The Joys of Love (4 page)

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Authors: Madeleine L'engle

BOOK: The Joys of Love
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“Sure, I know, but if Mr. Price tells me to be in the box office at nine, there isn't much I can do about it. Maybe he won't keep me long. I love being in the box office any other time.” She blew on her glasses and wiped them with Jane's handkerchief.
“If Price is going to work you at all hours of the day, he shouldn't make you pay room and board.”
Elizabeth sighed, handing Jane back her handkerchief. “I'd give my eyeteeth for room and board. I'd feel okay about Aunt Harriet, then. It's a lousy business, accepting money from people, especially when they don't want to give it. Let's go.” She took the key out of the cash box and turned off the light, and they left the office. Elizabeth locked the door behind them and put the key in the pocket of her skirt.
“Want something to eat before we go back to the Cottage?” Jane asked.
“No, I don't think so.”
“Dinner was a long time ago. I'll treat you.”
“Thanks a lot, Jane. But I really don't want anything. You go ahead, though.”
Jane shook her head. “I've already had a hamburger with John Peter and I told him to wait for me in the Cottage.”
The Cottage, where all the apprentices and most of the professional company lived during the summer, was several blocks from the theatre and the beach. The theatre had once been a casino and the Cottage had first been a private home and then an orphanage. The casino went bankrupt and the orphans were moved to a larger and newer building. Even though the Cottage was set back from the beach, the floors were always sandy under the rugs and the sheets damp in cold weather, and it constantly smelled musty.
Elizabeth and Jane walked side by side on the sidewalk. “I'll bet your Aunt Harriet doesn't approve of your staying up late like this,” Jane said.
Elizabeth grinned. “I
think
Aunt Harriet's fond of me—in her own way—but I
know
she doesn't approve of me. Your parents sound so wonderful, Jane, the way they really like you, and don't mind about your wanting to be an actress.”
Even the darkness could not hide the forlorn look that suddenly fell on Jane's face. “They don't approve of John Peter,” she said.
“Why not?”
“I don't know, but it makes me unhappy anyhow.”
“But they let you come here with him this summer,” Elizabeth said.
Jane shook her head sadly. “It's just their way of doing things. They know if they tried to keep me away from him it'd
just make it worse. But it's like your aunt hoping you'd like chemistry better than the theatre. I'll never like anyone better than John Peter.”
They had reached the Cottage now and they climbed the stone steps in silence. There was only one dim light on in the large living room, which the apprentices, and occasionally the company, used for rehearsals. Dorothy Dawne, also known as Dottie, the same blond woman Elizabeth had seen in Mr. Price's office, and Huntley Haskell, another one of the professional actors, were sitting together on one corner of a sagging sofa, embracing passionately. This was nothing unusual, and Elizabeth and Jane, barely glancing in their direction, went slowly up the stairs. Elizabeth felt suddenly very tired. It wasn't a physical tiredness but a tiredness in her heart, because Kurt had asked her to meet him and then hadn't come.
Maybe he left a message for me with one of the others, she thought, and started to hurry.
The professional company lived in rooms on the second floor and the ten girl apprentices lived on the third floor. The male apprentices lived in a big dormitory room over the garage. Most of the paying girl apprentices had single or double rooms, but Elizabeth and Jane lived with two of the paying apprentices in a lopsided room under the eaves. The two paying apprentices had the large half and the big closet. Elizabeth and Jane had the small half and a curtained-off alcove for a closet.
The door to their room was open and the lights were blazing. John Peter and Sophie Sherman, one of Elizabeth and Jane's roommates, sat on Jane's bed. Ditta Coates, a paying apprentice
who lived down the hall, sat sprawled across the bed of their other roommate, Bibi Towne. Ditta was a plain girl of about twenty-nine who taught dramatics at a boarding school. In the large half of the room, Ben, draped in a sheet, Jane's blond hairpiece pinned to his dark hair, was doing the vial scene from
Romeo and Juliet.
“‘Stay, Tybalt, stay!'” Ben cried, waving his long arms wildly as Elizabeth entered. “‘Romeo, I come! This do I drink to thee.'” Draining a paper container of coffee, he fell, all arms and legs, across one of the beds. Elizabeth and Jane joined in the applause.
Ben laughed happily. “It's certainly the
vile
scene, isn't it?”
“‘O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful, and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all hooping!'” Elizabeth said.
Ben raised one of his dark, peaked eyebrows. “And what, may I ask, is that from?”
Elizabeth grinned. “Celia, in
As You Like It
.”
“Be careful of my hair,” Jane warned, as Ben reached up and began tousling the hairpiece that looked so incongruous against his dark locks, his eyes as alive and eager as a puppy's.
“Now I'm going to be Melisande.”
“Not with my hair you aren't,” Jane said. “Give it here.”
“What a brute you are.” Ben reluctantly unpinned the hair. “What was your telephone call, Liz?”
“It was my Aunt Harriet and she'd gone to bed. I'll have to call her tomorrow morning.”
“Bed at this time of night!” Ben cried, tossing Jane the hair.
“It's the shank of the evening.” He took a brown paper bag off one of the bureaus. “I brought you a hot dog, Liz. It's all covered with mustard and pickle the way you like it.”
“Ben, you're an angel,” Elizabeth said, and pulled the hot dog, wrapped in innumerable paper napkins, out of the bag. “I'm going to have to eat this out the window or I'll drip all over the room.” Bless Ben, she thought. He knows how I hate to sponge off people, but he always sees that I get fed.
Sophie, who had hay fever and was always accompanied by Kleenex, threw her a box. “Here, Liz.”
“Thanks, Soph.” Elizabeth took a large bite of the hot dog, then asked with pretended casualness, “Any messages for me?”
Ditta shook her head. “Not a thing.”
Sophie said indifferently, “What did you expect?”
But Ben turned to Elizabeth and said bluntly, “I saw Kurt Canitz going into the Ambassador with Sarah Courtmont.”
For a minute Elizabeth looked at him furiously, then she turned away.
“That was mean, Ben,” Ditta said.
“Well, it's the truth.”
Ditta rose, saying, “If I'm going to keep awake at any of the classes tomorrow morning, I've got to get my beauty rest. Good night, all.” She yawned widely and ran her fingers through the rather stiff permanent in her brown hair, hair that was already beginning to show a few threads of grey.
As she left, Elizabeth yawned, too. “If I don't get to bed, I'll never get to the box office by nine. Come on, kids.”
“You mean you want us to go?” Ben asked with incredulity.
“In words of one syllable, yes. It's our turn to set tables tomorrow morning, Ben. Mind you don't oversleep.”
“And mind you don't wake me when you get up, Ben,” John Peter said. He bent over Jane and gave her a quick kiss.
“Good night, darling,” Jane said.
“Good night, sweetheart.”
Ben patted Elizabeth clumsily on the shoulder. “It's a pity your attention is otherwise occupied, Liz. We might have made such a lovely couple.” Then he raised one of his peaked brows and looked around. “Where's the charming fourth roommate, by the way?”
Sophie shrugged; she had a petulant way of lifting her shoulders whenever she was envious or discontented that particularly annoyed Elizabeth. “Bibi is probably at the Ambassador or Irving's,” Sophie said, “fraternizing with the professional company.”
It's amazing, Elizabeth thought, how Sophie can make anything she says sound unpleasant.
Ben lounged in the doorway and said, “Why, I'll never know. The professional company stinks. Good night, kids. See you over the canned orange juice, Liz.”
A voice from down the stairs shouted up, “Elizabeth Jerrold!”
Ben stuck his head out the door. “What?” he shouted back. Jane winced, as she always did at loud noises.
“Is Liz there?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Canitz wants her.”
“Damn it, what does he want at this time of night?” Ben said. “Tell him you're asleep, Liz.”
“But I'm not,” Elizabeth said, and ran to the door. “Tell him I'll be right down,” she called. Elizabeth's voice, though she raised it only slightly, easily reached down the two flights of stairs; instinctively she understood projection and during the summer had learned to add more to her native knowledge. Then she said, not looking at the others, “He probably wants me to type some letters for him or something.”
“At this time of night?” Jane asked.
“Why not? Mr. Price had me taking dictation till two o'clock one morning.” She looked hastily in the mirror, and ran her brush over the soft brown waves that never, to Jane's envy, had to be put up in bobby pins at night. “Well, goodbye,” she said, and hurried out the door. Ben's clarion-clear voice floated down the stairs after her—and what Ben lacked in projection, he more than compensated for in volume—singing:
“Love is a little thing
Shaped like a lizard.
It runs up and down
And tickles your gizzard.”
Elizabeth quickened her footsteps and felt the color mounting to her cheeks.
Kurt Canitz was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs. He stood leaning against the balustrade, his dark head as sleek and beautiful as a black leopard's, and held out his hands to her.
“Elizabeth,” he said, “Liebchen, sweetheart. I'm sorry I didn't meet you after the show tonight.”
Elizabeth said nothing.
“La Courtmont asked me to go up to the Ambassador with her for a drink and everybody else was going down to Irving's. It was my one chance to see her alone. I wanted to talk to her about the lead in a show I'm thinking of producing this fall.” His voice was childlike and pleading.
“Sure,” Elizabeth said. “It's okay, Kurt.”
“She's certainly a beautiful creature,” Kurt said as he put his arm about Elizabeth and led her out of the Cottage. They walked through the deserted streets to the boardwalk, and then in the direction of the Ambassador, at the other end of the boardwalk from the concessions and soda fountains.
“I hope you've been watching Courtmont this week, Elizabeth,” Kurt said. “You can learn a lot about makeup from her. And lighting. That woman knows more about lighting than most electricians. A lot of good actresses don't know when they're in a spot and when they're in shadow. Courtmont manages to get all the light on her face and everybody else slightly shadowed. And she knows how to make up those big blue eyes of hers so that they look like two small individual spotlights of her own. Your eyes are—” He stopped for a moment, then asked in a tone of wondering surprise, “What color are your eyes, my Liebchen, my Elizabeth?”
“Grey,” Elizabeth said.
Kurt laughed, rather apologetically. “It's odd how one remembers what eyes are like but doesn't remember what color they are. You have good eyes, Elizabeth. Wide apart. And nice lashes. And nice wavy brown hair. But you should put in a rinse to make it redder.”
Usually Elizabeth seized on any of Kurt's suggestions like a seagull diving after a fish, but now she shook her head. “If I put in a rinse, it would look dyed. This way, what red there is is my own.”
“It wouldn't look dyed if you had it done properly.”
“I can't afford that sort of thing, Kurt.” People with money never understand that other people don't have it, she thought. Even Kurt, who usually seemed to understand everything. Aloud she said, “I don't like dyed hair anyhow.”
It was the first time she had ever disagreed with Kurt, and she felt quickly upset and unhappy.
But Kurt's arm tightened about her waist in an affectionate gesture, and he said softly, “It was just an idea, Liebchen. You're perfect as you are. I'm very fond of you, funny one, did you know that?”
Elizabeth's heart winged with happiness as it always did when Kurt spoke to her in that gentle, loving way.
But as to his question, she could give it no answer, because to think that Kurt Canitz was really fond of her was too exciting and too wonderful a thing to be believable. All she wanted to do was to cry out, I love you! but she just leaned against him and continued to walk beside him on the lonely boardwalk with the salty night wind pushing her hair back from her face.

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