Whispering Hearts Read online

  I was certainly more responsible when it came to caring for our apartment. Her room always looked like wild boars had charged through it: clothes strewn about over chairs and tables, and some even left on the floor, including panties! She rarely made her bed, and if she did, it looked like it was made by a four-year-old. When she wasn’t home, I ended up straightening it a bit, especially to pick up any food she had left on the night table or even in her bed. I had to do the same in our living room and kitchen. It worried me. Mice or maybe even rats were probably shopping these tenements looking for a banquet.

  However, despite fighting it, I did think about Jon Morales occasionally, maybe more than occasionally. Whenever a young man in a jacket and tie entered the Last Diner, I would pause, expecting it might be he. Marge, who had made me a personal cause, caught my interest and started to tease me a little.

  “Waiting for someone?” she’d ask, smiling.

  Of course, I assured her I wasn’t, even though I knew I was revealing some disappointment that it wasn’t Jon, a feeling of disappointment that surprised and disturbed me. I was still very determined not to permit anyone, especially a man, to distract me from my goal. But it increasingly seemed like I had to remind myself more often than I would have thought necessary.

  After a while, I convinced myself that I was relieved he wasn’t pursuing a relationship with me. I knew that other girls my age would spend more time wondering why and thinking perhaps that they were lacking in some respect. Maybe they could make themselves more attractive or more pleasant to be with, or maybe they could flirt just a little more. I had heard girls back in England talk like this when they were pursuing one boy or another. I thought I was strong enough to put all that aside for now.

  However, Jon eventually called, ostensibly to see how my work as a waitress was going. I knew I hadn’t left him with much hope. Perhaps he had thought that the passing of time would have softened me.

  “I’m coming to the Last Diner with some of my associates for lunch on Thursday. Are you working then?”

  “Yes, I am. I’m working extra hours to make up for new auditions. They take hours and hours for thirty seconds to a minute of performance. I barely have time to eat and sleep these days.”

  He laughed. “It won’t take you long to become an experienced thespian,” he said. Because I had mentioned eating, I was expecting him to bring up our potential dinner date, but he didn’t. Anyway, if he had, I was determined to refuse. However, because he was so nice, I asked him for his advice on choosing which open audition to try between the two that were happening almost simultaneously on Friday.

  “I’m not that familiar with either of the productions, but I’ll do some research for you. I know some people who follow theater. I’ll get back to you and get some information for you to make a wise choice.”

  “Thank you, Jon.”

  “I’ll tell you on Thursday,” he said. There was a pause. Here comes the dinner-date invitation, I thought, but he surprised me. “How’s everything else that’s going on in your life, your apartment, etcetera?”

  I knew he was referring to Piper.

  “I’m surviving,” I said. “I’m on what they call a learning curve.”

  He laughed. “In New York, just realizing you have lots to learn about people is way more than half the battle. See you Thursday.”

  “Yes,” I said, without much enthusiasm. “See you Thursday.”

  I didn’t like being unappreciative and cold to someone who had been kind to me. Jon wasn’t the only one who had shown some concern for me, and I knew I should show everyone more gratitude. From the way Piper described her own initial experiences in New York and things I overheard other waiters and waitresses say at the restaurant, I realized I had been lucky to meet people who were considerate and took to watching out for my welfare.

  Leo Abbot was always asking me how things were whenever he saw me, sometimes giving me the feeling he was waiting at his window to spot me coming home. Marge was more like an older sister now, and Donald Manning gave me every break he could. All the short-order cooks were treating me like their younger sister, too. I knew some of the other waitresses were jealous over the attention I was receiving. All this kindness made me homesick.

  Twice during the week, I called home hoping Mummy would pick up. I called early enough so that both my father and Julia would be at work, but she didn’t answer. I was afraid to leave a message that my father might hear first and that would send him into some tirade that would bring my mother to more tears. I did write a letter, addressing it to “The Corey Family.” I described my start at work and the few auditions I had attended, making it all sound as perfect as I could. In the letter, I put my telephone number and some suggested times they could call.

  But considering work, going to the auditions, and the time difference, my chances to receive a call or even make one were quite diminished. From Julia’s description, I could only imagine how troubled Mummy still was. If she did answer and hear my voice, I was sure she would only start crying, and I would not only make things worse for myself, I’d make them worse for her. Better to wait for either Julia or her to call me after they had received my letter, I thought. Or hopefully, when something positive happened and I could get them to see I was doing the right thing. It was the only chance I had to turn my father toward accepting what I had done. Even though I knew that if he did, it would be reluctantly. To get him to that point would be as difficult as pulling an elephant backward.

  Meanwhile, each of the auditions I attended was similar to the first. For the first two new ones, the line seemed to be twice as long. For the third, we were all given a minute or so to read a song sheet for one of the numbers in the musical. Many of the girls trying out couldn’t read music. I thought, Finally, finally, I have a big advantage.

  Apparently, I did. I received a callback. Piper was very impressed when I cried out joyfully after hanging up the following day.

  “What was that?” she asked, rushing out of her room. “Someone die?”

  “No. It’s good. I received a callback.”

  “Really? It’s only your fourth try,” she said, a little bitterly, I thought. “I’ve had fifteen in a row without a callback.” She was really whining.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, even though I had my doubts she had gone to as many as fifteen auditions.

  She looked like she might cry. Then she smiled. “But you’re right… it’s got a lot to do with luck,” she declared, and returned to her room.

  Now I wanted to think otherwise: that whether I received a callback had more to do with my talent. The problem, I realized, was that the callback was the same day as the other two competing auditions. The scheduling was even more complicated when I tried to figure in my work hours at the Last Diner. I saw no way not to miss the entire workday. I’d have to either take on some late-evening hours or see if someone wanted to take some time off.

  The two simultaneous auditions were starting earlier than my callback. I thought of getting to one ridiculously early so I could be one of the first to perform. I wasn’t sure which of the two was worth the extra effort, and if for some reason I was delayed, I’d have to leave. Getting there early would have been an entire waste of time, time I had to make up at the restaurant. I thought about it all the following day, and when I came home, I decided I couldn’t wait for Thursday. I called Jon for his advice. Maybe he had spoken to his friend familiar with the theater.

  “Should I try to work in two?”

  “No, Emma. Put everything you have, every spare minute, into the callback,” he said without hesitation. “Forget about the other open auditions. Who was it who said ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’?”

  “It’s an old English proverb. Our neighbor in Guildford uses it often.”

  “Proverbs are tried-and-true wisdom,” he said, and I laughed, thinking he really was so sweet.

  I’m slipping, I thought suddenly. Was I now looking forward to dinner with him and quietly
regretting that he hadn’t brought it up again?

  “Thank you, Jon.”

  “Thank you for calling and thinking enough of me to ask my advice,” he said.

  “Will I see you for lunch tomorrow?”

  “Absolutely. Until then,” he said.

  “Will I see you for lunch tomorrow?” What am I doing? I thought after I hung up. I came here to build my career, and instead, I’m thinking I might have a relationship and fall in love. Then what? I give up all my dreams and do what my father was always predicting I would: marry and have kids and throw away my dreams like wedding rice as I rode off into the sunset? Get hold of yourself, Emma Corey. You can have a friend, but a lover? Not now. Get a grip.

  Because of this, I was actually nervous about seeing him the next day. As he promised, he came in with two associates, both about his age. I knew what he was doing by introducing me to them. He wanted their approval, and from the way they were looking at me, he was getting it.

  Marge was all smiles when I started for the counter to bring their orders to Buck.

  “Special customer?” she teased.

  “He’s just a friend,” I said, passing her in the aisle.

  “Does he know that?” she asked. “You could be a heartbreaker, Em.”

  It gave me pause. I looked back at him and saw how he was watching me. Was I doing something horrible by leading him on, only to turn him away firmly in the end? What did you have to do not to lead a man on? Be nasty or indifferent right from the start? I thought I had been indifferent enough, but apparently not. When does friendship start to slip into romance? I had always been quite good about seeing the difference, but right now, my mind was clouded by so many things.

  “Wishing you good luck tomorrow,” Jon said when I brought them their food.

  “Thank you.”

  “Are you going home afterward or coming here to work?” he asked. The other two were watching me closely for my reaction to his question.

  “I’m coming to work,” I said. “So much time to make up.”

  “I hope you’ll call me if you get good news.”

  “Oh, if I get good news, I’ll ring up everyone in the city,” I said, and his friends laughed.

  “Don’t be discouraged if you don’t,” he warned.

  “Discouraged? That word isn’t even in my vocabulary,” I replied. His friends laughed again. When I looked back at the three of them, they were talking and laughing and nodding my way.

  “No matter what, you’ll get a good tip there,” Marge said.

  “It’s all I want right now,” I insisted.

  She looked impressed.

  “Hey,” Buck said to me when I came to the counter to pick up food for another table. “If you get a free night or two, I’ve got a friend who says he can get you a tryout at Danny’s Hideaway. They’re looking for a lounge singer for weekends. Some quick money.”

  “Oh, thank you. I have Saturday night free. I’m working right after my audition. Is Saturday too late?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ll get back to you,” he said. “Might be perfect to sing a few on a Saturday night. They’ll see audience reaction.”

  “Thank you, Buck.”

  “My pleasure, Emma.” I thought his eyes were twinkling.

  “Careful,” Marge whispered. “He’s broken more hearts than eggs for omelets.”

  I laughed, but all this sudden male attention was making me very nervous.

  When Jon and his friends were done and leaving, he cut away from them to speak to me as I headed back to the counter with a new order for another table.

  “Any chance I can take you to dinner tomorrow night?” he asked. “Either to cheer you up or to celebrate.”

  “Oh, thank you, but I have to work after the audition.”

  “Oh, right. You said that.” His face brightened. “How about Saturday night?”

  “I think I’m having another audition.”

  “Saturday night?” Skepticism seeped into his smile. Was I brushing him off?

  “At a club,” I said. He pulled his head back as if I had revealed I worked as a prostitute or something.

  “You wanna do that?”

  “Singing is what I do, what I live to do. It’s the most important thing to me right now.”

  “Right. Well, good luck. Seems like things are coming your way,” he said, but he didn’t sound overjoyed. “Give me a call when you know something.”

  He joined his friends. I watched them leave and thought he surely had bragged to them and was now trying to explain why things weren’t moving rapidly ahead with me. For a moment, I felt guiltier than I had when I told my father my singing was more important than anything he could suggest I do.

  That evening after work, I was too tired even to bother straightening up the apartment. I had eaten something at the restaurant before I left. Now I wanted to concentrate only on the song sheet for the callback in the morning. I lay down and sang it to myself.

  My concentration was interrupted when I heard voices in the hall, lots of voices. Suddenly, the door was thrown open, and Piper, leading four other people, entered, a bottle of red wine in each of her hands.

  “Emma!” she cried. “I want you to meet Jerome and some of my friends, our friends. We’re all here to celebrate your first callback. We have food, more wine, and a luscious dessert.”

  I said nothing. I stared blankly at them. Why would I want to celebrate with people I didn’t know?

  “Say hello, Jerome,” she commanded a short, heavy, light-brown-curly-haired man who had a rather thick nose and a small mouth with soft, almost feminine lips. There was little doubt in my mind that Piper was the prettiest girl he had even been with long enough to claim as a girlfriend.

  “Hey,” he said. When he smiled, his lips seemed to enlarge as if air flowed down and into them from his cheeks. He was carrying two more bottles of wine.

  “Hello,” I said, and turned to Piper. “I can’t party. I have to get up early tomorrow for the audition and then go to work to make up the hours.”

  “Oh, we’re just having a short get-together,” she replied. “Some of us work, too, and hafta get up in the morning, right, Jerome?”

  “I’m afternoon and evening tomorrow,” Jerome said. She gave him a look of reprimand. “I’m just saying,” he added quickly.

  “Well, Shirley works in the morning, don’t you, Shirley?” Piper asked a very thin-looking girl with the worst dyed red hair with bluish streaks I had ever seen. It was cheap and artificial. The strands looked like straw. All the coloring did was highlight her pale, almost translucent complexion. She looked fragile enough to break if one of the more aggressive New York pedestrians I had confronted bumped into her.

  “That’s true if I get up,” she replied, and laughed. “I work for my father. He has a paper-bag factory in Brooklyn. He wants to fire me because I’m a bad example for his other workers, but my mother won’t let him.”

  The other girl and a dark-brown-haired man standing beside her laughed. They were both carrying bags of take-out Chinese.

  “I’m Toni,” the girl said. She was the prettiest, I thought, with wavy pecan-shaded hair and a shapely figure highlighted by her tight light-blue mid-calf skirt. She wore a darker blue light-cotton tight sweater. “That’s short for Antoinette.”

  “Let ’em eat cake, huh, Toni?” The man with her looked at me. “Marie…”

  “I know,” I said. “Marie Antoinette.”

  “Who’s that?” Piper asked.

  “Toni’s great-great-great-grandmother,” he said, smiling and winking at me.

  “Very funny. Toni works as a bar waitress at the Hot-cha Club in the Village,” Piper said. “And Michael,” she added, referring to the man who had made the joke, “is part owner.”

  “Very small part,” he said. “I’m more assistant manager.”

  “I told him you’d sing for us. Maybe he’ll get you a gig,” Piper said.

  “A gig?”

  “A job singin
g one night.”

  “Oh. I have a possible audition for that sort of thing Saturday night.”

  “You do?” she practically screamed. “Where?”

  I looked at her friends. “It’s only possible. It might not happen,” I said. I didn’t want to reveal the place and have her make negative comments to discourage me.

  “Yeah, well, enlighten me when it does,” she said. She laughed and then led them all into the living room.

  “Emma, you’ll have to heat up our food,” she called back to me. “We don’t have a microwave,” she told her friends. “The manager, Grandpa Abbot, is supposed to see about getting us one, but so far he hasn’t. We should hold back on the next rent payment,” she told me.

  “It’s not part of our arrangement,” I said. I had told her if he did get it for us, it would be more of a favor. “He’s not obligated to get one.”

  “Whatever. I don’t know which pot to use and how to work the oven,” she told the others. “Emma’s been doing all our cooking.”

  Reluctantly, I told Toni and Michael to bring the food into the kitchen. Piper immediately turned on her radio in the living room. She sent Jerome in to get some glasses for the wine he and she had brought. I began to heat up their food and put out some plates and silverware.

  “This is nice of you,” Jerome said. “I told Piper it might not be right to bust in on you like this.”

  “It’s not,” I said, feeling my father standing right beside me, whispering, Always be honest. Better to set people straight from the start than stumble around doing it later.

  “Oh,” Jerome said, and made a quick retreat to the living room. Whatever he told Piper only made her laugh and turn up the music.

  You know what this is, I told myself. Jealousy and spite.

  Piper had them all dancing and drinking the wine. Michael and Toni were smoking, which was something Piper and I had decided neither of us would do nor permit anyone else to do in the apartment.

  “The radio is too loud, Piper. There’ll be complaints, and we agreed that no one is supposed to smoke in the apartment.”

  “It’s only tonight,” she said. “Don’t be so… English. The English are so proper,” she told her friends.