Emil furrowed his brow and looked with uncertainty from the actress to me and back again. “I... don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.” He turned to me, nodding stiffly. “Sir.”
“Emil.” I dipped my chin in return to show there were no hard feelings about the way he had high-hatted me when I came in.
“Are you having supper?” Helen Hayes asked, and when I told her I’d just ordered, she urged me to join her, patting the chair at right angles to her own.
“But it looks like you’ve already finished,” I protested.
“I just had a snack. That’s all I usually eat after a performance. But I need more coffee, Lord, several cups more, to get me through this,” she said in a stage voice, shaking a sheaf of papers she had just picked up. “And I would very much like the company. Emil, have Mr. Malek’s meal and drink brought over here.”
“Yes, Miss Hayes,” he responded, doing another about-face, this one not at all snappy.
“I don’t believe Emil cares a whole lot for me,” I said as I sat down.
“Oh, don’t worry about him,” she replied gently. “He’s not nearly as stuffy as he puts on, and he’s very protective of me. I’m here several nights a week after the performance, usually by myself — I often like being alone after working — and Emil views himself as my guardian, my protector. Actually, almost nobody ever approaches me. Maybe they don’t recognize me, or if they do, they choose not to come over.”
“I almost didn’t come over myself. Thanks for pretending that we have known each other.”
She tilted her head gracefully in what may have been a practiced gesture, although with her it seemed natural and spontaneous.
“Not at all, Mr. Malek. Now if you’d been, say, an accountant or a stockbroker or an optometrist — not that those are bad professions, mind you — I almost surely would not have invited you to join me. But a newspaperman — that’s different. You as a group are among the most interesting people in the world. And in candor, I was feeling sorry for myself. Also, as I told you, I welcome the company.”
“Feeling sorry for yourself? Why?”
“This!” She stuck out her lower lip and shook the sheaf of paper again. “Mr. Malek, when we left New York and took Victoria Regina on the road in the fall, I got this crazy idea that this cast could rehearse another play, The Merchant of Venice, as we go across the country and then give a few performances of it, very few, in certain cities. I told myself, and everybody else, that it would keep us all fresh and stimulated. But that was a bald rationalization on my part; I am thirty-seven years old, and I have always wanted to do Shakespeare.”
“You never have?”
“Never. Not once. Be very careful what you wish for, Mr. Malek, because you might get it,” she said with feeling. “I’m playing Portia” — she tapped what I now realized was a script — “and we’re supposed to give our first performance of ‘Merchant,’ a matinee, right here in Chicago at the Erlanger two weeks from today. Never in the history of the American theater has a cast been more unprepared, and I include myself, particularly myself, in that indictment.
“Well, you’ve heard quite enough of my problems. Let’s talk about you and newspapers. My husband, Charles — Charles MacArthur — worked as a reporter here some years ago, before he moved to New York and we got married. We live up in Nyack, not too far north of Manhattan. He’s back home now, working on a screenplay. When he lived in Chicago, before I knew him, he was on the Examiner, and also your Tribune. I suppose you’re too young to have known him?”
I smiled. “For the record, you and I are just about the same age. I’ll be thirty-six come March. But I didn’t get onto the Trib until your husband had gone East. Of course, I’ve seen his and Hecht’s play, The Front Page, and I do know him as a reporter by reputation. God, the stories they still tell about him in the local room — that’s what the Trib calls its city room. He’s a legend.”
“Oh?” Her eyes danced and she clapped her small hands. “What kind of stories?”
“Well... here’s one, although I’m a little fuzzy on some of the details. Apparently, he was sent by the paper to a small burg over in Michigan to cover a trial. I think it was when Henry Ford sued the Trib over something they wrote about him that he didn’t like. Anyway, so the story goes, MacArthur — your husband — commandeered a streetcar, tossed the motorman off, took the controls, and ran the thing at full speed to get to the courthouse, which sat up on a hill overlooking the town. The police chased after the trolley, so MacArthur got off at the top of the hill, took some cannonballs that were piled up next to a Civil War statue, and rolled them down on the town coppers like bowling balls, which sent the cops racing for cover while the locals stood around and cheered.”
“Come to think of it, I believe Ben — Hecht that is — mentioned that episode once. To hear Ben and Charlie talk, and how they both do love to talk, those were boisterous days on the Chicago newspapers. Is it still like that?”
“I wouldn’t say so. Since the Crash, everything’s been, well, more serious.”
“From what I’ve seen, that’s the case just about everywhere,” she said solemnly, sipping coffee as the waiter arrived with my dinner and more beer. “How did you get started in the newspaper business, Mr. Malek?”
“When I was a kid, I figured I’d be a streetcar motorman, which is what my father is and always has been, at least as far back as I can remember. But in high school, my junior year it was, I volunteered for the school paper because it seemed like that’s where all the good-looking girls were. And I ended up liking it, the paper, I mean, the reporting and the writing. Well, when I graduated, I knew college was out of the question. There was just no money either for me or for my sister, she’s three years younger. The advisor on the school paper was impressed with my work and said he’d put in a good word with a guy he knew at the City News Bureau. That’s mainly a police reporting service that the papers all use, and...”
“Oh, yes,” Helen Hayes said. “I’m sure I’ve heard Charlie talk about the City News Bureau.”
“Sure, you would have. It’s been around forever, and almost every reporter in town gets his start there. Anyway, I signed on, and it was pretty rough at first. The pay is terrible, and the police out in the precincts make fun of you and play tricks like stealing your notes and things like that. But if you’re serious about your work, and good at it, the coppers end up accepting you — most of them are pretty good guys, actually. And it’s great training; you cover murders, auto crashes, fires, the works. Besides, putting in your time there is almost a necessity for getting a job on one of the dailies.”
“What do you do at the Tribune?” Her eyes fastened onto me, suggesting that what I had to say was important.
“I cover police headquarters, which is down at 11th and State. I’ve got the day shift.”
“Sounds impressive. Are you happy?”
“It’s a job.”
She considered me with a thoughtful expression. “You don’t seem terribly enthusiastic for someone in such an exciting line of work.”
Looking back on that evening, I am still surprised by how much I opened up to her. I like to think I’m good at getting other people to talk about themselves, but I hadn’t talked much about my own life for several years, with reason. But here was someone — and not just anyone — who seemed genuinely interested.
“I’ve had better assignments than this,” I told her. “I covered both City Hall and the County Building several years ago. I don’t mean to brag, but I was considered one of the top young reporters on the paper, particularly when it came to news features and human-interest stories. Then, well... I got so I was drinking more and more. It sort of snuck up on me. And I’ll be honest — it affected my work.”