Marty Rubin

Marty Rubin is May Wynn’s agent and one of the few people able to connect her professional life with her private history with Willie Keith. His role is practical but consequential: he handles calls and schedules, watches over May’s working conditions, and eventually tells Willie where she is and what has happened since he left. Through Rubin, the reunion between Willie and May is shaped not as a private romantic encounter alone, but by the demands of a career and the complicated life May has built in his absence.

Identity and Work

Rubin works as an agent for performers, including May Wynn, and appears in the story through the everyday business of arranging access to her. When Willie calls, Rubin recognizes him at once and greets him with exuberant familiarity, asking where he is. That warm recognition establishes a relationship that predates this conversation; Rubin is not simply an unfamiliar professional dealing with May’s returning former lover.

His work is nevertheless visible in the details of May’s schedule. While she is trying to arrange an audition record, she explains that a radio-show recording must be made that day and that she has been taking remedies in an effort to get well enough to work. Rubin is involved in the conversation about when she can leave, and the proposed meeting with Willie must be fitted around her commitments. The reunion is therefore mediated from the beginning by the labor that supports May and by Rubin’s function as the person managing that labor.

Arranging Willie and May’s Reunion

When Willie reaches May by telephone, she is surprised by his return and initially struggles to find time to see him. Rubin’s presence in the conversation makes the scheduling difficulty concrete: May consults him about the recording and when she can get away, then offers a meeting at the Brill Building. Rubin’s professional business is part of the intimate scene, not an interruption that can simply be removed; Willie’s return must find a place within May’s working day.

At the studio, Rubin greets Willie in a green suit ill-suited to his yellowish complexion, his thick tinted glasses distorting his eyes. He shakes Willie’s hand and tells him that he looks marvelous. May is still at the microphone with two men in shirtsleeves as the musicians pack their instruments. When Rubin announces that Willie has arrived, May runs to him, puts an arm around his neck, and kisses him on the cheek. Rubin has helped bring them into the same room, but the encounter does not instantly give them privacy: May continues talking with him and the other men for several minutes while Willie waits in his heavy coat.

Rubin also gives Willie a practical reading of May’s condition. When Willie worries that she ought to be in bed, Rubin later explains that the show must go on and that customers pay the same for their beer whether or not May has a cold. After her performance, he kisses her cheek and tells Willie to get her to bed after the two o’clock show. The advice holds two realities together: May is run down, but earning a living depends on continuing to perform. Rubin’s concern does not erase the commercial pressure surrounding her; he speaks from within that pressure and still urges Willie to look after her.

May’s Circumstances and Rubin’s View

When Willie asks about May’s life, he learns that she is singing at a Fifty-second Street club and has only recently found this work after several weeks without a job. Her father has been ill for half a year, while her mother manages a fruit store that is earning nothing; May is supporting the family. She has taken a room in a downtown hotel because she fears that late subway journeys will make her ill. She is also attending school, though she cuts many classes and rejects the goal of academic distinction in favor of picking up information. Rubin’s professional connection gives him a place in the network surrounding this overextended life, while the facts Willie hears show how little room May has to put work aside.

That strain becomes especially plain during the later club visit. May has been subdued at dinner, yet returns to the stage half an hour later looking radiant and sings five numbers with undiminished energy. Rubin, who arrives midway through the act, explains her performance in terms of professionalism and the customers’ expectations. Willie stays for hours, talking with May or listening to her sing, while the crowded cellar grows stale and noisy. His response to the venue is severe: making a living in that atmosphere seems to him worse than the endless steaming aboard the Caine. Rubin’s brisk explanation and Willie’s dismay offer contrasting views of the same work: one treats it as a job that must be done, the other sees the cost of a life organized around it.

The Search for May After the War

After Willie returns from the war, Rubin again becomes the person who can make contact possible. Willie calls his office asking where May is, and Rubin says he has been waiting for him to appear for a couple of months. When Willie meets him, Rubin leads him away from the Brill Building toward a crowded hotel lobby, asking eager questions about kamikazes and minesweeping before Willie presses him to explain. Rubin then points out May’s listing and photograph on a large signboard. The reunion is once more routed through Rubin’s workplace and professional knowledge, but this time the information he provides carries a painful revelation.

The sign identifies May as Marie Minotti, billed as Broadway’s Beloved Bombshell, and shows her beside a saxophonist at a microphone. Willie asks why she changed her name. Rubin says she believed the old one had brought her no luck and explains that she has been involved with Walter Feather since about two weeks after Willie left. Willie reacts with sickness and stares at Feather’s picture. Rubin describes Feather as married and divorced twice, says he has tried to oppose the relationship, and acknowledges that May becomes angry with him over it. He also describes Feather as a successful musician with money and skill in attracting women, while presenting May as more innocent than her knowing public manner suggests.

Rubin’s account is not wholly detached. He says May continues to pay him his ten percent even though there is no written agreement and she does not have to; he knows Feather advised her to stop. He also admits to having argued with May over Willie’s letter and to having criticized Feather as a draft dodger, a remark she would not accept. Rubin apologizes for having intruded in Willie’s affairs, but he does not hide the fact that he has taken sides. His information gives Willie a clearer picture of May’s life while also making plain the limits of his influence: he has argued, advised, and tried to intervene, but May has chosen her own course.

Narrative Role

Across the two meetings, Rubin serves as both facilitator and witness. At the first reunion he helps fit Willie into May’s crowded workday and insists on the practical truth that a performer must keep working despite illness. Years later, he uses his knowledge of May’s professional whereabouts to lead Willie to her, then supplies the history that makes the encounter emotionally difficult. The repeated pattern is significant: Rubin can open a door, arrange a meeting, or convey information, but he cannot settle the relationship for the people involved. His candid, sometimes intrusive mediation brings the consequences of Willie’s absence into view without resolving what Willie and May will do about them.