We started our tour in Philly, where Belle’s husband’s from, and where his father has a theater of his own. We stayed there for a month, reworking our act for the road, testing it out on those audiences that already loved Belle, she could do no wrong. Then we went to Cleveland to see what they thought, and they liked us there, they liked us a lot, and we liked them too, Cleveland was a gas. The theater was brand new, and we had crowds every night, on and on, all the applause thrilling me, until suddenly it seemed like everyone in town had already seen us once, and once was enough. Belle said it was time to move on, and what Belle says goes, because Belle runs the show, because Belle is the show.
There was more money to be made in Chicago, bigger crowds, more Jews, Jews who wanted all the Yiddish songs as much as the English songs, more than the English songs, never tired of them, and they were always Belle’s favorites too. Belle’s husband left us there, back to Philly, back for the spring, a relief for Belle because the only one who barks more than Belle is her husband. She told us she got us to Chicago but now we were on our own. So we did two shows a night with her on the weekends but nothing during the week, and we were worried we’d go broke, but Skip, my baby, my talker, my charmer, got us work at White City. I loved White City, with its twinkling lights all over the place, crowds of jolly Chicagoans, clean streets, wide skies. Three nights a week there, plus two with Belle and we were set.
Oh, everything was such a laugh! Rushing to the theater, hustling in a cab, breathless, tumbling out the door, but never tripping, never falling, we were dancers and we would never fall. I could have kept going across America, I liked the driving, I liked the road life, I liked setting up house for a spell in a hotel or a boardinghouse and then taking everything apart again. I could have looped and looped around this great country of ours forever. I liked these people, these performers, and I liked being buddies on the road. Skip & Felix & Elizabeth & Belle & Jeanie, that’s me, the girl in the air.
But if I had to stay in just one place, Chicago was as good as anywhere else. They got a mayor there who’s a real hoot, puts on a good show, even if he’s bad news. He makes his own rules, doesn’t give a damn about Prohibition, lines his own pocket from booze money. I read the papers, and I spent enough time there to know, Chicago is one wild town.
I never met that mayor, but I met a lot of people who worked for him. It seemed like half the town was either coming or going from his office. One of his special assistants came backstage once, a man named Paul, a gentleman in a fine suit, tall and meaty but with long sweet eyelashes and enormous, plush lips. Paul was an American but the child of Italians, so he was Paulo once, he told me, that very moment we met, sharing a new secret between friends, we shook hands on it, and the minute we touched I thought only one word: Yes.
Paul loved our work, loved our show, all three of us, me & Skip & Felix, and he offered to show us the town. He was one of the mayor’s special assistants in enforcing Prohibition, which made him an expert in exactly where you weren’t supposed to go but sometimes could. There was a wink after that, a wink just for me. Yes, we will go with you, Paul, wherever you go, yes.
He had his own car, the fanciest I’ve ever seen, with a driver who tipped his hat at us once when we got inside, and then never spoke to us again, quiet as a ghost in the front seat, he might as well have been a puff of smoke. We went from speakeasy to speakeasy, Paul shaking hands with all the men in fancy suits hovering near doorways, surveying the scene, running the show. I’m in Skip’s arms the whole night dancing, but I can see Paul watching me, burning a hole through Skip with his eyes like he’s not even there, and I’m staring right back at him, and I know something’s going to happen because I want it to and all I have to do is say yes.
So yes, I say, yes yes yes, I scream it. He’s married, who cares, yes. He’s a criminal maybe, yes yes yes. You’re just a girl he tells me, I say yes yes yes. You’re so skinny I could slip my hand right through you, he says. Oh I’ll feel it, I say. A skinny pretty Yid from New York City, he said. Never did I know that was a thing that could be desired, but in fact it is a thing that he desired, and so he had it.
What about Skip? How did I get it past him? We shared a room, like a married couple, husband and wife, till the curtain closes for good, he used to say, but we were definitely not married. The answer is that I’m an excellent liar, I have lied for years, so long that it has become as easy as telling the truth.
It went on for a few weeks, me and Paul, sneaking around Chicago, seemed like he had keys to every door in town, hotels and warehouses and clubs, front rooms, back rooms, a key to my door too. He offered me money sometimes but I always said no, because I didn’t need his money, and also I might be a liar and I might be a cheat, but I’m definitely not a whore.
Every day my hair was a mess, messy sex hair, and Elizabeth hadn’t the time to get it right every day, the tight waves and curls, the two of us racing to get it done before Belle’s set. She said she didn’t know what to do with me, that the Chicago wind must be stronger than she knew, and I laughed, a dirty laugh, a good-time-girl laugh, and she gave me a look like maybe it wasn’t the wind, maybe it was Skip, and then she sighed, “Oh those Folsom boys.”
Then one day we were running later than usual and Belle was in a monstrous mood, her husband was in town and he was not a part of the road family, him being bossier than Belle herself, and there couldn’t be two bosses of the show. Belle started griping that Elizabeth was her girl and not my girl, and we were wincing hearing her voice, so beautiful when she sang but intimidating when she spoke, and Belle was right, it’s true, Elizabeth was hers and not mine. And Elizabeth said she’d rather just cut all my hair off and be done with it, and then I told her to do it and the very next day she did, it was a bob, and it was done.
Now the men in my life had even more ardor for me, this new me with the new hair. Paul liked it because it was different, spontaneous, a change of plans, and Skip liked it because it was smart and stylish and fresh. I liked my hair because it didn’t slow me down. I was a twirling, racing, breathless, desirable woman. I felt like I had everything I needed for one perfect week.
But one morning I woke up with a pain in my stomach, serious and low, slow and steady, and along with that my undergarments were stained with a white mess, and that didn’t seem right either. And I tried all the old wives’ recipes I’ve heard, gypsy recipes too, but alas and alack, the pain would not stop, the undergarments continued to spoil, and I knew I was ruined in some way.
I didn’t believe I could tell anyone in my road family about my pain, not Elizabeth or Belle or Felix and especially not Skip. This is the hard part when you’re a liar and a cheat and you have secrets, because you’re really alone when things are bad, then you’re really invisible. So I found a doctor for ladies and he stared at me down there for a while and coughed and hemmed and hawed and then, without looking me in the eye, told me I had the clap. The clap! Here I was, living for applause all this time, and boy oh boy, did I get it.
Now I knew I could have gotten the disease from either Skip or Paul, but I had an idea it was from Paul because I was sure I wasn’t his only girl on the side, that there were other girls, ones who took money from him, and those kinds of girls sometimes have the clap, although there I was with it too, so who was I to judge or say anything? I asked Paul about it, I asked him if he had a little something going on down there, and he said that when you lived a life like his, there was always a little something going on down there.