Show Business Is Murder Read Free

course at intermission, when we met for a shot-glass-size cardboard espresso, we said the line in unison and laughed. Next to us, the weird sister with the whitest hair turned to her companion and said, “I remember the war. I was in high school. We were supposed to knit socks for the soldiers.”
    â€œI knitted three pair,” the other said with pride. “My brother was a doughboy.”
    â€œI only finished one sock,” white hair admitted. “And then the war was over.”
    The little old man with the burgundy beret stepped into the room on light, dancer’s feet. When he saw me looking at him, he winked and did a little dance, humming “For Me and My Gal” under his breath.
    He did a nice soft shoe, his leather soles gliding across the floor, no taps, just thumps of emphasis with the heel. His lithe body was perfect for the moves and the twinkle in his eye told me he was enjoying the little burst of applause that greeted his impromptu performance.
    When he was finished, he bowed low and removed his beret. Long wisps of yellow-gray hair barely covered a scalp dotted with liver spots. He stepped to the counter next to me and ordered a double espresso.
    Blinking lights in the lobby signaled the end of intermission and the start of the second feature. We made our way back to our seats, but the conversation, and the old man, was not forgotten.
Birch, 1972
    GIRL CRAZY HAD maybe the dippiest plotline of any movie Birch Tate had ever seen. This playboy from the East, Mickey Rooney, gets sent to a Western college so he’ll shape up. Judy Garland works there because her grandfather owns the place or something, and she falls in love with Mickey even though he’s the biggest goofball on the planet. Mickey and Judy decide they need to put on a big show to make money for the college, only Mickey has no idea that Judy loves him, so he’s always making out with some blonde or other. It was really stupid, and Mickey Rooney struck her as a guy evenstraight girls would have a hard time finding sexy, but Judy Garland—well, Scotty was right. Judy was amazing.
    There was that incredible voice, for one thing, and the big brown eyes and the way her face changed to show exactly what she was thinking all the time. When she sang “They’re writing songs of love, but not for me,” Birch found tears on her cheeks. The plot, Mickey Rooney, none of it mattered when Judy sang. The song went clear out of the stupid movie and into a whole world of its own, a world of love and pain and compassion, a world of someone who’d longed for love and wondered if she’d ever find it.
    Birch knew that feeling. Back in her freshman year, she and her dad agreed that it was no big deal that nobody asked her to the school dance. She was only fourteen, and there was plenty of time to outgrow her tomboy stage. They both kept saying it as dance after dance came and went without anyone asking Birch (which was not her name back then but the name she took for herself when she realized she had to bend or she would break).
    The junior prom was the first one that hurt. Not only had nobody asked her, but the boys she asked turned her down flat. Boys she’d known for years, gone hiking with, played baseball with, told her they wanted to ask other girls instead of her.
    Then she took the dainty little watch with the real diamond chips her dad gave her for her sweet sixteen and exchanged it for a waterproof sports watch. For the first time in his life, Sam Tate allowed himself to say what Birch guessed he’d been thinking for a long time: Did she want everyone in Woodstock to think she was a lesbian, for God’s sake?
    She wasn’t exactly sure what a lesbian was, but she knew it wasn’t good and it meant no boys asked you to dances.
    Then she met Enid and the truth dawned. They were writing songs of love, but not for her, because nobody wrote songs of love for two girls.
    So that was why the