were. My head shots. Little pieces of me, all over the road.
Thirteen
New York City
November 1950
I said good-bye to Daisy at the door of Bonwit’s and walked quickly crosstown. I had a plan.
It would start with my hair. I kept remembering how Nate had looked at me, how the Lido Dolls all had to have the same hairstyle, the same teeth, the same smiles. The cans of hair spray, the bobby pins scattered on the counter. All it took for us to get our hair to stay up there — our slippery, springing, disobedient hair.
I’d hardly started working there, and already I wanted to shake up the joint. I wanted control of just one small thing.
I ducked into a barbershop nearby, a place I knew from Shirley, who had endlessly debated whether she should get the short haircut we were beginning to see on the fashionable girls, the ones who wore cropped black pants and ballet slippers with their fur coats, and sunglasses even in November.
When I walked out, I had a haircut like a boy, just wisps around my face, and the cold wind on the back of my neck felt like freedom.
I slammed through my front door two hours later, pirouetted through the hall, and leaped onto the couch. I bounced three times and then fell on my rear like a kid.
My first callback. And not on a turkey like That Girl From Scranton! But for a real show, A Year of Junes, with a famous director, an up-and-coming choreographer, and real Broadway stars in the cast.
I’d run almost all the way home. But I’d made sure to stop to buy a postcard of Times Square and a stamp. I’d scrawled White mink and diamonds! on the back, and addressed it to the Florence Foster Studio of Dance.
In a few weeks, I could have a part. I could quit the Lido and get away from Nate. I had been there almost three weeks already; I’d have almost three hundred dollars. That was walking-away money. Maybe I could really start again.
With a glance at the clock, I ran for my bedroom. I couldn’t show up at work in dungarees. I was pulling on a dress when the phone rang. I ran for it, hoping it was Billy.
“Good, you didn’t leave yet.”
Nate. I sank to the floor, cradling the receiver against my ear as I pulled on my stockings. “I’m late.”
“I want you to do something for me. Just a little thing.”
“It’s always a little thing.”
There was a pause, and I knew I’d annoyed him. “I can’t get to the club tonight. I want you to tell me if Ray Mirto is there. You remember him?”
“The guy in the red tie.”
“Just give