me a call at midnight. You have a pencil? I’ll give you the number.”
I wrote down the number. It was a New York exchange, so Nate was in town. “Why do you want to know?”
“No big reason. I just want to know if he’s around, that’s all. It will help me out. See who he talks to, if you can. If he’s drinking.”
“What am I, your snitch?”
“Don’t be crazy. It’s just a favor. Come on, you can’t say you don’t owe me a few.”
No, I couldn’t say that. That was the problem with this apartment, with these clothes. With the job. With everything. He had me boxed in, and I hadn’t even seen it coming.
“All right,” I said, and put down the phone.
“You cut your hair.” Ted Roper put his hands on his narrow hips.
“We all think it’s darling,” Polly said.
Mickey broke in. “Honey, it suits you.”
“I’m not talking to you,” Ted said to the girls, and they all turned and pretended to powder their faces or reach for a cup of coffee.
He turned back to me. “You’re a Lido Doll. You wear an upsweep. That’s your look. You don’t go cutting your hair without talking to me!”
“I didn’t know,” I lied. “It was just an impulse. I’m sorry.”
He nodded slowly, staring at me, as though he was trying to figure me out. “You know, I can fire you.”
“I know,” I said. I kept my gaze down.
“Aw, c’mon, Ted,” Mickey said. “We’re not Fords on an assembly line.”
“Yeah,” Darla said. “Why can’t the kid cut her hair if she wants?”
He put up his hands. “No ganging up on the boss.” I was off the hook.
“So what are you waiting for? Get into your costume,” he said. “Full house tonight! They’re carrying in the tables to the front, so watch your step, we’ve got a whole lot less floor out there.”
It was a packed house. We could hear the noise as we gathered our skirts and headed for the wings.
Darla fluffed out my skirt for me as we waited for our cue. “So what did he think?”
“What did who think?”
“Mr. Benedict. About your hair.”
I glanced over my shoulder at her, puzzled. Why should Nate have any say-so about my hair? “He hasn’t seen it yet.”
The band had swung into our cue, and I heard our introduction from Danny, the announcer — Ladies and gentlemen, the Lido Dolls go to Mardi Gras! — and I stepped out into the lights.
I knew the routine so well now that it was easy to scan the audience and not miss a step. I didn’t see Ray Mirto. The first show was usually full of couples, wives and husbands, young people out on dates, tourists.
It wasn’t until the second show that I spotted him at one of the tables that had been added as the crowd grew, right on the dance floor. He was with a woman this time, and another one of the men from the night before.
I would call Nate later, between shows. I would do this favor because I owed him. But I would get to a place where there were no more favors, I vowed, only the ones I wanted to give.
It was easy to say that while I was dancing, while I was joking with the girls over cups of coffee and plates of food, but when midnight came I had to run to the phone, the one in the hallway where the girls passed back and forth during the break. I dialed the number I’d memorized. Nate picked up on the first ring.
“He’s here,” I said. “With a date and one of those guys from the other night.”
“Joe Adonis?”
“No, the giant one.”
“Is he drunk?”
“How am I supposed to know?”
“Tell me if he’s still there at closing.”
“You mean I have to call again tonight?”
“Just a quick one.”
I waited and he waited. I didn’t want to call again. I didn’t want to be on the end of this string, jerked whenever he raised a hand.
“Just do it,” he said, and hung up.
I was still feeling shaky when I hit the street at three a.m. I’d made the call and told Nate that Ray Mirto was heading up to the lounge. I felt dirty, like I was some kind of spy. I was a spy, but it was for a side I didn’t believe in, in a war I didn’t understand.
Hank was waiting outside the back door. I was never so relieved to see anyone in my life. Hank with his open face,