“What?” I said, shocked. “No, I didn’t go all the way.”
“Well, did you go halfway?” she insisted.
“Give her a break, Gladys,” Ruthie called out, turning back to the mirror to fix her face.
“Was he sweet?” Lillian asked. “Was he kind? He looked very handsome when he was waiting out front for you. We all went and had a peek.”
“Yes, he was very sweet and very kind and very interesting, nota bore at all. I didn’t get home until the sun was almost up and we didn’t even go dancing.”
“Did you see his bedroom at least?” Gladys asked.
“No, Gladys, I didn’t, what is the matter with you? We went to dinner and stayed out talking until the restaurant kicked us out. He’s a very respectable man.”
“I know plenty of respectable men who’ll have their way with you on a first dinner date, and send you home with a diamond bracelet.”
“He’s not like that,” I said, wanting to be done with all their questioning, wanting to get back to my daydreaming of how it had been, just the two of us, closing down the restaurant, intent on learning as much as we could about each other.
“Come on, girls,” Ruthie said, saving me, “we’re all going to be late if we don’t get going.”
Every night that week I waited to hear from Archie again, but just like before he kept me waiting. The girls kept asking, but by the end of the week their questioning slowed. It didn’t make any sense to me that he would act this way again. Why would a man express so much interest and then disappear? The whole thing made me uneasy.
And then Lillian, our former roommate, who had kept the apartment in Inwood and enlisted two other girls from the show as roommates, showed up on my doorstep before morning rehearsal unannounced. I wasn’t particularly surprised—Lillian often preferred to stay in the living room at our place rather than trek all the way up to Inwood; it was closer to the theater, cleaner, and had an elevator that worked—but she usually made her decision late at night after a heavy evening of dancing.
“Do you need to drop off some things before we head to thetheater?” I asked as she walked in. She was petite, five feet two at most, and was a fantastic ballerina, her posture enviable, but today she looked hunched and stricken.
“Everything okay, Lils?” I asked. “Big night out?”
“I have to talk to you about something,” she said. “Before we go to the theater.”
“What is it?”
She walked past me to the living room, set down her things and went to the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water. “It’s about the fella you’ve been going with.”
“Archie? What about him?” It had been more than a week since I’d seen or heard from him, but I didn’t want to let on.
“Well, you know Evelyn, the young girl who just joined this season as a pony, you know the one, blond, voluptuous.” She held her hands in front of her bosoms and pretended to squeeze.
“Yes,” I said. Oh God, don’t tell me he’d been wooing her, too, how humiliating, poaching from under my very nose. What a fool to think he was interested in me and me alone.
“She’s from Cincinnati, she just moved here recently, and she said he’s very well-known in that town, very well-known,” she emphasized. “In the papers weekly, apparently, comes from a wealthy family.”
“Well, he built his own fortune, actually, but never mind… go on.”
“You’re not going to like this, and I’m only telling what I heard because the other girls have been talking about it in the dressing room and I don’t want you to have them whispering behind your back, it’s not right—”
“Just spit it out, Lillian,” I snapped, furious already at whatever it was she was about to tell me.
“He’s engaged.”
“What?”
“To be married.”
“To Evelyn?”
“No.” She almost laughed and I shot her a look that made her straighten up. “No, not Evelyn, but she knows about him, and it’s been all over the papers back in Cincinnati, some woman from his hometown.”
“That can’t be right,” I said, confused, caught completely off guard. How could this be? Why would a man go to great lengths to find out where I perform, send me gifts, flowers, take me to dinner and want to know so much about me if he’s already engaged to another woman? It made no sense.
