The self-enchanted : Mae Murray : image of an era (1959)

But did she have? Jay had stalked off, angry again. He did not come by that night. His note arrived by messenger, waking her the next morning. Beloved girl . . . your marvelous mouth haunts me. And all that I hear from it is Victorian twaddle. I want to kiss you until you tremble. I want to draw my fingertips across the inner ivory surface of your thighs. In the name of the seven hundred bald-headed virgins, stop this weird game and marry me. How dare he write such nonsense. But it made her shiver. She prepared to be utterly aloof to Jay; but when he came backstage to rehearsal the next day, he was very proper, stopping to chat with Ziegfeld, paying his respects to Jenny, and treating her so courteously that she began to doubt his letter. Wait until he saw her in the Follies, he would know then what she was striving for, who she was. The one who knew without explanation was Rudy di Valentina. He picked her up many nights after rehearsals. Almost whenever Jay did not come, Rudy was waiting at the stage door to tuck her arm through his and lead her out into the warm night carnival of flashing signs and flashing people, outof-towners in light summer clothes, mingling with New Yorkers in the exciting kaleidoscope of Broadway. He'd find a restaurant with a Latin band ; they'd dance, they'd drink wine and eat omelets. Rudy didn't touch hard liquor, but he loved wine and he'd order the wines he'd drunk as a boy. At two o'clock or three, roaming the dark canyons of the city, they'd see the blank eyes of a million windows lighted by a shaft of moonlight. "I like this city," he'd say. "She has been sweet to me even when she punished me like a cross stepmother." Central Park slept. The sky which had seemed so close when Mae had fed the squirrels that morning, now was darkly lost. They could hear only the plumed trees sighing in the wind. They walked hand in hand along deserted paths. 34