Read Online City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert - Free Book Online

Herbert!” I would say.
    “The point is debatable,” he might respond.
    Or, on another day: “Goodmorning, Mr. Herbert!”
    “I will half allow it.”
    Or: “Good morning, Mr. Herbert!”
    “I fail to see your argument.”
    Or: “Good morning, Mr. Herbert!”
    “I find myself unequal to the occasion.”
    Or, my favorite ever: “Good morning, Mr. Herbert!”
    “Oh, you’re a satirist now, are you?”
    Another inhabitant of the third floor was a handsome young black man named Benjamin Wilson, who was the Lily’s songwriter,composer, and piano player. Benjamin was quiet and refined, and he always dressed in the most beautiful suits. He was usually to be found sitting at the grand piano, either riffing on some jaunty tune for an upcoming show, or playing jazz for his own entertainment. Sometimes he would play hymns, but only when he thought nobody was listening.
    Benjamin’s father was a respected minister up in Harlem,and his mother was the principal of a girls’ academy on 132nd Street. He was Harlem royalty, in other words. He had been groomed for the church, but was lured away from that vocation by the world of show business. His family didn’t want him around anymore, as he was now tainted with sin. This was a standard theme, I would learn, for many of the people who worked at the Lily Playhouse. Peg tookin a lot of refugees, in that respect.
    Not unlike Roland the dancer, Benjamin was far too talented to beworking for a cheap outlet like the Lily. But Peg gave him free room and board, and his duties were light, so he stuck around.
    There was one more person living at the Lily when I moved in, and I’ve saved her for last, because she was the most important to me.
    That person was Celia—the showgirl,my goddess.
    I had been told by Olive that Celia was lodging with us only temporarily—just until she got things “sorted out.” The reason Celia needed a place to stay was because she’d recently been evicted from the Rehearsal Club—a respectable and inexpensive hotel for women on West Fifty-third Street, where a good many Broadway dancers and actresses stayed back in the day. But Celia had losther place at the Rehearsal Club because she’d been caught with a man in her room. So Peg had offered Celia a room at the Lily as a stopgap measure.
    I got the sense that Olive disapproved of this offering—but then again, Olive mostly disapproved of everything that Peg offered to people for free. This wasn’t a palatial offering in any case. Celia’s little room down the hall was far more humblethan my fancy setup over in Uncle Billy’s never-used pied-à-terre. Celia’s bolt-hole wasn’t much more than a utility closet with a cot and a tiny bit of floor upon which to strew her clothing. The room had a window, but it faced a hot, stinking alley. Celia’s room didn’t have a carpet, she didn’t have a sink, she didn’t have a mirror, she didn’t have a closet, and she certainly didn’t have a large,handsome bed, like I had.
    All of this probably explains why Celia moved in with me my second night at the Lily. She did so without asking. There was no discussion about it whatsoever; it just happened—and at the most unexpected time, too. Somewhere in the dark hours between midnight and dawn on Day Two of my sojourn in New York City, Celia stumbled into mybedroom, woke me up with a hard bumpto the shoulder, and uttered one boozy word:
    “Scoot.”
    So I scooted. I moved over to the other side of the bed as she tumbled onto my mattress, commandeered my pillow, wrapped the entirety of my sheet around her beautiful form, and fell unconscious in a matter of moments.
    Well, this was exciting!
    This was so exciting, in fact, that I couldn’t fall back to sleep. I didn’t dare to move. For onething, I’d lost my pillow, and I was now pressed against the wall, so I was no longer comfortable. But the more serious issue here was this: what is protocol when a drunk and fully dressed showgirl has just collapsed