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By Root 245 0

costumes and dropped them in the wardrobe room, as we were required to do. Marilyn's attention was on her work. I slipped past the stage hands who were breaking down the set and stacking scenery. I tiptoed across the stage and jumped from the apron to the theater floor. The lobby was empty and dark as I eased out the door. I had avoided everyone. As I walked to the inter section I looked down the street. I saw a crowd of well-wishers at the stage door; they would keep the company occupied for at least a half-hour. Mr. Julian, I am coming and coming alone. You'll never know what a remarkable feat I have accomplished.

I approached the designated corner, searching for a tall well-built man in a dark-green suit, possibly a tweedy affair. He might be smoking a pipe—pipes and tweeds went so well together.

Mr. Julian wasn't on the corner. I wondered if he had decided, after all, to collect me at the stage door. I crossed the street and stood under the light, planning my next move.

“Mistress Maya?”

I turned, happy to be relieved of the problem. A small, very wiry old man was standing before me. His eyes were large and black and glistening. His bald head looked greased under the streetlight. He was smiling a row of decidedly polished metal teeth. And he wore a Kelly green suit.

“Mistress Maya, it's that I'm being Mr. Julian.”

If he was a swimming champion the match took place in 1910.

“Yes, Mr. Julian. How are you?” I offered him my hand and he took it, stroked the back of it, turned it over and kissed the palm.

He mumbled, “I am loving you.”

I said, “Yes.” And, “How about that coffee?”

If Martha or Ethel or Lillian caught a glimpse of my athletic lover, I'd never be allowed to live it down.

“I can't go far, I must be in the hotel before curfew, you know.”

He didn't understand the word “curfew” and I didn't have the time to stand on the corner explaining it.

“Let's go to the café up the street. Is that all right?”

We sat at a small table silently. Each conversational opening I tried was blocked by his statements of undying love. His bright eyes watched me drink coffee. He observed my lips so intently, I had the sensation that his gaze was following each sip slide over my tongue, through the esophagus and into my stomach.

I gulped the last swallow and stood up. “Thank you, Mr. Julian. I must get back to the theater or the bus will leave me.”

“I will take you to your hotel.” His eyes were begging.

“No, thanks. The buses have to take us. Sorry.”

“It's that I will walk you back to the theater. I am loving you.”

“Absolutely not! No, thank you. I appreciate the coffee and the thought, but I'd like to remember you right here, having coffee with cream.” I didn't offer him my hand again. “Thank you. Please stay. Good-bye, Mr. Julian.”

I walked slowly out of the café, but when I closed the door I broke into a run that would have impressed Jesse Owens. The bus was loading as I reached the theater.

As I climbed aboard, Martha said, “Whatever else Mr. Julian is, I can tell he's fast.”

Lillian said, “I've got something for you, Maya. You left it in your dressing room and I felt I'd better bring it to you. Your life would not be the same without it.”

She handed me a package. It was Mr. Julian's heart.

CHAPTER 23

The singers were hardened to the discomfort of travel and the sense of dislocation. Yet the Yugoslavia trip put an unusual amount of pressure on us all. The cold weather, gray and dreary, and the incommodious hotel with its grim corridors and heavy odors pressed weightily on our spirits. The unhappy people in their ugly, thick clothes and the restrictions on our freedom of movement all combined to make us impatient to put the dour place behind us and to bask in the sunshine of North Africa.

Ethel, Martha, Barbara Ann, Lillian and I crowded our personal belongings into the two overhead racks of our compartment. It was seven o'clock on a dark morning. The cast had begun to assemble at the train station at six and we had boarded the fabled Orient Express as soon as Ella Gerber and Bob Dustin completed their head