The Girl at the End of the Line Page 7

  “Were you looking for something in particular?” asked the young woman who had given Molly directions.

  “My grandparents performed on Broadway, years ago,” said Molly staring over the girl’s shoulder at a window marked TICKETS AVAILABLE where a crowd had gathered. “I need to find out some information about them, but I guess I’m in the wrong place. Is this some kind of box office?”

  “Oh, they don’t sell any tickets here,” said the young woman following Molly’s gaze. “We get comps.”

  “Comps?”

  “Complimentary tickets. Producers like to paper the house with actors when there aren’t enough paying customers, so they give us freebies. Actors make great audiences. We whistle and stamp for everybody on stage, figuring they’ll do the same for us one day.”

  “Are all these people here for … comps?” asked Molly.

  “Oh, no,” laughed the girl. “There are job listings posted in the other room. There’s some casting done here. But basically it’s just a place where you can come in between auditions, check the boards, get off your feet, go to the bathroom, talk with your friends. They might have the kind of information you’re looking for up in Membership, on the fourteenth floor.”

  She indicated a bank of elevators through an archway.

  “Thanks,” said Molly.

  “Good luck,” answered the young woman, disappearing into the crowded hallway.

  Molly led Nell to the elevators, feeling more out of place than she ever had in her life. Everyone seemed to be staring at them in the same strange way—as if they were watching her but not watching her. Was it so obvious she didn’t belong here? It was a relief when the elevator came and they got in alone.

  It was only as they climbed to the fourteenth floor that Molly finally realized that the actors downstairs hadn’t been staring at her at all—they were just aware of her looking at them. It was what their profession was all about, after all: being seen, controlling what you look like to other people, living your life in deliberate and perpetual self-consciousness. How did they stand it?

  Before Molly could even begin to understand what being an actor must be like and why anyone would want to live that way, the elevator doors opened. She and Nell walked out into an open area with people lined up at a windows marked ACTOR’S CREDIT UNION on one side of the room, and a counter marked MEMBERSHIP on the other. Behind the counter informally dressed people sat at desks, typing and filing. It looked like an insurance agency.

  Marveling at the strange new world she had landed in, Molly took her place in the short line with Nell beside her. After a few minutes they found themselves facing a pleasant, compact young man.

  “Can I help ya?” he said in the deese-dem-and-dose dialect of New York.

  He wore shiny pants that might have come from Kmart and had none of the sparkle of the people downstairs. Why was Molly surprised? Had she expected out-of-work actors to be staffing the membership office? Unions were businesses. They probably paid minimum wage and specifically avoided performers as being bad employment risks.

  “My grandparents acted in Broadway plays years ago,” said Molly. “I’m wondering if you might still have some information about them.”

  “You a member?”

  “No, but as I said, my grandparents performed on Broadway, so I imagine they were.”

  Molly spelled Jellinek. The clerk poked a computer terminal in front of him, then shook his head.

  “Sorry, we don’t got no Jellineks registered with Equity.”

  “Maybe not now,” said Molly. “This would have been almost fifty years ago.”

  “Well, then there’s your problem. The computer don’t go back before about nineteen eighty.”

  “What about records from before that? Where are they?”

  “Yeah, people ax that sometimes, but we don’t really need that kinda stuff. They’re stored away, I don’t even know where.”

  After a few more questions it was painfully apparent that the priorities of a union were a lot different than a library’s. If Molly had been looking for a steamfitter or plumber who had once worked in New York, how much luck would she have had at those unions? And even if Equity’s old records could be found, the only information that had been recorded was the agent’s name and a local address, not where they had come from originally.

  “Your actors, they ain’t so stable, see?” confided the clerk with a knowing look. “They move around a lot, so your fifty-year-old local address ain’t gonna mean much.”

  “Can you look up some other names for me?” asked Molly, disappointed.

  “Sure, but if it’s more old stuff, we ain’t gonna have it, probably. Like I say, we only keep track of active members.”

  Molly began reading off the cast of characters of Without Reservations in order of appearance. Gramps, Aunt Tillie, the Doctor, Bart the Handyman. None of their names appeared in the computer, either. Molly wasn’t surprised. From their pictures in the program she knew that they had been older people fifty years ago. They were probably long dead.

  “Here ya go,” said the clerk, looking up triumphantly from his terminal. “We got Arthur Page Anderson and we got Lillian St. Germaine. They stopped paying dues back in eighty-one and eighty-three respectfully. I can’t give you addresses because you ain’t members, but their last contact was Ajax Bowles. Ajax Bowles, that’s the agency.”

  “Do you know where I can find this agency?”

  “Haven’t the slightest,” said the clerk. “We only keep track of actors, and only them that pay their dues.”

  “Ajax Bowles closed after Burt Wolfanson died of AIDS in the late eighties,” said a woman who had stepped into line behind Molly and Nell. “Burt wasn’t a bad guy. He used to send me out for commercials sometimes. You civilians?”

  She looked strangely familiar—an attractive woman in her fifties who had obviously once been beautiful, though the harsh fluorescent lights now accentuated every wrinkle beneath her impeccable makeup.

  “We’re not in the theater, if that’s what you mean,” said Molly. “Our grandmother was.”

  Molly suddenly realized where she had seen the woman. It had been on television. She had starred in a series of singing tuna fish commercials when Molly was a teenager. Molly marveled at seeing her up close after all these years—her first celebrity in the flesh. The jingle even flashed into Molly’s mind, a hypnotic ditty recounting how all ambitious tuna made straight for her sponsor’s can, only to endure a rigorous audition process. Just like the fish downstairs.

  “Do you happen to know any of these people?” said Molly, handing her the Without Reservations “Playbill.” Perhaps an old performer might know more than an old computer.

  The tuna fish lady scrutinized the names in the program.

  “I really liked how you sang to the tuna,” ventured Molly.

  The woman sadly shook her head.

  “I’ve done everything from Sophocles to Noel Coward over the past thirty years,” she said with a sigh. “More than a hundred productions, and the only thing they ever recognize me for is three lousy commercials that I spent less than a week of my life on.”

  “Sorry,” stammered Molly.

  “Most of these people were before my time,” said the tuna fish lady, returning the Without Reservations program to Molly. “You never heard of Arthur Page Anderson and Lillie St. Germaine?”

  “Should we have?”

  “Such is Broadway fame,” sighed the actress. “They died years ago but were on top for quite a while. At least in New York. I did a Shaw play with them when I first came to town. Lovely people, real pros.”

  “Well, it was a long shot,” said Molly. “Thanks anyway.”

  “And then there’s Tuck Wittington.”

  “He’s still around? You know him?”

  “Oh, everybody knows Tuck,” said the woman with a chuckle, shaking her head.

  “But he wasn’t in the phone book.”

  “Neither am I, and Tuck probably has lots more
people he doesn’t want to hear from than I do. But five nights and two afternoons a week you can find him right around the corner. He’s playing in Bank Street Story at the Lyceum. Wait a minute while I finish my business here, and we’ll go downstairs and see if we can get you comps.”

  Five

  That night, after an hour of exploring, an attempted nap at the hotel, and a pair of eleven-dollar club sandwiches at a Times Square coffee shop, Molly and Nell made their way to the Lyceum, which was indeed only just around the block from Actor’s Equity.

  The old theater was gray with the grime of a century and dwarfed by a flashy modern skyscraper next door, but Molly loved the wackily elegant Beaux-Arts building on sight. It was like an overdone piece of nineteenth-century revival furniture, complete with Corinthian columns, Greek masks, ornate balconies, and windows wreathed with bellflower garlands and wedding-cake moldings. The lobby was a wonder of hand-carved oak and polished brass, the carved acanthus leaves and leaping dolphins testimony to a grander age.

  The tuna fish lady had very kindly talked the people at Equity out of two tickets for the eight o’clock performance of Bank Street Story—Annie Oakleys she had called them because of the hole punched in the center of each. When the great woman sharpshooter and Wild West Show star gave out free passes, so the story went, she used to throw the tickets in the air and punctuate them with signature bullet holes.

  Molly was immensely grateful—the seats would have cost them well over a hundred dollars—but the actress waved off her thank-yous with a sad, “Just forget about those commercials and remember my knowing smile when you watch Tuck eat the scenery tonight.”

  Things had already been going better than Molly could have dreamed. Now, thanks to the kindness of strangers, they were about to see their first Broadway play and meet, Molly hoped, a man who had known their grandmother in her youth. If their luck held Tuck Wittington would remember where Margaret Jellinek had originally come from. They’d be able to sleep late, check out of the hotel tomorrow morning, and still have the day to explore the city before catching the overnight bus back to Pelletreau.

  She’d have to give Taffy a call tomorrow and let her know when to pick them up, Molly reminded herself, settling back in her narrow, black velvet seat as the Lyceum’s houselights dimmed and the play began.

  Bank Street Story had been running for more than a year, and it was evident from the opening curtain why it was a hit. His name was Mitch Wanders.

  Molly hadn’t seen the blond actor on the television police drama that had catapulted him to celebrity, but even she knew who he was. Now she understood why he was a star.

  Wanders was a dynamic and sexy guy with a quiet reserve that was utterly masculine. Molly couldn’t take her eyes off him. Nell seemed impressed, too, judging from the way she stared at the actor with her lips slightly parted and her cheeks ruddy. He had a clear baritone voice and eyes that were so light blue as to be almost freakish. Though their second-row seats were far off to the left, Molly could actually see the tiny beads of sweat form on the actor’s beautiful face under the hot lights and smell his makeup.

  Molly hadn’t sat through a live play in a real theater since she was in high school. She was amazed at how exciting and immediate it was. She found herself thoroughly sucked in, horrified at what had happened to the little girl, but outraged to see the grieving Dr. Lewis, played by Mitch Wanders, forced to stand trial for her death.

  The district attorney—whom Molly hated on sight—was a sarcastic bully who treated poor Dr. Lewis like a common criminal. The actor who played him had a craggy face with a ridiculous cleft in his chin, curly black hair, and a voice that Molly thought of as trumpetlike, even though he never raised it.

  “Name three of your daughter’s friends, Dr. Lewis,” he snarled, his cruel dark eyes flashing.

  “I … I don’t know their names.”

  “But you know that she had friends?”

  “My daughter was a wonderful little girl. She must have had friends.”

  “What time would you say that this wonderful little girl had available to be with these friends, when your wife spent practically every waking minute dragging her to health clubs, restaurants, and beauty parlors and burdening her with intimate details of your sex life?”

  By the end of the play, the good Dr. Lewis didn’t look so good anymore, and society as a whole had been convicted of sacrificing its children on the altar of parental neuroses and needs. In fact the only likable character left was the honey-voiced, puckish, adorable judge, played by the man whose credits in the program ran three times longer than anyone else’s: Tuck Wittington.

  Molly and Nell were waiting at the Lyceum’s stage door around the block when the old actor emerged twenty minutes after the final curtain. Molly didn’t approach until he had walked without incident through the crowd being held behind a police barricade.

  “Mr. Wittington?”

  “C’est moi,” he answered with a hopeful smile, like a cocker spaniel hearing its name called at dinner time.

  He had taken off his makeup, and his old, well-lined skin was raw and pink-looking. Over his shoulder was slung a leather bag, almost like a purse. His strawberry blond hair had gone to white at the temples and the sideburns. He looked much smaller in person than he had in his black robes on the elevated judicial bench on stage. He stood maybe five feet five, but his slight frame carried forty or fifty more pounds than the “pipsqueak” who had made his Broadway debut in Without Reservations so long ago. His faintly British voice, once a shaky thing reviewers had laughed at, was now as deep and melodious as an old pipe organ.

  “I’m Molly O’Hara and this is my sister Nell,” said Molly. “We loved you in the play and we wondered—”

  “Say no more, my lovelies,” he said, taking her program from her hand and scribbling on its cover with a felt tip pen that he took from his pocket. “I am just heartened to see that there are those of your generation who can still appreciate an old thespian.”

  “Thank you,” said Molly as he handed her back the autographed “Playbill.” “Actually I wondered if we could talk to you for a moment about our grandmother …”

  “What is the dear old party’s name?” said Tuck, reaching for the program again.

  “Margaret Jellinek.”

  Tuck’s outstretched hand stopped in midair.

  “Margaret … Jellinek? I knew a Margaret Jellinek once.”

  “You made your Broadway debut with her in Without Reservations.”

  “Yes, I did. Good God. And you are that same Margaret Jellinek’s granddaughter?”

  Molly nodded. Tuck shook his head back and forth.

  “Suddenly I feel time’s winged chariot hurrying near,” he said in a mournful voice. “Brontosaurus Wittington, the dinosaur of old Broad-way. So how is your ancient granny, whom I, God help us, remember only as a beautiful young woman?”

  “She died,” said Molly. “About a week ago.”

  “You really know how to cheer a fellow up, don’t you?”

  A chorus of squeals suddenly exploded behind them. Holding out programs and writing utensils and at least one piece of underwear, the crowd surged through the barricade toward the confident, grinning figure of Mitch Wanders, who had just appeared at the stage door.

  “Oh, Jesus,” said Tuck, rolling his eyeballs broadly enough to be seen from a block away. “It’s Mitchell versus the great unwashed horde again. Let’s get out of here before I regurgitate.”

  Nell’s eyes lit up and she started back, obviously intending to join the crowd converging on Mitch Wanders. Molly grabbed her by the arm and dragged her along after Tuck, who was already to the corner of Broadway.

  It was past eleven o’clock now, but the streets of Times Square were every bit as crowded as they had been at noon. A million neon lights lit up the Great White Way like a stage set, making the night sky far above seem unreal and irrelevant.

  Tuck navigated surely through side streets thick with emerging audiences, cha
ttering about plays in which he had performed in each theater they passed. By the time they came to rest in a restaurant on the other side of Eighth Avenue a few blocks up from their hotel, Tuck with studied nonchalance had dropped the names of half-a-hundred famous people he’d worked with.

  “Ralph’s” had looked like just a nondescript doorway from the street, but inside was a cavernous space with exposed brick walls and menus scrawled with chalk on blackboards. The noise level was high and so were the customers’ spirits.

  Magnanimously greeting patrons and waiters alike, Tuck led Molly and Nell to a large table in a rear corner of the restaurant where several of the other cast members from Bank Street Story, and some of other actor types were already eating, drinking, and generally having an uproarious time.

  “People,” announced Tuck, tapping the round glass candle holder on the table with a fork and depositing his bag on a chair, “these are … what did you say your names were?”

  “Molly and Nell O’Hara.”

  “ … Molly and Nell O’Hara, whose grandmother acted with yours truly in his Broadway debut back in the seventeen sixties. Please be kind to them. I’ll be right back, children, I must say hello to Cameron.”

  Tuck bounced away and disappeared into the crowd at the bar. Nobody seemed to take much notice of Molly and Nell. The conversations around the table continued at high decibels. A few seats away the actor who had played the hateful district attorney nursed what looked to be scotch and stared at Molly in a way that made her skin crawl. After a few moments Molly couldn’t stand it anymore. She turned to the woman next to her who had played the horrible Mrs. Lewis and tried to strike up a conversation over the din of the room.

  “I enjoyed your performance very much.”

  “Thanks.”

  “It’s a really good play.”

  “The Times thought so.”