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It wasn’t until the sixth ring—though who could say how many he’d slept through—that Lenny actually resolved to get out of bed and answer the phone.
“‘Lo?” he rasped, free hand already fumbling around for a pack of cigarettes. The kitchen table was empty except for the phone, but maybe the cupboards—? There were usually smokes within two feet of him, if he could just— Ah. There it was.
Lenny shut the fridge door to the words no man liked to hear: “I need a favor.”
“And I need to still be fucking asleep,” he quipped back. Huh, pretty good for a guy who was only barely conscious. Then, because curiosity killed the cat, and Lenny’d never been all that good at resisting a good near-death experience, he asked, “Who is this?”
“Susie. Myerson?” came the brusque response. Lenny blearily racked his brain. Did he know a Susie? He had to, right? He'd probably grown up with three or four of them. None that he could remember having his phone number, though. Before he could ask for more information or, easier, just hang up, she came back with: “You know, Midge’s manager.”
Well, Midge certainly rang a bell.
“Midge needs a favor?” He took a drag on his cigarette as he thought the prospect over. “Didn’t I just do her a favor?”
“Not this year,” Susie, Midge’s manager—he’d have to remember that if this was going to become a regular thing, doing favors for women he’d never so much as felt up—said, as if that explained everything. Maybe it did. The Gaslight gig was back in December, and it was, what? April now? He couldn't say for sure. Lenny was still feeling a little sloshed from last night, and even if he wasn’t, he was no authority on what did or didn’t make sense.
“Oh.” He rubbed his hand across his forehead and ignored the fact that he’d just sprinkled ash all over the floor. Someone would clean that up, probably. “What’s the favor?”
The pause on the other end of the line dragged out so long, Lenny half-wondered if he’d fallen back asleep. He was leaning up against the counter, his feet close to fucking freezing off against the cold floorboards, but he really was exhausted. Before he really could sink back under, standing up and frigid toes and all, he got his answer.
“It’ll be easier to explain it when you get here. You heard of the Bird’s Eye?”
He couldn’t quite believe he was going along with this, but nonetheless, Lenny replied, “Sure.”
“Good. Be there at eight sharp.”
Lenny squinted doubtfully at the sun slanting through the less-than-pristine windows. Couldn’t be more than eleven, now. He could get a bit more shuteye before worrying about a shower and a shave and the traffic between here and wherever the hell the Bird’s Eye was. Was that the club with the tragically watered-down booze or the one with the stage he’d nearly put a foot through? Ah, he’d figure it out.
“Yeah, okay,” he agreed, lugging the phone back to his bed so he could get back to sleep as soon as he hung up.
“Okay,” Susie replied, sounding almost distracted.
“Hey,” Lenny called before the line could disconnect. “How’d you get this number?”
A little huff of exasperation gusted into his ear. “Does it fucking matter? Be there at eight.”
The line went dead.
He stared at the receiver for a long moment before letting out a disbelieving bark of laughter. Setting it back in the cradle, he sank to the mattress and shook his head.
Well then. If he was going to be doing favors tonight, he really should get some beauty sleep.
Lenny strolled into the Bird’s Eye Club—one look at the chestnut paneling and gleaming chandelier, and he was sure this was not the place where he’d lost a shoe to shitty carpentry; then again, the sign for the Bird’s Eye Supper Club outside could’ve told him that—at 9:05 and headed straight to the bar. Not because he wanted a drink, though he did, but because he had a feeling he’d find the reason for this outing close to the liquor.
And would you look at that? There she was.
Midge, as usual, looked gorgeous. Gorgeous and about ready to climb out of her skin. Apparently, whatever had filled her empty rocks glass hadn't done its job. Her knee jittered up and down, making her voluminous black skirts flutter and bounce, never quite high enough to reveal her pale knees, but it wasn't as if he was complaining. She wasn’t quite sitting on her stool, more like leaning against it, though that didn’t stop Lenny from taking a seat beside her.
Her painted lips turned down even as he motioned to the bartender for a drink.
“You’re late,” she accused.
Lenny shrugged. “Would you believe that I—”
“You were supposed to be here five minutes ago,” Midge said, not even letting him get through the excuse he’d come up with on the cab ride over. He'd put a lot of thought into it, too. Not because he didn't want to face her disappointment, but just because it was a good exercise. Maybe it'd turn into a bit; he was always looking for new material.
His eyes narrowed. Didn’t her manager—?
Lenny was distracted from rifling through his hungover memories by a Tom Collins appearing in front of him. He knocked it back and immediately felt his teeth go numb.
Well. This definitely wasn’t the place with the watered down gin.
Biting back a hiss, Lenny turned to Midge. “So, what’m I doing here? Something about a favor?”
Her knee startled jiggling again, and Lenny just managed not to grab hold of it, make it settle. She pulled at the tips of her long, black gloves. For someone who let her neuroses out every time she got on stage, Midge looked awfully close to losing it.
She blew out a breath and started in on what she did best: talking.
Lenny only mostly followed the whole, sordid tale. If asked, he was pretty sure he couldn’t begin to replicate it. Probably there were too many details, to make for real coherence. Things about Paris and someone named Simone and something about not fucking a priest that Lenny couldn't quite fit into the narrative of what was happening tonight. Tonight was all about her brother and her brother’s high-strung—which, how this woman could accuse anyone of that with a straight face—wife and an anniversary party conflicting with one of the first non-Gaslight gigs Midge had booked in weeks.
It was the kind of shit Lenny couldn’t dream of making up on his own. And so god damn much funnier than it had any right to be. How Midge came up with this stuff on the spot, as easy as chatting over tea and tiny sandwiches without any crusts—that was the sort of thing women with her kind of money did, right?—he’d never know.
Knowing, though, would have to wait.
For now, Lenny just had to figure out what the hell he was doing here.
“So,” he drawled, taking a sip from the drink the bartender had so helpfully provided about halfway through Midge’s story to buy time. He still wasn’t sure he fully understood what was happening. “Your whole family is going to be here," he prodded the bartop, though he somehow doubted that Midge's family would be content to eat even the finest cuisine on stools, "but you need to be at some club across town.”
“Yes,” she agreed before her nose scrunched. “Well, some club four blocks away.”
“There’re comedy clubs above 86th?” Well above 86th if the money he’d had to shell out to his cabbie was any indicator.
Her lips quirked and her eyes slid slyly to the side, taking him in. “A few.”
Lenny turned this information over for a moment before asking, “They any good?”
“Well, it’s not the Copa,” she threw back, “but they hired me.”
“Eh.”
Midge let out a sharp bite of laughter, half-way offended. Her eyes sparked, taking on a challenging glint, which Lenny certainly did not enjoy, even if the reluctant twitch of his lips said otherwise. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Considering his options because his mouth, as usual, had run away from him, Lenny took another drink. Midge didn’t look fooled for one minute. She arched a brow, waiting for an answer, and he wasn’t sure he had a good one.
“C'mon,” he settled on, “you know how I feel about the Copa. It’s a hellhole.”
She rolled her eyes. “Once I play it, I’ll let you know if I agree.”
Lenny could only chuckle and tip his glass in her direction. “I wait with baited breath. Also for you to tell me what the hell I’m doing here.”
“Oh, right! I need you to—”
“Let me guess: vamp at this club of yours until you can come take the stage?”
Lenny liked to think that his powers of inference, even dulled by gin and pretty smiles, weren’t anything to scoff at. Usually, they weren't.
Right now, though, Midge literally scoffed at him.
“And let you take over my set?” she demanded. “Not a chance. No, I need you to create some kind of scene here so my parents decide to pack it in and take the party back to their apartment.”
“This is New York," Lenny pointed out. Midge might be Upper West Side through and through, but there were a few universal truths about New Yorkers. Short of someone pulling a gun or their pants down, most wouldn't even bat an eye. "You really think there’s some kind of scene that could make your parents ditch their nice dinner?”
“I’ve got faith in you.”
It was the gin that made his stomach warm and his lungs constrict. The thickness of his tongue could definitely be blamed on it, too. Naturally, Lenny slugged back the rest of his drink before nodding, his head already spinning.
“All right,” he said, “leave it to me.”
“That was way more than four blocks,” Lenny griped, collapsing into the booth beside the two toasting women. They hadn’t even bothered to get him his own glass.
He’d finally managed to escape the Bird’s Eye, having shoved the entire contents of his wallet into the hands of the irate maître d’ to secure his freedom. So maybe plying a couple likely candidates—after years working the club circuit, Lenny knew a belligerent drunk when he saw one—with booze and then playing them off one another when they inevitably stumbled up to the bar to thank him and angle for a refill, all in order to instigate a drunken fistfight was a bit of overkill. Still, it wasn’t as if anyone could deny it was effective.
The fight hadn’t even progressed beyond raised voices before the willowy, imperious woman who could only be Midge’s mother was shifting in annoyance, cutting her eyes towards her husband. The blonde—and yeah, okay, Lenny could definitely admit that she looked high-strung—flinched and then giggled, shrill and embarrassed, at the first flung curse. Just one shattered glass, and the entire family was out of their chairs, Midge mouthing a “Thank you!” over her shoulder as she ushered her nervy sister-in-law out the door.
Unfortunately, he hadn’t made so quick an exit, thus leading to his shakedown by a supper club where he was no longer welcome.
Even more unfortunately, he’d managed to miss most of Midge’s set.
He’d caught the tail end of her final punchline, the warm thank you she’d given the crowd, and the audience’s responding applause. It’d taken a while for Lenny to make his way through the press of people, only half listening to the guy who had the shit luck to follow the Mrs. Maisel.
Midge didn’t even bat an eyelash at his sudden appearance, just turned to the short woman sitting next to her, the one who must’ve called him this morning and set this whole endeavor in motion.
“Susie,” she exclaimed, clearly riding high from a good show and a responsive audience, “you didn’t give him the shortcut?”
Her manager threw her hands into the air, nearly knocking her hat from her head. “Excuse me for having other things on my mind! I had Zelda to bribe and an elevator to jam! You could’ve told him.”
“There was a shortcut?” Lenny blinked but wasn’t sure why he was even surprised. Of course there was a fucking shortcut, and of course these two had managed to find it.
“If you can call cutting through the restaurant's kitchen, down an alley, through an Italian family’s living room, and over a couple of roofs a shortcut,” Susie replied.
He would’ve laughed if it weren’t for Midge proclaiming, “I made it here in six minutes flat. In heels and without one run in my stockings. That’s a shortcut!”
“You made it here in six minutes because you completely ignored Nonna Farini shouting you down, didn’t you?”
Midge tried to defend herself, but Lenny could see that this Susie character was tough as nails. She wasn't gonna let her client think too highly of herself. It certainly was a novel approach for a manager. Then again, if his own acted more like a human, maybe Lenny wouldn't do his utmost to avoid spending any time with the man.
Leaning back into the booth, Lenny contented himself with just taking in their easy, occasionally biting, rapport. He didn't even bother trying to butt in. There was still gin swirling through his system, and sometimes their conversation—bickering, more like—drifted in and out of focus, but it didn't keep him from chuckling a time or two. Susie seemed startled every time, but Midge just grinned at him, warmer than the best crowd he'd ever played for.
He shook himself and focused on the cadence of their voices. Midge was detailing the dinner—what little they'd had of it; Lenny doubted they'd gotten much more than a bread basket at The Bird's Eye before fleeing the rabble—conversation as Susie coaxed out little details, heightening what could've been a mundane telling into the beginnings of comedic gold. These two could pull off a double act if the mood ever struck, though he somehow doubted Midge would much enjoy sharing her stage.
If anyone was ever made for the spotlight, Lenny had a feeling it was Midge Maisel.
He also had a feeling she’d be getting her fair share of it once the world wised up to her.
So, Lenny lounged in the well-padded booth—there was something to be said for these uptown clubs; his shoes didn’t stick to the floor and he’d bet the furniture was from this century—and soaked in the private, easy quibbling between client and manager.
In the meantime, the last comic had left the stage and most of the audience had cleared out. A few tables were still occupied, cigarette smoke swirling and ice cubes clinking, but Lenny didn’t miss the waitresses collecting empty glasses or the bartender wiping down the long bar.
Susie was the first to surface. She waved off Midge’s insistence that one of her bits should stay in the set as she scooted out of the booth. Once she was on her feet, she gave her leather jacket a tug, almost like she was testing the seams, and cut into her client’s impassioned defense of a joke about phone operators.
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” she said when Midge looked ready to dig her heels in. “For now, I gotta go make sure Jackie didn’t burn the Gaslight to the ground.”
Midge’s lips pursed, but she backed off. “All right. And don’t call me at work.”
“I’ll call you where I call you,” was Susie’s parting shot, leaving Midge and Lenny alone in the booth.
Three had been a bit of a squeeze, not that he had minded. Lenny couldn’t help but notice that Midge’s skirts—and her legs beneath them—had pressed up against him the entire time he sat beside her. Now with just the two of them, she didn’t bother to shift away. Her long, dark gloves lay on the table, leaving her pale arms in stark contrast to the dramatic black of her dress.
They sat quietly for seconds or minutes; Lenny couldn’t precisely say. He was too attuned to the rhythm of Midge’s breathing, the way her every inhale pressed her shoulder into his arm. Between his shirt and his jacket, there was no way he could feel her body heat, but he felt warm anyway.
Maybe he’d had a few too many drinks over at the Bird’s Eye...
Midge let out a quiet sigh, surveying the nearly empty club. “We should probably go.”
He didn’t argue.
In no time at all, they were out in the brisk spring air and walking further uptown. Midge didn’t protest when he fell into step beside her. He resisted the urge to play gentleman and kept his arm to himself, but she didn’t seem to mind that either.
Green grass was finally beginning to poke up around the neatly trimmed trees that lined the street—no scraggly blades struggled up between cracks in the concrete this far uptown. There was no chance at seeing the stars in the middle of Manhattan, but streetlights winked in the pools of melted snow and lit apartment windows glowed above their heads. A cool breeze kicked up, and rather than draw her coat tighter, Midge drifted closer to him.
Lenny was no poet, had never seen much point in it when he’d rather make people laugh than sigh. Still, something about this night, ridiculous as it had been, felt like it deserved poetry.
Before he could embarrass himself with some knock-off Keats, Midge spoke.
“Have I said thank you yet?”
“Funny enough,” he replied, “you haven’t.”
“Well, thank you," she said, as primly as if she didn't regularly get up on stage to talk about her tits and who her husband had most recently fucked. "It’s been such a headache hiding this all from Mama and Papa, I really appreciate you helping me out.”
Lenny didn’t like to second-guess her but— “If it’s a headache, then why not just tell them? Y’know, rip the blindfold off?”
She laughed, bright and somehow pitying all at once. “Because then I wouldn’t have a headache, I’d have a massacre.” Lenny’s eyebrows raised, which Midge caught as they passed under the glow of a streetlight. “Trust me,” she said, looking him straight in the eye and making him want to squirm and bask in the attention all at once. “You haven’t met my mother.”
No, he hadn’t. But maybe one day...
He shook the thought off. There was a lot of that going on tonight. “No,” Lenny said instead, “but I’ve heard plenty of your material on her. It’s almost like I know her.”
“Oh, God!” Midge groaned, pressing her fingertips daintily to her forehead. Anyone else would’ve buried her face in her hands, but between the satin gloves and her still perfectly powdered face, she resisted. “I don’t even want to imagine what she would do to me if she knew what I’ve been saying about her. If she didn’t keel over on the spot, that is.”
“Well then you better wait to tell her until after we’ve been formally introduced,” he drawled, trying not to worry about how casual he actually sounded. “I can’t imagine never meeting the woman responsible for you.”
Midge could have made a joke, said something about the parade of nannies he was sure she'd had. She didn't.
Her response, when it came, was soft, sincere. “Deal,” she said, darting a quick, almost shy look up at him. Lenny just smiled back and shoved his hands in his pockets before they could start straying anywhere they most certainly didn't belong.
The last few blocks passed in easy silence, which was so rarely the case in his life. Even if he didn't make his living from it, Lenny was a talker. There was no question that Midge was, too. They filled silences as naturally as they breathed. Hell, it was easier to breathe when he was talking.
He tried not to read too much into it that they handled the quiet just as well as the noise.
Finally, Midge cleared her throat, slowing to a halt. “This is me.”
Lenny took in the tall, pre-war building and added it to the list of pieces he was teasing out of Miriam Maisel. Maybe he'd get an idea of the whole picture one day soon.
“Thanks for walking me home,” she added, making no move to head inside.
He had no complaints on that front, though he wasn’t sure he could realistically continue to keep her out here if he couldn’t get his brain to string a few words together.
Which was why he opened his mouth and said the first thing that popped into his head.
“Y’know, if I’m gonna keep doing you favors…”
If Midge was affronted by the suggestion in his tone—which strayed too far away from tongue in cheek; more like tongue in mouth—she didn’t show it. Her lips quirked to the side, amusement making her dark eyes dance.
Her hand landed on his shoulder for balance as she stretched up, up, up until her lips connected with his cheek. She lingered a moment longer than he really deserved, but Lenny really wasn’t going to second-guess her here. Finally, she pulled away, the heels of her shoes dropping to the sidewalk with a distinct click. Feeling more dazed than a simple kiss to the cheek should warrant, Lenny watched her smile and move towards the door.
Over her shoulder, she tossed him a teasing, “You ever think of ways I can pay you back, you let me know,” just before disappearing inside.
Still enveloped in a cloud of her perfume, he watched through the glass doors as she made her way through the lobby and into the elevator. She said something to the attendant as she got on, chatting as she turned to face forward. There was no way she could see him in the gloom outside, but he still raised a hand in goodbye. Just before the elevator door slid shut, she grinned, a smile that felt like it was all for Lenny.
It probably wasn’t what she meant by paying him back, but for now, he couldn’t think of much he’d rather have.