with showgirls, and listen to Broadway business talk, and eavesdrop on the gossip of boys who looked like girls! I wanted to hear about people’s big sex lives!
But I couldn’t say any of that. So what I said, brilliantly, was: “I’d like to look around a bit! Take things in!”
Everyone was looking at me now. Waiting for something more, maybe? Waiting for what?
“I don’t know my way around New York City, is my primary obstacle,” I said, sounding like an ass.
Aunt Peg responded to this inanity by grabbing a paper napkin off the table, and sketching upon it a quick map of Manhattan. I do wish I had managed to preserve that map, Angela. It was the most charming map of the city I would ever see: a big crooked carrot of an island, with a dark rectangle in the middle representing Central Park; vague wavy lines representing the Hudson and East Rivers; a dollar sign down at the bottom of the island, representing Wall Street; a musical note up at the top of the island, representing Harlem, and a bright star right in the middle, representing right where we were: Times Square. Center of the world! Bingo!
“There,” she said. “Now you know your way around. You can’t get lost here, kiddo. Just follow the street signs. It’s all numbered, couldn’t be easier. Just remember: Manhattan is an island. People forget that. Walk far enough in any direction, and you’ll run into water. If you hit a river, turn around and go in the other direction. You’ll learn your way around. Dumber people than you have figured out this city.”
“Even Gladys figured it out,” said Roland.
“Watch it, sunshine,” said Gladys. “I was born here.”
“Thank you!” I said, pocketing the napkin. “And if you need anything done around the theater, I would be happy to help out.”
“You’d like to help?” Peg seemed surprised to hear it. Clearly, she had not expected much of me. Christ, what had my parents told her? “You can help Olive in the office, if you go for that sort of thing. Office work, and such.”
Olive blanched at this suggestion, and I’m afraid I might have done the same. I didn’t want to work for Olive any more than she wanted me working for her.
“Or you can work in the box office,” Peg went on. “You can sell tickets. You’re not musical, are you? I’d be surprised if you were. Nobody in our family is musical.”
“I can sew,” I said.
I must’ve said it quietly, because nobody seemed to register that I’d spoken.
Olive said, “Peg, why don’t you have Vivian enroll at the Katharine Gibbs School, where she can learn how to type?”
Peg, Gladys, and Celia all groaned as one.
“Olive is always trying to get us girls to enroll at Katharine Gibbs so we can learn how to type,” Gladys explained. She shuddered in dramatic horror, as though learning how to type were something akin to busting up rocks in a prisoner-of-war camp.
“Katharine Gibbs turns out employable young women,” Olive said. “A young woman ought to be employable.”
“I can’t type, and I’m employable!” Gladys said. “Heck, I’m already employed! I’m employed by you!”
Olive said, “A showgirl is never quite employed, Gladys. A showgirl is a person who may—at times—be in possession of a job. It’s not the same thing. Yours is not a reliable field of work. A secretary, by contrast, can always find employment.”
“I’m not just a showgirl,” said Gladys, with miffed pride. “I’m a dance captain. A dance captain can always find employment. Anyhow, if I run out of money, I’ll just get married.”
“Never learn to type, kiddo,” Peg said to me. “And if you do learn to type, never tell anybody that you can type, or they’ll make you do it forever. Never learn shorthand, either. It’ll be the death of you. Once they put a steno pad in a woman’s hand, it never comes out.”
Suddenly the gorgeous creature on the other side of the room spoke, for the first time since we’d come upstairs. “You said you can sew?” Celia asked.
Once again, that low, throaty voice took me by surprise. Also, she had her eyes on me now, which I found a bit intimidating. I don’t want to overuse the word “smoldering” when I talk about Celia, but there’s no way around it: she was the kind of woman who smoldered even when she wasn’t intentionally trying to smolder. Holding that smoldering gaze was uncomfortable for me, so I just nodded, and said in