“Of course not,” I said.
Next morning I got a note from Twain saying that business had occupied him, but he’d meet me that night at the theater. Feeling at loose ends, I wrote a letter to my daughters telling them that even if I missed their birthdays—Hope would turn five early in July, Susy three a few weeks later—I loved them and would come home as soon as I could. I included their zip code in the address just in case, put a three-cent stamp on the envelope, walked it to the post office—no mailboxes yet—and dropped it through a slot, feeling silly and yet closer to them.
By the time I strolled up Broadway in my black evening suit, my spirits had rebounded. I’d slicked my hair, scrubbed my teeth with Burnett’s Oriental Tooth Wash, and put on gleaming new high-laced shoes. Around me throngs of people stepped briskly in the deepening dusk, speaking in animated voices. Lamps from theaters and concert saloons splashed the sidewalks with brilliant colors. Bursts of music and applause floated from lobbies. The lamplighters were out with their ladders, making the streetlights glowing yellow balls. Stagecoaches’ lights of red, green, and blue formed tracers as they bumped over the cobblestones. Excitement bubbled in me. I was on my way to the theater. With Mark Twain, no less.
He stood in the lobby of the Waverly, natty in tails, silk stovepipe, and polished gaiters, surrounded by admirers. When I pushed close he muttered, “Let’s clear out.”
Our seats occupied a small gilt-framed box flanking the stage. The Waverly’s interior was intimate—cramped, to be less poetic—all its surfaces festooned with draperies and gilt molding. In the orchestra seats were a few fat burghers whose overdressed wives looked self-conscious in the mostly male audience. The fifty-cent sections were boisterous. The house held about three hundred, and standing room was vanishing fast.
The curtain rose. A hand-lettered sign said that we were about to see “A Pretty Piece of Business,” which turned out to be a comedy skit. Following it were two sisters who danced in remarkable unison, like music-box figures. The audience grew restless.
Finally the feature. By the most forgiving standards it was awful. Performed to Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, set with flowery painted backdrops depicting ancient Greece, a sequence of frothy numbers built to the goddesses’ contest for the golden apple. Buxom women in platinum wigs wore garish clinging gowns, one Viola Crocker, as Venus, parading herself especially sinuously. Her heavy curves were much appreciated by the house. To me she looked almost alarmingly overweight.
I’d had about enough when Elise Holt finally sauntered on as Paris. Although ostensibly a male—she played the wisecracking, cigar-smoking soubrette—Holt alone wore flesh-colored tights. Her well-curved legs and hourglass torso showed to maximum effect. The blond curls peeped from under leafy garlands; the oval face was powdered and rouged. The audience paid rapt attention. So did I.
She looked larger onstage than she had at the Troy ball grounds. But beside the others she was petite. She danced with jaunty grace. Her throaty voice sounded more suggestive than musical. Unlike the fleshy women, Holt exuded sensuality without seeming to try. It occurred to me that she was very like a 1920s flapper—liberated, mannish, sexual—almost sixty years before her time.
“Witching little thing,” Twain remarked. “Vital as a St. Rupert’s drop.”
“Fantastic body,” I said.
He glanced at me. “And dressed with meagerness to make a parasol blush.”
As an encore, the cast performed a wild full-stage cancan. “A wilderness of girls,” Twain called it.
He was hard to read on sex. The glitzy peroxide and tights seemed to have amused more than titillated him. I remembered his writings as being sexually repressed, standard for the age. But it might have been a facade. Or imposed by Livy.
Twain lit a cigar outside. “You fancy the little blonde?”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
At a flower stall he purchased red roses and sent them backstage with a note. “Let’s see if this stirs anything.”
We stood by the stage door. After most of the performers had departed, Holt appeared, bundled in furs, flanked by a man and a woman.
“Miss Holt,” drawled Twain, tipping his hat. “If you’d be kind enough to join us, we’d be honored by your company at Delmonico’s.”
She looked at him, brows knit. The other woman whispered. Holt smiled vaguely; either she didn’t know of Twain or didn’t care. “The flowers were lovely,” she said, starting past. “Thanks ever so much.”
Damn, I thought, and stepped in front of her. “I enjoyed your performance here and in Troy.”
Startled, the blue-violet eyes scanned my face and rested briefly on my cheek. “Why, you’re the one who provoked that row at the match!” She laughed, low-pitched and throaty. “I enjoyed your performance, sir.”
“I’m Sam Fowler,” I said, grinning. “Come have a drink with us?”
“That’s kind, but I’m afraid not.” She gestured at the man. “My fiance.”
The guy gave me a tight smile. Fiance? Where the hell was he during the Troy game? Or did she only go to ball games with high-rolling Congressmen?
Holt must have guessed my thoughts. A warning flashed in her eyes: Be quiet. I nodded slightly, smiling. “‘Night, gentlemen,” she said crisply.
“That’s that,” I muttered, watching her move away.
We walked several blocks in silence.
“You fancy female companionship?” asked Twain.
I thought about it. “More than ever.”
We took a hack out Fifth Avenue toward Murray Hill, where Commodore Vanderbilt was planning to erect a magnificent railway depot to serve all Manhattan. In Twain’s view it would be too far uptown.
“Where does ‘uptown’ start, anyway?”
“About Twenty-fifth or so.”
“That’s not so far, then.”
“Too blamed far to walk from the St. Nicholas.”
We descended in front of a tall brownstone on Thirty-fourth.
“House of ill repute?” I said.
“A palatial bagnio,” Twain replied. “Parlor houses are prospering between Union Square and Central Park, but I guarantee you won’t fault this one.”
“You sound pretty knowledgeable.”
“One of fame’s advantages,” he said mildly. “Entering doors that are otherwise shut.”
A peephole clicked open. Twain was recognized. We stepped into a garnet-and-gold hallway. Recessed niches
