CITY_OF_GIRLS_by_Elizabeth_Gilbert

—

Later in Act 1, Lucky Bobby is trying to convince Mrs. Alabaster to pawn her valuables in order to finance the speakeasy.

“I can’t sell this watch!” she exclaims, holding up a large gold watch on a handsome chain. “I got this for my husband!”

“Good trade, lady.” My boyfriend nods approvingly.

Edna and Anthony were hitting their punch lines like badminton birdies right over the footlights—and they did not miss a single shot.

“But my father taught me never to lie, cheat, or steal!” says Mrs. Alabaster.

“So did mine!” Lucky Bobby puts his hand over his heart. “My pops taught me that a man’s honor is all he’s got in this world—unless you get a chance for the big score, and then it’s okay to fleece your brother and sell your sister to a whorehouse.”

“But only if it were a quality whorehouse, one hopes,” says Mrs. Alabaster.

“You and me come from the same kind of people, lady!” says Lucky Bobby, and then they launch into their duet, “Our Dastardly, Bastardly Ways”—and oh, how hard we had fought Olive for the right to use the word “bastardly” in a song!

This was my favorite moment of the show. Anthony had a tap-dance solo in the middle of the number, during which he lit up the place like an emergency flare. I can still see his predatory grin in that spotlight, dancing as though he aimed to tear a hole through the stage. The audience—the handpicked cream of New York City theatergoing society—was stomping their feet along with him like a bunch of appleknockers. I felt like my own heart was going to explode. They loved him. Then, somewhere underneath my joy at his success, I felt a pinch of dread: This guy is about to become a star, and I am about to lose him.

But when the number was over, and Anthony rushed backstage, he tackled me in his sweaty costume, pushed me up against a wall, and

kissed me with all his might and glory—and I forgot, for just a moment there, about my fears.

“I’m the best,” he growled. “Did you see that out there, baby? I’m the best. I’m the best there ever was!”

“You are, you are! You are the very best there ever was!” I cried, for that is what twenty-year-old girls say to their boyfriends when they are desperately in love.

(To be fair to both Anthony and me, though, he was pretty damn electrifying.)

Then Celia did her striptease—singing plaintively in that gruff Bronx accent of hers about how bad she wanted to have a baby—and she had the audience simply netted. She somehow managed to look adorable and pornographic at the same time, which is not easily done. By the end of her dance, the audience was hooting and hollering like drunks at a burlesque show. And it wasn’t just the men who had hot pants for her, either; I swear I heard some female voices in the cheers.

Then there was the pleasant hum of intermission—the men lighting cigarettes in the lobby, and the press of satiny women in the bathroom. Billy told me to go out and mingle among the crowd, to get a feeling for their reactions. “I would do it myself,” he said, “but too many of them know me. I don’t want their polite reactions; I want their real reactions. Look for real reactions.”

“What am I looking for?” I asked.

“If they’re talking about the play, that’s good. If they’re talking about where they parked their cars, that’s bad. But mostly, watch for signs of pride. When an audience is happy with what they’re watching, they always look so goddamn proud of themselves. As if they made the play themselves, the selfish bastards. Go out there and tell me if they’re looking proud of themselves.”

I pushed my way through the crowd and examined the happy, rosy faces all around me. Everyone looked rich, well fed, and deeply satisfied. They were chattering nonstop about the play—about Celia’s figure, about Edna’s charm, about the dancers, about the songs. They were repeating bits of jokes to each other, and making each other laugh all over again.

“I’ve never seen so many people looking so proud of themselves,” I reported back to Billy.

“Good,” he said. “They damn well should be.”

He gave another speech to the cast before the second curtain—a shorter speech this time.

“The only thing that matters now is what you leave ’em with,” he said. “If you drop this thing in the middle of the second act, they’ll forget that they ever loved you. You’ve gotta earn it all over again now. When you hit that finale, it can’t just be good; it’s got to be stupendous. Keep it zinging, kids.”

Act 2, scene 1: The law-and-order mayor has come to Mrs. Alabaster’s mansion, intent on shutting down the illegal gambling operation and bordello she is reputed to now be running. He comes in disguise, but Lucky Bobby is onto him, and gives warning. The showgirls quickly put maids’ costumes over their spangled leotards, and the croupiers disguise themselves as butlers. The customers pretend to be visiting the mansion for a garden tour, and lace tablecloths are thrown over the gambling tables. Mr. Herbert, as the blind pickpocket, politely takes the mayor’s coat and then helps himself to the man’s wallet. Mrs. Alabaster invites the mayor to join her for a spot of tea in the solarium, discreetly dropping a stack of gambling chips down her bodice in the process.

“You’ve got yourself a pretty high-grade house here, Mrs. Alabaster,” says the mayor while peering around the place, looking for signs of illegal activity. “Real fancy-like. Did your family come over on the Mayflower, or something?”

“Dear me, no,” says Edna in her highest-tone accent while fanning herself elegantly with a deck of poker cards. “My family always had their own boats.”

Toward the end of the show, when Edna sang her heartbreaking ballad, “I’m Considering Falling in Love,” the theater was so silent it could have been empty. And when she finished the last wistful note, they got up out of their seats and cheered for her. They made Edna return to the stage for four bows after that song, before the play could continue. I’d heard the word “showstopper” before but had never really understood what it meant in actual practice.

Edna Parker Watson had literally stopped the show.

When it came time for the big-finish number of “Let’s Make Ours a Double,” I grew annoyed and distracted by watching Arthur Watson. He was trying to keep up with the dance steps of the other cast members, and making a poor job of it. Thankfully, his awfulness didn’t seem to disturb the audience too much, and you couldn’t hear his tuneless singing over the orchestra. Anyway, the audience was singing and clapping along with the chorus (“Sin babies, gin babies / Come right on in, babies!”). The Lily Playhouse glittered with a sheen of pure, shared joy.

Then it was over.

Curtain calls followed—so many curtain calls. Bows and more bows. Bouquets of flowers thrown upon the stage. Then finally the houselights came up, and the audience gathered their coats and were gone like smoke.

The whole exhausted lot of us, cast and crew, wandered out on that empty stage and just stood there for a moment in the dust of what we had just created—speechless in the staggering incredulity of what we had just seen ourselves do.

—

From Nichols T. Flint, in the New York Daily News:

—

We spent the rest of the night at Sardi’s, waiting for the reviews to come in and drinking ourselves half blind in the process.

Needless to say, the Lily Players were not a theater group normally accustomed to waiting for reviews at Sardi’s—or to getting reviews at

all—but this had not been a normal show.

“It all depends on what Atkinson and Winchell say,” Billy told us. “If we can nail down both the high-end praise and the low-end praise, we’ll have a hit.”

“I don’t even know who Atkinson is,” Celia said.

“Well, babycakes, as of tonight he knows who you are—that much I can promise you. He couldn’t keep his eyes off you.”

“Is he famous? Does he have money?”

“He’s a newspaperman. He’s got no money. He’s got nothing but power.”

Then I watched a remarkable thing happen. Olive approached Billy, carrying two martinis in her hands. She offered one to him. He took it in surprise, but his surprise only deepened when she raised her glass to him in a toast.

“You’ve done ably well with this show, William,” she said. “Very ably well.”

He burst out laughing. “Very ably well! I will take that, coming from you, as the highest praise ever given to a director!”

Edna was the last cast member to arrive. She’d been mobbed at the stage door by admirers who wanted her autograph. She could have dodged them just by going upstairs to her apartment and waiting it out, but she’d indulged the populace with her presence. Then she must have taken a quick bath and changed clothes, because she walked in looking clean and fresh, and wearing the most expensive-looking little blue suit I’d ever seen (only expensive looking if you knew what you were looking for, which I did), with a fox stole thrown casually over one shoulder. On her arm was that good-looking idiot husband of hers, who had almost ruined our finale with his terrible dancing. He was beaming as though he were the star of the night.

“The much-praised Edna Parker Watson!” Billy cried, and we all cheered.

“Be careful, Billy,” said Edna. “The praise hasn’t come in yet. Arthur, darling, could you fetch me the most icy cocktail available?”

Arthur went wandering off in search of the bar, and I wondered if he would be smart enough to find his way back.

“You’ve made a wild success of things, Edna,” said Peg.

“You did it all, my loves,” said Edna, gazing up at both Billy and Peg. “You are the geniuses and the creators. I’m just a humble war refugee, grateful to have a job.”

“I have the worst desire to get falling-down drunk just about now,” said Peg. “I can’t bear the wait for the notices. How do you remain so calm, Edna?”

“How do you know I’m not already falling-down drunk myself?”

“Tonight I should be sensible and mind my intake,” said Peg. “No, never mind, I don’t feel like it—Vivian, will you chase after Arthur and tell him to bring back about three times the number of drinks he had originally planned?”

If he can manage the math, I thought.

I headed to the bar. I was trying to wave down the bartender when a man’s voice said, “Could I buy you a drink, miss?” I turned around with a flirty smile, and there was my brother, Walter.

It took me a moment to recognize him, because it was so incongruous to see him in New York City—in my world, surrounded by my people. Also, the family resemblance threw me for a loop. His face and mine were so similar that for a disorienting instant, I almost thought I’d bumped into a mirror.

What on earth was Walter doing here?

“You don’t look too happy to see me,” he said, with a careful smile.

I didn’t know if I was happy or unhappy; I was just tremendously disoriented. All I could think was that I must be in trouble. Maybe my parents had gotten wind of my immoral behavior and sent my big brother to retrieve me. I found myself glancing over Walter’s shoulder to see if my parents were with him, which definitely would have signaled the end of a good time.

“Don’t be so jumpy, Vee,” he said. “It’s just me.” It was as if he could read my mind. Which didn’t serve to relax me any further. “I came by to see your little play. I liked it. You kids did a fine job.”

“But why are you in New York City at all, Walter?” I was suddenly aware that my dress was revealing too much cleavage and that there was a hickey remnant on my neck.

“I quit school, Vee.”

“You quit Princeton?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Does Dad know?”

“Yes, he does.”

None of this made any sense. I was the delinquent member of the family, not Walter. But now he had dropped out of Princeton? I suddenly got a vision of Walter breaking wild—throwing away all his years of good behavior to come to New York to join me in a carnival of drinking, carousing, and dancing himself to smithereens at the Stork Club. Maybe I’d inspired him to be bad!

“I’m joining the Navy,” he said.

Ah. I should’ve known better.

“I start Officer Candidate School in three weeks, Vee. I’ll be in training right here in New York City, just up the river, on the Upper West Side. The Navy’s got a decommissioned battleship moored on the Hudson and they’re using it as a school. Right now, they’re short of officers, and they’ll take anyone with two years of college. They’ll train us in just three months, Vee. I start right after Christmas. When I graduate, I’ll be an ensign. I’ll ship out in the spring and go wherever they need to send me.”

“What does Dad have to say about you quitting Princeton?” I asked.

My voice sounded weird and stilted in my ears. The awkwardness of this encounter was still throwing me off, but I was doing my best to make conversation, pretending as though everything was perfectly normal—pretending as though Walter and I chatted with each other at Sardi’s every week.

“He hates it like gum,” Walter said. “But it’s not his call to make. I’m of age, and I can make my own choices. I called Peg and told her I was coming to the city. She said I could stay with her for a few weeks before OCS training begins. See a bit of New York, take in the sights.”

Walter would be staying at the Lily? With us degenerates?

“But you didn’t have to join the Navy,” I said dumbly.

(To my mind, Angela, the only people who became sailors were working-class kids with no other options for advancement. I think I’d even heard my father say that, at some point.)

“There’s a war on, Vee,” said Walter. “America will be part of it sooner or later.”

“But you don’t have to be part of it,” I said.

He looked at me with an expression that was both puzzled and disapproving. “It’s my country, Vee. Of course I have to be part of it.”

There was a wild cheer from the other side of the room. A newsboy had just walked in with a handful of early editions.

The raves were already coming in.

—

And look here, Angela, I’ve saved my favorite for last.