The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress (7 page)

Ritzi let go of the sock and eased her eyes shut with the heels of her hands, counting backward—minutes, hours, days—rewinding time first to William Klein, then to the moment she crawled out of that bathroom cabinet, and further to Club Abbey and Crater and details that turned her stomach. The sex. The sound of fists raining down on Crater. She shuddered. “What time is it?”

“Almost noon.”

“What day is it?”

“Thursday.”

A few hours. Was that all? Sleep had fallen so hard that she felt as though a month could have passed. It took several seconds before Ritzi could remember her middle name, and it was all she could do to form a sentence. “I’m thirsty.”

Vivian left the room and returned a few seconds later with a glass of water.

“Thank you,” Ritzi said.

“He’s a bastard.”

“For the water. But thanks for that too.”

Vivian leveled her unnerving jade eyes on Ritzi. “What happened last night?”

Ritzi guzzled half the glass of water. Her throat was sore from the relentless vomiting she’d endured early that morning. It had taken twenty minutes for her muscles to stop cramping once she unfolded herself from the tight confines of the cabinet. And all that time, doubled over in agony, she’d retched, first onto the floor and then into the toilet. On and on it went until there was nothing left but bile. It was a long time before she could look at Vivian and say the words out loud. “You don’t want to know.”

“I can’t protect you if you don’t tell me.”

“And I can’t protect
you
if I do.”

They stared at each other in stalemate.

Vivian pursed her lips. Looked away. “You’ll lose your spot if you don’t get moving. You know what they do with no-shows.”

Ritzi sat up and drew the sheets around her. So many details about the last twenty-four hours were vivid in her mind, but she could not, for the life of her, figure out how she got into bed without her clothes.

“I burned your dress,” Vivian said. “Damn thing smelled of vomit and looked like evidence.”

“I don’t remember taking it off.”

“You didn’t. I came in this morning and found you passed out. Didn’t think you’d want to ruin the sheets.” Vivian stuck her chest out in an exaggerated motion. “Besides, you ain’t got nothin’ I ain’t got.” She laughed. “Okay, maybe a little more.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Did Crater get you drunk again?”

Ritzi groaned at the sound of his name. “Yes.”

“You didn’t even roll over. I pulled it off you like a sausage casing.” Vivian nodded toward the sock lying next to Ritzi. “You wouldn’t let go of that thing, though. What you got hidden in there?”

The sock was knotted in the middle, and she picked it up and clutched it to her chest. It had come with her on the train to New York City and held the one thing she couldn’t bear to part with from her old life, the one thing she had no intention of sharing. In recent months, she’d taken to sleeping with it, like a child who wouldn’t part with a filthy security blanket. “Nothing.”

Vivian shifted closer and tucked a limp piece of hair behind Ritzi’s ear. “Fine. Keep your secrets. We’ve all got them.” She walked to the window and pulled back the curtains. Vivian blinked into the sunlight. “I’m sorry, you know, that I ever introduced you to Owney. Should have told you to go back home when I had the chance.”

“I wouldn’t have listened.”

“It doesn’t go well for most of the girls who come asking for me. By the look of things, I only made it worse for you.”

Ritzi didn’t often see Vivian during the day, and the fine lines around her eyes seemed deeper, the corners of her mouth limp. It occurred to her for the first time that the notorious madam Vivian Gordon was starting to look her age. Ritzi set her feet on the floor and tested her balance.

“I did this to myself, Viv. It’s not your fault.”

She grabbed the gray sock, wrapped the sheet around herself like a corn husk, and shuffled to the bathroom in search of a shower—a rare modern amenity that she took advantage of whenever possible. As she tossed the sheet aside Ritzi realized that she didn’t know where her underclothes were. Had she left them in Klein’s office? The hotel room?

And that was the tipping point. Ritzi began to wail. Great gasping breaths of air that choked her as the water—first needles of ice and then fire—pelted from above. Her tender body ached from the strain. Stomach sore. Thighs bruised. And a pain in her joints, as though they were all being stretched apart. She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the water, letting it soothe the weariness until she was wrung dry of tears. Ritzi soaped and rinsed over and over, digging at her body with a washcloth, desperate to scrub away the shame.

The air was thick with steam and her skin pink by the time the water finally ran cold. She stepped, dripping, onto the floor. The girl in the mirror with the frightened eyes was sadly recognizable. It was the same girl who got off a train from Iowa three years earlier looking for fame and fortune. For the first time in ages, Ritzi didn’t see a stranger in her own reflection.

“Feel better?” Vivian asked when she came back to the bedroom.

She’d gone through Ritzi’s closet and laid a blue dress on the bed.

“Much.”

“You have less than an hour to get to the theater. Clean up good.”

“Thanks. For everything.”

“I didn’t want a roommate, you know,” she said, digging around in the bottom of Ritzi’s closet for a pair of black heels. She plucked a strand of hair off one shoe and set them next to the dress. “I prefer to live alone. Was none too pleased with Owney when he insisted on this arrangement. But I’m glad you’re here, Ritz. I really am.”

RITZI
swung herself into the backseat of the black Cadillac. “Where’s the audition?”

Shorty Petak leaned over the front seat and pushed up the rim of his bowler hat. “The new Broadway Theatre. This’ll be the first show.”

A Polish thug employed by Owney, Shorty served many purposes: chauffeur, bodyguard, bouncer. He often stood watch outside the dressing room during shows that Owney backed to keep stagehands and riffraff from the performers. Sometimes Ritzi liked him; sometimes he got on her last nerve.

She lifted a compact from her purse and inspected her reflection. Eyes a bit swollen. Nose chapped. Ritzi patted powder onto her cheeks and applied another coat of lipstick. “So this show is a big deal?”

“Jimmy Durante is the lead.” Shorty swerved into traffic, and she had to grasp the door handle so she wouldn’t tip over.

“The chorus line will be big, then? Twenty or thirty?”

He flashed a look in the rearview mirror. “This ain’t for the chorus line. Owney set you up for a solo. You knew that, right?”

If Owney had bothered to relay that information, it had gotten lost in the chaos of the last twenty-four hours. She would have missed the
audition altogether if not for Vivian dragging her out of bed. “Of course,” she lied.

All her other auditions had been for kickers in the chorus line. She made for a pretty face in the crowd, a good set of legs in the background. But this was something else entirely. She’d begged Owney for three years to give her a shot like this. Had worked hard for it. Done things she would never admit to in the light of day. But after last night, she wanted nothing to do with him ever again. Three years of ambition erased by one night listening to the agonized shrieks of Joseph Crater.

The Broadway Theater was a short drive from her apartment, and Shorty reached it in record time—he loved gunning the engine when Owney wasn’t around. He parked illegally and walked her right into the lobby. A crowd of large-busted girls stood with glossy lips, each waiting her turn.

Shorty took her elbow and pushed through the crowd toward a man with a clipboard.

“Name,” he asked, not bothering to look up.

“She’s on the reserved list,” Shorty said.

A murmur of dissent rose around them. Angry whispers. Protests. Someone shouted, “This is an open audition. No reserves. That’s what my agent said!”

“Name,” the man with the clipboard repeated.

“Sally Lou Ritz,” she said.

He flipped a few pages and scanned his list. “Right through there.”

Shorty walked her down a side passage. Once they were out of earshot, he said, “You’re auditioning for the part of May, a prostitute.”

“Fitting.”

He pinched her arm. “You’ve got a solo. It’s perfect for your range, but tricky. There’s only a piano accompaniment. That’s what’s messing up the other girls. No orchestra to hide the sour notes. Sing it clear and you’ll be fine. The rest has been arranged.”

The hallway merged left and emptied them into the area backstage. Shorty took her purse and gave her a little shove.

An assistant waved her forward. “This way.” He held back the curtain and led her onstage.

A nameless, faceless voice called out from the dark mouth of the theater, “Are you ready, Miss … Ritz?” He sounded bored, as though he’d sat there listening to one performer after another butcher the song.

“Yes.” She searched for a face but could see nothing past the yellow spotlight in which she stood.

“That’s Cole Porter on the piano to your left. He wrote the musical.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Her voice raised an octave. She cleared her throat. Swallowed.

Porter looked amused at her discomfort. He leaned away from the piano, all eyes and receding hairline. “I’ll go through it once so you catch the melody. You’ll come in on the third measure.”

Ritzi scanned the sheet music as he played.
Shorty gave me a way out of this
, she thought. Everything was arranged, as long as she sang well. She couldn’t flub it completely—Owney would know better. Ritzi was consistent. But she could try too hard. Put a little too much emotion into it. That certainly wouldn’t be much of a stretch today. Would Owney let her be if she didn’t land this gig? One way to find out.

After several minutes, Porter’s fingers came to a rest on the piano keys. “Got it?”

Ritzi nodded and he began again. She waited, marking each beat with a gentle tap of fingers against her thigh. At the beginning of the third measure, she joined the melody, her voice deep and lusty and emotional. She could have sung the song straight and high and clear. But she didn’t. Ritzi allowed herself to feel it instead of performing it. In her peripheral vision, she saw Shorty standing next to the curtain. His head jerked up at the sound of her voice. Ritzi kept her eyes on the sheet of lyrics. They rang all too true. Ritzi let her voice crack at the beginning of the last chorus, an emotion-filled rasp that would surely cost her the audition.

Appetizing young love for sale

If you want to buy my wares

Follow me and climb the stairs

Love for sale

She brought the last line to a close with a slight waver. This was the opportunity she’d struggled for. Her chance at a real part in a Broadway show. And she’d blown it on purpose. All Ritzi wanted was to go home and go to bed with an aspirin and a hot water bottle and forget that she had ever boarded that train three years ago. She closed her eyes and waited for the rejection.

Damning silence filled the auditorium. Cole Porter rustled his sheet
music. She heard whispers. And then, “Rehearsals begin next week, right here. Don’t be late.”

It took several moments for her to make sense of the congratulations and the handshakes and the pleased look on Shorty’s face. Ritzi was given a packet of paperwork filled with scores and scripts and a typed contract stating her role in the production.

Cole Porter graced her with a smile that might have thrilled her had it come a few years earlier. “You’re perfect,” he said.

She remembered to smile and give thanks, to look pretty and charming and delighted. Ritzi had enough composure left to look the part. It was only when Shorty led her down the dark hallway again that she let her face crumple into dismay.

“That was risky,” he whispered.

“Why? I got the part.”

“That’s not how Owney wanted you to sing it.”

“Maybe I wanted to try something different.”

“Listen.” He stopped and shoved her up against the wall, lowering his voice so no one could hear. Shorty pushed up on his toes to meet her eye to eye. “Keep doing things your way and you’ll get a short ride in the trunk of Owney’s Cadillac. I’m tired of dumping bodies off the Brooklyn Bridge at two in the morning, Ritz. I sure as hell don’t wanna do yours. Got it?”

MARIA
inherited kitchen duties at the age of ten. Her mother had passed the mantle, and the family recipes, with austerity and a hand-carved wooden spoon straight from the hills of Barcelona. Caramel colored with a smooth handle that fit in the curve of her palm, it was one of the few things she’d brought with her when she married Jude. Something about the feel of that spoon, the swish it made across the bottom of the pan, was therapeutic, and Maria swayed as she stood at the stove, boiling chutney to go with dinner.

Bifana
. The meal her mother made for special occasions. Pork tenderloin with cinnamon, cloves, cumin, and raisins. Maria usually made the complicated Portuguese dish during the holidays. Tonight it was an act of bribery. A way of softening her husband, easing into a conversation she didn’t know how to approach.

The apartment was three rooms cobbled together with thin walls and rusty plumbing. A tenement near Chinatown. One corner of the living area was reserved for the kitchen, a nook containing a stove, a sink, an icebox, and a small stretch of counter against which Maria now rested, stirring the chutney in rhythmic circles. The heat radiating from the stove caused beads of sweat to rise along her hairline and lip. She wiped them away with the back of her hand.

Maria had rushed home from Smithson’s that day and worked out her anxiety by preparing the meal. She browned the tenderloin. Added spices. Stuck it in the oven to roast. And all the while, she wrestled her fears about Jude. She stacked the questions in her mind, shuffling them like a deck of cards in the hands of a dealer. Muttered prayers. Worried her rosary with puckered fingers. At one point, she lit a cluster of votive candles on the coffee table and tried to recite the doxology, but she couldn’t get through five words without her mind wandering to Jude and those envelopes in the Craters’ apartment. When Maria heard Jude’s key in the lock, there was nothing left to do and she surrendered to the inevitable. She didn’t move when the door pushed open or when she heard him stop in the doorway. Instead, she swayed to an imaginary tune and hummed beneath her breath, arm raised to pin a pile of chestnut curls to the top of her head. Maria jumped back when a glob of chutney splashed her arm. She brandished the wooden spoon like a weapon, banging the side of the pot in frustration.