Carrie laughed and clapped along with the rest of the audience. Norma shot Constance a look of despair. It was a highly infectious song, which explained why they used to hear it coming out of every music shop in Paterson. May Ward didn’t write the lyrics, but she was the one who made it popular, which was why her face decorated the sheet music.
She sang each verse in the same grand manner. Norma kept her head in her hands, trying, no doubt, to forget the lines as soon as she heard them.
“Oh, it’s twelve o’clock,” said Willie as he took her home;
“I’ll bet you’re never out as late as that!”
The girl wiggled the bird around and sang its line:
“Well he don’t know Nellie like I do!”
Said the saucy little bird on Nellie’s hat.
Constance thought it might never end, but it did, eventually. May Ward collected her applause, as did the girl and the bird.
They disappeared into the wings. After a little shuffling, the curtain rose to reveal a stage set meant to look like the front of an old half-timbered European-style shop. From the awnings hung dolls, pots and pans, drums, masks, puppets, toy horns, and other such props meant to recall a Main Street department store.
One girl after another ran out on stage, costumed in ordinary street attire and shop aprons. The Dresden Dolls were almost impossible to distinguish from this distance: one saw only brightly painted lips, pink cheeks, and enormous eyes lined in black. Constance watched anxiously for a glimpse of Fleurette, but none of the creatures on stage answered to her description.
“Haven’t you seen her yet?” Carrie whispered.
“She must be in the next number,” Constance said.
“She isn’t here,” Norma mumbled.
The next number, called “The Cash Girl,” concerned itself with the affairs of a department store cash girl (played by Mrs. Ward) in want of a husband. She found her happiness in the affections of the store detective, but only after pretending to steal a pair of gloves to win his attention.
One girl, dressed as a doll in the toy department, sang “The Tale of an Old Rag Doll,” and another, playing the part of a girl shopping for her first party dress, sang “The Girl in the Looking Glass.” May Ward herself performed “The Moon Song” at the end, under an enormous celluloid moon, in the arms of her store detective.
It wasn’t a bad little play, but there was something shopworn about it. Constance was growing a little frantic over the fact that she hadn’t seen Fleurette.
The next number, “The Garden of Love,” was filled with the kind of silly romantic songs that Fleurette loved. “Put Your Arms Around Me” was performed by May Ward and four Dresden Dolls, none of whom were Fleurette. “Hands Up” seemed to have six of the ensemble on stage at once. Still they didn’t see her.
Constance fidgeted in her seat and contended with an avalanche of explanations and excuses, none of which bore up for long: Fleurette was new to the company and would probably only take a few small parts alongside the entire ensemble. She had been given a solo, as she so often had back at Mrs. Hansen’s, and would appear on her own in the next number. Maybe, Constance thought, she would only be brought out on stage for the grand finale.
But the truth made itself known to her eventually. Fleurette wasn’t there.
More than once she counted eight Dresden Dolls on stage together. Fleurette was never among them.
Norma had stopped looking at the stage and was glaring at Constance. She was letting her have the first word, but only so that she could contradict it.
“There’s an explanation,” Constance whispered.
“There’s always an explanation. The jails are full of people with explanations. She’s going to have to do more than explain.”
“Well, the first thing we have to do is to find her,” Carrie put in. “She might yet be with the company. Let’s go around to the stage door before the crowds get there.”
She led the way out of the theater, just as the final encore ended. Once outside, they slipped around the corner and into the alley. It was dark back there, with only a single lamp at the stage door. They had just enough time to get themselves situated behind a row of ashcans before the theater-goers started to trickle around to the alley. Soon there was a crowd of young men and women pressed shoulder to shoulder, many of them waving autograph books.
Finally the door opened and the porter—the man Fleurette called Mr. Impediment in her postcards—stepped outside, gave the audience a disapproving frown, and yelled for them all to stand back. Then, to the accompaniment of squeals and shouts from the crowd, May Ward stepped out in a pretty white fur wrap and a hat to match.
She stood alone at first to collect applause and whistles for herself, and then she turned around and waved for her chorus girls to join her. One by one they popped out of the stage door, each with a winter coat over her costume and a hat trimmed in feathers and flowers. Mr. Impediment saw to it that autographs were signed in some orderly fashion, and that the more ardent male admirers were held back and prevented from slipping notes to the girls.
But still there was no sign of Fleurette.
“She could be ill tonight,” Constance whispered to Carrie and Norma. “Maybe she’s back at the hotel, and one of these girls is an understudy.”
Norma pushed her coat up around her neck and said nothing.
“Or maybe Fleurette is the understudy, and she wasn’t needed tonight,” Carrie suggested.
Norma shook her head. “She never said anything about being an understudy.”
“She might have neglected to mention it,” Constance said. “There’s only so much room on a postcard.” She didn’t believe that herself—it didn’t seem like Fleurette to run away just to be an understudy—but she was desperate for an explanation.
Two black motor cars nosed down the alley and lined up at the stage door. The figures of May Ward and Her Dolls crowded into the machines. Constance thought she might have seen someone else climb in with them—or had she only imagined it?
“She’s not here,” Norma said.
“If we hurry we can have another look at them back at the hotel,” Carrie said. They made haste down the alley and around the corner, which put them back at the hotel just before the motor cars arrived.
By this time Constance was in a state of panic. Was it possible that Fleurette really had disappeared? She wanted one more look at the company before she decided.
“I’ll follow them upstairs and try to take a peek in their rooms in case she’s there,” Carrie said. “She won’t recognize me.”
Norma pulled Constance across the lobby to the opposite corner, where a sort of reading-room had been assembled around a fireplace. She took the only chair available and told Constance to hide inside the telephone booth.