Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves(69)



She started, her surprise causing her to slam shut the cash register drawer. Her gaze took in the man – medium height, serious gray eyes, a short nose, and a mouth that wanted to smile.

Aye, nice looking he might be, but he was not Duke. Duke of the soulfully piercing blue eyes and a mouth that danced with humor at her wackiness . . . and suckled with such fervor at her pencil eraser-stubbed nipples.

Duke, with his seductive West Texas drawl that hid his speech impediment to all but her. Duke of the flexing biceps and washboard stomach and questing, then lingering, fingers that played her body far better than she ever had a guitar.

“Sorry tis I am, but I already have a date for tonight,” she told the male customer.

And it was true – her date that night was with other businessmen – in fedoras and homburgs.

For the Grand Ole Opry audition, she teamed her one good donated house dress, more of a funeral black, with Miriam’s genuine pearl necklace. In fact, Romy had worn the outfit to Arturo and Sally’s funerals. Since Romy could not afford rayons, she artfully drew a seam line up the center back of each of her legs with a Maybelline pencil.

With trepidation, she walked the five blocks to the War Memorial Auditorium, near Tennessee’s capitol. Looking somewhat like the Greek Parthenon, the auditorium was noted for its near perfect acoustics.

The three businessmen greeted her at the courtyard’s fountain and introduced themselves, but all she could think of was that these were the Three Wise Men, who were searching for a star.

Let it be me.

“Nothing to be nervous about, Miss Sonnenschein,” the elderly Stanley Davenport said, doffing his hat. “We’ve heard mighty good things about your talent, so we want to make this audition as pleasant for you as possible.”

The three gave her a tour, beginning with the 2,200-empty-seat auditorium and its intimidatingly large stage, then finishing with the control room that was banked by a bewildering array of audio equipment and a control board with more switches and dials than Duke’s Roper stove or Ford pickup.

Through the studio window, she peered down at the spot-lit stage. She might feel like a freak in circus sideshows on that stage, but, Jesus Jehoshaphat Christ, could it be any worse than being a Nazi specimen?

Aye. There were a lot of things worse. Like being unloved.

Still, she felt that old Gypsy’s surging impulse to go on the lam.





§ CHAPTER NINETEEN §




Finishing with “Lost in Your Smile”, Romy, costumed in Sally’s Charro outfit, rose from her stool before the WSM microphone stand and, guitar in hand, made a slight curtsey to deafening applause and standing ovation.

Offstage, behind the curtain, the insurance man Stanley Davenport nodded vigorously. The dapper gentleman was farfetched from the hillbilly image of the Grand Ole Opry. Some Opry backup singer had told her that dreams might come true onstage, but they were formulated behind the curtains by men like Stanley.

He was that fairy godfather, working behind the curtains. From frenzied last-minute rehearsals to makeup transformations to monitoring the Saturday night gate money, a lucrative .25 cents per person – and, importantly it would seem – to changing her Teutonic surname to its anglicized Sunshine, that was Stanley.

“Keep this up,” he told her, greeting her offstage with her guitar case, “and in a year you will be able to afford to move out of the Vauxhall into Belle Meade Plantation.”

Coming off her first month with the shindig was putting a little strut in her walk. However, by now she knew that the ultra-swank Bell Meade community would not be where she wanted to move should she even be able to afford such an upscale community. “Stanley, I was thinking of – ”

“Look at this,” he said, handing her a folded newspaper. He took her by the elbow and ushered her toward the dressing room shared by one and all. At the moment, it was blessedly empty. “’Fire-hose Intensity’ one reviewer said of your performance last week. And another, this one – well, read it for yourself.”

She set the guitar case on the sparkly green Formica counter, banked by mirrors. The smell of grease paint mixed in the small room with human sweat and dying bouquets.

She acted as if she were reading the column at which his finger tapped. Unprotected as she now was by either the National Youth Association or the American Jewish Joint Committee, she risked being deported back to Germany by the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization if, for nothing else, a failure in literacy requirement imposed for immigrant entry.

“There,” his finger tapped the page again, “where the reviewer says he was ‘. . . permanently transfigured by Sunshine’s distinctive singing style and idiosyncratic guitar accompaniment.’ And you are all the talk of radio. Nothing like you since Kate Smith.”

She set the newspaper alongside her guitar case. “Tis the radio I want to talk of, Stanley.”

“The Grand Ole Opry is getting the foremost air time – ”

“Nay, tis not that.” She spread wide her palms in supplication. “Stanley, I give it me all. These performances. But they strip me down to build up somebody I dunna know.” Her hands swiped at her rouged checks and lips, and reflected in the mirror she saw someone she did not recognize. “And the price of that. I canna retreat to me place, wherever ‘tis, to renew meself.”

He stared at her as if she had lost her mind. “You want to go back to cooking for a bunch of Texas ranch derelicts? Is that what you are telling me?”

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