Stage Door Canteen (5 page)

“You never can tell, Georgie.” Angie giggled again. “Who knows what’s going on in the neighborhood?”

“Oh, Ange, really.”

“I think they would have said something to us about the Coca-Colas,” Frankie said, “that we ought to turn them down because they were for the GIs to have, not visitors, except the guy you did the Lindy with is some sort of war hero. That’s what the sailors from the navy yard said.”

“Was that it?” Georgina looked surprised. “He didn’t look old enough to be a war hero to me, he looked about seventeen.”

“He’s a sergeant. And he’s twenty-four,” Dina said, “he told me.”

“He was lying.”

“No, really, he wanted to show me his ID,” Dina insisted. “Actually, you gotta admit he’s very good-looking. And he’s not all that short, he’s taller than I am.”

Frankie hooted. “Taller by what? Two inches?”

“He’s a shrimp, and I think he’s kind of wild,” Angie said. “He’s got a funny look in his eyes.”

“Ha ha ha,” Frankie said, “they all have a funny look in their eyes when they look at you, Ange.”

Angie swung her pocketbook at her, pretending to be angry, as they ran down the last flight of stairs with a clattering of high heels, and came out onto the corner of 75th Street. The bars under the elevated were open, even though with so many people in war jobs most neighborhood taverns closed early, around twelve thirty. There were slits of light around the curtained plate glass fronts and they could hear jukeboxes.

“So did he show you his ID?” Georgina wanted to know.

“I have to wait here by the subway,” Frankie told them. “I called my Uncle Sal while we were in Longchamps, he’s an air raid warden on King’s Highway, he’s going to come and walk me home.”

They stood under the corner street light. Angie opened her purse and took out a package of Lucky Strikes and lit one, then offered the pack to Dina, who shook her head. Dina was very conscientious about her body’s health, especially her wind, which meant no smoking. She was also the group’s best dancer.

“No,” Dina said, “why would I want to see anybody’s ID? I could have done without the Lindy, too, I could have really hurt myself when he dropped me.”

“Oh, Dina, don’t be like that,” Georgina said. “He said his hands slipped. Besides, he’s a good dancer, and with a good build, too. Even if he is short.”

“Oh for God’s sake,” Dina said, “stop saying that.”

Angie laughed. “Well he is short. Like Mickey Rooney.”

“He doesn’t look like Mickey Rooney,” Georgina protested, “he’s better looking than that. He looks like Alan Ladd. Did you see Alan Ladd in that movie, This Gun For Hire? He played this really groovy guy, Raven, who was a killer, but you felt sorry for him. I cried my heart out when he died.”

Frankie said, “Is Alan Ladd really short? He doesn’t look it in the movies.”

“Oh come on, Frankie, don’t you read the papers? They make him stand on a box.”

“Hey, lay off, Dina likes the shrimp.” Angie put her arm around Dina’s shoulder and leaned on her. “Geez, are you as tired as I am? My feet hurt.”

“Feet always hurt when you wear heels,” Frankie told them. “When you take advanced ballet with Silberman he won’t let you wear high heels because they destroy the metatarsal. That’s what he says.”

“When you dance you sweat a lot.” Like Dina, Georgina Theodropolis was very serious about training. She had auditioned for the Martha Graham School of Modern Dance. “Look at it this way, drinking a lot of Coca-Cola helps replace all that water.”

They all groaned. Dina said, “God, really, Georgie, I don’t sweat that much, you make us sound like sluts!”

“Are we going to sign up?” Angie wanted to know. “We gotta make up our minds. It’s a long subway ride from Manhattan, and like now it’s two o’clock in the morning—”

“Hey, we stopped for a drink, remember? You’re the one who wanted to go to Longchamps afterward for a drink and something to eat.”

“—and I’ve got five blocks to walk yet. My family really isn’t going to be too crazy about volunteering you know. The canteen supervisor said they like you to come in at least one night a week. They put you on a schedule and tell you when, I don’t think you even get to choose which nights.”

Frankie, too, was having her doubts. “But if we all went together it probably wouldn’t be too bad. Anyway, it’s also for the contacts, isn’t it? Like meeting producers?” A car drove by and honked its horn. She quickly turned, putting her back to the street. “Don’t look at them, it’s my brother Tommy’s friends. Even if they want to give me a ride home I wouldn’t get in the car with them this time of night.”

Angie said, “I didn’t see any producers.”

“We saw Katherine Hepburn, didn’t we?”

“OK,” Dina’s cousin allowed, “so we got to look at Katherine Hepburn. Besides, she left right away. I didn’t see anybody else famous, everybody at the Stage Door Canteen was just like us. Nobodies.”

There was a chorus of protests. “Speak for yourself, Angie Casabono,” Georgina cried. “I’m not a nobody, what do you think I’ve been studying voice and dance for four years for?”

“I know what my father is going to say,” Angie flung back. “That you don’t have to ride an hour each way on the subway to drink Cokes and dance with sailors. That if you want to do something for the boys in the service go over to the church and roll bandages with the Red Cross.”

“Ugh.” Dina shuddered. “Don’t say that.”

“My mother rolls bandages at St. Anne’s,” Georgina declared. “On Thursday nights.”

“Yes, but I mean, what would we really be doing?” Angie insisted. “So we go to the Stage Door Canteen twice a week, we take the subway after work, we stay maybe four or five hours—”

“If you come for the early shift you stay longer than that,” Georgina put in.

“—and we dance with all these guys and talk to them, and don’t drink the free Coca-Colas because they’re only for the people in the service. Do you really think soldiers and sailors want to do that? I mean, what’s the point? They’re sitting around talking and putting their arms around you when you’re out on the dance floor, but isn’t that really kind of a tease? If I was a guy and I was about to be shipped overseas, wouldn’t I want something more?”

“They’re lonesome,” Dina put in quickly, remembering the Stage Door Canteen booklet. “They just want somebody to talk to. And dance with.”

“It’s serious, isn’t it?” Frankie said quietly. “I mean, basically, they might get killed. Listen, I was just thinking, if you met somebody and really, really liked him and you knew he was going to get shipped to the worst part of the war where it was practically guaranteed that he was going to get killed, would you want to give him something that would really make it worthwhile? Like go all the way?”

They stared at her.

“Frankie, are you crazy?” Dina said. “We’re not even supposed to date them!”

“But I’m a virgin.” Georgina looked around, visibly upset. “I’m a good Catholic girl, I couldn’t do that, I really couldn’t! I mean, not just like that.”

“Oh, calm down, Georgie.” Dina put her arm around her. “You’re gonna be a virgin until the day you’re married. We all know that.”

Frankie looked defensive. “I didn’t mean the canteen, doing anything with the guys at the canteen, it just crossed my mind. About what Ange said.”

“Hey, don’t blame it on me.” Angie backed away, waving her hands. “I never said you should start sleeping with soldiers just because you felt sorry for them. Don’t tell anybody in the neighborhood I said that, will you?”

“Oh God,” Frankie said, stepping off the curb, “here comes my Uncle Sal, I’ve got to go. Listen, let me know what you want to do about everything.”

They watched her cross the dark street under the elevated. Angie said “I made up my mind. I think it’s okay to be a hostess if you live in Manhattan and don’t have to take the subway and are an actress or a debutante or something. But right now I work part time and have classes during the day and I don’t even have time for voice practice. So I’m out.”

“Angie you’re so tough. But I guess you’re right,” Georgina sighed. “It’s just too much.”

“I’m going,” Dina announced. They all turned to stare at her. “I’m going to volunteer for a Stage Door Canteen hostess.”

Her cousin Angie reached out and snapped her fingers in front of Dina’s nose. “Hey, come down out of the clouds, Bernardine Mary Flaherty. If you think people like Katherine Hepburn and Mary Martin are going to notice you, they’re not, believe me.”

“It’s not that. Honest.” Her face was a little pink, but she lifted her chin. “I really think what Frankie said is mostly true. That the boys in uniform are really going to have to die for us if they have to. That’s a big thing, to lay down your life for your country. So I guess I don’t mind the hours, the long ride into Manhattan, because when you come right down to it, for me anyway, it’s you know, what everybody says. A patriotic duty.”

When they were silent she added softly, “It’s okay, I can go by myself.”

The moon had come up.

Jenny had read until nearly two o’clock and then turned out the lights, but the moonrise was immediately visible. The bedroom was filled with its glow.

She got out of bed and went down the hallway and through the tiny fin de siecle foyer with its improbable full-sized marble mantel and fireplace, to the living room and the windows that overlooked Riverside Park. She was freezing in just her nightgown, but heat conservation was a priority and the ancient steam radiators wouldn’t begin chattering until seven a.m. She opened the blackout drapes for the view that always delighted, the bright, metallic shine of the river and the moonlit cliffs of the Palisades.

One of the apartment’s glories, besides its location in a Stanford White-designed building, its high-ceilinged rooms and two working fireplaces, was that it overlooked, spectacularly, the Hudson River. They had signed the lease for it in October of 1940 when Brad had moved up to executive editor at the magazine, and before the Army had claimed him. Now, she was periodically reminded by something called the New York City War Housing Board, seven spacious rooms and two baths, rent-controlled, heat-rationed and with a leaky tub in the front bathroom was, in overcrowded wartime New York, something so desirable it was virtually priceless. And that it would be grossly unpatriotic not to list it for additional occupancy. That is, the forms to be filled out in triplicate explained, rent out one of the apartment’s unused bedrooms to someone in a war occupation listed as “essential.”

Jenny knew that eventually she would have to comply with the war housing board’s request, but for the time being she reveled in having the apartment to herself.

She pressed her forehead against the cold window glass. The radio was playing in the bedroom, a Rodgers and Hart tune, I Didn’t Know What Time It Was. She suddenly thought of Brad asleep in his hotel room in Washington that he shared with another air force command staffer, after a day spent in what he referred to as the frustrating, serpentine coils of the War Department. The first months they were separated the telephone bills had been enormous, the hunger for each other and the resentment at the war for keeping them apart, still fresh. Now , since they had learned that everyone, eventually, gets accustomed to the unbearable, telephone calls were mostly confined to weekends and letters made do on the other days of the week. But that didn’t mean they didn’t miss each other. They had only been married four and a half years; now that he was in Washington she was lonesome, longing to talk to him, to touch him. Sex was, somewhat to her surprise, as painfully, needfully missed as everything else. She had thought, until this separation, that loving companionship was the glue that held together their marriage. Now on dark nights alone in the apartment there were wild fantasies of Brad’s naked body beside her, there in the bed, that startled her. Lusting after one’s own husband? She was finding the war was capable of anything. Good, solid Brad, fine husband, friend, and the intelligent, witty, talented former managing editor of one of the nation’s most respected finance magazines. Who was now Major Haller, attached to General Arnold’s administrative staff in the building that was beginning to be called the Pentagon because of its unsual shape, undeniably dashing, handsome, even somewhat gorgeous in his United States Army Air Force pinks. The last leave he’d had in New York the women in the Palm Court of the Plaza, when they’d gone there for drinks, had virtually fallen out of their seats looking at him. God knows. Jenny told herself, what women were doing in Washington. He said he never went alone to bars. She wanted to believe him.

Below, on the West Side Highway, the tiny moving lights were cars with shrouded headlights. Beyond that, on the surface of the silver river, was the ship traffic that, on moonless nights, would be almost invisible: freighters now called Liberty ships, long-waisted tankers, tugs with barges. An occasional racing motor boat, the harbor police or the military plowing a white, moon-touched wake.

I didn’t know what time it was, until I met you.

In the dark the radio’s faint melody was nostalgic, seductively dreaming. Richard Rodgers had written some achingly beautiful music.

The composer of the music for Jenny’s new show had a reputation as a difficult man. Many people in the theater regarded Dick Rodgers as a sarcastic, intimidating man that few really knew, or liked. Watching him at the piano while he worked with the big, bear-like Oscar Hammerstein, Jenny really couldn’t say; she had only the nagging suspicion that perhaps the composer didn’t seem to be satisfied with her in the part that he’d chosen her for. At first it, seemed, she’d been perfect. Or so everyone said. Now that the music and the actual words of the book were changing, Jenny wasn’t so sure.