Alan Handley - Kiss Your Elbow

“What about you?”

“Never mind me. Besides, I can’t do anything else. The theater’s all I know.”

“You did all right in the army. People told me. I asked.”

“Oh, the army. That’s different. Latch on to a good sergeant and you can’t miss.”

“It’s none of my business, I know,” Maggie said earnestly. “But do you mean to just keep on like this…you know what I mean…sort of…I mean, not ever…well, you know what I mean…” She finished lamely, strangely shy for her.

Yes, of course, I knew what she meant. And no, of course I didn’t mean to keep on like this. I was a man with a plan. A three-year plan. Operation Hollywood. I wanted to be an actor! So I made a bargain with myself while waiting in a cigarette camp near Le Havre to be shipped home. Three years to get a good part on Broadway or back to the salt mines.

It all seemed so simple—in Le Havre.

Who gets all the best parts in New York? Movie actors. Okay, so get to be a movie actor. How? Well, first you’ve got to be seen in the right places, get a little publicity. That’s the magic—publicity. And in the right places you’ll meet the right people who’ll maybe give you a small part and then maybe your picture in the paper and bingo!—a screen test and a contract. Six months on the coast and six months in New York for a play. Then every day is Christmas and you even plan whose stocking will be hanging up beside yours.

That was thirty-five months ago and gives you a rough idea how punchy you can get after four years in the army.

Four weeks more and Operation Hollywood would end with a whimper and with it my chance for the big money. But a bargain’s a bargain. I hope I hadn’t forgotten how to pilot a bulldozer.

There was no point in telling all this to Maggie—now. If things had only worked out differently…

“Timmy, what is the matter with you?”

“What? Oh, nothing. Just indulging in a little wishful thinking.”

“What about?”

“Hoping I’m not going to spend the rest of my all-too-brief life running away from a murder rap.”

“Oh.” Maggie turned back to the mirror and finished her face. I went over to the closet and got out her mink coat and helped her on with it. I wrapped my arms around her and stood that way for a moment. I needed someone to hang on to. I buried my face in the shoulder of her coat. It was cool and faintly perfumed. She reached up and patted my cheek.

“Now stop worrying. Everything’s going to be all right.”

While I was out in the hall putting on my coat she brought the Youth and Beauty Book.

“Here.” She handed it to me. “You ought to be able to drop it in a corner easily while you’re messing up your fingerprints.”

“I expect so.” I stuck it in my breast pocket. “But you know as well as I do that fingerprints or no, eventually they’re going to find out I was in Nellie’s office this morning.”

“Nonsense.”

“It isn’t nonsense. They always do.”

“How?”

“I don’t know, but they always do. One leaves spoors or something.”

“Does one? How awful.”

“And unless they find out who did it, I can’t prove I didn’t, when it comes right down to it.”

“Then by all means we must find out who did do it.”

It seemed so simple the way she said it.

I LOOKED AT MY WATCH as we pulled up in front of Sardi’s. Only four hours since I had been here before and it seemed like four years.

The meter said eighty cents and Maggie gave me a dollar, which I gave to the driver, and we got out.

The sidewalk in front of Sardi’s is strictly Actors’ Equity property. From ten in the morning till one at night you can always find one standing there. Musicians have their own Wailing Wall around Fiftieth Street somewhere; vaudevillians in front of the Palace; the radio people, a sheltered lot, have theirs on the third floor of NBC or CBS on Madison. Models are around Grand Central and Park, but actors are loyal to Forty-fourth Street between Eighth and Broadway. And they were there in full force today, and it didn’t take long for Maggie and me to find out that Nellie had been discovered.

Just about my most unfavorite actor in the world would have to have the pleasure of telling us what we already knew only too well. He spied us standing by the curb and came rushing over. Ted Kent is his name, or at least that is what he uses. I suppose the basic reason I don’t like him is very simple; he always gets all the parts I want and when you get right down to it, that’s the main reason most actors don’t like other actors they don’t like.

Ted is about my height, maybe a couple of inches shorter without his trick you-can-be-taller-than-she-is shoes and is a perfect example of a successful Operation Hollywood. The right people, the publicity, the small part, the screen test and the Hollywood contract. Only they didn’t pick up his option so he headed straight back to Broadway with quite a bit of money and new teeth, trying to get that part that will shoot him back to the coast again.

As he greeted us, he gave me a very small hello, which was all right by me, and Maggie a very big kiss—which wasn’t.

“Maggie, darling. Have you heard?” He was a darling boy, too. “Nellie is dead!” And he sort of stood back on one foot and waited for us to take it big. We must have both felt it was better to play dumb and we did what was obviously expected.

“No!” said Maggie. “Who did it?”

Ted gave her what I thought was a funny look and said, “But, darling, nobody did it. She just collapsed. Heart, I expect.”

“Are you sure?” I said.

“What do you mean, am I sure? Of course I’m sure. Heart failure, I think, or drunk—you know she drank like a fish. Anyway, she fell over on that spindle she had on her desk, you know.” I admitted I did know. “And she died. File and forget, I say.” He practically giggled at that one. Maggie and I looked at each other. I think my sigh of relief must have reached the East River.

“How do you know?” Maybe he wasn’t straight on his facts. Maybe this was all just a trick by the police to find out who really did it. When you’ve convinced yourself that you are a key witness in a murder scene it’s a little disconcerting to be told that it isn’t a murder at all and just a simple case of alcohol or heart failure. I can’t say I was sorry that it was turning out this way, but I’m afraid the ham in me was feeling cheated as if I had been fired from a show before it even started rehearsals.

Ted tried to wither me with a look, but I don’t wither very easy by guys like Ted. “Everybody knows. The police have been here asking questions and having a big time. They’re still up in her office now waiting for the meat wagon.” You could tell in his day he’d been in some pretty lousy shows, too. A couple of other people joined our clump attracted by Ted’s overloud voice—which was the idea—and, goosed up by a bigger audience, Ted really put out.

“Libby Drew found her…she was just dropping in, making the rounds, and saw her lying on her desk, blood all over the place running over the floor…”

“But…” I started to interrupt but Maggie silenced me with a stiff poke in the ribs. Ted chose to ignore my attempted interruption and went merrily on, practically drooling at the mouth.

“Of course, you know Libby, sly puss that she is…. Did she make with the screams and bring everybody running as anyone else would do it?” He answered himself. “No indeed, the little brat carefully took the elevator down to the main floor, probably pulled her dress off one shoulder, put eyeshadow under her eyes and staggered all the way across the street into Sardi’s and announced it like a messenger in Macbeth. What a performance! Nothing like it since the Cherry sisters. I was having lunch with Terry and Lawrence…. They’re doing a new show and there’s the dream part for me…”