The Girl at the End of the Line Page 10

  “This is David Azaria,” said Molly. “He’s in the show with Tuck.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Prince, making a face at David that was halfway between a smile and a sneer. “I saw it in previews. Regional theater crap. What did you play?”

  “I’m the mean prosecutor.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Well, maybe you’ll have a career, maybe you won’t. In the end they’ll throw you away, like you were a piece of garbage. Save your money, kid, that’s my advice. When you’re young you think it’s going to go on forever. Believe me it doesn’t.”

  “About our grandfather, Mr. Prince …” said Molly, but Prince ignored her, fixing David with watery gray eyes.

  “Fifty years in the theater and what do I get?” he said bitterly. “Nothing. Look at me. Look what I’m doing.”

  “What are you doing?” asked David in a quiet voice. “Are you writing music or something?”

  The book on the table was open and Molly noticed for the first time that it was covered with staffs and musical notes.

  “Ha!” snorted Prince. “That’s rich. You know what this is?”

  Prince held up the Worcestershire-bottle thing and pressed a button on its side, which caused it to buzz like a dentist’s drill.

  “It’s an electric eraser,” he said, answering his own question. “Marinov licenses the performance rights to all his shows. All those stupid dinner theaters and high schools got orchestras, and we rent them the music. They mark up their scores in rehearsal and when they send them back yours truly’s got to clean them up. All day long, five days a week, I’m erasing music books. I’m de-composing, goddamnit. I’m decomposing and I ain’t even dead. I can’t even get an audition anymore.”

  “I’m sorry Mr. Prince, but about our grandfather …” said Molly again, weakly. “Richard Julian?”

  “Yeah, what about him? Dick Julian was a schmuck. Like I told Tuck, New York is a better place without him. I don’t know why you want to come way the hell out here and belabor the point.”

  “Weren’t you a friend of his?” asked Molly, confused.

  “Dick Julian? Are you kidding? The man would rob the baby teeth from a two-year-old. I hung out with him so he wouldn’t be able to stab me in the back by surprise, and still he was always stealing parts from me. You know we got rats here? It’s those sweatshops above and below us. We’re workin’ in a goddamned sweatshop sandwich.”

  “Please, Mr. Prince,” said Molly. “I know this is an imposition, but we’ve come all the way from North Carolina.”

  “All right, all right,” said Prince. “I told Tuck I’d talk to you and I’m talking, ain’t I? What else do you want to know?”

  “Did Richard Julian ever happen to mention to you where he had originally come from?” asked Molly. “A hometown?”

  “No. And if he did, how the hell would I remember?”

  “Did he ever talk about his wife? Margaret Jellinek? Maggie?”

  “Never heard of her.”

  “He never mentioned the name Gale?”

  “No.”

  Molly’s face must have fallen because Prince’s expression softened somewhat. He put down the electric eraser.

  “Hey look, kid,” he said in a somewhat kinder voice. “I know it’s not your fault that you’re related to an asshole. Dick Julian and I drank together, chased broads together, did a few of the same shows—but that was it. I just never knew much about him and didn’t care to.”

  “I suppose you have no idea where he might be now,” said Molly with a sigh.

  “The last time I heard, he was in England.”

  “England!”

  “Yeah,” said Prince, wiping something unpleasant from the corners of his lips. “When work dried up for us in the early eighties, he married this rich English dame who’d been chasing him for years. Lady somebody or other.”

  “A lady?” said Molly, exchanging an amazed glance with Nell. “She was nobility?”

  “Well, I don’t know how noble she was,” said Prince with a nasty chuckle. “When Julian and I did the revival of Boys from Syracuse together she used to sit in the front row of the theater and pop her tits out of her dress in the middle of his songs to rattle him. And boy was he ever rattled. There’s not a lot a man can hide when he’s wearing tights, if you know what I mean.”

  “Do you remember her name?” said Molly, swallowing hard. Anecdotes about her grandfather’s erections weren’t exactly what she had hoped to hear about today.

  “Stacey,” said Bobby Prince, flashing a smile that might have been rakish if his teeth had been in better shape. “Racy Stacey we used to call her.”

  “What about her last name?”

  “Who knows? I never really paid any attention. Anyway, Poor Julian was scared to death of Racy Stacey. Every night she’d wait at the stage door for him with a magnum of champagne under one arm and a nightgown in the other. Once I had to smuggle him out of the theater in a laundry cart to get past her. Another time he painted red spots on his face and we pretended he had measles. I couldn’t believe it when he actually married the broad, but I guess he wasn’t so stupid, huh? Now he’s in England being big Lord Fauntleroy, while I gotta run an electric eraser to supplement my social security.”

  “Where in England? Do you know where they live?”

  Bobby made a sour face, clearly feeling sorry for himself.

  “It’s not like I was ever invited over for tea and crumpets,” he said.

  “Please try to remember.”

  “What remember? Stacey lived in England, that’s all I ever knew.”

  “Did she ever mention people? Places? What did she talk about?”

  “Well, besides sex, all Racy Stacey ever talked about was dogs and dog shows, if that’s what you mean. Who took best of breed in 1928, that sort of shit. I guess that’s why she appreciated a hound like Dick Julian, huh? I’m sure they’re making each other miserable. My God, she was a bore. Anything else you want to know?”

  “I guess that’s about it,” said Molly, discouraged. That Richard Julian/aka Jellinek had married a sex-crazed lady dog fancier somewhere in England wasn’t much of a clue to his present whereabouts, if he were even still alive. “It was very nice of you to take the time to see us.”

  “Well, not that many women bring me flowers anymore,” said Bobby Prince, pointing snidely at the rose in Molly’s hand.

  Molly looked over to David, who made a face, then shrugged his shoulders.

  “I’ll put it in water for you,” she said.

  “Hey, I was just kidding.”

  “No, I appreciate your help, and it will brighten up the place,” said Molly. “Do you have something I could use as a vase?”

  “There’s some empty Coke bottles in the bathroom,” said Prince, nonplussed. “Hey, you really don’t have to …”

  “It’s my pleasure,” said Molly. “Where do I go?”

  Prince got up and led her to an unmarked door on the other side of the room, knocking loudly to make sure it was empty.

  “Woman in the bathroom,” he yelled in the direction of the men still unpacking boxes of music scores. They didn’t look up as Molly closed the door behind her.

  The bathroom was small and predictably dirty. Alexander Marinov might have been as rich as Andrew Lloyd Webber, but he obviously wasn’t sharing his good fortune with his employees. Molly was surprised somehow. Had she expected rich people in the theater to be different than rich people in other businesses?

  There was a cracked mirror behind the sink, a clean bar of soap, and plenty of paper towels. Molly rinsed out one of the old Coke bottles she found in the corner of the room and filled it with water. Then she washed her hands.

  When she emerged David and Nell were waiting for her by the elevator. Bobby Prince was back at his table, staring out the window with an unutterably sad expression.

  “Thanks again, Mr. Prince,” Molly said, walking over and placing David’s rose in its Coke bottle vase in front of him. “We really app
reciate your help.”

  “I’m an actor, you know,” he said. “I don’t really belong out here. I’m not really like this.”

  “I know.”

  As she walked across the room to join the others Bobby Prince held up the buzzing eraser.

  “Tell Tuck I meant what I said,” he called out, a sarcastic smile returning to his ruined face. “I can get him that job with Marinov anytime he’s ready. Provided he can learn to run one of these.”

  Molly didn’t speak until the elevator had made it successfully back to the ground and they were safely outside in the sunlight.

  “Well, that was certainly depressing,” she said with a sigh.

  Nell wrinkled her nose and scratched her head.

  “What time does your bus leave?” said David.

  “Seven,” said Molly, checking her watch. It was barely twelvethirty.

  “You’ve got plenty of time,” said David, holding up his hand toward a lonely yellow cab that seemed just as lost as they were on the empty streets. “There’s one more place I’d like to take you before we have to say good-bye.”

  “You mean we don’t have to take the subway back?”

  “We didn’t have to take the subway here,” said David as the cab screeched across three lanes and pulled up at the curb beside them.

  “Then why did we?”

  “I didn’t want to deprive you of a New York experience.”

  “Thanks a lot!” said Molly as Nell got into the cab beside her, sandwiching her against David. “So where are we going?”

  “The marriage license bureau,” he said.

  “I’ll bet you fifty dollars that they got married in New York,” said David an hour later, as they exited the big ugly Municipal Building across from City Hall back in Manhattan.

  Molly didn’t answer. She still felt like a fool for making such a fuss when he had first suggested going to the marriage license bureau.

  “I have no intention of getting married to anyone, thank you very much,” she had screeched.

  Molly winced, remembering the look on David’s face. Part of her remained convinced that it had been a trap, that he had known she would jump to all the wrong conclusions and embarrass herself. To her horror another part of her was disappointed that all he’d had in mind was to check the license records in case Margaret and Richard Jellinek had gotten married in New York City when they’d first arrived. A license would include Grandma’s place of birth and next of kin.

  After long waits, endless forms to fill out, and a stiff fee, the upshot was that six weeks from now a copy of any marriage license that the search turned up would be mailed to Molly in North Carolina.

  “Fifty bucks says they find your grandparents’ marriage license,” repeated David. “What do you say?”

  “I say, a fool and his money,” said Molly. The whole thing was beginning to look hopeless.

  “We should be getting back,” said Molly. “Our bus …”

  “You still have plenty of time,” said David. “Aren’t you getting a little hungry?”

  “We’ve imposed on you long enough,” she said, trying to be polite. It was now nearing two o’clock and they hadn’t eaten anything since an overpriced continental breakfast at the hotel coffee shop. Molly was starving, and she knew Nell must be, too.

  “Don’t worry,” said David. “I’m not proposing to pay for your lunch or anything. Your rich sister over there can treat us. Come on.”

  The next thing Molly knew, he was leading them up behind the Criminal Court buildings into the maze of Chinatown.

  It was as if they had suddenly been transported to a different continent. One minute they were standing on wide sidewalks, dwarfed by towering buildings; the next they were in a crowded rabbit warren of narrow, noisy streets filled to bursting with bustling Asians, goggle-eyed tourists, and strange sights and smells. The stores were full of kung-fu tchotchkes and sandals. Roasted ducks hung by their necks in every other window. Displays of fruits and vegetables, familiar and unfamiliar, filled the crowded sidewalks in between open storefronts full of baskets of fish so fresh they moved.

  When Molly was thoroughly disoriented, David took them through a narrow doorway into a nondescript building and up a long escalator crowded with Chinese people. At the top was an enormous room that housed the largest restaurant Molly had ever seen.

  The walls were red satin where there weren’t mirrors, the ceiling was low, the noise level was thunderous. Hundreds of people, virtually all of them Chinese, were eating at dozens of large round tables underneath the watchful gaze of dragons and buddhas slathered with gold radiator paint. In the narrow aisles between tables, Chinese women pushed wheeled carts filled with assorted covered bowls.

  “Dim sum,” said David, as a host spoke musical Chinese into a walkie-talkie and found them three empty places at a table in the middle of the room, in between a trio of lunching women and a pair of businessmen.

  “Dim sum?” said Molly, overwhelmed.

  “Sort of appetizers. Small portions of lots of different things. Just point at the dishes that look good to you, and don’t worry if you get something you don’t like. Everything’s remarkably cheap, and nobody’s going to be upset if you don’t finish something. Just remember that the Chinese have different tastes than we do. We like things crunchy, they like things gooey. The women with the carts don’t speak much English, which is just as well. I figure it’s better not to know exactly what we’re eating.”

  Molly gulped bravely, as David pointed to something on the first cart that wheeled by. It was some kind of fish dumplings that they all shared—Molly and Nell having considerably more difficulty than David working their chopsticks (no silverware was evident anywhere in the room). Surprisingly the dumplings were not only edible but tasty.

  The spell broken, they began ordering in earnest, avoiding the dishes that looked too odd (like the ones featuring clearly identifiable feet from unidentifiable animals). Some things were delicious, others merely strange. After twenty-five minutes they were all laughing and full and had the table to themselves—the other diners having finished their meals and left.

  “We sure don’t have anything like this back in Pelletreau,” said Molly, regretting the words even before they were out of her mouth. She sounded like a hick again.

  Nell stood up, focusing on a pair of pictograph signs an acre away that indicated where the bathrooms were located. Molly stood, too, but Nell shook her finger, then bounced off through the crowded room, looking back over her shoulder once, clearly pleased with herself.

  “Ah,” said David, taking a sip of steaming green tea that had been provided by a roving team devoted solely to that purpose. “Alone at last.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” said Molly uncomfortably.

  “It means that we’re never going to get anywhere with a chaperon always on top of us.”

  “Look, I told you last night …”

  “You love your sister, yada-yada-yada” said David. “Obviously she loves you, too. That’s why she’s giving us a little time together. She wants you to have a life, just like I do.”

  Molly took a deep breath and blew it out again.

  “Look. David. You’ve been very nice about everything. I appreciated your taking us to see Bobby Prince this morning. And to the marriage license bureau. And this lunch was a lot of fun, too, I really enjoyed it—and so did Nell, obviously. But I’m not good at flirting. I never got any practice, I’m afraid. I don’t understand what you want from me.”

  “I want to be your friend. I want to get to know you better.”

  “There’s nothing to know,” said Molly, flustered, running nervous fingers through her short hair. “I’m not educated. I’m not beautiful. I have a very small antique shop on a country road in a tired city in North Carolina.”

  “And a sister to take care of.”

  “And a sister to take care of, that’s right. Besides, we’re leaving tonight.”

  “Let me respond to yo
ur points, one by one,” said David, sitting back in his chair. “Having prosecuted more than one person with graduate degrees on felony charges, I’m not very impressed by a person’s education. I admire you for running your own business; I think it’s admirable that you love and want to protect your sister; and as for appearance, I happen to think you’re adorable, but then I’m a sucker for the well-scrubbed tomboy look.”

  “Well, I happen to think you’re nuts. We have nothing in common. And we’re still leaving tonight.”

  “There’s a synchronicity in the universe that supplies people like us with common ground, Molly,” said David, staring his inscrutable stare.

  “What do you mean, people like us?”

  “People who like one another. I like you, you know. And you like me.”

  “Not even a little bit.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “I do not,” said Molly, blushing angrily.

  “Neither of us cares for the subway. We both like Chinese food. If we spend some time together we’ll find all kinds of connections between us. We’ve probably been to some of the same places, maybe even know some of the same people.”

  “I doubt it,” said Molly, thinking of the unexceptional people she knew and the few places she’d been.

  “We both know Tuck, don’t we? And I actually was in North Carolina once. I took a deposition in Winston-Salem for a grand larceny case.”

  “I hardly think that gives us a basis for a … whatever. And living six hundred miles apart I don’t see any practical way for us to get to know one another better.”

  “Would you like to?”

  “Would I like to what?”

  “Get to know me better?”

  “I don’t know how to get through to you,” said Molly. “Don’t you see it’s impossible? That it just doesn’t make any sense?”

  “You didn’t answer my question. Would you like to get to know me better?”

  Molly squirmed in her chair.

  “Please, David,” she said quietly. “I think I bruise easily. I’m not even sure of that. No practice, remember? I think it would make more sense if we just went back to our respective corners of the planet and got on with our very different lives.”