Strings Attached

Four



New York City

October 1950



I heard the piano music in my dreams. He played early in the mornings, probably before school, and I was half awake. I started thinking of him as Mr. Broadway. He’d play a classical number, something I didn’t recognize, of course, and then he’d swing into “Embraceable You” or “I Could Write a Book.”

I’d lie in bed, listening, and for a while the piano would chase away the blues. I was out of work, and even though I didn’t have to pay rent, I needed money for food and stockings and toothpaste. I was getting down to my last dime, and it was plenty thin. I’d been hoping to step into another chorus job, but none of my auditions had panned out. Today I would look for a waitress job to tide me over. I tried not to think of this as defeat. Plenty of girls had jobs and managed to take classes and go on auditions, too.

I was up and circling want ads when the phone rang. I didn’t want to answer the phone, afraid it would be Nate, but I was waiting for a callback. If you’re a dancer, you’ve got to pick up the phone.

“This isn’t about Billy, so don’t blow up at me,” Nate said. “I know that your play closed. I’ve got a job lead for you.” He talked fast, like he was afraid I’d hang up. Before I did, he said, “At the Lido.”

“A nightclub?” I said this automatically, even though my heart raced at the sound of the name.

“Not just a nightclub. The Lido. You know what that means.”

I knew. The Lido was class. The girls on the line were chosen as much for their elegance as their legs. Frank Sinatra played the Lido, Ethel Merman, Johnnie Ray, all the big names. And Hollywood movie scouts constantly dropped in, looking for the girl who stood out, the one they’d offer a Hollywood contract to. Lido girls were on the cover of Life and Look, they were in Walter Winchell’s and Cholly Knickerbocker’s columns.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked.

“Because you need a job.”

“You can’t just fix everything, you know.”

“Don’t make a federal case. I’ve got a new client in New York, he’s got a connection, I heard something, I’m passing it along. Look, the auditions are going to be on Friday. If you go tomorrow, you can get a jump on the competition. Just go see Ted Roper — he’s in charge of the shows. Two o’clock tomorrow. He’s expecting you. All I can do is get you in the door. I can’t get you the job, so relax.”

Nate hung up with a soft click. No chance for me to say no. It was like he knew whatever I’d say would be a waste of his time. He knew I wouldn’t turn this down. He knew I’d be crazy to say no.

I didn’t like him knowing all that. I didn’t like how staying here suddenly made me available to him whenever he felt like calling. I hadn’t counted on that.



I didn’t have cab fare, so I’d have to walk to the Lido. When I got to First Avenue, I picked up a newspaper from the corner store. I flipped the paper in half so that I couldn’t see the screaming headline allies push on Pyongyang, fighting still heavy. I wouldn’t read the war news, but I’d need to skim the want ads if the audition didn’t work out.

The owner took my nickel and smiled. “You’re back!”

“Back?”

He looked at me closer. “Oh, sorry. I thought I recognized you. Enjoy your day, miss.”

I tucked the paper under my arm and headed west toward Second Avenue. One thing I hadn’t realized about New York was that it was a city of neighborhoods, and not just big ones, like Greenwich Village, but tiny ones, made up of just blocks. You went to the stores right near your apartment, and after a while people knew you. Soon that man would know my face and not confuse me with anyone else. Then I’d feel at home.



Nightclubs shouldn’t be seen in daylight. I loved being in a theater at any hour, loved it especially in the daytime, with its smell of coffee and cigarettes and dust, but the glamorous nightclub I’d read about for so long and dreamed about just looked dingy and sad when the sun was up. It smelled like watered-down drinks with cigarette butts swirling in them, a bunch of sour reminders from four in the morning.

A man checking receipts at the front told me to go on through to the dressing rooms, so I headed for the stage. The floors were being cleaned, and the furniture had been shifted around into clumps. Chairs and tables seemed to conspire against me on the way. I slammed a hip into a chair back, then bounced off the edge of a table.

“Doesn’t bode well for the dance routines,” a man said. But he smiled at me in a friendly way.

“Don’t tell the dance captain,” I said.

“Good smile.” He wasn’t flirting, he was judging. “Joe didn’t say you were a redhead.”

I didn’t know who Joe was, but I said, “Born with it, sorry to say.”

“It’s okay, kid, you’ve got a look. I’m Greg. I’ll be playing your music.”

“Kit Corrigan.”

“So you want to be a Lido Doll, huh?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“I’ll tell Ted you’re here.”

A tall, thin man in horn-rimmed glasses and khakis walked out onstage. He looked like a professor, but I could tell he was a dancer from the way he moved, elegant and easy. “This the girl?”

Yeah, I was the girl. I was used to being the girl. I was used to the look he was giving me right now, sizing me up. Not in a personal way, in a way you’d size up a horse if you were a jockey.

“Did you bring rehearsal clothes?”

I nodded.

He hadn’t introduced himself, but he was obviously Ted Roper, and I was expected to know that. “Let’s see if you can dance. You can change in the dressing room.”

I knew about nerves, and I could make them work for me, but I felt rattled by Ted Roper’s obvious irritation. Maybe he was ticked off that Nate had pulled strings to get me in to audition early.

In the dressing room, an ashtray full of cigarette stubs sat beneath a NO SMOKING sign. The lightbulbs in the wire cages washed out my skin. I fumbled in my purse for rouge. I pushed aside bobby pins, a comb, and a lipstick to clear a space on the counter. Quickly, I wriggled out of my skirt. I was already wearing my leotard. It was cold, so I kept on my sweater and tied a scarf tightly around my waist.

A stout woman with iron-gray hair came in, her broad hands full of an explosion of tulle. The wardrobe mistress, I guessed.

“Audition?” she asked in some kind of European accent. I nodded while I patted on a little rouge. She dumped the skirts on a table next to a sewing machine. “You should wear higher heels. What are you, a seven?”

“Yes …”

She walked over to a shelf full of shoes — pumps, sandals, gold and silver and an array of colors. She slammed a pair of black pumps on the counter. “Use these.”

I slipped out of my own scuffed shoes and into the higher heels. I straightened my shoulders and looked at myself in the mirror.

Back in Providence, Florence Foster, my dance teacher, had taught me everything, including how to walk. I’d been studying dance since I was eight. By the time I turned fourteen, she was telling me that I’d have to leave town. “You’re not getting anywhere in Providence, dolly,” Flo had told me. “Shake the dust of this town off your shoes and get yourself to Manhattan. White mink and diamonds, kid. That’s the big time. Don’t ask me if I think you should. And don’t come by and say good-bye. Just drop me a postcard.”

Now I heard her croaking voice in my head. It’s not just the feet, it’s the arms, it’s the neck, it’s the goddamn elbows and the goddamn knees. Keep your face strong. Don’t simper like an idiot beauty queen. You’re a dancer. A dancer. Got it? You can’t forget about your pinky finger, for godsake, you’ve got to know what every muscle is doing, even your eyebrows. You’re a dancer.

I’m a dancer, I told myself.

“No time to be late,” the heavyset woman said. “He’s waiting to see how fast you dress. Around here, the clock hands move for Ted.”

“Thanks. And thanks for the shoes.”

I hurried back onstage, but I was careful to slow down as I got close. I knew he’d be watching how I walked.

The trick to auditions? You’ve got to not mind that they’re bored, or that they’re thinking about the last girl, or that they’re dying for a smoke. You’ve got to think about your own joy.

So I danced. He threw combinations at me, and I kept up. It was like he wanted a reason to flunk me, just like old Mrs. Babbitt back in American History.

But he couldn’t. There’s nobody I can’t please. Nobody.

Finally, he signaled for Greg to stop playing.

“So,” Ted Roper said, “you can dance.”

I waited.

“Three shows a night — I presume you know that? You come at six thirty and you get out at three a.m. And you have to be available for promotional pictures during the day, or special shows. You’re a replacement, so you’ve got to catch up fast. You’ll work with me for the rest of the week.”

“Yes, Mr. Roper.”

“You might as well see Sonia now — she’s the wardrobe mistress. She’ll tell you about your fittings. And hair. Every girl wears an upsweep. You’ll have to handle some headpieces in that dance.”

“That’s not a problem.”

“It better not be. Dress rehearsals on Saturday — look at the schedule in the dressing room after you talk to Sonia. If you’re late for dress, even a minute, I dock your pay.”

He looked at me over his eyeglasses. I didn’t see contempt anymore, just … what? Like he felt sorry for me? “One more thing. I don’t stick my nose into the personal lives of my girls. But there’s no special treatment, no matter whose friend you are. Got it?”

“I’ve got it, Mr. Roper.”

“All right, Miss Corrigan, you’re hired.”

When I walked out of that place an hour later I wasn’t just another pretty girl. I was a Lido Doll. I was somebody in New York City. I could feel my whole body adjust to the change. I used my hips in my walk now, challenging every man on the street not to notice me. They all did. When I smiled at a businessman walking by, he couldn’t stop looking and slammed right into a mailbox.

I’d made it. It seemed impossible, glorious. I thought of all the dancers sitting at drugstore counters, out of work. That wasn’t me anymore.

Would it have happened without Nate Benedict making that call? I knew I’d danced well, but the fact that someone had paved the way took some of the pleasure out of it. That was the thorn on the stem of the flower, the lemon in my dish of cream.