“And they were quite right, too! And ... do they know that I’m going to top the bill at the Astrarium?” she asked.
“No, they think you’re in Spain or somewhere.”
“Somewhere!” said Lily to herself, with a thrill at her heart. “I’ll show them!”
She choked with joy at the idea of the startled look on the faces of Pa and Ma when they saw her on the aerobike. An exuberant gladness filled her heart. And that feverish work, those laborers everywhere, the opening in the roof, the terrace up above, those posters all over Paris and there, behind the iron door, in the dark, the bird! It was all for her: a theater for herself! And she felt a need to leap, to laugh, to spread gaiety all around her; and she rushed about madly with the Bambinis, romped with them behind the pillars, rolled with them on the floor of her dressing-room, became once again the Lily who had played truant all around the world, inventing practical jokes in India and climbing apple-trees in Honolulu. She crossed the combs and tooth-brushes on the Roofer girls’ tables, rushed into their room when they were undressed, drove the trembling herd of them distracted, talked of the thousand dangers that awaited them if they didn’t mend their ways, made them fly to their lucky charms to ward off ill-luck, when she offered them a yellow flower, with great pomp, or some broken glass in a jewel-box. Then she talked to the Three Graces, those big girls who always astonished her with their cloistered existence—Nunkie before everything—and who amused themselves by measuring one another round the biceps, round the chest, or else, with their elbows on the table, played at who should first bend back the other’s wrist. Lily sat down for a moment with them, then stopped, breathless with larking and talking, and went back to her dressing-room:
“I shall have months to spend in here!” she thought.
LILY’S GOLLYWOG
And, assisted by Glass-Eye, she pinned up bits of stuff, tied a silk bow to the back of the chair, put up nails for her costumes, laid out on her table long rows of post-cards, photographs of friends, all dispersed to the four quarters of the globe, some dead, others done for, all the poor witnesses of her life. Then she took her black gollywog from her trunk and kissed it passionately—“Darling! Darling! Darling!”—before hanging it up on the wall. And along the dressing-room passage and through the window came the sound of voices ... snatches of homesick tunes: From Rangoon to Mandalay or Way down upon the Suwanee River ... and “Hullo, Lily! Hullo, old boy!”... The female-impersonator walked into her room as though it were his own, sat down on the basket trunk, plunging his green eyes into hers.
And sometimes Jimmy passed, always at a run: something had gone wrong somewhere, the heating apparatus, the electric light....
“Hullo, Lily!” And he stopped for a moment, frowned at the sight of the impersonator. “Always busy?” he asked, seeing Lily, bare-armed, washing something in her basin.