Another bad break: It looks as if her husband is holding back to chat with Nanette Fabray, of all people. Goddamn him. Nanette Fa-bare-ass?! Now?
But hang on a sec.
Instead of quitting and slinking back upstate—where the cold Chautauqua always springs tears from her face—after silently admitting, It’s over, I’ll never achieve, and also my husband’s talking to a harlot not ten yards from me, instead she surprises herself.
“A hoot?” she says. She often surprises herself. “Kid, parties are for single women and cheating men. When you die, you’ll regret the things you did when you could’ve been home relaxing. Nice gloves. The name’s not Martha Puente.”
And her brazen right eyebrow rises just a little.
“The name,” she says on this April night two years, six months, and four days before her triumph, “is Lucille Ball.”
* * *
—
MAYBE IT’S JUST an innocent little chat there across the beach with Lucille’s husband and Nanette Fabray?
Looking over, she doesn’t notice that the kid with the gloves’s face has gone red. She’d done a few wartime “Martha Puente” spreads for Yank magazine, the Army publication. (The G.I.s had had fun with the centerfold, with the word Yank itself, General Ike’s hairy-palms-and-blindness campaign.) The kid’s standing here smitten, having kept that photo under his mattress all through junior high.
He doesn’t know what to do. Say something to her.
“It was only that…” He hunts around his brain for a suave line. “It was I could see right off you’re uh…” (Being an adolescent means running this kind of vain scavenger hunt every day.) “I guess I don’t know what you mean. You’re not Martha Puente?”
Lucille brings her hand to his shoulder.
“Kid, I’m in show business.” She smiles right at him. “I don’t mean a thing.”
And he swallows, closing his eyes. He’s trying to make the moment a keepsake, like a photo, for later use.
But Lucille barely registers the kid now as he gives her a foggy little—
That’s no innocent little chat with Desi and Nanette Fabray. Male interest has made Fabray’s face beautiful. The eyes, the color on her cheeks. That is not just a chat.
—as the kid gives her a foggy little smile.
Maybe the world wants Lucille to fight. Or maybe it’s just the torch of her hair. The blunt call to arms of redheads. She appears to steady herself against a lifeguard’s chair. No one so glamorous will ever die, the kid thinks. (A woman of charisma makes you content with being ignored, so long as you stand near her.)
“Well,” she says. “Off to rescue my husband.”
“Okay, oh,” the kid says.
But like so many people, he finds himself inclining toward Lucille Ball. “Now, of course, Miss…” Already he is touching up the photo in his memory, taking her hand from his shoulder and placing it on his cheek, emending general kindness into personal affection.
Anyway, she is gone. “Let me get you a brick!” he calls after her. Too late.
A jazz orchestra is meanwhile corrupting the sandy night a little. The lyrics—You may see a stranger—are very nearly articulated by the swooning horns.
* * *
—
NANETTE FABRAY’S BIG eyes look to steal from each moment whatever it holds. This is why men have made her a star.
Lucille’s crossing the beach toward her, high heels stabbing tiny sand holes. Nanette cries, “The darling Mrs. Arnaz!”—too late by a second. In her Juilliard voice: “Come over, Luce, don’t high-hat us!”
Lucille huffs right to her husband and her nemesis (one of her nemeses). She has always had to carry the conjugal water, and that has made her strong.
Nanette, she thinks: Stupid bitch.
Desi does not wear a hat; even minor celebrities can sail above fashion. His scalp blazes at the part of his hair. (Lucille a half minute ago had caught the easy smile that Desi flashed Nanette.)
“Hi de ho,” Lucille says, sounding distinctly unmiffed. Maybe easy smiles don’t mean anything.
Nanette says, “Desi and I are talking about your TV plan, Lucille, which sounds to me like the absolute darb.”
Easy smiles are not the rhythm of years. Easy smiles are nothing compared to the abiding beat of a shared life. (Lucille had missed it, but Desi, just before flashing Nanette his smile, had stroked Nanette’s hand with his thumb.)
And the TV plan is a thing he is supposed to have kept secret.
“Truth is,” Nanette’s saying, “I’ve been so gone lately about my Tony nomination. There’s been nothing else.”
“Lucille,” Desi says, reaching for his wife, “come here, darling.” And it’s this warmth of possession that makes her finally despise him.
“Ah,” Lucille says. “The big Tony nom. I thought they gave that award for theater?” Smiling, smiling. The tip of the blade is in the intonation.
“Oh, you dizzy Dora.” Nanette laughs, an uncomplicated woman. “Why, it is theater! The Tony? Why, that’s the award I’ve always…” She stops herself.
Lucille’s smile could kill daisies.
“Lucille and I, uh”—Desi jumps in—“we are only in New York for the weekend. Isn’t that right, Lucille?”
“How loveable you are when you consult me, Dez.” She’s fists on hips now. “You should do it more.”
Is Lucille being mean? Hard for Nanette to say. There is that optimistic color to Lucille’s hair, her mouth, to her ten lighter-flame fingernails.
“Was that a slight, Lucille?” A dying hopeful note in Nanette’s voice. “A crack about my Tony nomination?”
“Slight? Not at all.” Lucille smiles. “I meant it to be substantial.”
Nanette blinks and blinks like an offended Tinker Bell. And Desi rubs his forehead. “Now, Lucille.”
Sqwauuhweee!—a surprising noise. Some beach birds are flying whoosh over the sand. Sqwauuhweee, wheeling around. The birds with their faces of beaked apathy kite on the wind. Gliding over this era as any other. But one of them hesitates in the sea breeze; it idles overhead like a pause in Lucille’s conversation.
Nanette slaps Lucille in the face. Smack! Rudeness is being the first person to succumb to what you really want to do. And the birds circle overhead in a shape that expands and contracts, like a breathing constellation. A second blow comes. Smack!