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probably transparent, and he smelled worse than any given alleyway in the city. But he’d figured showbiz people would get up none too early. And with any luck they’d all smell just as bad and no one would be the wiser.
    The theaters and marquees loomed up ahead of him, then, and if his mother had been there he’d have said, “Look, see? All those people putting those shows on. They’re still getting paid, so why not me?”
    He sucked in a breath, puffed out his chest, and swung open the door to the 51 st Street Theatre, better known to Milo just then as the home of Jerome H. Remick and Company, Music Publishers.
    After getting directions from a bored and skeptical boy at the box office, Milo huffed up the stairs, as sweat tickled a line down his back, and the din of pianos and muffled singing grew louder in cadence with the crescendo of his thudding heart.
    Inside the lobby, a few people working in nearby half-glassed-in offices glanced up at him, but went back to their work, no doubt assessing he was no performer and therefore not worth knowing. Milo approached an office girl, a young woman tapping at a typewriter. “Miss? I’m here about a job.”
    “Mmm-hmmm,” she said, still typing.
    “Playing the piano?”
    “Yes, sir,” she answered, but hadn’t yet looked up at him, still typing. Finally she reached over and slapped the machine silly by way of slamming the carriage back. Milo jumped.
    She looked up at him and said, “So what is it you want to do here?”
    “Play the piano.”
    She moved her mouth around a little, and Milo realized she was trying not to laugh at him. She lowered her voice and leaned over her typewriter, and Milo noticed her bosom lightly depressed the keys. This tickled his funny bone somehow, so he bit his own lip to keep from laughing.
    “It’s called being a song plugger. You plug the songs for the acts. Sometimes here, sometimes around town. That’s what a piano player does here.”
    Milo would have proposed to her at that very moment. Having never been in love before, he assumed the torrent of gratitude was close enough. He cleared his throat and spoke with theatrical volume and diction. “Yes, of course, that is exactly what I meant. And whom do I see about such an important job?”
    She laughed at this. “I’ll check if Mr. McHenry will see you.”
    She leaned into an office doorway. Milo noticed several of the men stop their conversations or paper shuffling to watch the shape of her derriere as she bent slightly at the waist to talk to Mr. McHenry.
    She gestured lightly with her hand. “Go right in, Mr.…?”
    “Schwartz.”
    “Mr. Short.”
    Milo shrugged. Once he had the job, there would be plenty of time to get his name right.
    Mr. McHenry was a voluminous man melting behind a desk that seemed not large enough for him. He mopped his brow with a soaking handkerchief in a gesture that struck Milo as awfully optimistic. He jerked his thumb at the piano.
    “Let’s hear you.”
    Milo nodded, and rested his hat on an empty office chair, for lack of a better place. He settled onto the piano bench, sucked in a breath, closed his eyes, and let his hands do their thing.
    His fingers danced along like they didn’t belong to him, really. They just went right ahead and had a party, and this terrific song came out, and it felt like great good luck that one of his favorite songs to play, the one he’d probably learned earliest, thanks to his mother’s frequent requests for him to play it, happened to be authored by Irving Berlin himself, and surely that would impress Mr. McHenry. He was swinging back into the bouncy refrain when he heard, “Hey, pal, I said that’s enough!”
    Milo turned around on the piano bench. “Sorry?”
    “I’ve been hollering at you for eight bars. I said thanks, I got the picture.” McHenry heaved himself up by way of planting both massive palms on his desk, and stomped over with some papers. He slapped some music onto the piano. “That was