The stage manager glared. “Well, well, well. If it isn’t Her Highness, come to grace us with her presence at last. You’re an hour late, Theta!”
“Keep your shirt on, Wally. I’m here.” Theta exchanged a furtive glance with Henry at the piano. He shook his head and she shrugged.
“She thinks she’s better than everybody else,” one of the chorines, a dim little witch named Daisy, griped.
Theta ignored her. She dropped her coat in the front row, doused her cigarette in the stage manager’s cup of coffee, and took her place onstage.
“One of these days, Theta,” he fumed. “You’re going to do something even Flo Ziegfeld won’t tolerate, and it will be my pleasure to toss you out on your—”
“You gonna beat your gums all day, or are we gonna work?” Theta snapped.
Theta executed her steps perfectly. She could do the number in her sleep. For good measure, though, she bumped into Daisy, just to rattle her. Daisy was sore because Theta had gotten a nice write-up in the papers for a number that was supposed to be Daisy’s. “That was my specialty dance,” Daisy had fumed in the dressing room the next night. “And you stole it out from under me.”
“I can’t steal what you don’t own,” Theta had said, and Daisy had hurled a pot of cold cream, missing Theta by a mile—her aim being as questionable as her dancing. As usual, Daisy had gone with her sob story to Flo, who had broken down and given her the spotlight for the Worship of Ba’al number that closed the show. Theta was tired of standing in somebody else’s shadow—especially when that somebody was half the performer Theta was.
They broke for five, and Theta sat on the piano bench next to Henry. “You look like you ran away from a prep school,” she teased. He was wearing a cardigan and a straw boater.
“It’s all about the style, darlin’.”
“We’re both bigger than this lousy show, Hen.”
Henry played softly, almost reflexively. He was always happiest with his fingers on the keys and some song pouring out of him. “Agreed, darlin’. But we still gotta pay rent.”
Theta adjusted the seam on her stockings so it ran straight. “How’d it go when you gave Flo your new tune?”
Henry’s perpetual smirk turned to a frown. He plunked out a sour chord and stopped. “About how I ’spected it would.”
Theta tugged on the boater’s brim. “The Ziegfeld only likes ’em dumb and hummable, kiddo.”
“ ‘The people pay to be entertained, kid,’ ” Henry said in perfect imitation of the great showman. “ ‘They want to leave happy and humming. Above all, they don’t want to think too hard!’ ” He sighed. “I swear I could write a song about constipation, and as long as it rhymed girl with pearl, Mr. Ziegfeld would like it.” Henry struck up a jaunty melody on the keys. He sang with exaggerated romantic bravado in his soft, sweet tenor. “Darling girl, I’d be your fool, if I could only pass this stool, oh the curse of CON-STI-PAAAA-TION!”
Theta dissolved into laughter.
“What’s so funny?” Daisy loomed over them.
“I just got a joke Henry told me last Wednesday.” Theta cupped a match to her cigarette and blew the smoke toward Daisy, who didn’t take the hint.
“Whatcha reading?” The chorine sneered at Theta’s copy of The Weary Blues, which sat on top of her bag. “Negro poetry?”
“I wouldn’t expect you to get it, Daisy. You don’t look at anything besides Photoplay—and even then somebody’s gotta explain the pictures to you.”
Daisy’s mouth hung open in outrage. “Well, I never!”
“Yeah, that’s what you tell all your fellas, but the rest of us aren’t buying it. Go away, now, Daisy. Shoo, little fly!” Theta flicked her fingers dismissively at Daisy, who stormed off and started dishing out an earful about how high-hat Theta was to any of the dancers who would listen.
Henry’s fingers found their place on the keys again. “You sure know how to make pals, honey.”
“Not interested in making pals. I already got a best pal,” she said, patting his knee. She reached into her brassiere and pulled out a fifty-dollar bill, which she tucked into Henry’s shirt pocket. “Here. For the piano fund.”
“I told you to forget that.”
Theta’s voice went soft. “I never forget a favor. You know that.”
“Where’d you get that kale?”
“Some Wall Street broker with more money than sense. He bought me a fur just to be seen with him at dinner. And that’s all he got—dinner company.”