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Alice and Paul came to the dressing room and invited me out for a drink. I accepted immediately. We exchanged compliments and during the intermission we sat in an easy friendliness until the next show began. A few nights later Alice brought other members of the company down to catch my show. One singer told me that Eartha was leaving and Leonard Sillman and Ronnie Graham were auditioning dancer/singers to replace her. She had been bound by a contract which had run out at last and was going to open in one of the big-paying Las Vegas hotels. And would I like to try for the part? Naturally I wanted to audition and just as naturally I was petrified.

The theater stage jutted out aggressively into an empty darkness. Sillman sat erect on a straight-backed chair, apart from, yet fearfully a part of, the proceedings.

I was shivering in the wings, thinking of the excitement Eartha brought to her music when a stage manager asked me if I was going to sing “Monotonous.” The play on words occurred to me and I did not find it funny. I said yes, but did not add that I would not be singing it like Eartha Kitt. She was overtly sexy and famously sensual. I was friendly, gangly and more the big-sister type. No, I would have no chance if I tried imitating the brown velvet kitten.

When I was called I went out onto the stage and put my hands on my hips and a foot on the chaise longue. I sang a few bars, then swirled around and put the other foot on the chaise longue. I sang and danced, skimming over the stage (a dance teacher had told me when I was fourteen years old that a good dancer “occupies space consciously”), always ending back at the seat with an attitude of haughty boredom. My plan was to capture attention by displaying absolute contradiction. Hot dance and cool indifference.

I waited an interminable two days for Leonard Sillman's “reaction.” The phone call came and my heart jumped against my breastbone. I had the job. The famous show-business break had come. Ivonne's friend Calvin bought champagne and we celebrated at her house. I also bought champagne (although I did not care very much for it) and went to Mr. Hot Dogs, where Mom and Lottie and the counter customers helped me to celebrate. I told them that I would join the company for the rest of its tour, then settle down in New York City. My only hesitation was caused by the question of what to do about Clyde. Mom and Lottie said they would take care of him. He could have his breakfast at home as usual and come directly to the restaurant after school, by which time one of them would be going home on the split shift. I accepted that solution, knowing that when I “made it,” as I was sure to do, I would rent a large Manhattan apartment and hire a governess for my son. And when I traveled I would take him along with the governess and possibly a tutor.

My life was arranging itself as neatly as a marble staircase and I was climbing to the stars.

Barry Drew met my announcement with an apoplectic explosion. “Oh no, you're not. What? You can't close. What? We have you under contract, you can't walk out on a contract.”

I countered that I had already accepted the role, that he had the Kingston Trio and Rod McKuen opening at the club and they were as good or better than I. “I will never have another chance like this again. I don't want to spend my life at the Purple Onion.”

He was firm. “You didn't think that when we brought you in here. You're lucky we didn't offer you a year's contract. You'd have signed your life away to get a job like this.”

I cried and begged and hated myself for doing so. He remained unmoved. I ranted about his cruelty, throwing curse words at him like blobs of hot tar, hoping at least to smear his surface.

Barry said coolly, “Sillman not only will not, but cannot, hire you if you break your contract. The union will have you up on charges and you will be blackballed.”

He acted as if he himself had founded the union and written its bylaws just to keep restless and irresponsible singers