“Don’t you ever get tired of those old ballets?”
“I hate all new dancing,” said Louis, diverted momentarily from his usual preoccupation with pussycats and such like.
“Even Jed Wilbur’s?”
Louis shrugged. “He’s the best of that kind, I guess. I don’t get much kick out of dancing in them, though … in Eclipse and now the new one.”
“Where the father kills the girl, isn’t it?”
“I think that’s the story. To tell you the truth I don’t pay much attention. I just do what they tell me. At least he let’s me do things I like to do … tours en l’air, that kind of thing. He keeps me happy.”
“I wonder what the story means?”
“Why don’t you ask Jed? He’ll talk your ear off about it. I just go to sleep when he starts getting arty with me.”
“You sound like Eglanova,”
He snorted. “We got that in common then. I love her. She’s like a mother to me, ever since I’ve known her: Louis, you do this, Louis, you do that … Louis, don’t go out with sailors, Louis, don’t snap your head when you finish pirouette, Louis, don’t take such deep bows after ballet … I never had any mother,” said Louis, and for a minute I thought he was going to have a good cry.
“It’s terrible,” I said, “the way Mr. Washburn tried to get rid of her before Sutton was killed.”
“He’s a bastard,” said Louis, gloomily licking the edge of his gin glass. “He can’t help it. He was just made that way … all the time doing somebody dirty … not that he isn’t good to me, as long as I’m hot with the audience. The second I have a little trouble, get bad reviews or something awful, good-by Louis, I know him.”
“He’s a businessman.”
“Ballet is art not business,” said Louis making, as far as I knew, his first and last pronouncement on ballet. “But you should’ve seen his face when he came to find out if me and Ella were going to quit the company for sure and go into night clubs. He looked like somebody had just belted him one. ‘Now, Louis, you know we’re old friends …’ that was his line to me; so I strung him along awhile then I told him that Ella was just bluffing him.”
“Do you think she was?”
“At least as far as I was concerned. I didn’t have any intention of leaving the company, even though I’ve thought about it a lot. We had talked a little about it then and just lately Jed has been trying to talk me into doing that big musical of his this fall, but I said no; I mean the money’s very nice except that the government gets it all … then you’re out of a job maybe six months of a year with no money coming in and it isn’t so swell. No, I like to know I got a regular amount coming in every week, ten months a year.” I hadn’t realized before that Louis was quite so money-conscious, so shrewd.
“I wonder why Ella told Washburn that, about your quitting the company together?”
“Just to worry him a little, to raise her price. She knew he couldn’t find another dancer to take her place. As a matter of fact, just between you and me, I think she was planning to leave ballet in a year or so, but alone. I think she wanted to go in musicals and I got a feeling that was why she was so keen on getting Jed to join the company. Oh, she wanted to do a real modern ballet and all that but she wanted to work on him to get her a Broadway job. She had an eye for all the angles.”
“I thought Jed joined the company because of you.”
“You’re pretty fresh, petit gosse,” said Louis with a grin, pinching my thigh until I just about yelled with pain. “I wasn’t talking about why Jed joined us; I was talking about why Ella wanted him to, why she sold Washburn on the idea.” I rubbed my leg until the pain went away. One day I am going to beat the hell out of Louis, if I can; if I can’t I’ll do a lot of damage first.
“Jed’s sure got it bad for you,” I said in an earnest, slightly breathless tone of voice.
“Funny, isn’t it?” said Louis, with a sigh, stretching his arms and controlling a yawn … it was stifling in the bar, a single fan made a racket but did not cool the warm smoke-filled air. “He’s been after me for years. Used to write me crazy letters even before we started working together.”
I waved to the waiter who, without asking, brought us another round; before he left he gave Louis a lightning grope and Louis didn’t like it but, as I pointed out, he was just getting some of his own medicine. He didn’t think that was very funny but after he’d swallowed some more gin he was in a better mood. I tried to get him to talk about Mr. Washburn but he wanted to talk about Jed. “I’m a lone wolf,” he said, wiping his sweaty face with the back of his hand. “Lots of guys get themselves a nice pussycat and settle down but not me … I used to be a pussycat for some older guys, when I was real young, but I didn’t like it much and besides it isn’t dignified for a man like me to be kept by somebody else, and that’s what Jed’s got in mind. He wants me to settle down with him and be his boy while he makes dozens of ballets for me until I’m too old to get around a stage. Even if I liked the idea of going to bed with him, which I don’t and never have, I couldn’t go for that kind of life and, as for his making ballets for me, well, that’s what he’s doing right now with Mr. Washburn paying for them in cash, not me paying for them in tail … I tell him all this a thousand times but he doesn’t listen. He’s made up his mind I’m his big love and there’s nothing I can do about it. You’d think somebody who’d been around dancers as long as he has wouldn’t feel that way, like a little girl, but he’s got a one-track mind. He came to us just because I was in the company … not because Ella wanted him or because Washburn offered him a lot of money. Believe me it’s been hell dodging him, too. I can’t take my clothes off but what he isn’t in the dressing room wrestling around. I finally convinced him that Ella, who was making eyes at me this season, and me were having a hot affair and I suppose he fell for it since I’ve been known to play the other side, too. I let Ella in on the secret and so we pretended we were having an affair which was fine until I found out she expected to have a real one … you could’ve knocked me over with a feather when she suggested the idea one afternoon, right after the season opened. I said no and from that time on till she died we were having trouble and I mean trouble. She used to do everything she could to break me up on stage and off. I hate to admit it but I was kind of relieved when that cable broke.”
So were a lot of people, I thought, sipping my third coke … I was getting more and more wide awake and, perhaps as a result of the caffein I was drinking, more and more keyed up.
Molly, in black satin and a dark wig, joined us. “Going to make a real night of it, dear?” he asked.
“First real bender this season,” said Louis, looking happy.
“Well, I must say you couldn’t pick a better place, and in better company,” said Molly giving me the eye. “You a dancer, honey?”
I said that I was, in the corps de ballet.
“My, they’re much more butch than they used to be,” said Molly, turning to Louis. “What’s happened to the mad girls who used to be in your company?”
“Flew away,” giggled Louis. “Spread their wings and flew away.… psst! like that, all gone.”
“Well, it’s a new look,” said Molly, giving me a tender smile. We had a great deal more to drink and then we left Hermione’s. I was wide awake and a little jittery while Louis was roaring drunk, throwing passes almost as fast as I could catch them and throw them back.
At four in the morning we ended up in a Turkish Bath in Harlem. I was very innocent; I figured that if Louis tried to give me a rough time I’d be safe in the baths since they were, after all, a public place with a management which would come to my help if he got too horny. I was mistaken.