return of the peking acrobats

“D’jever hear of an act like that?” Frank threw the newspaper down on the vanity. A powder puff went spinning and the incandescent dust rose in a languid cloud.

“Whatsat?” Nadine was not listening.

“There, the big square ad under your schnozz. Christ, Nadine.” He looked at his watch. “Eighteen minutes. Are you going to be ready?” He had the New Jersey way of coming down hard on the g’s in a participle.

“Keep yer shirt on don’t say Christ.” That reminded her—she tucked the cross medallion under her chemise. “You think the new piano player?”

“He’s all right. Dane’s been at him for three hours and got him soused to steady his nerves. Sixteen years old Jesus God.”

Nadine stood up, saying, “If you don’t fucking cut out the profane use of God’s name I will be headlining the nine o’clock train to Chicago. Now zip me up.”

He zipped the dress and gave her an affectionate slap as she passed by him to get to her shoes. “Feeling good?” he asked.

She was all at angles like a late Picasso, wedging the sandal onto her foot.

“Eh,” she said.

“How’s Kelly?”

“As usual.” She straightened up and shook out her dress. “All right?”

“Sure.” His head was cocked to one side, like an inquisitve dog’s, Nadine thought.

“Cut it out,” she said, batting the air with her hand. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Can’t help worry for you,” said Frank.

“Cause you’re a peach.” Nadine turned, slithered through the door into the velvet darkness of the backstage.


She had a spot just below the overhang of the mezzanine, slightly right of center, where she fixed her eyes. It gave a nice length to her throat, opened the vocal chords, and made her look wistfully distant, as if the words meant something to her. She had long ceased to wonder how anybody could buy it; just so they did.


The new piano player was truly good, and soused. When he shook her hand after closing, she kept it a careful distance from the satin of her dress.

“Gee! Gee, Miss di Nova,” the kid said continually. “Gosh, I’m just so happy…”

She gratefully wrung her hand on Frank’s handkerchief, discreetly passed to her. “It’s Mrs. You really were, sweetie, the real deal. Just keep practicing. We’ll get somewhere. Frank, you called a car?”

“Here in five minutes,” he said. “G’night, honey.” They pecked each other on the cheek. Nadine went back to the dressing room, changed into comfortable shoes and her daytime tweeds, and went out the stage door into the alley to meet the cab.

“How are you, Mrs. di Nova?” said the driver.

“Right as rain. How are you? Charlie, right?”

“No ma’am. You can’t see, I’m Raymond.”

“Oh, sweetie, I’m sorry. How are you?”

“Just fine, ma’am, thank you.”

“Still plugging away at school?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good boy. How many more years before they make you a dentist?”

“No, ma’am, that’s Jamie.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve only got another year and a half before I can take the bar,” said Raymond proudly.

“Well, you’d better give me your number. A lady in show business always needs a good lawyer.”

“Yes, ma’am. You bet your boots. I will. But you’re not the sort of lady who gets into trouble, ma’am.”

“Not the exciting kind of trouble, to be sure, Raymond. But to read her contracts and negotiate and so forth.” Nadine was examining a hole opening in the thumb seam of her glove, wondering if she could fix it herself. “It’s still plenty of work, and until you make a big name for yourself and all the stars are pestering you…”

“Aw gee, Mrs. di Nova, I’d never let you down, not for a million stars.”

She looked up. “That’s a beautiful thing to say, and a beautiful way to say it. You hang on to that line, Raymond. Use it where you know it’ll do you the most good.”

He made a sound to indicate that he was blushing.

“Good act tonight, Mrs. di Nova?”

“Oh, sure. We all work hard.”

“Nice kind of work. I mean, I’d do it, if I could.”

“All work is work. It’s nice if you’re good at it.” She would try to mend the hole, but Nadine knew it would have to go to a leatherer’s. She bit her lip to keep from grumbling.


The lights were out when she got upstairs, but she could hear Kelly breathing in the dark and knew by its pattern that he was awake.

“Sweetheart?” she murmured.

Nadine hung up her coat and put the gloves on the console to attend to in the morning. She kicked off her shoes and shoved them to the side of the door.

“Still awake?” she inquired, as she crossed to the closet. She unhooked her skirt and stepped out of it, hung it up in the closet, hung her jacket beside it, rolled her stockings down from her waist.

“Headache any better?”

“No.”

She tugged gingerly at the toes of her stockings; her legs gratefully expanded in the cool air.

“Mmm! Do you want me to get you anything?”

“Such as what?”

“I don’t know.” She went into the bathroom but did not turn on the light; she spread cold cream over her face in the dark. “If there’s something you want…” She brushed her teeth cursorily, spit out, and crossed toward the bed. She slid between the sheets, sighing as her lower back unraveled against the mattress. She closed her eyes and sank in surrender to rest.

“I don’t see,” said Kelly, “what you think you could do.” A match hissed as he lit up a cigarette beside her.


Rather than take the streetcar, Nadine walked downtown to the leatherer’s.

“Haven’t seen you for a time, Mrs. di Nova,” said Mr. Applebaum.

“Your work’s too good,” said Nadine.

“Can’t help myself,” said Mr. Applebaum. “Kind of a dreary day out, isn’t it?”

“I like the fog all right,” said Nadine. “Atmosphere.” She handed him the glove.

“Oh, we can set that right,” he said, turning to his tools on the counter behind him.

She took a seat to wait, crossing her left leg over her right. It was a relief not to talk; it was worth the long walk.


Nadine took the change she saved by walking to get herself an éclair in the bakery on West Twelfth Street. She bit it with self-conscious delicacy, poising her lips to save the lipstick, and chewed with slow circular motion rather like a cow’s, as she gazed at the girls passing like trains behind the glass cases of pastry. One of them had very nice features and an even hairline; Nadine pictured the girl to herself in costume, her head banded by a feather and sequin piece, and thought it was promising. She looked at the matron with narrowed eyes.

When she was ready to leave, she went to the counter and addressed the matron.

“Would you be so kind,” she said, taking a card from her case and pushing it with her fingers across the glass, “as to give this to the young lady, there, and tell her I’d be glad to see her at the Roller Room.” Without waiting for the woman to decide what attitude to take, Nadine wheeled on her heel and exited with her subtlest sway.


Frank opened the door to a pair of big blue eyes that, on closer examination, did not owe their appealing size to an excess of kohl.

“I’m here to see Miss di Nova,” the pair of eyes said. Her voice wasn’t anything special. Evidently this was a blind instinct of Nadine’s; Frank figured at the odds that the legs under the houndstooth skirt were decent.

“Sure, come in,” he said, pressing the door back and critically watching the sway of her ass as it took the hike up from the street level. There was potential, he was relieved to find. Nadine had fished out some real trouts once or twice. “Second door on your right,” he said.


Nadine started at the knock. “What? Yeah, come in.” She was still looking down at the clipping on her vanity when the latch clicked shut.

The girl waited for a moment.

“Miss di Nova?”

“Mrs. …What?” Nadine turned around to face her. “Oh. Hi, hiya, sweetheart. Yes. Come in. Sit…anywhere.” She gestured vaguely with her hand.

The girl begged mute permission of a pile of clothes on the loveseat before respectfully pushing it a little to the side. “Mrs. Anistakis said you left this card…” She held it out as proof.

“Course I did,” said Nadine. “Um. Yes, do you ever danced before?”

“I was in the majorettes in high school.”

“Think you could learn?”

“Learn…to dance? Oh, of course. I’m good at picking up routines.”

“Are you…” Nadine’s gaze had strayed back to the newspaper clipping. “…Fast on your feet?”

The girl was desperately leaning forward. “Yes, very. I’m a very fast learner, too.” A long silence dejected her. “I…I could come back at a more convenient time.” The empty response confirmed her fears, and she stood up.

Nadine roused herself.

“Oh, sweetheart, no. Sit down, don’t mind me. Sit down. What’s your name, honey?”

“Catherine…” Suggestions of glamorous stage names flashed across her hungry eyes, but she manfully finished with the truth. “Moran.”

Nadine nodded. “That’s a fine name,” she said. “I know you think it’s not special enough, but trust me, the more pizzazz in a name, the less in the act. Get it?”

The girl nodded hungrily.

“So you can pick up dances all right. That’s fine. Oh, sweetheart, I’m sorry…” Nadine started to crumple.

Catherine Moran stood up again. “I can come back.”

“No, don’t! You’ve got to put up with this from…” Nadine gave a weakly bitter laugh. “What you don’t have to put up with!” She pulled the clipping off the vanity. “You ever hear of these fellers?”

The girl took the clipping and scanned it. “Um, no ma’am. I never did.”

“I’ll tell you something, honey.” But Nadine did not tell her anything; instead, she reached her fingers into a chocolate box on the corner of the vanity, yanked her fingers out of it again, and swiftly picked it up and passed it to Catherine Moran. Not wishing to be rude, the girl selected a candy without looking and bit into it with trusting obedience. Whatever was in the center was exactly disgusting to her. She tried to get her tongue around the chocolate outside without being obvious.

Nadine’s hands were folded in her lap. She looked down at them, hooking her fingers together and trying their strength.
“I told you it’s Mrs., didn’t I?”

“Yes ma’am. You did.”

“That’s not a stage name, either. He’s got a killer-diller of a name, doesn’t he?”

The girl angled her chin intently. “Who, ma’am? Oh, your…”

“I didn’t take him for that, though. I didn’t think I’d ever really work in show business, and when Kelly came along I didn’t care. I just wanted to marry him worse than anything in the world. I didn’t think he cared two straws for me until we were walking home from a ballroom and he said…” Nadine’s fingers broke apart; she smiled. “Well, I don’t know as I remember what he said.” She looked sympathetically at Catherine Moran. “A lady shouldn’t remember such things out loud, should she?”

The girl swallowed.

“We had a real nice wedding. Not so big but I never thought it could be so nice. I didn’t care anyway. I didn’t care about anything except being married to him. And not even married, see? Just him. Just Kelly, being with Kelly. I wanted to make him coffee every morning but if he’d said, no, sit in that chair and I’ll have the coffee brought in by the lady next door, I’d have sat in that chair and watched him drink it just so’s I was in the same room alone with him for a while, every day.” She pointed at the newspaper clipping that Catherine Moran was still holding, limply, in her left hand. “We saw them on our honeymoon. They were performing on the boardwalk to publicize their act at the Platinum Perch. Atlantic City. I hated Atlantic City, always did, but I didn’t even notice it was Atlantic City when we were there. I remember those fellows, though, doing a pyramid kind of thing on the boardwalk, and a girl bending her legs over her back and hooking them around her chin…Ugh. But he watched them and was grinning and eating a hot dog, and I just was looking at him and he said, Look at that! And I looked at them, those little Chinese acrobats, and…” She gazed through her fingers as if into some tranquil depth.

Catherine Moran quaveringly asked, “And what?”

Nadine looked up. “What?” Her face softened as she looked at the girl. “Are you married, sweetheart?”

“No. I’m not.”

Nadine saw her blush with distant satisfaction. “I hope you are someday,” she said, “and I hope you marry somebody you really love.” She paused. “And I hope…” A great weight seemed to press against her, insistent that she continue to speak. But she prevailed against it.

“Did Frank let you in? Fellow with a mustache?”

“Yes.”

“Good. You go out there and tell him your name. No, before you do that…” Nadine put out her hand to stop the girl’s exit. “Was somebody playing the piano when you came in?”

“Yes,” Catherine Moran answered, her face sweetly mystified.

“Here’s what you do. Go and talk to the piano player first, Mr. Bates. Old fellow, been here for years. You go and tell him to play you something you can sing. Then when Frank—that’s Mr. Ellison—comes out, you sing it over for him. Tell him I said so.”

The girl stood with her hand poised lightly on the doorknob.

“Will he…?”

Nadine shook her hand about briskly. “He’ll hear you sing and that’ll tell him where to put you in the chorus. And he’ll show you the papers. You can sign them here or take them home first, whatever you like. Show them to your dad, if you got one. If you have questions, you make sure to ask them. Frank’s a swell guy, he won’t mind.”

The girl stood a moment longer, then she collapsed forward.

“Miss…Mrs. di Nova, I just want to tell you, I can’t tell you how much this…”

“Sure, sure. Tell me if you come back to work. I have a good feeling, now shake a leg.”

When the door closed, Nadine put her head in her hands and, after a moment, moved to the loveseat to put her face in the pile of clothes.


“Excuse me.”

Dane swiveled round on the piano stool.

“I’m supposed to find Mr. Bates?” 


“Who?” he said.

“The piano player, Mr. Bates.” She stepped forward, into the first pool of stage light. Her hair lit up with a blue halo.

“Oh, he’s gone. I’m the piano player now.”

Her posture shifted uncertainly; where her skirt barely cleft to her thigh, the light made an effect positively Dutch. “Mrs. di Nova said I should speak to Mr. Bates about…”

“Oh, she must have forgot. I’m new. I guess she forgot.” He was embarrassed; his shoulders rolled forward.

“That’s all right,” she hastened to reassure him. “I just have to sing something for Mister, um…”

“Mr. Ellison, maybe?”

“Yes. The one with the mustache. He let me in.”

“That’s Mr. Ellison. Are you auditioning?”

“Yes. For the chorus.”

”Oh! Swell, that’s swell!” He spun back to the keyboard; she minced around him and came to rest her elbows on the piano lid. “What do you want to sing?”

“Oh! I’m not sure. What do you think?”

He played a careless patter of broken chords. “What voice are you?”

“I sang both when I was in the high school choir.”

“Say!” He looked up at her admiringly. “That’s something. You can sing both. Well, do you like Gershwin?”

“Oh, I’ll say I do!”

He gave her a rollicking lead which she picked up and promptly dropped, with a helpless giggle.

“I’ve never done anything like this before,” she confessed.


Frank rapped on Nadine’s door as he opened it.

“Goddammit, don’t you knock!”

He pulled up short. Her face was streaked with mascara.

"Hey, I’m sorry!” He stared at her.

“Well, how do you like me?” she said belligerently.

“Honey. What’s wrong?”

“Fuck off.”

He stared at her still more intently.

Her rigidity failed. She waved limply past him.

“Girl’s out there,” she croaked.

“Girl?”

“She’s all fine and dandy. Just have her sing for you or something.”

“Honey…” he began again.

“Oh, Frank!” she blubbered. “Piss off, can’t you?”

He backed slowly out. “Okay okay.”


“She’s a wonderful lady!” Catherine Moran effused as she handed the signed papers back to Frank.

“Yeah, wonderful,” He scanned the contract perfunctorily, and devoutly hoped she really could pick up routines all right. He looked over her shoulder and, through the glass pane in the door, saw Dane hovering outside.

“I just don’t understand how it’s all happened,” the girl went on breathlessly. “I mean I never gave it a thought, the stage I mean. And I don’t think I even saw her at the bakery…that’s where I work, where I used to work, my boss gave me her card, she left it there.”

“That’s Nadine, she likes to do her favors for people,” said Frank. He regarded Catherine Moran kindly. “But you must be real special to have struck her like that.” He approved of the girl’s blush. She wasn’t a shark. If she could just pick up a routine, he thought. He saw Dane’s head bobbing up and down behind the frosted glass, smiled, and frowned.

“Was she all right when you spoke with her?” he asked Catherine.

The girl’s big eyes grew bigger.

How does she do it, Frank wondered, just the right time, bet she doesn’t even know it when she does it, things go right we could go up a third. He looked again at Dane's glassy silhouette. That's where it is, he thought, it'll all come from him, with her, he’s an artistic type of kid &mdash oh Nadine, how do you do it?

“I…I don’t know, I’m not sure. She seemed…” Catherine bit her lip. “She was talking about her honeymoon.”

“She was? Her honeymoon?”

“Yes, about her husband, and Atlantic City, but she didn’t finish.”

“Was she…” Frank decided against it. “Yeah, sometimes she gets a little misty on that account. Her husband’s crippled, see. It’s a real shame, she feels real bad about it sometimes. But she doesn’t drink or nothing, don’t worry. She’s never anything but professional. It’s too bad you had to meet her when she was down.”

“Oh, I didn’t mind!” Catherine hastened to assure him. “I wish I’d known. She was so kind to notice me…”

“Well, you caught her eye.” Frank stood up and shook her hand. “Now you go out and, um, yes. I’ve got a little work to do here.”

As he trailed off, she uncertainly turned the door handle and stepped out. Looking up, Frank saw Dane snap to attention like a Waldorf bellhop. Their voices mingled, their cheap heels clacked down the hallway with symphonic youthful expectation.