Everybody Loves Somebody Read Online Free

room. The bird
     on Ruth’s finger flew in pursuit of its mate. One after the other, the finches escaped through the open window and disappeared
     into the dusky Brooklyn sky.
    Although Boylston Simms didn’t come right out and ask her to leave, Ruth figured she’d better find somewhere else to stay.
     She made her way to the station and boarded the train for Manhattan. It was dark by the time she arrived on the Upper West
     Side, where a friend of her cousin’s was supposed to be residing. But the friend had long since moved from the address. With
     nine dollars and sixty cents in her purse and her suitcase in hand, Ruth walked around the neighborhood until she found a
     vacancy in a boardinghouse on 103rd Street. She slept that night for a solid fourteen hours. She dreamed she ordered a pancake
     breakfast in a fancy hotel dining room and was served a platter of fried birds. She dreamed she had a newborn baby girl with
     a marvelous crop of silver hair.
    T HE NEXT DAY , she walked along the mall in Central Park. A man who introduced himself as Fitz Greene Halleck sat down beside her on a
     bench by the esplanade and offered to row her around in a party boat. She refused. He bought her an ice cream, which she accepted.
     After a long conversation he told her that he worked as a stage manager, and he asked her to audition for a musical. He wrote
     down the Lower East Side address where the auditions would be held the following Monday and then politely bade good-bye. She
     wondered if a man as easy to be rid of as Fitz Greene Halleck was really as untrustworthy as he seemed. She decided not to
     audition for Fitz Greene Halleck’s play but instead to investigate other theaters.
    On Monday she went through the
Variety
ads. On Tuesday she auditioned at the Princess Theater for a small show called
Nobody’s Perfect
. In this show, announced the director to the group of auditioners, imperfection would be a virtue. Ruth danced with a strong
     partner who led her easily through unfamiliar steps. Still, she must have distinguished herself as adequately imperfect, for
     she was given a chorus part in the show and was on salary by the following week.
    She lasted all the way to the first dress rehearsal, two months later. In the final weeks she became friendly with Sam Amwit,
     a song plugger from Harms Music who was helping the actors learn the tunes. He played his own tunes on the piano during a
     take-five, and everyone in the chorus thought his music was better than the music in the show. When the cast returned to continue
     rehearsing, Sam Amwit’s last song was still playing in Ruth’s mind, and when the chorus moved to the right, she moved to the
     left and tripped over another actress’s foot.
    Apparently, her stumble was only the most noticeable of many awkward moves—Ruth’s imperfection was of a different nature from
     the imperfections of the other cast members. The director let her continue with the rehearsal, but afterward he told her not
     to return. In a note she hastily scribbled, Ruth asked Sam to come see her soon and gave him her address. A few days later
     she received an apologetic letter from Sam explaining that he was engaged to a woman from Virginia.
    Nobody’s Perfect
flopped, Ruth was pleased to hear. She went to other auditions and eventually landed a part in a girl-and-music show at Margot’s,
     a cabaret on East Fifty-second Street. She danced in a chorus line for an entire month there. Certain male customers returned
     night after night to see certain dancers; claims were implicit, though relationships were usually limited to postperformance
     lap-sitting and a few shared drinks. Ruth sat on the lap of an older man named Wallace. She drank gin spritzes and taught
     him the songs Sam Amwit had taught her.
    Her brother Frank came to see one of her shows and waited around afterward to talk to her. Luckily, Wallace wasn’t in the
     audience that day. But Frank didn’t approve of either the show