American Dreams by John Jakes Page B

lasted one week. She hadn't even reached the lowest rung of the acting ladder, utility player. For that you had to speak a few lines.
    During much of her sixteen months in New York, Fritzi had supported herself as a waitress at a cheery restaurant called the Dutch Mill. She liked the owner, who permitted her time off to audition. She was strong enough to handle the long hours and heavy trays. She objected only to the silly starched Dutch girl hat with wings that she had to wear, along with wooden shoes that caused corns.
    Unfortunately, the Dutch Mill's owner was elderly. Just in March he'd decided to retire and move in with his daughter in Virginia. The new owner immediately converted the restaurant to a five-cent theater, or nickelodeon as the contemptible places were being called. Fritzi was thrown back on the streets she'd tramped for weeks before finding the waitress job.
    She'd recently gotten a new position, night chambermaid at the Bleeker House, a seedy hotel in the theater district. The hotel manager, Mr. Oliver Merkle, was no gentleman. He was in fact a slimy specimen, representing to Fritzi all that was repulsive and frightening about New York. The female staff referred to him as OUie the Octopus or, alternatively, Oh-Oh - the cry of alarm when they saw him coming.
    At two o'clock she sat on a bench in the waiting room belonging to Shorty Lorenz, a little blond wart of a man who'd been married seven times. Crowded on the benches or standing nervously were six other Adrift in New York 55
    young women, all strangers but one; Fritzi recognized a tiny, pale girl with black bangs whom she'd seen at other readings. Pauline Something.
    Pauline gave her a glance without recognition.
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    Shorty Lorenz breezed into the room at two-fifteen clutching a batch of sides which he handed out. 'Okey-dokey, girls, this here's a society drama called Shall We Divorce? The producer is Brutus Brown.' There were a few gasps, and a provocative sigh from the tiny girl. Brown was a noted philanderer.
    'His
    stage manager's inside,' Lorenz said. 'He'll hear you one at a time.
    The part's Allyson, the sister of the divorcing husband. She's kinda high strung, has one pretty good scene, four pages. Take five minutes, look it over, we'll start with Miss Abrams.'
    Fritzi was third to read for the paunchy stage manager, who had a face like granite. He sat in the middle of the audition room in a straight chair.
    Shorty Lorenz read the male part, Allyson's brother. Fritzi stumbled over words -- the playwright's diction was clumsy -- and pitched her voice too high; she made a mess of the reading. At the end, however, the granite face cracked and the stage manager shook her hand with a fatherly smile.
    'What's your name again?'
    'Fritzi Crown.'
    'Nice reading, Fritzi. We'll phone you tonight if we want you to come back.'
    'Thank you, sir.'
    Lorenz called Pauline next. She breezed past Fritzi as if Fritzi were invisible, and of no consequence in the competition.
    That evening Fritzi sat in the second-to-last row of the Lyric Theater's upper balcony. Her ticket had cost sixty-five cents, fifteen cents more than usual. Orchestra seats were five dollars, not one was empty. Only stars of the magnitude of Mrs. Patrick Campbell could inflate prices and fill a house.
    The Second Mrs. Tanqueray was hurtling toward its conclusion. Mrs.
    Pat had made her tragic fourth-act exit moments ago. Paula Tanqueray had been undone by her past -- a revelation that she'd once 'kept house'
    with an army officer who later formed a romantic attachment with Tanqueray's daughter from a first marriage. The daughter rushed on It stage and cried, ''I've seen her! It's horrible!'
    Tanqueray's bachelor friend recoiled. LShe -- she has--.?'
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    Striving
    ^Killed herself? Yes -yes! - so everybody will say."1
    Fritzi felt faint, whether from excitement or starvation, she didn't know.
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    Since Sunday midnight she'd had only weak tea and some stale kaiser rolls thrown out