Vintage Love (265 page)

“Don’t talk that way to me!” she protested indignantly, looking for Marty to come to her aid. But Marty was having another gin.

“You needn’t worry about me, kid, I can keep a secret,” Louis said with another of his teasing smiles and then went on to join the group where Marty was holding forth.

Anita decided the party was over as far as she was concerned. She edged her way to the front door and then let herself out into the cool night. She hurried across to her house, a shabby frame structure like the Nolans’. All the rest of the family were at the party so she was able to go straight up to her room, turn on the solitary light and by its soft glow drag her battered cardboard suitcase out and place it on her bed. She quickly transferred all her scant supply of clothing to the suitcase and then put in her make-up, and lastly her beloved doll with real brown hair and eyes which opened and closed, depending on how it was tilted. At least she wasn’t venturing out into the world without an old friend. She arranged the doll amid her clothes and tilted its legs so that it fitted into the suitcase neatly. Then she snapped the suitcase closed, sat it on the floor and began the vigil until one-thirty.

A little after midnight she heard the rest of the family come home. The younger members went dutifully to their rooms and then her father and mother came upstairs, laughing and talking as they often did when they were more than a little drunk. They went into their room and closed their door with a slam. She felt a great moment of relief. They had not noticed she was missing.

She placed her forty dollars in her pocketbook and then warily made her way downstairs with her suitcase in hand. She let herself out the back door, which her father had carefully locked on the inside. Then she stood shivering in the shadows waiting for her love.

Marty was late in coming and she was beginning to have moments of real despair when she heard an uneven footstep and saw him approaching. He bowed to her drunkenly and, swaying, took her bag in hand and motioned for her to follow him.

She did so and as soon as they were a distance from her house, she asked him anxiously, “Are you all right?”

“I’m drunk,” he said sagely as he stumbled along. “But I’m all right. In fact, I feel fine!”

She stared at him as she walked along at his side. “I never saw you like this!”

“Get used to it, kiddo,” the young man told her. “I have a big thirst and lots of capacity.”

Anita was glad the railroad platform was deserted but for the half-dozen members of the vaudeville troup. They were all standing huddled together and looking weary, and none of them even glanced at her. For this she was grateful.

Mr. Mooney, the station master, wasn’t around and as soon as the train pulled in, Marty shoved her onto it. “Second class,” he told her. “We always travel second class. Saves money.”

Since she had never travelled on a train before, the big car with its battered wooden seats and smell of tobacco smoke seemed quite comfortable, warm and inviting.

The rest of the company came aboard, grumbling. She watched as they stowed their bags on the iron shelves above them and complained about the hard seats and the filthy condition of the train.

A big woman who sang ballads in a husky contralto voice sat across from them. She wore a wide-brimmed hat and a black old-fashioned dress and her stout figure, crowned by her painted and mascaraed face, looked much older and less friendly than when she was on stage.

She told Marty, “This is a rotten little railway line! Can’t compare with the Lake Erie and Pennsylvania!”

“You should know,” Marty said, removing his hat and bowing. “You’re the queen of the second class!”

The fat woman shot him a dark look. “And I see you’ve fetched along a princess for yourself! I’ll bet her folks will be just delighted! And wait until Sherman Kress sees her!”

“Mind your stinking business!” Marty said in a drunken, slurred voice. He sank down onto the seat next to Anita and promptly gave her a sloppy kiss.

From across the carriage, the fat woman said, “If you’re smart, kid, you’ll get off this train quick and run home! Don’t say that Madame Irma didn’t warn you!”

“That for you!” Marty told Madame Irma, fingering his nose at her. The big woman snorted indignantly and turned her back on him.

The train started with a jolt and a sleepy-eyed conductor accompanied by a shrivelled little assistant came by, punched their tickets and sent disapproving glances their way.

“What now?” Anita asked when the two railway men moved on.

“Sleep,” Marty mumbled, annoyed at her making him open his eyes. “Unless you want to go to the bathroom. It’s down at the end of the car.”

Anita felt she’d be more comfortable for making the trip, so she made her way down the railway car, holding onto the tops of the seats as it clattered unevenly along. She passed a pretty-faced young girl with her eyes closed. Seated next to her was an older man in a bowler hat and shabby black suit. He had a lined, jowled face, and his neck seemed to have shrunk inside his hard collar. He had the look of a man who might once have been fat and who was now thinner and doleful as well.

Further along sat a very suave (by Anita’s standards) young man with a black mustache and long sideburns, wearing a brown homburg and an expensive-looking brown suit. He was Romero, the magician — Anita recognized him at once. Next to him sat a crabby-looking little man who had been the master of ceremonies for the troupe and who had held the stage for a few minutes on his own, telling some pretty stale jokes. Even Anita had heard them all before. As she passed, the little man glared at her.

When she returned from the washroom at the end of the car, the crabby-looking little man was standing with his hand on the back of a seat, facing Marty and glaring at him. To her surprise Marty seemed to be afraid of the sour man, and cringed before his stern gaze.

The little man introduced himself. “I’m Kress! Who are you?”

Stunned by the way he’d rasped the question at her, Anita took a few seconds before she could reply in a stricken voice, “I’m going to marry Marty!”

“So he claims!” Sherman Kress scowled. “But he’s told me a few stories before! Did you run away from home or are you with us by your parents’ permission?”

She gasped, “My parents want me to marry him!”

“They must be soft in the head,” Sherman Kress snarled with a disgusted look at Marty again. “I don’t want this company in any trouble with the law!”

“Don’t worry!” she pleaded.

“I’ll worry,” the little man declared. “But I don’t suppose it will do any good as long as you two stick to your story. But I warn you, as long as this tour goes on I’m handing out no extra money for lodgings or expenses. Just you and your Marty-boy be certain of that!”

Marty found his voice to say sullenly, “We got money to pay our way! We don’t need anything from you!”

“That’s great!” Sherman Kress said sarcastically. “Too bad I ain’t got a rich uncle like you! Well, you mind how you behave, and remember what I said!” And he went back to sit with the magician again.

Anita was near tears as she sat next to Marty and saw that Madame Irma had been thoroughly enjoying the scene. Now the fat woman turned to the window and ignored them. She said unhappily, “Everyone seems so hateful and angry. I though show people were kind to each other!”

“Are you nuts?” Marty stared at her sleepily.

“It’s nothing like I expected,” she continued tearfully.

He reluctantly put an arm around her. “You’ll get used to it. Try and get some sleep.”

“Are we going to be on this train all night?” she wanted to know.

“Yep. And most of tomorrow. We switch at the New York State border but we don’t have to leave the train. Just change engines and baggage cars.”

“What about food?”

“A porter will come through selling sandwiches and drinks,” he said. “You bring that money with you?”

“Yes.”

“Better give it to me,” he said. “Someone might slip it out of your pocketbook while you’re sleeping.”

Anita gave him the forty dollars and he put it in his wallet, stowed the wallet away and immediately went into a drunken sleep, snoring in her ear so that she couldn’t even think of sleeping. She was afraid to move, feeling sure he’d be angry if she waked him. So she hunched there against him for hours, unhappy and uncomfortable. At last she fell into a cramped troubled sleep.

The jolting of the train moving backwards in an eerie fashion wakened her and she sat up with a start. Marty was still sound asleep.

Madame Irma glanced across at her with a sympathetic look on her broad, overly made-up face, and said, “We’re just switching and hitching onto the other train, dearie. It’s all right.”

“Thank you,” Anita said gratefully. She felt awful and there was a terrible crick in her neck.

“I saw you give him that money,” the older woman said. “You sure you know what you’re doing?”

“I wanted him to have it,” she said, caressing her neck and hoping it would feel better shortly.

“He’s no good, you know that!”

She looked at the older woman with troubled eyes. “Do you think you should say such things to me?”

“Not to hurt you, dearie,” the big woman said. “Madame Irma never deliberately hurt anyone. I’m trying to put a flea in your ear, that’s all!”

“A flea in my ear?”

“I’m telling you what I know about him,” the big woman said. “He drinks too much, he runs after every skirt he sees, and worst of all, he has a rotten singing voice and he can’t even dance all that well.”

Anita gasped at the enormity of what she was hearing. She said, “Surely there must be something good you can say about him?” There was a brief pause as Madame Irma considered.

“He’s never murdered anyone as far as I know,” the fat woman said dourly.

“I’m going to marry him!”

“I’ve had three husbands,” Madame Irma told her. “None of them were worth sharing a double bed with. The single life, that’s the best! Take it from me! I’ve lived and I’ve suffered!”

“You have a lovely singing voice,” Anita told her.

“Thank you, dearie, I was big time once.”

“Big time?” Anita repeated, in puzzlement.

Madame Irma shook her head. “You don’t know a
anything
, dearie. I swear I never met anyone so dumb! ‘The big time’ means the big houses where they pay you real money. Not a two-bit show like this where you hardly make enough to live like a galley slave!”

“Then why are you with this kind of show?”

“Misfortune, dearie,” the big woman said. “As you can see, I’m not all that young anymore. And I’ve put on a little too much weight. I relaxed the last time I married. He promised he’d take care of me for the rest of his life. The trouble was, he didn’t live long! A mean Dago caught him in his wife’s bed and put a knife in him! End of my third and final marriage!”

“I’m sorry,” Anita sympathized.

“So am I,” Madame Irma said emphatically. “Now I’m reduced to working in a show like this, because I’m broke and I’ve passed my prime. But that little twerp you’re thinking of marrying is never going to make it. He doesn’t have much ability and he won’t work hard with what he has.”

“When we’re married I’ll make him work,” Anita said. “He’ll do it for me. He says he’s going to take me into the act!”

Madame Irma groaned. “You want to marry him and you want to go on the stage?”

“Yes.”

The big woman rolled her eyes. “Some folks have to make all the mistakes at once!”

As the train rolled on, Anita discovered that the wooden seats were more uncomfortable than anything she had ever known. Her bottom ached. It was getting close to dawn and she was starting to feel hungry. Marty had slumped all the way down onto the seat and was snoring loudly, his clothing wrinkled and askew. She glanced down at the freckled Irish face and a soft feeling of love for him went through her. She knew he’d had a hard time getting anywhere in show business.

She remembered him as a gawky boy in Lynn with little education and no future. At least he’d managed to get himself this niche in a precarious business. And with her to comfort him and work with him, there was no reason he couldn’t get to the top. “The big time!” She liked the sound of the phrase.

The train whistle blew dolefully and Marty opened his eyes and looked up at her. He stared at her for a moment, then closed his eyes and groaned again.

“Are you all right?” she asked worriedly. She sensed it was a question she’d ask often.

His answer was another groan and then he eased himself up and gazed at her. He had a sick look on his pale, freckled face and he seemed to be unable to believe what he saw.

“You’re really here on the train with me!” he said in amazement.

“You made me come,” she reminded him. “You brought me here!”

“I did?” he asked, showing disbelief. He groaned again. “What a hangover!”

“Don’t you remember any of it?”

“Not much!”

Tears brimmed in her eyes again. “Are you sorry I’m here?”

Marty opened his eyes and smiled weakly. “No. It’s wonderful to see you. You look like an angel!”

“You’re not just making that up?” she worried.

He held his head in his hands. “Do you think I could make anything up in this state?”

“Are you going to be sick?”

“I
am
sick,” he complained. “What I need is some coffee to get me awake! Where is that boy with the sandwiches and coffee?”

His query was answered a few minutes later when the door at the end of the car opened and a youth with a large square box suspended from his neck came along, crying out an unintelligible phrase which sounded like “cheese, chicken and coffee” slurred together into one word.

Marty beckoned the boy after he’d served Madame Irma with two chicken sandwiches and coffee. He asked Anita what she wanted. “Chicken or cheese?”

“I’ll take cheese,” she said nervously. “And coffee with cream and sugar!”

“I want mine black,” Marty told the youth. “And I’ll have a cheese as well.” The boy served them and went on.

The sandwich and coffee made Anita feel better. Things didn’t seem so bad after all. At least she was on this train with Marty, who wanted her to share her life with him as his wife, and that was all that really mattered. Marty loved her and she was at last going to be part of the glamorous world of show business.