Downtown Strut: An Edna Ferber Mystery (Edna Ferber Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF Page A

the tilt of his head seemed almost girlish, coy.
    “Roddy,” I began, “please join me for lunch. There’s a coffee shop at the end of the block…” I stopped. My words, delivered so casually, slapped him into silence, the good-looking face closing up, his eyes now shrouded and distant. He glanced quickly over his shoulder, as if seeking a way to flee. Immediately I understood my error. How many workaday eateries in the theater district would gladly entertain a middle-aged white woman sharing a cup of coffee and a tuna salad on rye with a twenty-year-old Negro? Unseemly, perhaps, given the cruel fact that Negroes could not sit alongside whites in theaters, compelled to slink away in the distant balconies, the viciously named “nigger heaven.” While we might actually get seated in some grubby little restaurant, there was no guarantee we’d be served. Hostile, disapproving eyes would watch, narrowed. Probably more in tune with contemporary America than I was, at least an America that didn’t reside in doorman buildings on the Upper East Side, Roddy understood the simple but awful calculus of a Negro youth having a cup of bad coffee in plain sight of censorious eyes. My heart went out to the strapping lad, standing there fumbling with a loose button on his jacket.
    I wanted to talk to this young man, though I wasn’t certain why.
    I spoke with one of Hammerstein’s aides who’d been eying me from an appropriate distance, doubtless having been given the charge of seeing to the untoward and frivolous demands of the temperamental novelist. She’d stepped out into the lobby when Roddy and I left the theater, but she leaned nonchalantly against a back wall, feigning interest in the texture of the wood. When I looked in her direction, she scurried over. “My name is Lorna,” she volunteered. She avoided looking at Roddy. Now, hesitantly, she steered Roddy and me into a small dressing room, actually pulled up chairs for us, and miraculously, or so it seemed to me, she wheeled in a tray of covered salads and sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper, as well as a pot of steaming coffee. But she didn’t look happy. When I said thank you, she gasped, as though I’d cursed her with a particularly offensive obscenity, and, turning on her heels, she muttered, ”No, thank you !” That made no sense. Her stern eye moved to Roddy, who purposely avoided eye contact with the skittish woman, though he managed a polite “Thank you” which she failed to respond to. She whispered to me that the food was intended for the absent Ziegfeld assistant—and for me. “In case you wanted lunch. This was for the two of you.” She pointed to the spread of food, glancing at Roddy as if he’d usurped a decent man’s final meal. I ignored her, and when she blathered on about something, I turned away. She left us alone.
    Roddy and I sat at a small table, just feet apart from each other, and I could see he was anxious.
    “I’m making you nervous.”
    “No, you’re not,” he lied.
    “Tell me about yourself, Roddy.”
    He stammered a bit but grinned. “I don’t know what to say, Miss Ferber. Yesterday, you know, when I sat in your living room, I actually believed for a minute that someday I’d be a writer…like you. I mean, Waters invited me to your home, and I sat there…you know…” His face darkened, and he glanced away. “Foolish, maybe.” As he spoke, he seemed to sink into the uncomfortable chair, his arms folding gracefully and his neck bending. He reminded me of a hardy flower, now suddenly wilting.
    “What do you write?” I asked him.
    “Poetry, mainly. Short stories.” A pause. “I mean, I try to write…” Another pause. “When Waters asked me to be a part of his group, I told him no.”
    “Why?”
    He shrugged. “Well, I haven’t published anything yet.” He blinked nervously. “And I don’t like to show people my stuff. I’m never… sure about it.”
    “No matter, Roddy.”
    He held up his hand, a gesture