Chapter 16
Closing Night at the Copa, Part 2
As the Copa girls came out to warm up the audience with a dance routine, Nina settled herself into the totally unfamiliar territory of the Copa ringside table. Feeling self-conscious about her rather dowdy outfit, she prayed that the spotlight would not land on her. She edged away from the stage ever so slightly. What would Bobby think when he saw her sitting there?
Walter Winchell could see his guest’s discomfiture, and he strove mightily to make her feel at home. He ordered drinks for them, a Manhattan for the lady and his own statutory double scotch and soda. He applauded the dancers lavishly, called out his praise of them, and invited Nina to do the same. “Classiest show girls in town!” he proclaimed with an appreciative nod of the head towards the stage. Nina looked up in wonder at the sequined costumes with their low-cut necklines and abbreviated skirts revealing shapely legs wrapped in the finest silk stockings tapering down to dainty silver slippers held in place by straps covered in diamonds. The diamonds caught the light with each kick of the showgirls and dazzled Nina along with the rest of the audience. Her drink remained untouched before her, but she could not be untouched by the atmosphere of excitement and anticipation building up around her.
Before she knew it, the Copa girls danced off out of the spotlight, and Bobby was on the small stage, going right into Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, in his finger-snapping hipster guise. He was perfectly groomed. He looked so sophisticated in the gray Tux, holding his arms in a drooping pose over the audience, drawing them in with his song. Nina recognized this as a stance that Polly had taught to him, a lesson from the Vaudeville stage that no longer existed. Bobby did not strongly resemble Polly physically, but he had learned her mannerisms, and he brought them all onstage with him, invested with his own layer of cool over a barely suppressed sense of excitement. Nina was quickly swept up in the glamour of the act and the adoration of the audience for the headliner, who just happened to be a member of her own family. With the spotlight on Bobby, Nina happily settled down to watch the show.
In between songs, Nina turned her head to survey the Copa audience, who were as equally well groomed as Bobby and the band members on the stage. This was a time when people dressed to go out, made sure to look their best, just to sit in the dark in an audience. It was an important occasion, like going to church, or to testify in court. They were not merely spectators of the act at the Copa. From this vantage point, it occurred to Nina that Bobby’s performance would not be possible without the spark of electricity that passed between him and those seated at the tables.
The show was not simply a band, a headliner, and rows of anonymous people, it was a gathering of intimate friends who came together and lit up the night and made it special. It was a work of art that had a lifetime of a single evening, enjoyed, reveled in, and then it was gone, never to be repeated in exactly the same way again. Winchell was right, as he had written in his column, the audience did overflow into the saxophones and the violins, but Bobby Darin still made like a meteor, precisely because the audience was close enough for him to reach out and touch. When he looked over the tables, lowering his head and lifting his gaze to meet theirs, every person there knew that he was singing just to them, for them. In a space much larger than that afforded by the Copa, such a connection would simply be impossible. At various moments in the show, audience members turned to each other with shining eyes that proudly said, “I was at Bobby Darin’s opening at the Copa!” The night was not yet over, but they were already rehearsing the story they would tell about it in the years to come, to cement it in their memories.
If Bobby did see her seated with Winchell, he gave no indication of it. Of this Nina was glad, because any recognition of her from the stage would have sent her flying to the back of the room. Dick Behrke could not see her from his position leading the band until Darin’s first exit. There were two brief breaks in the show in which the band would play a musical bridge that gave Darin a respite from performing.. As the applause died down at the first break, Walter Winchell leaned over to her and said, “Nina, I’ve been reading the extraordinary story of your family in Bobby’s interviews. It must have been very tough for Polly, giving birth to Bobby after Sam was gone.”
Nina flushed slightly and moved her Manhattan around in front of her. She forced herself to meet Winchell’s gaze as she said, “Oh, it wasn’t like that at all, Walter. Bobby was a great gift to our mother. He was everything to her. You just can’t know.”
Walter nodded, “And now, he’s a gift to the whole world,” he said, indicating the stage before them.
Nina blinked rapidly in succession as she considered this. She said nothing, but she nodded in agreement. Soon Bobby was back out on the stage, singing to the audience, clowning for them, playing various instruments, and charming them all. He had the ability to relate to a roomful of strangers on an intimate level. They could not fail to respond to him. While the rest of the audience saw an amazingly mature performer in the young man on the stage, Nina saw a little boy of six, belting out Some of These Days in the manner of Sophie Tucker to the rest of his family. She would never be able to see him in any other way. The familiar lineup of tunes went by much too quickly. It was certainly a different show sitting down front! Nina would have to thank Walter Winchell for this treat.
After Darin sang the medley of By Myself and When Your Lover Has Gone, he left the stage for another moment. The audience, sensing that the end was near, was mostly silent as they awaited his return. Walter Winchell was more satisfied with this show after each viewing than he was with the last. Darin’s mastery of the material and of the physical space of the Copa was stunning to him. It was something he witnessed only rarely in his nightclub attendance. Now he came back to himself and remembered his companion of this magical evening. The person on the stage before them, Bobby Darin, was a character of fiction, a creature fashioned to deliver an unforgettable performance. Walden Robert Cassotto was the man behind Bobby Darin, and it was Walden Robert’s sister who was at his side tonight. He did not know when he might have another chance to talk to her about the mystery of Bobby’s birth. Now he knew he had better not waste any time in getting to the matter.
He leaned across the small table between them and said, “I was struck by something that Bobby has said in several interviews, Nina. He said that Sam Cassotto died five months before he was born.”
Nina drew herself up at attention. Winchell had not posed a question to her, so she made no reply. She looked at him and waited.
Finally, Walter said, “You know, I went looking for Sam’s obituary after reading that, and do you know what I found?”
Nina seemed frozen in her chair. At last she said, “No, what did you find?”
Walter slapped a hand on the table between them and said, “Nothing! No obit five months before Bobby’s birth, or seven months before, or six months before. Don’t you think that strange?”
Nina picked up her Manhattan and downed it at last. “Why, no, Walter, it’s not strange. We were a poor family back then, we couldn’t afford to announce Sam’s death in all the papers.” Why had she agreed to sit at this table, Nina now wondered.
“Do you know what’s even more strange?” Winchell asked, leaning a bit closer and speaking to her in a confidential tone. He had not known until this moment what he was going to say to Nina, but he knew instinctively when to press an advantage, and he certainly had it now.
Nina did not know, and she did not want to know, so she merely shook her head.
“I received a phone call from Bobby’s father this very morning.”
Now Nina let escape a nervous peal of laughter. “Well, then, Walter, you got a call from beyond the grave.” She began looking around for a way to get away escape this ringside seat and this terrible man, but all of the tables were pushed in too close to allow for an easy exit. She could not leave without attracting a great deal of attention, attention which she did not want.
Winchell continued to look searchingly at Nina with his cold blue eyes. “I assure you, this person was very much alive.”
Nina realized she could not now get away until the end of the show, and this had been Winchell’s intention all along. She looked him square in the eye, as there was no point in shrinking from what was to come. It had been looking for her for the past twenty-four years, and now it had found her. “I think,” she said, rallying her strength, “that somebody is pulling your leg!”
Winchell considered this. He said, “Very likely, Nina. The question is, who?”
Now Nina suppressed an urge to bolt from the table, to be gone, to any place but the Copa. Bobby was coming back out onto the stage.
Continued in the next chapter
© Copyright 2008 Gisele (UN: gisele at Writing.Com).
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