Miss Eckles was used to disappointment and spent a wonderful evening at home by herself playing at her upright piano from Etude without interruption from Miss Klemper and out-of-step brats.
Lucy was not to dance until eleven but by seven, bathed, her curls released from kid curlers knobbing her head, and having supped on cereal and milk, she was impatient to leave. Mae washed down a slice of bread and apple butter with a cup of tea, more nervous than Lucy.
Lucy wanted to put on her makeup at home. The girls at the Empire wore their makeup dashing out between acts for coffee. But Mae's timidity overruled Lucy who stormed how would anyone know she was a dancer, if she didn't have on makeup? Lucy had to carry her theatrical face in a heavy red metal box, an arsenal recommended by the druggist who supplied Empire showfolk. Sticks of greasepaint in varied blatant flesh tones, a box of thick clinging powder to mask her perfect skin, black mascara to bead her long caressing lashes, blue paint to bruise the tender lids of her enormous slanting eyes, black crayon to draw a frame above them, pasty Valentine red to cupid-bow her rose petal lips.
Young Aphrodite rising from the sea of childhood weighted with Max Factor cosmetics.
To keep it fresh and uncreased the sparkling costume was cradled in a sheet from their bed, with the stiff new pink ballet slippers and new pink tights.
The Bison Lodge was ten blocks from their roominghouse. They walked because they didn't have a single coin left for carfare. Through the violet evening Mae carried the ballooned sheet and her shabby black handbag wadded with a soft towel in lieu of money. Lucy swung the red makeup box and, rolled like a diploma, her music.
The evening star twinkled just in time for a wish as they reached the address. Up there, a passer-by directed, and they climbed to the second floor where the Bisons had their lodge above Sullivan's near-beer saloon and bowling alley.
Palpitating with anticipation, they stared disappointedly at the hall. Here was no gilded ballroom like the one into which Lucy had peeked at the Brown Palace. Opaque globes glared down at bilious green walls and the hardwood floor. A spittoon-studded necklace of folding chairs, with a battered upright piano as pendant, circled the
