The stage manager glared. “Well, well, well. If it isn’t Her Highness, come to grace us with her presence at last. You’re an hour late, Theta!”
“Keep your shirt on, Wally. I’m here.” Theta exchanged a furtive glance with Henry at the piano. He shook his head and she shrugged.
“She thinks she’s better than everybody else,” one of the chorines, a dim little witch named Daisy, griped.
Theta ignored her. She dropped her coat in the front row, doused her cigarette in the stage manager’s cup of coffee, and took her place onstage.
“One of these days, Theta,” he fumed. “You’re going to do something even Flo Ziegfeld won’t tolerate, and it will be my pleasure to toss you out on your—”
“You gonna beat your gums all day, or are we gonna work?” Theta snapped.
Theta executed her steps perfectly. She could do the number in her sleep. For good measure, though, she bumped into Daisy, just to rattle her. Daisy was sore because Theta had gotten a nice write-up in the papers for a number that was supposed to be Daisy’s. “That was my specialty dance,” Daisy had fumed in the dressing room the next night. “And you stole it out from under me.”
“I can’t steal what you don’t own,” Theta had said, and Daisy had hurled a pot of cold cream, missing Theta by a mile—her aim being as questionable as her dancing. As usual, Daisy had gone with her sob story to Flo, who had broken down and given her the spotlight for the Worship of Ba’al number that closed the show. Theta was tired of standing in somebody else’s shadow—especially when that somebody was half the performer Theta was.
They broke for five, and Theta sat on the piano bench next to Henry. “You look like you ran away from a prep school,” she teased. He was wearing a cardigan and a straw boater.
“It’s all about the style, darlin’.”
“We’re both bigger than this lousy show, Hen.”
Henry played softly, almost reflexively. He was always happiest with his fingers on the keys and some song pouring out of him. “Agreed, darlin’. But we still gotta pay rent.”
Theta adjusted the seam on her stockings so it ran straight. “How’d it go when you gave Flo your new tune?”