Uncommon Type: Some Stories

Who’s Who?

On a Monday morning in early November of 1978, as she had been every day for the past six weeks, Sue Gliebe was up and out of the apartment before her roommates were awake. Rebecca was asleep, eight feet off the floor in the loft bed in the living room, and Shelley, probably, was still conked out behind the locked door of the apartment’s single bedroom.

Sue had showered quickly and quietly in the half tub with the rubber hose running up from the faucet, the dribbling water a weak stream that was alternately tepid and then as hot as the surface of the planet Mercury. Since she had come to New York, she had yet to feel truly clean and her scalp had begun to itch. She dressed in the fog of the tiny bathroom, slipped on her shoes from under the living room sofa, where she slept, strapped her big leather purse crossways from shoulder to opposite hip, then grabbed the umbrella she had bought on Friday. Another storm was due, the news said, and Sue was prepared; she had already paid five of her dollars to one of the many men who appeared with boxes of umbrellas the moment the clouds grew thick with rain. As quietly as possible, Sue exited through the front door, making sure the lock clicked behind her. She had once failed to confirm that click and Shelley had angrily lectured her on the dangers of an unlocked apartment door in New York City in 1978. No click was a major no-no.

Her roommates had come to view her as an unexorcised poltergeist, one that had to be negotiated around. Then again, they were not really her roommates but her hosts, making Sue feel as welcome as an abdominal parasite. Rebecca had been so friendly the last summer when she was working costumes for the Arizona Civic Light Opera, and Sue, a local hire, was playing three featured roles. They were gal pals, then. On days when her duties were slack, Rebecca swam in the pool at the Gliebe family home and partied with the company on the Gliebe patio. She had offered Sue her couch for “a while” whenever—if ever—she came to New York City. When Sue showed up with three suitcases, eight hundred dollars in savings, and a dream, Rebecca’s actual roommate, Shelley, nodded her assent to the deal with a “yeah, okay.” But that was seven weeks ago and Sue was still spending every night on the couch in the small living room. The vibes in the one-bedroom apartment just off Upper Broadway had gone from benign acceptance to Arctic-level iciness. Rebecca wanted Sue out; Shelley wanted her dead. Sue hoped to purchase extra sofa time and goodwill with contributions of fifty dollars to the rent as well as providing milk, Tropicana orange juice, and, once, a thing called blackout cake that Shelley ate for breakfast. Such gestures were not so much appreciated as expected.

What could Sue do? Where could Sue go? She was hunting for her own New York City apartment every single day, but the agencies named Apartment Finders and Westside Spaces had “listings” that were in dark, urine-stained tenements where no one answered the buzzer, or were no longer available, or never existed in the first place. Shelley told her to post a Need a Roommate notice on the board at Actors’ Equity, but Sue confessed that she had yet to join the union—she couldn’t until she had an acting job. Shelley gave her a half-lidded look of supreme disappointment and another “yeah, okay,” then added, “Next time you go to ShopRite, get a big can of Chock Full O’Nuts, please.” In this eighth week—the start of her third month on the isle of Manhattan—the bundle of Arizona talent who had played Maria in West Side Story (just last season at the ACLO) was prone to weeping at night, silently, in her bedroll on the couch, in the diamond-shaped silhouettes made by the window’s security gates (were such things actually burglarproof?). On the subway, which cost her fifty cents a ride, she often fought back tears, worried that someone would see a pretty young girl undone by her struggles and, well, rob her or worse. For Sue, moving to New York was an act of faith, faith in herself, in her talent, and in the promise of the city that never slept. It was supposed to be an adventure, like something out of the movies, where she would come out of a stage door after a performance and kiss a handsome sailor on shore leave, or a TV show like That Girl, where she’d have an apartment with a big kitchen and louvered shutters and a boyfriend who worked for Newsview magazine. But New York was not cooperating. How could things be going so sadly for Sue Gliebe, who was the very definition of a triple threat; she could sing, dance, and act! Her parents had recognized her raw talent when she was a little girl! She had starred in all the high school plays! She had been selected from the chorus at the Civic Light Opera to become their lead actress for three seasons running! She had done High Button Shoes with Monty Hall, the host of TV’s Let’s Make a Deal! She had had a going away party with a big banner reading ON TO BROADWAY!

So why was New York, New York, making her cry? Her first night in the city, when Rebecca took her via the bus to see Lincoln Center, Sue had looked at all the locals along upper Broadway and actually asked, “Where is everyone going?” She now knew that everyone was going everywhere. This morning, she was going to the bank, the Manufacturers Hanover branch where she had opened an account five weeks before. From behind a Plexiglas (bulletproof) wall, a disinterested female teller slid a ten-dollar bill, a fiver, and five ones through a slot, leaving it to Sue to note that her savings were now down to exactly $564. She had spent more than $200 in New York City and had nothing to show for it but a five-buck umbrella, a blue one with a telescoping handle.

From the bank, Sue went to a donut shop for one plain cake—which was the least expensive—and a coffee with sugar and half-and-half. That was breakfast. She ate standing at a counter sticky from bits of sugar glaze and spilled java. Barely fortified, she walked to the office of Apartment Finders on Columbus Avenue, which was up a wide flight of stairs and above a Hunan Chinese restaurant. The posted listings on the wall had not changed since Saturday, but Sue searched the bulletin board anyway, for a diamond chipped off a ring, for an overlooked gem, for a place with her name on it. Apartment Finders had cost her fifty dollars a month, money she might as well have used to light candles. She would come back later in the day, when, supposedly, new listings were posted, but she already knew her hopes were sure to be dashed again.

Sue decided she was adapting to Gotham, because she turned on her heel and headed back over to Broadway with an agenda for the day. She would not blow time by idly walking in Central Park, with its weedy lawns and cracked benches, dirty sandlots and pathways littered with discarded coffee cups, spent condoms, and other trash. She would not filter through the record stores and bookstores without buying any of the titles. She would not spend money on the trade papers—Show Biz, Back Stage, or Daily Variety—looking for notices of Equity Principal Interviews or auditions for Non-Equity Showcases. Not today. Today, she was going to the Public Library, the famous building at Forty-Second and Fifth, the landmark building with the stone lions in front.

Two blocks from the Eighty-Sixth Street subway station, the rain started. Sue halted, reached for her umbrella, pushed the button on the telescoping handle, but the handle did not telescope. She pulled on the fabric of the thing, forcing it open, but in doing so bent some of the spokes. When she tried to slide the plastic knob up the shaft, the umbrella bent like the leg of a card table. She shook the umbrella and tried forcing the knob, but only half of the cover deployed. With the rain getting heavy, she recocked and again tried to get the umbrella open, but it inverted into a scoop and more of the spokes disconnected like severed ribs.

Giving up, she tried to jam the worthless skeleton into an overflowing trash bin at Broadway and Eighty-Eighth, but the umbrella seemed to fight back, refusing to go in with the other garbage. It took her four tries before it stayed put.

Sue hurried to the subway station. Her hair was dripping from the rain as she stood in line at the kiosk to purchase the two tokens she would need for the day’s travels.

The local trains were delayed. A flood on the uptown tracks. The crowd grew on the platform, large enough that Sue was edged ever closer to the yellow safety line. One bump and she could have fallen onto the tracks. Forty minutes later, she was standing in a subway car so crowded the riders were crammed against each other, their body heat making steam rise from their heavy, rain-soaked coats. The car was so stuffy and hot Sue began sweating. At Columbus Circle the car stopped and did not move for ten minutes, the doors jammed shut, preventing escape. Finally, at Times Square, Sue pushed herself out of the car and into the stream of people who had managed to find the stairs. She tramped up and up and through the turnstiles, then up more stairs and out into the chaos of the Crossroads of the World, where everybody was going everywhere.

Times Square was an exterior version of the station below—filthy, flooded, and overcharged with people. Sue had learned a primary lesson since her arrival in the city, to keep moving, to walk with purpose even when she had none, especially along Forty-Second Street, dodging the human debris that collected there for the drugs, the porn, and, in the rain, to peddle five-dollar umbrellas.

She’d navigated the area before, seeking appointments at the lesser talent agencies, those with offices close by the big X where Broadway crossed Seventh Avenue. She had been surprised to find normal people at normal desks doing normal business just floors above the hissing concrete of Times Square. She had no luck with any of the agents—she never made it past the outer offices—so was reduced to leaving her résumé with secretaries who would say, “Yeah, okay,” in a tone remarkably similar to her temporary cohost Shelley’s.

On this Monday, her agenda was her résumé.

During her last month in Scottsdale, Sue had done two TV commercials for Valley Home Furniture, sweeping her arms wide, exclaiming, “Every room, every style, every budget!” Then, for four weekends, she had acted at the Autumnal Renaissance Faire, quoting Shakespeare as a Lusty Wench for thirty dollars a day. She had added those credits to her résumé with a ballpoint pen, but she knew it looked, well, amateurish. So she was going to retype the whole thing, get an offset printer to make a hundred copies, then staple one each to the backs of her head shots, the photo that made her look like Cheryl Ladd from Charlie’s Angels but with real cleavage.

The problem was that she had no typewriter, nor did Rebecca. When Sue asked Shelley if she had a machine she could use, she didn’t say no but did tell her, “They rent them at the library.” That’s why Sue Gliebe was umbrellaless, navigating eastward on Forty-Second Street, passing a stoned-looking teenager who had pulled his penis out of his pants and was pissing as he stumbled along. Not a single person made note of the sight.

The exact moment Sue discovered that the Main Library was closed on Mondays, a flash of lightning bleached the scraped sky of Mid-Manhattan. She stood at the side entrance to the landmark building, its door locked, unable to comprehend the meaning of those three simple words: Closed on Mondays. Just as a roll of thunder outblared the honking horns of traffic, she lost the battle against tears, the collective disappointments simply too much: New York City roommates were not friendly soul sisters; Central Park was a place of naked trees, unusable benches, and spent rubbers; windows had security gates that locked rapists out and victims in; no cute sailors were waiting to meet a girl and get a kiss. No. In New York City real estate parlors took your money and lied to you, drug addicts relieved themselves in plain sight, and the Public Library was closed on Mondays.

Sue was crying, right there on Forty-Second Street between Fifth Avenue and Sixth or, according to the map, the Avenue of the Americas. Sobbing, gasping, tears, the big show. As many people as had made note of the stoned guy’s penis stopped to help or even look at the girl who was having so terrible a day that she was weeping aloud in public. Until…

“Sue Gliebe!” a man’s voice called out. “You little titmouse!”

Bob Roy was the only man in the world who called her a titmouse. Bob Roy had been the general business manager of the ACLO but lived in New York City. He was a Theater Professional contracted for the season and a homosexual. He had once been an actor on Broadway and he’d done commercials in the 1960s but went into theater management for steady work. Running the Civic Light Opera out west was a summer camp for him—he did it every year—and took his duties a little less seriously than he did laughing and gossiping. Bob Roy seemed to know everything about the Theater, and if you worked in his company, if he signed your paychecks, he either loved you or loathed you. Your treatment completely depended on which way his judgmental wind blew.

He loved Sue Gliebe from the moment he saw her at a dress rehearsal for Brigadoon in the summer of ’76. He delighted in her youth, her halo of honey-blond hair, her clear eyes full of good nature, and her conscientious work ethic. He adored her for showing up on time, knowing her lines, and having ideas for her onstage business. He was fascinated by her tanned body and firm boobs and her lack of self-consciousness, ego, and spite. Every straight man—all seven of them—at the ACLO wanted to fuck her, but she wasn’t that way. Most actresses craved such adoration and demanded the largest dressing room, but Sue Gliebe wanted nothing more than to be onstage. After three seasons, she had not changed a whit and Bob Roy loved her all the more.

He was in a taxi at the curb, the window rolled down with the rain falling between them. “Get in this cab right now!” he ordered.

He slid over to make room for her and the cab moved along. “I’d have bet on seeing Eva Gabor on Forty-Second Street before you. Are you crying?”

“No. Yes. Oh, Bobby!”

Sue explained: She had been in the city for two months, sleeping on Rebecca’s couch. Her savings were running out. No agents would give her the time of day. She saw a man pissing in the street. She was crying now, in particular, because the only movies that told the truth about New York City were about needle parks and taxi drivers on killing sprees. Bob Roy laughed out loud! “You’ve been in Noo Yawk for two months and haven’t called me? Naughty, Sue. Naughty, naughty.”

“I didn’t have your number.”

“What were you doing in Slime Square?”

“Going to the library.”

“To check out the latest Nancy Drew mystery? I’d have guessed you’d read them all by now.”

“They have typewriters. I need to create a new résumé.”

“Titmouse,” Bob said. “Start with a new you first. How about a cup of tea or hot Postum? Whatever soothed Baby Sue growing up in Indian Country.”

The taxi took them to Bob’s apartment downtown—to a terrible neighborhood where all the buildings were six-story tenements and the sidewalks were lined with beaten-up trash cans. He gave the driver six dollars and asked for no change. She followed him out into the rain, up the stoop, through the heavy main door, then four flights up a narrow, zigzagging stairway to apartment 4D. He needed keys for three different locks on the door.

From the dingy, dimly lit hallway, the walls more dirty gray than the original green, the floor a maze of broken and mismatched tiles, Sue stepped into a haven that smelled of candles and lemon-scented dish soap, a cabinet of curiosities, one of which was the bathtub smack dab in the middle of the small kitchen. Bob Roy’s railroad flat was four tight, connected rooms, each stuffed with koombies, knickknacks, doodads, furniture pieces of any style, shelves, books, photos in frames, trophies bought from flea markets, old records, small lamps, and calendars from decades before. “I know,” he said. “It looks like I sell magic potions in here, like I’m an animated badger from a Disney cartoon.” He lit a burner on the stove with a huge kitchen match, then filled a shiny, Olde English–style kettle with water from the tap. As he prepared cups on a tray he said, “Tea in minutes, titmouse. Make a home for yourself.”

The room off the kitchen was really a hallway, a narrow passage through treasures and castoffs. The sitting room featured three large chairs of different eras, one a La-Z-Boy, each covered with a colorful throw of some kind. A circular coffee table, nearly too large for the square space, was covered with stacks of books, a cigar box full of sharpened pencils, a vase with an artificial orchid, and two assembled toy bugs from the Cootie game, posed like they were either fighting or mating. The rain was still coming down hard outside, but window curtains that could have come from an antebellum mansion muffled the roar of the storm. The last room in the railroad flat was Bob’s bedroom, most of it taken up by a four-poster bed.

“I can never move out of this place, it would take me years to pack,” Bob called from the kitchen, only eight feet away. “Turn on the radio, would you?”

“If I can find it,” Sue said and heard his laugh in response. She had to focus out so much clutter, like she was in a Lost and Found Forgotten by Time, until she saw it. The radio was a blond-wood-paneled box as big as an ice chest, with circular knobs like thick poker chips and four lines of numbers for different frequencies. She turned the ON/OFF VOLUME until its satisfying kock was so loud Bob heard it from the kitchen.

“The tubes have to warm up,” he said.

“Does this get shortwave from the Soviet Union?”

“How’d you know?”

“My grandma had a radio like this.”

“So did mine! In fact, that’s it.”

Bob came in with a tray on which were two cups, a pitcher of milk, a sugar bowl with a painted honeybee on the lid, and a plate stacked with Oreo cookies. “Feel free to take off your coat, unless you like being damp.” Orchestral music came from the radio just as the teakettle sounded its harmonic toot.

Sweet tea with milk, three Oreos, and Bob Roy’s snug and cozy flat helped Sue breathe deeply for the first time in months. She let out a sigh as big as a cresting wave and leaned back into a chair so soft it put the z in cozy.

“Okay,” Bob said. “Tell me everything.”

She opened up about, well, everything, cued by Bob’s sympathy. He uttered his support at every story, every anecdote: New York was the only place for Sue to be! Shelley and her “yeah, okay” attitude were to be expected from such a see-you-next-Tuesday! The subway was survivable as long as you never made eye contact with anyone. You found an apartment by reading the Rental classifieds in the Times and The Village Voice, but you had to get them early, at seven in the morning, and then you had to hightail it to the apartments with a bag of donuts because the super would always open up for a pretty girl who shared her donuts. From there, they moved back in time, reminiscing about the summer seasons in Arizona, comparing the backstage gossip to that from the front office, the love affairs gone horrible, and how Sue thought Monty Hall was a solid professional. Bob spilled his tea, laughing.

“Have you had any lunch?”

“No. I was going to treat myself to a slice of pizza pie.” At half a dollar per wedge, pizza had become Sue’s standby meal at midday.

“Let me go out for deli. You strip out of that uniform of yours and take a hot bath. I’ll leave you a robe I stole from a spa in the desert, then we’ll eat like middle class Jews.”

In the kitchen, he removed a large butcher board that covered the bathtub. Why a tub was in the kitchen had something to do with the original plumbing of the old building. He turned on the water, so hot plumes of steam hazed the security-gated window, and laid the robe across a chair. A delicate wicker basket held scented soap, shampoo, conditioner, an organic sponge, and a pitcher to fill with water and rinse with.

“I’ll take my time. You soak.” Bob locked two of the front door locks behind him.

After the weak, abbreviated showers uptown, Sue relished the feel of hot water on her skin and the pouring of water over her head. It was funny, taking a bath in a kitchen like this, but she was alone, the bath was like the hot tub on the Gliebe family patio, and Sue scrubbed, rinsed, and soaked her way to being truly, wonderfully clean. She was still soaking when the front door locks were opened and Bob returned carrying a large bag of deli.

“Still naked, I see.” Bob didn’t bother averting his eyes, and Sue didn’t mind. If “backstage was no place for modesty,” as they said in the Theater, Bob Roy’s kitchen was no place for blushing.

Sue’s now pale limbs were swimming in the man-size terry-cloth robe as she sat at the coffee table, running a comb through her damp hair. Bob set down some half sandwiches, small cartons of soup, coleslaw, pickle wedges, and cans of what was called seltzer and, over lunch, they talked about movies and plays. Bob said he could get her free tickets to the lousy shows on Broadway and cheap seats for the hits, so there would be no more evenings in New York with nothing to do but be unpopular on Rebecca’s couch. He’d call around to his friends for tips on agents who could arrange a meeting or two, no promises beyond that. He knew a few rehearsal pianists who would help with her audition numbers, with sheet music, transposed for her key. “Okay, titmouse,” Bob said, clapping rye crumbs from his fingers. “Let me see this résumé of yours.”

Sue pulled the old version out of her purse as Bob grabbed a pencil. After a quick once-over, he drew a big X on the paper with a sigh. “Standard. So standard.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Sue was hurt. She had worked hard on the thing. Her stage career was on that piece of paper. All the plays she had done in high school, including the one-acts, asterisked with *Thespian Society Award*. Every performance she had ever given at the ACLO, from member of the chorus right up to last year’s turn as Nellie Forbush in South Pacific. Five seasons and eighteen musicals! The productions at the Gaslamp Playhouse Dinner Theater—Emily in Our Town and the Ensemble in Zoo Story. The Narration she did for the Diabetes Walk-a-thon public service message. Every performance Sue Gliebe had ever given was listed on that résumé.

“As we jaded queens say, ‘Nobody gives a shit, honey.’” Bob stood up and went into his bedroom. From under his bed he pulled out an old typewriter protected by a clear plastic dustcover. “This beast is so heavy. I really should keep it out. Make space on the table, would you?” Sue moved away the deli leftovers and a stack of books.

Bob’s typewriter was nearly as big as his grandmother’s radio, a black metal antique, fitting for an apartment crammed with old, peculiar things. The typewriter was a Royal, with glass sections on the sides, like opera windows for any titmouse that might take up residence among the keys.

“Does that still work?” Sue asked.

“It’s a typewriter, child. Ribbon. Oil. Paper. Happy fingers. That’s all it needs. This, however…” He disdainfully picked up the record of Sue’s life’s work, holding it with two fingers like it was rancid melon rind. Then he grabbed a pencil and used it as a pointer. “You list only the roles you’ve played, not the high school you went to or the Gasbag Amateur Play School Diner. The only pro credit you have is the Arizona CLO, so you can’t lie about those credits. You put it at the top in big capital letters, then list the best plays and the best roles first, not in the order you performed them. If you were in the chorus, name your part like ‘Ellen Craymore’ or ‘Candy Beaver’ toward the bottom. If anyone questions you, then say you were in the chorus. These other roles? In high school and all that?”

“Yes?”

“They go under the heading ‘Regional Theater.’ Embellish. Don’t tell them the plays were one-acts. Don’t tell them you won any trophies. Don’t tell them they only ran two weekends. The play. The role. You were a working actress in the Region of Pile-of-Rocks, Arizona, and you have the credits to prove it.”

“Isn’t that lying?”

“They don’t care.” Bob took his pencil to the résumé again. “Oh, look! You’ve done commercials! Valley Furniture! The disease of the month! No, no, no. You put right here, ‘Commercials on Request.’ They will see that you have done commercials but will request not a single one.”

“Really?”

“Trust Bobby Roy, Sue. The great ones all do. Now, this last bit, this sad paragraph listing your Special Skills. This is bullshit to anyone on the other side of the casting desk. Notice I did not say ‘couch.’”

“What if they’re looking for special skills?”

“They ask you. But this list? Guitar. You know three chords, right? You can juggle. Three oranges for a few seconds, right? You roller-skate. What kid doesn’t? You can ski and ride a bike and skateboard. BFD! Did you actually put Sign Language here?”

“I learned some for Tribal Heritage Day. This means ‘awkward.’”

Bob gave the one bit of sign language he knew. “This means ‘bullshit.’ Understand that your résumé will receive all of five nanoseconds of attention. Casting people look at your picture, then at you to see if it matches. Are you actually a girl? Do you have blond hair? You sporting a rack of any significance? If you’re what they are looking for, they turn over to your résumé, scan your credits and your lies, then scribble down this magic word: callback.”

Bob rolled paper into the old Royal, adjusted the margins and tabs, and within minutes had typed out a crisp, clear, and clean résumé that made Sue look like she was as experienced a dreamer as ever hopped a bus to the big city. She could boast of thirty roles. The one thing missing from the paper was her name at the top.

“Let’s think about this for a moment,” Bob said. “Over more tea.” He removed the deli tray to the kitchen and lit another big match for the burner. “I’d get out more Oreos but then we’d just eat them.”

“Think about what?” Sue studied her new professional call sheet. She liked herself more because of what Bobby had typed.

“Have you ever thought of changing your name?”

“My real name is Susan Noreen Gliebe. I’ve always been just Sue.”

“Joan Crawford had always been Lucy LeSueur. Leroy Scherer was called Junior till he became Rock Hudson. You ever hear of Frannie Gumm?”

“Who?”

Bob sang the opening lines of “Over the Rainbow.”

“Judy Garland?”

“Pal of Frances lacks the panache of friend of Dorothy, doesn’t it?”

“My parents will be disappointed if I don’t use my real name.”

“Disappointing your parents is the first thing to do when you come to New York.” When the kettle sounded off, Bob refilled the teapot sitting beside the Royal. “And say you make it big on the Great White Way—which you will. Do you really want to see that name in lights: Sue Gliebe?”

Sue blushed, not out of embarrassment at such praise, but because, deep inside her, she knew she had a future as an actress. She wanted to be big. Yes, as big as Frances Gumm.

Bobby poured more tea in both cups. “And how do you pronounce that? ‘Gleeb’? ‘Glee-bee’? ‘Glibe’?” He pantomimed a big, fake yawn. You know what Tammy Grimes’s stage name was? Tammy Grimes.” He fake-yawned even wider.

“How about…Susan Noreen?” Sue could imagine that name up in lights, no problem.

Bob flicked the paper in the Royal typewriter, snapping the new résumé with his finger. “This is a birth certificate for the new Sue. If you could go back in time and pick a brand-new name for yourself and your ma and pa, what would that name be? Elizabeth St. John? Marilyn Conner-Bradley? Holly Woodandvine?”

“I can call myself something like that?”

“We’ll check with the union, but yes. Who do you want to be, titmouse?”

Sue held her tea. There was a name she’d once dreamed of having, in junior high school, when she sang in a folk group for her chapter of Young Life. Everyone was making up groovy names like Rainbow Spiritchaser. She came up with hers, imagining the name on the cover of her first LP.

“Joy Makepeace.” She said it out loud. Bobby’s face showed no reaction.

“Heap big trouble with that’um smoke signal,” he said, “unless you have some Native American DNA in the Gliebe bloodline.”

So it went as the afternoon wore on. Bobby came up with a constant stream of stage names, the best of which was Suzannah Woods, the worst being Cassandra O’Day. The Oreos had come back out and were now all eaten. Sue kept working the Joy angle. Joy Friendly. Joy Roarke. Joy Lovecraft.

“Joy Spilledmilk,” Bobby said.

Sue used the bathroom. Even Bob’s water closet was replete with estate-sale booty. She could not imagine why anyone would want a toy bowling set with Fred Flintstone tenpins, yet there they were.

When she came out, Bobby was holding a stack of vintage picture postcards from Paris. They had considered French names like Joan (of Arc), Yvette, Babette, and Bernadette, but none of those sang out.

“Hmm.” Bobby held one of the cards. He showed it to Sue. “The Rue Saint-Honoré. Pronounced ‘Honor-ray.’ That’s the masculine. The feminine has an extra e on the end and is pronounced the same. Honorée. Isn’t that lovely?”

“I’m not French.”

“We could try an Anglo-Saxon surname. Something simple, one syllable. Bates. Church. Smythe. Cooke.”

“None of those are good.” Sue flipped through the stack of old postcards—the Eiffel Tower. Notre Dame. Charles de Gaulle.

“Honorée Goode?” Bob repeated the name and liked the sound of it. “E’s on the ends of both.”

“They’d call me Honorée Goody Two-shoes.”

“No, they wouldn’t. Everyone pretends they speak French, mon petite teet-mouse. Honorée Goode is honestly good.” He reached over and pulled a black Princess-model phone off a bookshelf and dialed a number.

“I have a friend at Equity. They have a computer so no names get duplicated. Jane Fonda. Faye Dunaway. Raquel Welch. Taken!”

“Raquel Gliebe? My parents would have no problem with that.”

Bob was connected to his friend Mark. “Mark-y Mark-a-lot, Bob Roy. I know! It has? Not since she went out of town, on that cruise liner. It’s good money! Can you do me a little service? Check the database for a stage name. No, for one not taken. Last name Goode with an e on the end. First name Honorée.” He spelled it out. “With an accent or schwa or whatever on the first e. Sure, I’ll hold.”

“I don’t know, Bobby.” Sue was running the new name over and over again in her head.

“You can decide when you march into Equity with your first contract and a check for the dues. Then, you can be Sue Gliebe or Catwoman Zelkowitz. But I have to tell you…” Someone came on the phone, but it wasn’t Bob’s friend. “Yes, I am holding for Mark. Thank you.” He turned back to Sue. “I walked into that run-through of Brigadoon. Up there onstage was a girl playing Fiona who was going to have a career.”

Sue smiled and blushed. She was that Fiona. She had crushed that role, her first out of the chorus. Her Fiona had led to all the roles the ACLO had given her, had pushed her off to NYC, and had made her clean in Bob Roy’s kitchen tub.

“I loved that girl,” Bob said. “I loved that actress. She wasn’t some bitter leading lady pissed off that New York had had enough of her. Or a painted starlet doing Civic Light Opera because the distance and makeup hid the fact she was forty-three years old. That Fiona was no mutton. No, she was a local lamb, an Arizona gal who could hold the stage like a Barrymore, sing like Julie Andrews, with a set of boobs that set the boys a-flutter. If you had introduced yourself to me as Honorée Goode, I would have said, ‘Well, you certainly are!’ But no, you were Sue Gliebe. I thought, Sue Gliebe? That’s just not going to fly.”

Sue Gliebe felt warm inside. Bobby Roy was her biggest fan and she loved him. If he had been fifteen years younger, forty pounds lighter, and not a homosexual she would have spent the night in his bed. Maybe she would, regardless.

Mark came back on the phone. “Are you sure?” Bob asked. “That spelling, with the e? Okay. Thanks, Marco. I will. Thursday? Why not! Bye!” He hung up the phone, tapping it with his running fingers, and said, “Big decision time, titmouse.”

Sue leaned back in her overstuffed chair. The rain had stopped outside. Her skin had been dried by the terry cloth of the robe and she smelled of delicate rosewater from the bath soap. The big radio was softly playing an orchestration of a nightclub standard, and, for the first time ever, New York City seemed like the place Sue Gliebe belonged…