Under a scrolled canopy, the line at the Montmartre stretched halfway down the street, but that didn’t throw me. I took a deep breath and sidled past a group of girls decked out in bolero jackets with ermine trim. Under the canopy at the front door, I gave my brightest smile to a black-suited man with a minuscule mustache. “I’d like a table for lunch.”
He eyed me up and down. “Miss, so would everyone else.”
“But I have money.” I held out my handbag as proof.
His nose went a trifle higher, and his gaze slid past me as if I weren’t there.
Just then, a chorus of whispers broke out as a man and woman walked arm-in-arm toward the crowd. She was draped in a white mid-length fox and matching turban. He wore a pinstriped suit with a fedora pulled nearly over his eyes. A girl about my age dressed in a cherry wool suit pushed up beside me. “Who is it?” She had perfect makeup and a beauty mark accenting her full mouth that couldn’t possibly be from nature.
I sucked in a breath. Joan Crawford and her latest beau. Straight out of the studio. The snooty waiter parted the velvet cords and ushered the couple into the dark recesses of the café, leaving the rest of us out in the cold. I must have looked as dejected as I felt, because the girl in red gave me a pitying look. “Everybody’s after the same thing, sister. Take it from me and don’t go thinking you’re something special.”
I guess I was a slow learner even outside of school, but three weeks later, I was getting the picture. I hadn’t been discovered by anyone—unless you count the men on the street corner who wolf-whistled when I walked to the Culver City Pharmacy every day for a small chocolate malt and my big break—and my hotel bill was totting up to something shocking. What had seemed like a lot of lettuce in South Dakota didn’t go far in the land of sunshine.
Mama’s voice came in my head. You’ll find your way, my girl.
I packed my bags and took the trolley downtown, where I found a dank-smelling hotel with ten-cent-a-night beds and temperamental plumbing. This sure wasn’t what you saw on the picture postcards. Hungry women and children stood in breadlines. Bums slept on benches. Men who looked like they hadn’t had a square meal in months begged for dimes. I’d thought California was different, that the hard times didn’t dare visit this far-off land of dreams. Boy, was I wrong about that.
——————
That summer, I tried my best. I really did. Every morning when I got up and waited in the dingy hall for my turn in the lavatory, I wondered about Papa and Penny. Did the corn get planted? Were they getting enough rain? When I stepped outside to the clamor ofnew construction and honking automobiles, I imagined the morning sounds of the old tractor and the lowing of new calves. I tried not to think of Papa and how he must be worried. I’d be home soon. I’d make it up to him.
I had a system by then. Every morning I scoured the news rags that claimed to have the inside scoop on Hollywood, then I took the streetcar to Central Casting. If I was lucky, I heard about an audition at one of the studios and hotfooted it to the lot. I knocked on doors at RKO, where Fred and Ginger waltzed and tangoed, and hung around Warner Brothers, the first studio to produce a talkie. I lined up with everyone from cowboys to grandmas, all hoping for a bit part. In all of June, I got one walk-on in a western that made me two dollars and a part in a crowd scene at RKO for three seventy-five and a cup of coffee.
I was running out of money and low on luck when I met Lana on a hot July day. Columbia was looking for dancers. I tried out, kicking it up with the rest of the girls, and thought I had a chance. The hot sun had soaked into the paved back lot and I was wilting with only enough change in my pocketbook for fare back to the city, when Lana sauntered out of the audition in seafoam-green gabardine and three-inch coral pumps. She offered me a cigarette, her voice an easy drawl. I wasn’t smoking—not yet, at least—but we talked until the assistant director came out and announced casting closed.
I slumped, defeat almost knocking me to my knees. “I needed that eleven dollars.”
“Didn’t we all, honey?” She crushed her cigarette under her spiked heel. “Don’t take it so hard. Come on, I’ll buy you a sandwich.”
I had nothing to go home to but a five-by-ten room, so Iaccepted. Over watery coffee and a stale sandwich, she told me about a place that was hiring. “It’s not terrific, but you can make five dollars on a good night. And your days are free to answer the cattle call.” She jerked her head toward the studio.
“I’ll take it,” I told her, and when I thanked her for the sandwich and the tip, she said not to mention it. “Girls like us, we gotta stick together.”
It was only later that I realized Lana wasn’t much for sticking together.
——————
It’s hard to say exactly where you take the first wrong step, but here’s the joke: afterwards, you can look back and see it, plain as daylight.
The place Lana brought me was called the Rose, and it was a dance hall just down South Spring Street, five stories high with greasy windows and a garish flashing sign. We walked into a green-tiled entry decorated with a dejected potted palm.
“Bert, this is Minerva, the one I told you about,” Lana said.
Bert looked harmless enough, middle-aged and balding with a paunch and ready smile. He jerked his head toward the stairs. “Sure. Fix her up solid, Lana,” he said in a friendly way, “and get a wiggle on. Time is money.”
“Hold on to your tickets,” Lana told me as we walked up four flights of stairs, “and turn them in at the end of the night. We’re not supposed to accept tips, but if Tiny and Bert aren’t looking...” She raised her brows and nodded. “Also, let Tiny know if you have trouble, but only if you can’t handle the chump yourself.” We reached the top, a little breathless. “Making a fuss over a little bit of groping is bad for business.”
Upstairs, windows covered in black curtains lined a long front room. A glum-looking five-piece played in the corner while men in wrinkled suits and faces to match clutched handfuls of pink tickets. A dozen women in evening gowns stood along the far wall, looking bored.
Tiny—I found out quick—kept everything running smoothly. Standing less than five feet on his tiptoes, he had more swagger than a man twice his weight and could wrestle a drunk out the door before a girl had time to say, “Keep your hands to yourself.”
We were called hostesses. That night, I danced until my feet ached. The men—short and tall, bald and toupeed, some with bad breath, others smelling like gin—handed over their pink tickets. I figured out quick that the men wanted more than just a dance. They wanted to talk, and their pink ticket bought them three and half minutes of someone to listen. I waltzed and fox-trotted, avoided roving hands, and heard their hard-luck stories, then tucked their tickets under my garter. I hardly ever made the five dollars Lana promised, but it was a respectable job. At least at first.
The next week, I moved in with Lana, splitting the rent at a boardinghouse on Western Avenue. For a while, things were looking up. Some evenings when we were feeling flush, we dressed up and went to the Alexandria Hotel on Spring Street. Lana would flirt with anybody in pants while I helped myself to the free sandwiches and kept an eye out for Charlie Chaplin, who they said liked to come there for supper. I never did see him, but the sandwiches were sometimes my best meal of the week.
I wrote to Penny just about every week. I hadn’t sent any of them yet, but I would soon, I told myself.
It won’t be long until I find my way, Penny, just like Mama always said. And then I’ll be home with enough money to pay everything back. I’ll make it up to you and Papa and God and everybody.
