City of Girls Read Online Free PDF Page A

pins.
    Even for a finale, it went on for an awfully long time. The orchestra banged forth, the kick line pounded away, the happy and breathless couple couldn’t believe how terrific their lives were about to get, the showgirls slowly displayed their figures, the juggler sweated and hurled—until suddenly, with a crash of every instrument at once, and a swirl of spotlights,and wild flinging up of everyone’s arms in the air at the same time, it ended!
    Applause.
    Not thunderous applause. More like a light drizzle of applause.
    Olive didn’t clap. I clapped politely, though my clapping sounded lonely there at the back of the hall. The applause didn’t last long. The performers had to exit the stage in semisilence, which is never good. The audience filed past us dutifully,like workers heading home for the day—which is exactly what they were.
    “Do you think they liked it?” I asked Olive.
    “Who?”
    “The audience.”
    “The audience ?” Olive blinked, as though it had never occurred to her to wonder what an audience thought of a show. After a bit of consideration, she said, “You must understand, Vivian, that our audiences are neither full of excitement when they arriveat the Lily, nor overwhelmed with elation when they leave.”
    From the way she said this, it sounded as though she approved of the arrangement, or at least had accepted it.
    “Come,” she said. “Your aunt will be backstage.”
    So backstage we went—straight into the busy, wanton clamor that always erupts in the wings at the end of a show. Everyone moving, everyone yelling, everyone smoking, everyoneundressing. The dancers were lighting cigarettes for each other, and the showgirls were removing their headdresses. A few men in overalls were shuffling props around, but not in any way that would cause them to break a sweat. There was a lot of loud, overripe laughter, but that’s not because anything was particularly funny; it’s just because these were show-business people, and that’s how they alwaysare.
    And there was my Aunt Peg, so tall and sturdy, clipboard in hand. Her chestnut-and-gray hair was cut in an ill-considered short style that made her look somewhat like Eleanor Roosevelt, but with a better chin. Peg was wearing a long, salmon-colored twill skirt and what could have been a man’s oxford shirt. She also wore tall blue knee socks and beige moccasins. If that sounds like an unfashionablecombination, it was. It was unfashionable then, it would be unfashionable today, and it will remain unfashionable until the sun explodes. Nobody has ever looked good in a salmon-colored twill skirt, a blue oxford shirt, knee socks, and moccasins.
    Her frumpy look was only thrown into starker relief by the fact thatshe was talking to two of the ravishingly beautiful showgirls from the play. Theirstage makeup gave them a look of otherworldly glamour, and their hair was piled in glossy coils on the tops of their heads. They were wearing pink silk dressing gowns over their costumes, and they were the most overtly sexual visions of womanhood I had ever seen. One of the showgirls was a blonde—a platinum, actually—with a figure that would’ve made Jean Harlow gnash her teeth in jealous despair.The other was a sultry brunette whose exceptional beauty I’d noticed earlier, from the back of the theater. (Though I should not get any special credit for noticing how stunning this particular woman was; a Martian could have noticed it . . . from Mars .)
    “Vivvie!” Peg shouted, and her grin lit up my world. “You made it, kiddo!”
    Kiddo!
    Nobody had ever called me kiddo, and for some reason itmade me want to run into her arms and cry. It was also so encouraging to be told that I had made it— as though I’d accomplished something! In truth, I’d accomplished nothing more impressive than first getting kicked out of school, and then getting kicked out of my parents’ house, and finally getting lost in Grand Central Station. But her delight in