Billy looked for a moment as if he were going to apologize, but then made the classic drunkard’s mistake, instead, of digging in. “Ah, don’t blow your lid about it. She’ll be all right. She just wanted to have a few more when we got home.”
“She’s not like you,” Olive said, and unless I was mistaken, her eyes were sprinkled with tears. “She can’t stop after ten drinks. She never could.”
Edna said gently, “I think it’s time for you to go, William. You, as well, girls.”
The next day, Peg stayed in bed until late afternoon. But aside from that, business went on as usual, and nobody mentioned what had transpired the evening before.
And by the next night, Peg and Billy were out at the Algonquin all over again, buying rounds for the whole house.
FOURTEEN
Billy had committed the outrageous act of calling auditions for the play—real auditions, advertised in the trade papers and everything—in order to get a higher class of performer than the Lily was accustomed to.
This was a wildly new development. We’d never had auditions before. Our shows always got cast through word of mouth. Peg and Olive and Gladys knew enough of the actors and dancers around the neighborhood to be able to pull together a cast without anyone having to try out. But Billy wanted a better class of performers than what we could find within the perimeter of Hell’s Kitchen, so official auditions it was.
For an entire day, then, we had a stream of hopefuls pouring into the Lily—dancers, singers, actors. I got to sit with Billy and Peg and Olive and Edna as they reviewed the aspirants. I found it to be such an anxiety-producing experience. Watching all those people on the stage who all wanted something so badly—so glaringly and openly—made me nervous.
And then, very quickly, it made me bored.
(Anything can get tedious after enough time, Angela—even watching heartbreaking acts of naked vulnerability. Especially when everyone is singing the same song, doing the same dance steps, or repeating the same lines, hour after hour.)
We saw the dancers first. It was just one pretty girl after another, trying to stampede her way into our new chorus line. The sheer volume and variation of them made my head spin. Auburn curls on this one. Fine blond hair on that one. This one tall. That one short. A big-hipped, huffing, snorting, dancing dragon of a girl. A woman who was far too old to be dancing for a living anymore, but who had not yet boxed up her hopes and dreams. A girl with sharp bangs who was so awfully severe in her efforts, it looked like she was marching, not dancing. All of them breathlessly hoofing with all their hearts. Puffing away in a hot panic of tap dancing and optimism. Kicking up great clouds of dust motes in the footlights. They were sweaty and they were loud. When it came to dancers, their ambitions were not merely visible, but audible.
Billy made a slight effort to engage Olive in the audition process, but the effort was futile. She was punishing us, it seemed, by barely watching the proceedings. In fact, she was reading the editorial page of the Herald Tribune.
“Say, Olive, did you think that little birdie was attractive?” he asked her, after one very pretty girl had sung a very pretty song for us.
“No.” Olive didn’t even look up from her newspaper.
“Well, that’s all right, Olive,” said Billy. “How dull it would be if you and I always had the same taste in women.”
“I like that one,” Edna said, pointing to a petite, raven-haired beauty throwing her leg over her head onstage as easily as another woman might shake out a bath towel. “She doesn’t look quite as desperate to please as the others do.”
“Good choice, Edna,” said Billy. “I like that one, too. But you do realize that she looks exactly like you looked, twenty-odd years ago?”
“Oh, dear me, she does a bit, doesn’t she? That would be the one I was drawn to, wouldn’t it? Heavens, I’m such a vain old bore.”
“Well, I liked a girl who looked like that back then, and I still like a girl who looks like that,” said Billy. “Hire her. In fact, let’s be sure to keep the height down on all the chorus girls. Make them all match the girl we just picked. I want a bunch of cute little brunette ponies. I don’t want any of them dwarfing Edna.”