She dropped her head on my shoulder and started to cry. “Oh Leonard, I feel like hell.”
“What about? All this is completely imaginary.”
“Oh no it isn’t... The tenor was all right. He wasn’t much good, but I could have done with him, once he got over his cold. I wanted you up here, don’t you see? I was so glad to see you, and then I didn’t want you to see it, for fear you wouldn’t want me to be that glad. And I tried to be businesslike, and I was doing fine — and then you looked at me that way. And then I swallowed that down, because I knew I didn’t care how you looked at me, so long as you were here. And then — you flopped. And I knew you weren’t just a tenor that would put up with anything for a job. I knew you’d go back, and I was terrified, and furious at you. And then you sang the way I wanted you to sing, and I loved you so much I wanted to go out there and hold on to you while you sang the other one. And now you know. Oh no, it’s not just imaginary. What have you got?”
I held her tight, and patted her cheek, and tried to think of something to say. There wasn’t anything to say, not about what she was talking about. I had got so fond of her that I loved every minute I spent with her, and yet there was only one woman that meant to me what she wanted to mean to me, and that was Doris. She could torture me all she wanted to, she could be a phoney and make a fool of me all over town with other men, and yet Cecil had hit it: when she said hop, I jumped.
“I know what you’ve got. You’ve got big hard shoulders, and shaggy hair, and you’re a man, and you build bridges, and to you this is just some kind of foolish tiddle-de-winks game that you play until it’s time to go to work. And that’s just what it is to me! I don’t want to be a singer. I want to be a woman!”
“If I’m a man, you made me one.”
“Oh yes, that’s the hell of it. It’s mostly tiddle-de-winks, but it’s partly building yourself up to her level, so you’re not afraid of her any more. And that’s what I’m helping you at. Making a man out of you, so she can have you... I feel like hell. I could go right out that window.”
I held her a long time, then, and she stopped crying, and began to play with my hair. “All right, Leonard. I’ve been rotten, and a poor sport to say anything about it at all, because this isn’t how it was supposed to come out — and now I’ll stop. I’ll be good, and not talk any more about it, and try to give you a pleasant trip. It’s a little fun, isn’t it, out here playing tiddle-de-winks?”
“It is with you.”
“Wouldn’t they be surprised, all your friends at the Engineers’ Club, if they could see you?”
I wanted to cry, but she wanted me to laugh, so I did, and held her close, and kissed her. “You sang like an angel, and I’m terribly proud of you, and — that’s right. Hold me close.”
I held her close a long time, and then she started to laugh. It was a real cackle, over something that had struck her funny, I could see that. “... What is it?”
“You.”
“Tonight? At the hall?”
“Yes.”
“?”
But she just kept right on laughing, and didn’t tell me what it was about. Later on, though, I found out.
6
We sang Syracuse, Cincinnati, and Columbus after that, the same program, and I did all right. She paid my hotel bills, and offered me $50 a night on top of that, but I wouldn’t take anything. I was surprised at the reviews I got. Most of them wrote her up, and let me out with a line, but a few of them called me “the surprise of the evening,” said I had a voice of “rare power and beauty,” and spoke of the “sweep and authority” of my singing. I didn’t exactly know what they meant, and it was the first time I knew there was anything like that about me, but I liked them all right and saved them all.
The Columbus concert was on a Thursday, and after we closed with the duet again, and took our bows, and went off, a little wop in gray spats followed her into her dressing room and stayed there quite a while. Then he left and we went out to eat. I was pretty hungry, and I hadn’t liked waiting. “Who was your pretty boy friend?”
“That was Mr. Rossi.”
“And who is Mr. Rossi?”
“General secretary, business agent, attorney, master of the hounds, bodyguard, scout, and chief cook-and-bottle-washer to Cesare Pagano.”
“And who is Cesare Pagano?”
“He’s the American Scala Opera Company, the only impresario in the whole history of opera that ever made money out of it.”
“And?”
“I’m under contract to them, you know. For four weeks, beginning Monday. After that I go back to New York to get ready for the Metropolitan.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“I didn’t say anything about it.”
“Then after tonight I’m fired. Is that it?”
“No. I didn’t say anything about it, because I thought I might have a surprise for you. I’ve been wiring Pagano about you, and wiring him and wiring him — and tonight he sent Rossi over. Rossi thinks you’ll do.”
“What? Me sing in grand opera?”
“Well what did you think you were learning those roles for?”
“I don’t know. Just for something to do. Just so I could come down and see you. Just — to see if I could do it. Hell, I never been to a grand opera.”
“Anyway, I closed with him.”
It turned out I was to get $125 a week, which was upped $25 from what he had offered, and that was what they were arguing about. I was to get transportation, pay my own hotel bills, and have a four-week contract, provided I did all right on my first appearance. It sounded so crazy to me I didn’t know what to say, and then something else popped in my head. “What about this grand opera, anyway? Do they — dress up or something?”
“Why of course. There’s costumes, and scenery — just like any other show.”
“Me — put on funny clothes and get out there and — do I have to paint up my face?”
“You use make-up, of course.”
“It’s out.”
But then when I asked her what she got, and she said $400 a night, and that she had taken a cut from $500, I knew perfectly well that that was part of what they had been arguing about too, that she had taken that cut to get me in, so I could be with her, and that kind of got me. I thought it was the screwiest thing I had ever heard of, but I finally said yes.
If you think a concert is tough, don’t ever try grand opera. I hear it’s harder to go out there all alone, with only a piano to play your accompaniments and no scenery to help you out, and I guess it is, when you figure the fine points. But if you’ve never even heard of the fine points yet, and you’re not sure you can even do it at all, you stick to something simple. Remember what I’m telling you: lay off grand opera.
We hit Chicago the next day, just the two of us, because Wilkins went back to New York after the Columbus concert. The first thing we did, after we got hotel rooms, was go around to the costumer’s. That’s a swell place. There’s every kind of costume you ever heard of, hanging on hooks, like people that have just been lynched, from white flannel tenor suits with brass buttons up the front, to suits of armor, to naval uniforms, to cowboy clothes, to evening clothes and silk hats. It’s all dark, and dusty, and shabby, and about as romantic as a waxworks.