The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [141]
As the second act bell rang, he crushed out his cigarette and strolled back to his seat, waiting impatiently for Verity’s entrance. When the silver seashell finally opened he took out his opera glasses, studying her intently. She bore no resemblance to the Ivanoffs and neither was she his ideal, but if he was forced to sacrifice himself on the family altar, he was prepared to do so. And somehow, he did not think the task of seducing the delicious Verity Byron was going to be unpleasant.
When the final curtain fell he strolled around the corner to the stage door, arrogantly surveying the crowd of young men already waiting for the girls. He knew that this was not for him. His would be a more subtle approach.
His Mercedes-Benz limousine was waiting at the curb to drive him down Broadway to a florist, where he placed his order and then he told the driver to take him back to his hotel. A word in the bellboy’s ear and a hundred-dollar bill in his hand guaranteed him a top-class beauty in the style he liked, and room service guaranteed him a supper of caviar and roast beef cooked “blue,” as the French called it. Eddie preferred his steak almost raw and his women wild, and tonight he would have both.
Missie had been promoted to a dressing room of her own. Every night it was filled with flowers and notes from young men she had never met begging her to have supper with them, to lunch with them, to go to a party with them. Often a gift was enclosed—a pretty diamond ring, a slender jeweled bracelet, a sapphire and diamond pin in the shape of a lucky horseshoe. She always kept the flowers and always sent back the gifts, and she never dined with any man she had not been introduced to.
She had made her rules firmly; she was a Ziegfeld showgirl to earn her living, not as a piece of property to be bought for a trifling diamond bauble. The other girls laughed at her and told her she was crazy, that it was all part of the game, but she still could not do it. Besides, she was afraid. And she was too busy. She was taking singing lessons now as well as dancing and voice projection. Ziegfeld planned to expand her role in the next Follies: She was to sing a little song specially written for her by Jerome Kern and do a little dance with the chorus boys to help her, and if she was good enough she could play a speaking role in a little skit.
She smiled happily, pushing aside the night’s trophies as she creamed off her makeup. Everything was going so well. Azaylee was happy at school, though sometimes the teachers complained of inattentiveness.
“It’s just that she’s dreamy,” Missie had explained quickly. “Sometimes she gets lost in herself and quite forgets where she is.” But the one time Azaylee never dreamed was in the dance classes. “Mime and Movement,” it was called at Beadles, and the children would flutter about barefoot in skimpy chiffon tunics, plump little legs and skinny ones thundering across the floor, pointing their toes and swirling as Miss Beadle herself thumped out a tune on the Bosendorfer upright. But it was Azaylee who amazed them all; when the music began she seemed to quiver with excitement until it was her turn to flit across the wooden floor, arms arched over her head and her thin legs extended in a graceful leap. Azaylee in motion was a poem of grace, and even Miss Beadle said she should take ballet lessons.
So now twice a week after school six-year-old Azaylee took classes from an out-of-work Broadway dancer in a cold rented studio on Forty-second Street. Dora Devine put her through her paces at the barre in her little pink ballet slippers for one hour, and in little silver tap shoes she counted and tapped her way through a second hour. Then she returned home, flushed with success, to practice on the marble dining-room floor, driving them crazy with her endless tapping.
Missie looked up as her dresser came in. “Another note, Miss Verity,” she said. “And a flower. This guy must be poor