Manhattan Noir

CRYING WITH AUDREY HEPBURNBY XU XI

Times Square

for William Warren

Yeah, the ring’s for real. Why would I pretend about that?

So what is it you want to know, kid? That I wouldn’t be “dancing” if not for Ron? That things might be different if he hadn’t pulled his vanishing act? Ron never introduced me to his family. Said they didn’t give two shits about him after his mom remarried, so why stay in touch? Guess I can’t blame him.

Of course, I’m hardly one to talk.

Still, though. Might have been nice to have some American in-laws, even if they’d never come to Manhattan.

Okay, kid, write this down.

Mother cried over Audrey Hepburn movies…

“She’s so elegant,” she sniffed, “and helpless. No wonder men look after her.”

On television, Sabrina was approaching its illogical conclusion. It was Saturday, February 29, 1964, the night of my father’s fifty-ninth birthday. I was fourteen. A-Ba was at a dinner hosted by my three older brothers. We didn’t go because of Audrey, but also because Mother said fifty-nine wasn’t a big deal, and that my brothers and their wives were wasting time sucking up to A-Ba, hoping to get his money.

“I don’t know what you’re crying about,” I said. “It’s just a movie. It isn’t real.”

My mother dried her eyes with a silk handkerchief. “It wouldn’t hurt you to soften up a bit and be a little more elegant.”

Mother was Eurasian, but if you looked at her face front, she passed for Chinese. Exotic perhaps, but Chinese. Her mother was an American missionary’s daughter who married a wealthy Cantonese trader against her parents’ wishes. My father was a Cantonese businessman who made and sold soy sauce-“Yangtze Soy”-when he wasn’t boozing. Whenever his commercial aired, the one where sauce cascades down cleavage to the opening of Grieg’s piano concerto, Mother switched off the television in disgust.

“Here,” she said, handing me her crochet work. “Put this away, please.”

I complied and escaped to my bedroom, grateful to surface above the vale of tears.

Elegance. Facing the mirror in third position, I studied my feet. Six and a half and still growing; already, it was hard finding shoes my size. Mother would die if she knew I danced all the boys’ parts. “Ballet will help you be more graceful,” she insisted when she started me up nine years earlier. “It’s important for young ladies to be graceful because gentlemen like that.” Mother’s graceful. She had jet-black hair, large eyes, high cheekbones, and a figure like Audrey’s. I could imagine her in Humphrey Bogart’s arms, dancing to “Isn’t It Romantic.” Mother loved to dance, but A-Ba couldn’t foxtrot to save his life.

Sabrina is such a silly story. Bogart and Holden are these unlikely brothers of a wealthy Long Island family. Audrey’s the chauffeur’s daughter who has a crush on Holden. She dis-appears off to cooking school in Paris, returns grown up and sophisticated, which is when he finally notices her. But the family doesn’t want her marrying Holden, so Bogart turns on the charm, intending to pay Audrey off. Instead, Bogart falls for her, and they end up getting married. The End.

My hair’s limp and a faded mousy brown. I have Mother’s height and A-Ba’s frazzled eyebrows, beady eyes, and ugly mouth. I look pathetically Eurasian. My brothers inherited the best of my parents; they pass for Chinese and all made it over 5'8", a real asset among Hong Kong men. Leftover blood coursed through me, the accident, seventeen years after the last boy. Good thing I was a girl. That way, Mother fussed over me in her old age and didn’t even mind the way I looked.

In the living room, Bogart and Audrey were sailing off to their Parisian honeymoon in black-and-white. Personally, I couldn’t see what she saw in him. I would have taken Holden any day, philanderer though he was. After all, there was no guarantee what Bogart would be like after Paris.

But kid, I’m getting too old for this.

What? You think Ron happened yesterday? Audrey Hepburn died, that’s what happened yesterday. Papers said cancer. Too bad Ron’s not here. We’d have honored her passing together.

So you want to hear the rest of this story or not?

On her way home from lunch with friends the next afternoon, my mother was killed by a hit-and-run driver.

“She was running across the street again,” my father shouted.

“Always running!”

He had seldom been as angry. A-Ba’s an ugly man who was once better looking. Smashed his face against a cracked toilet bowl when he was drunk one night, and emergency did a lousy job on his jowl. In his fury, his gnarled, contorted face resembled a lion’s head in the dance-a shiny red and gold mask with fierce eyes.

“It was an accident,” I said. “The police said so. Besides, the driver should have stopped.”

“Always running,” he muttered.

Can’t recall much about the funeral. My three brothers did the adult things and said very little to me. We were virtually strangers, since they were gone by the time I was born. I wanted to scream at everyone to shut up and stop crying. I didn’t cry. My thoughts zigzagged from the driver who left my mother on the road to die, to my father who never spent time with her, to Audrey, dancing in the moonlight in the arms of Bogart, the ugly industrialist, the man who would look after her for the rest of her life as Sabrina. Only in celluloid, not in Hong Kong.

Hey kid, I’m on. We do five shows Friday night. You’re going to wait? Suit yourself. Back in fifteen, max.

How did he get me started? Asked about the ring, that’s how. This one’s different. Got a little class. Been in a few times, always buys me a drink. Looks at me when he speaks. Most guys can’t. All they see is… well, you know.

Ron couldn’t even watch me dance, never mind this act. But if it weren’t for my little specialty, I couldn’t keep this job, not now. Occasionally, he’d wait outside, even in the snow, before things got bad. “Times Square’s no place for a girl after dark,” he’d say, whenever he walked me home. Afterwards, we’d watch movies together till sunrise.

I miss that.

Vegetables? Funny? I suppose they are. There was the cigar, until some joker lit it. Scorched thighs hurt. Like the boss says, every act needs to change. Cucumbers taste better anyway.

Oh, so now you want to know what happened next? You’re the funny one, kid.

Six months later, A-Ba sent me away to an all-girls boarding school in Connecticut.

“You’ve been begging to go to the States,” he said over my protests. “I’ve made all the arrangements. Besides, I can’t look after you.”

He hadn’t touched any of Mother’s stuff since the funeral.

I wanted to find a keepsake among her silks and jewelry, but didn’t dare without his permission. Being the only girl, it was my right to have the first go. Once I was gone, my sisters-in-law would ransack all her beautiful things and there’d be nothing left for me.

I sulked my way to Connecticut.

Didn’t like the school. We weren’t allowed late-night TV. Despite the rules, we sneaked out after dark to meet boys. My classmates were in competition to lose their virginity. I won on my sixteenth birthday, easy. You don’t have to be either graceful or beautiful in the backseat of a car. Being the only foreigner added to the freak factor. Anyway, it’s not like those boys would bring me home.

I wrote home, dutifully, once a month. My brothers I never heard from. A-Ba only wrote brief notes with money, once each semester.

Mother would have written me long, gossipy letters, full of movies and news of society friends. If she’d seen an Audrey, her words might have flown. Mother survived on sentiment. She used to say, “One day, I’m taking you to New York where we’ll do ‘breakfast’ at Tiffany’s. We’ll buy the diamonds for your wedding there.” When it all got too much, I’d shout, “Mother, don’t be silly! Who’d marry me?” And she would hold me tight, tears rolling down her cheeks, promising, “Trust me, my darling, someone will. Someone will.”

I never wasted time crying.

Fantasy home. That’s what this club is. Guys come in for escape or relief because they can’t make it. A-Ba wasn’t like them. He had Mother because he was successful. Problem was, she needed someone classier. Wasn’t his fault. Other than his temper, he wasn’t all bad. It’s just that you can’t manufacture class the way you can soy sauce.

Maybe I came along too late and caught a dismal closing act. They must have had a better life once.

I didn’t talk about family to anyone.

Summer after graduation, I finally was allowed home. In Connecticut, it was possible not to think about her or her miserable life with A-Ba. But home, without Mother, was worse than being kept away at school.

In late August, Wait Until Dark made it to Hong Kong’s cinemas. It was petrifying, watching a blind Audrey stumble around, stalked and terrorized like prey. I’m glad Mother didn’t have to watch. Fear isn’t romantic.

Listen, kid, you want to tell this story? I’m getting to the Ron part. Didn’t you learn in your writing school that stories need history, plot, suspense? Character flaws? Otherwise the beginning muddles to the middle and you thank god it’s The End.

Southern Connecticut State was a bore, but it was better than high school.

The boys were less frantic. I majored in something. All I cared about was dance. My feet, though! They felt way too big, having ballooned to a seven and a half.

Fall of sophomore year, Ron Andrews danced into my life.

His troupe was performing “Dance Nostalgia.” Astaire routines. Porter, Kern, Gershwin. Ron did this solo soft-shoe number. The grand finale was him leaping onto a straight-back chair, tipping it over, and sliding toward the apron’s edge on his knees. I jumped up, shouted, “Bravo,” not caring what anyone thought. Maybe I started something, or maybe he was just that good, because the whole audience rose in a swell, cheering.

Later, backstage, Ron stood there, a towel round his neck. In his T-shirt and tights, one leg cocked on a stool, he looked like a blond William Holden. People congratulated; voices rose in a frenzy. He wasn’t very tall, but there in the center of all that adulation, he was a giant.

When we were introduced, I couldn’t help gushing, “You were incredible. Absolutely, amazingly marvelous!” He smiled, nodded in acknowledgement, and that was that.

Back at the dorm that night, I cried myself silly. It was such a weird sensation. I mean, I didn’t know the guy to save my life, and crying wasn’t my thing.

The next day, I went along to audition for their troupe’s summer stock.

I was a good, but not brilliant, dancer. The point was, it didn’t matter a whole lot whether or not I performed. Other students had rehearsed for weeks, desperate to make the cut.

My friend Sara co-opted me as her “male” partner. I’d agreed, but that was before Ron. Of course, I couldn’t very well back out now, not when the show had to go on.

“Smile, will you?” Sara hissed, just before we made our entrance. “Don’t be such a dog face. Think Astaire.”

We did “Dancing in the Dark.” Sara was this tiny brunette, graceful as sin. In her white ball gown, fitted to her gorgeous figure, she was stunning. I was in tux tails, my hair pinned tightly in a net, a mustache pasted on for effect, feeling absurd. Sara was a strong dancer, but she hammed things up too much. Every dip swooped a bit too low, every turn was overdone. Friends applauded, but I knew we weren’t much above passable.

Later, while removing makeup, I looked up in the mirror and saw him. He wasn’t as young as he appeared onstage. He pressed both hands down on my shoulders and studied my face. “Do you ever dance the lady’s part?” His voice resonated. Baritone.

Nodding and shaking my head simultaneously, I stammered, “Sometimes.”

“Come on, then.” Taking my hand, he led me onstage. In my tux shirt and tights, I looked ridiculous, but Ron didn’t seem to care as we stood side by side, arms outstretched, my hand in his. I was the taller, and nervous.

“Dancing in the Dark” came on.

“Follow me,” he commanded.

My feet flowed. It was better than magic, because all of me danced, guided by heaven and his lead. When the music faded, it segued to “In the Mood.” His hands gripped my waist and he swung me in the air. A perfect partner, confident without being bossy, leading without stifling my movements. When we finished, the applause went on for a long, long time.

Onstage, I smiled at him, exhilarated, my heart pounding from exhaustion. Ron had barely broken a sweat. He pulled me toward him in a final twirl. “What’s your name?” he asked. His eyes were a deep blue-green, as deep as the ocean, only deeper.

I quit school and followed him to New York. He was thirty, the senior member in the troupe.

“A dancer?!” my father screamed over intercontinental telephone wires. “You’re living with a baahk gwai dancer?

What are you, crazy?”

“But you married one. Or at least, a half-baahk gwai. I just wanted you to know.”

“You’ll get no more money from me.”

“I don’t need your money. I can work.”

“Doing what? Shining his shoes? What do you expect to make without a college degree?”

I hung up. Ron never got to speak to him.

That was the last time I communicated with my family.

What do you suppose Mother would have said?

I remind you of your sister? Another funny face, huh? Everything comes back to family, kid. We all start there, even if we end up someplace remote. Like Ron. Despite his step-dad, who beat him up and hadn’t a clue, calling him a fag and all, he still thought about his mom. Oh, he’d never admit it, but I knew. Every Mother’s Day, he used to cry in his sleep, like clockwork.

Ron and I got married six months later.

Life was great. He scored tickets to Broadway shows because he knew people in the business. Ron had tons of friends.

He was like this solar system, burning bright, in whose orbit everyone sparkled and spun. He found places to perform, way off-Broadway, all across the country, even in Alaska, while other dancers waited tables or collected welfare. “I’ve got to dance,” he said. “Doesn’t matter how or where.”

We did dance contests and exhibitions for money whenever he was between real gigs. Other than that, we didn’t work together much. His act, the dance of his heart, was solo. Money was tight, but that never mattered because I loved him and we were rent-controlled. He used to work a lot then, going to every audition, trying for the big break. Such energy! “Disco won’t last,” he predicted. “It’ll bore itself to death. You wait and see.”

We talked. I told him all about my mother, about my Tiffany’s “wedding,” about her crying with Audrey Hepburn. Sometimes, talking made me weepy. He’d hold me until I calmed. Blood talk, he called it. Healing that scabs the pain.

After two years in New York, I took a job as a typist and filing clerk. It was way more lucrative than dancing and had health insurance. Ron didn’t want me to do it. “What about your career? You’re a good dancer when you try.”

“You dance,” I replied. “I’ll feed us. Anyway, we’ll still do the contests.”

He picked me up, effortlessly. “Lazybones. Always wanting the easy way.”

Up in the air, I laughed. “Life doesn’t have to be tough all the time.”

“Then what would you say if I tossed you out the window?” He swung me horizontal and held me there.

“Don’t you dare.”

He gave up when he saw I wouldn’t budge. That was Ron: never made me do anything against my will. As long as he was our star, I was happy.

Besides, I liked shining his tap shoes. His feet were small and elegant, as if they’d been bound and sculpted to dance from the womb.

This rock? It’s fake. You think I’d be dancing if it wasn’t?

After I heard about Audrey yesterday, I hauled myself up to Tiffany’s. Some things you just do. Colorless things, diamonds.

Don’t know what Mother saw in them. At least she loved me in her own silly way. Ron was right about that. He was right about a lot, especially love. He said deep down, my father loved me because I was his flesh and blood. His own father had been a dancer, but died when Ron was eight. So he knew all about what he called the “empty spaces of the heart.”

But Ron was wrong about A-Ba. All these years and he’s never once tried to find me, I don’t think.

When Audrey Hepburn made her comeback in ’76, it was all Ron and I talked about.

We’d missed her. I’d seen every one of her movies, in memory of Mother, but Ron liked her too. She looked pretty good for her age. You know, if you look at her face front, she could almost pass for Eurasian.

That year, I dyed my hair and eyebrows coal-black, and cut a young-Audrey bob. Ron said it made me look exotic.

All the guys at work noticed. That was also when I started wearing makeup every day.

Funny stuff, makeup. One reason I never took performing too seriously was because I didn’t like all that stage goo.

Ron was tireless and careful about his; he needed to hide the lines. Mother wore makeup like it wasn’t there, long before the natural look. Her foundation and powder blended into the skin tones of her neck, unlike women who didn’t match their complexion properly and looked as if they’d severed and reattached their heads. She painted on eyeliner with a brush, rapidly, expertly, like an artist, but never used eye shadow. “Women with blue lids,” she declared disdainfully, “look frostbitten.”

Letting Ron pluck my eyebrows was a revelation. “You see, you do have eyes,” he said. “They were hidden by all that bushy fuzz.” With a little eye liner, my eyes became wider, brighter, more open.

I smiled at people now, instead of looking down all the time. I even admitted my feet were not too big. As Ron said, seven and a half is an average size in America. I began wearing stylishly nostalgic dresses from secondhand stores. Ron loved my quirky new look. “Lady fair,” he declaimed, “you put the stars and models to shame!”

That was the happiest time of my entire life. I felt elegant, even graceful.

Trust me, I don’t talk to just anyone. It’s not like I tell every writer who asks. What, you didn’t think you were the first, did you?

I started dancing here because welfare ran out. After getting laid off, it was great not working for a while. Like vacation. I loved playing housewife and not having to answer to anyone. Ron said not to worry about getting another job, something would turn up. He even suggested auditioning. But at twenty-eight, I felt silly competing with the kids. Wouldn’t say that to him, though. Why hurt his feelings?

In the beginning, I just used to dance. I tried a striptease, but it wasn’t a success. As the boss says, you have to have tits for that, and I wasn’t about to go silicon. So I stuck to the cage, or pole, because gams I’ve got. I’d come up with costumes for variety, like a see-through cheongsam with the waist-high slit, the Suzie Wong look? Oh well, I guess you are too young. Anyway, that was a big favorite. The act didn’t come about till much later.

I don’t remember exactly when Ron and I stopped dancing together.

What is it you want to know, kid?

Shortly after Audrey’s comeback, things started going badly for Ron.

He didn’t let on at first, laughing off problems and carrying on as if he were eternally onstage. First year, his agent was slow about returning calls. He talked about getting another.

Then, even friends in the business stopped returning calls, and his agent only had truly awful gigs, like the commercial where he had to wear a cow costume and tap dance around these giant milk bottles. I told him it was just the times, that the economy sucked and things were bound to get better. There were still occasional road shows in Alabama or someplace. We’d saved a little money, which was enough to live on, because I was a careful housekeeper, although Ron teased, calling me stingy.

Then I lost my job, it was tough finding another, and yadda, yadda, you know the rest. But back then on 42nd Street, they always needed fresh girls.

By daylight, Times Square was seedy, but not terrible.

Reminded me of Wanchai back home. When I was thirteen, I used to hang out on Lockhart Road after school. The mama-sans would stand around posing, fat old broads with painted masks and too-tight cheongsams. They’d catcall passing American sailors, pointing at the curtained doorways. It was like watching a show, somewhere very far off-Broadway, right at the edge of the grid. I gawked and giggled with my friends until they shooed us away.

Don’t know where I found the guts to walk into the biggest joint that day. Looking good helped, and I could still dance. They hired me right off. I was nervous the first night. It was a Tuesday. Place was dead except for a bunch of geezers in the corner. “Pretend you’re in a movie,” one of the girls told me. “That way, you’re not flesh.”

Ron was mad, but kept quiet because we needed the cash. After the first three months or so, he relaxed when he saw I always came straight home. “Just a job, I guess,” he’d say. I never expected him to dance, never breathed even the slightest hint, though he would have been terrific. He was way too fine for all this.

If only he’d kept going.

The kid. He looks a little like Ron.

You’re leaving town tomorrow? Getting married?

Ron went away, oh, ages ago.

Before he left home that winter afternoon, he claimed he was tired of the whole damned thing, said I would have been better off with Bogart. I didn’t get what he meant because I was running late for work.

In the morning, they found his tap shoes on the Brooklyn Bridge, his wallet and wedding band inside them. All I remember is, it was the day before he turned forty.

See you, kid. Good luck with the writing and all. Hey, what’s your name? I’ll look for your book someday.

So that’s the end. No one listens after the story’s over.

I cried myself to sleep for months afterwards. Ron kept me going, gave me hope, made me feel I was as good as any star despite my life. “Audrey Hepburn doesn’t hold a candle to you,” he’d say. He filled up my heart with so much love I thought it would burst. What more could a girl want?

Crying over Ron made me remember Mother. They would have adored each other. There were days I thought about going to join them both. Every night, I’d get up onstage and dance to whistles and catcalls, or the dead space of labored breathing, and I’d be okay. But away from here, alone in daylight, the space in my heart became immensely empty and bare. Tears cascaded from some mysterious source, against my will, until the day ended and night returned again.

And then one day, I’m not sure when or why, I just stopped crying.

Dancing’s been a kind of life. You get used to it. It’s better than hammering away at a noisy electric typewriter, mucking with carbons, hoping the cartridge won’t run out halfway. Plus no office politics. Girls who dance, they’ll be friends or leave you alone, whatever you want. Independent types. I like that.

The boss was good about things. Kept me on after Ron died, mostly because he felt bad for me. But business is business, and let’s face it, I was over thirty and this place is about fresh girls. So I came up with the cigar. He was skeptical, but gave it a whirl. I was a big draw. After the lighting incident, we moved on to vegetables. These were fine except for dai-kons, because those taste bad raw. But the boss was right.

Variety is spice, so out I strutted on spikes, hiked up the skirt, sucked in, spat out, and caught each tubular from between the legs, shoved each one between the lips, and crunched, hard, the pale, peeled daikon being the finale. Like juggling, with dance.

When I turned forty a few years back, the boss and girls gave me this big party. I look pretty good for my age. You can’t see the lines unless you look close. Makeup works. The girls come and go while I hang on. You have to keep going.

The act keeps me going. These days, we need to be careful. There’s less you can get away with. Mood of the times; a conservative feel’s in the air. That’ll blow over, like disco. Besides, it’s time to think about retiring. Economy’s improving. Ballroom’s hot again and there are gigs at shopping malls and the Y. I could do those. You don’t need to be either young or brilliant to foxtrot or jitterbug. All you need is a partner.

It was a silly way for Ron to exit. I would have supported us forever. He was all the home I wanted, even on those days when he couldn’t get out of bed. If only he hadn’t given up. He would always have been my star.

Show time. Feet hurt.

Funny Face is on later. That’s my favorite. Yes, it is just an earlier Fair Lady, except she does the actual singing. Astaire’s supposed to be this famous fashion photographer who turns plain-jane bookworm Audrey into a top model. Naturally, they fall in love, and their wedding day is the grand finale.

Astaire dances delightfully, and Audrey wears the most delicious dresses. Story’s hilarious. I love it where she’s all in black, among the Parisian pseudo-intellectuals, dancing past their stony faces. And the corny ending makes me laugh. Fred’s way too old for her, of course, and the plot’s quite impossible. But in the movies none of this matters, because it’s always a perfect match, made only the way those can be, in heaven, and never on earth.