City of Girls (24 page)

I didn’t like Shipwreck Kelly, either. I didn’t like his nickname, and I didn’t like his red, jowly cheeks. I didn’t like his boisterous teasing. He was the kind of man who slaps you on the back. I have never liked a backslapper.

I
really
didn’t like the fact that both Brenda and Shipwreck seemed
to know Celia and Arthur so well. By which I mean—they seemed to know Celia and Arthur in tandem. As though Celia and Arthur were a couple. This was immediately evidenced by Shipwreck hollering to the backseat of the car: “You kids wanna go to that place in Harlem again?”

“We don’t want to go to Harlem tonight,” said Celia. “It’s too cold.”

“Well, you know what they say about the month of March!”
said Arthur. “In like a lion, out like a lamp.”

Idiot.

I couldn’t help but notice that Arthur was in an awfully gladsome mood suddenly, with his arm securely around Celia.

Why did he have his arm securely around Celia?

What the hell was going on here?

“Let’s just go to the Street,” said Brenda. “I’m too cold to drive all the way to Harlem with the top down.”

She meant Fifty-second Street,
which everyone knew. Swing Street. Jazz Central.

“Jimmy Ryan’s or the Famous Door? Or the Spotlite?” asked Shipwreck.

“The Spotlite,” said Celia. “Louis Prima’s playing.”

And so it was decided. We drove that ridiculously expensive car a mere eleven blocks—which gave everyone in midtown enough time to see us and to spread the news that Brenda Frazier and Shipwreck Kelly were heading toward Fifty-second
Street in their convertible Packard, which meant that there were a number of photographers waiting to snap photos of us as soon as we stepped out onto the curb in front of the nightclub.

(That part, I must admit, I enjoyed.)

I was drunk in a matter of minutes. If you think waiters back then were quick to bring cocktails to girls like Celia and me, you should’ve seen how fast drinks landed in
front of the likes of Brenda Frazier.

I hadn’t eaten dinner, and I was emotional from my fight with Anthony. (In my mind, it was the worst conflagration of modern times, and I’d been all but undone by it.) The alcohol went right to my head. The band was clobbering away, loud and hard. By the time Louis Prima came over to pay his respects to our table, I was blotto. I couldn’t have cared less
about meeting Louis Prima.

“What’s going on between you and Arthur?” I asked Celia.

“Nothing that matters,” she said.

“Are you fooling around with him?”

She shrugged.

“Don’t you stonewall me, Celia!”

I watched her weigh her options, and then settle on the truth.

“Confidentially? Yeah. He’s a bum, but yeah.”

“But Celia, he’s
married
. He’s married to
Edna
.” I said this a little too loud,
and several people—who cared who?—turned to look at us.

“Let’s go outside and get some air, just me and you,” Celia said.

Moments later, we were standing in the frigid March wind. I didn’t have a coat. This was not a warm spring day, after all. I’d even been duped by the weather. I’d been duped by
everything
.

“But what about Edna?” I asked.

“What about her?”

“She loves him.”

“She loves young
bucks, anyhow. She always has one on the side. A new one for every play. That’s what he told me.”

Young bucks. Young bucks like Anthony.

Seeing my face, Celia said, “Think smart! You think that marriage of theirs is legit? You don’t think Edna is still in circulation? A big star like her, controlling all the money? Popular like she is? You think she sits around waiting for that hambone of hers
to come home? I should hardly think so! It’s not like she won the sweepstakes with that guy, anyway, cute as he is. So he doesn’t sit around waiting for her, either. They’re
continental,
Vivvie. That’s how everyone does it over there.”

“Over where?” I asked.

“Europe” was her full answer, as she vaguely waved toward a huge and distant place where all the rules were different.

I felt shocked
past all reason. For months, I had suffered from petty envy whenever Anthony flirted with the cute little dancers, but it had never occurred to me to be suspicious of Edna. Edna Parker Watson was my friend—and moreover, she was
old
. Why would she take my Anthony? Why would he take her? And what would happen now to my precious drumbeat of love? My mind bent in sickening twists of
hurt and worry.
How could I have been so far off the mark about Edna? And about Anthony? I’d never seen the faintest sign of it. And how had I not noticed that my friend was sleeping with Arthur Watson? Why hadn’t she told me earlier?

Then I had a flash of Peg and Olive dancing in the living room that night to “Stardust,” and remembered how shocked I’d been. What
else
did I not know? When would I stop being
surprised by people and their lust, and their sordid secrets?

Edna had called me an infant.

I felt like one.

“Ah, Vivvie, don’t be a goose,” Celia said when she saw my face. She pulled me into her long arms for a hug. Just when I was about to collapse into her bosom and unleash a river of fretful, drunken, pathetic tears, I heard a familiar and annoying voice at my side.

“I thought I’d pay
a call on you two,” said Arthur Watson. “If I’m going to squire two beauties like this around town, I can’t leave you unattended, now, can I?”

I started to pull away from Celia’s embrace, but Arthur said, “Say now, Vivian. No need to stop what you were doing just because I’m here.”

He put his arms around both of us at the same time. Now our embrace was completely contained within his. We were
tall women, but Arthur was a large and athletic man—and he easily got the two of us in quite a strong clasp. Celia laughed, and Arthur laughed, too.

“That’s better,” he murmured into my hair. “Isn’t that better?”

In point of fact, something about it
was
better.

A good deal better.

For one thing, it was warm in their arms. I’d been freezing out there, standing on Fifty-second Street in the
icy wind without a coat. The cold was pinching at my feet and hands. (Or maybe—poor me—all the blood had flowed to my lacerated, broken heart!) But now I was warm, or at least partially so. One side of me was pressed against
Arthur’s monumentally dense body, and the front of me was glued to Celia’s outrageously soft chest. My face was pressed into her familiar-smelling neck. I felt her move, as
she lifted her face to Arthur and began kissing him.

Once I realized that they were kissing, I made a tiny effort—merely out of propriety—to remove myself from their embrace. But only a tiny effort. It was awfully cozy in there, and they felt good.

“Vivvie is a sad little kitten tonight,” said Celia to Arthur, after they had kissed with considerable passion for a good long while, right in my
ear.

“Who’s a sad little kitten?” said Arthur. “This one?”

And then he kissed
me
—without letting go of either of us.

Now, this was a peculiar line of conduct.

I’d kissed Celia’s boyfriends before, but not with her face an inch away from mine. And this wasn’t just any random boyfriend—this was Arthur Watson, whom I rather detested. And whose wife I very much loved. But whose wife was right
now quite likely having sex with my boyfriend—and if Anthony were using his talented mouth right now, doing to
Edna
what he could do to me . . .

I couldn’t bear it.

I felt a sob rising in my throat. I pulled my mouth away from Arthur’s to catch my breath, and in the next instant, Celia’s lips were on mine.

“Now you’re getting the idea,” Arthur said.

In all my months of sensual adventures,
I’d never yet kissed a girl—nor had I thought to. You’d think by this point in my journey I would have stopped being so easily surprised by the twists and vagaries of life—but Celia’s kiss astonished me. Then it kept on astonishing me, as she dug in only deeper.

My first impression was that kissing Celia felt like such a frightful
extravagance
. There was so
much
to her. So much softness. So much
in
the way of lips. So much in the way of heat. Everything about her was pillowy and absorbing. Between Celia’s enormously soft mouth, and the abundance of her breasts, and the familiar flowery smell of her—I felt subsumed by it all. It was nothing like kissing a man—not even like kissing Anthony, who knew how to kiss with rare tenderness. Even the gentlest kiss from a man would be rough compared
to this experience with Celia’s lips. This was velvet quicksand. I could not pull myself away from
this
. Who in their right mind would want to?

For a dreamy thousand years or so, I stood there under that streetlamp, letting her kiss me, and kissing her back. Gazing into each other’s oh-so-beautiful and oh-so-similar eyes, kissing each other’s oh-so-lovely and oh-so-similar lips, Celia Ray and
I had finally reached the absolute zenith of our complete and mutual narcissism.

Then Arthur broke the trance.

“All right girls, I hate to interrupt, but it’s time for us to nip on out of here and head to a nice hotel I know,” he said.

He was grinning like a man who’d just won the trifecta, which I suppose he had done.

It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, Angela.

I know that this would be
a fantasy for many women—to find yourself in a big bed in a fancy hotel room with both a handsome man and a beautiful girl available for your enjoyment. But from a matter of sheer logistics, I quickly discovered that three people engaging in sexual exploits at the same time can be both a problematic and arduous situation. One never quite knows where to put one’s attention, you see. There are so many
limbs to organize! There can be a great deal of:
Oh, pardon me, I didn’t see you there.
And just when you’re getting settled into something nice, somebody new shows up to interrupt you. One also never quite knows when it is over. Just when you think you’re done
with your pleasure, you find that somebody out there isn’t yet done with
theirs,
and back you go, into the fray.

Then again, maybe this
triad would have been more satisfying if the man in question hadn’t been Arthur Watson. He was practiced and vigorous in the sport of copulation, to be sure, but he was exactly as off-putting in bed as he was in the world—and for the same reasons. He was always looking at or thinking about himself, which was irritating. My sense was that Arthur had a deep and penetrating appreciation for his own
physique, and thus he liked to arrange himself into tableaux that brought maximum attention to his own musculature and handsomeness. Never once did I get the feeling that he had stopped posing for us or admiring himself. (And imagine that ridiculousness, if you would! Imagine being in bed with the likes of Celia Ray and a twenty-year-old version of
me
—and not paying attention to anything but your
own body! What a dumb man!)

As for Celia, I didn’t know what to do with her. She was too much for me to manage—volcanic in her raptures, and labyrinthine in the secrets of her needs. She was forked lightning. I felt like I’d never met her before. Yes, I’d been sleeping and cuddling with Celia in the same bed for almost a year—but this was a very different kind of bed, and a very different kind
of Celia. This Celia was a country I’d never visited, a language I could not speak. I could not find my
friend
hidden anywhere in this dark stranger of a woman, whose eyes never opened, and whose body never stopped moving—driven, it seemed, by some ferocious sexual incubus that was equal parts fever and wrath.

In the midst of all this—in fact, right at the white-hot center of it—I had never felt
more lost or lonely.

I must say, Angela, that I had
almost
backed out of this arrangement at the door of the hotel room. Almost. But then I’d remembered the
promise I’d made to myself months ago—that I would never again excuse myself from participating in something dangerous that Celia Ray was doing.

If she were engaged in wildness, then I would be, too.

While this promise now seemed stale
and even confusing to me (so much had changed in the past few months, so why did it even matter to me anymore, to keep up with my friend’s exploits?), I stuck with my vow anyway. I hung right in there. With no small amount of irony, I can say: consider it an expression of my immature honor.

I probably had other motives, as well.

I could still feel Anthony shoving my hand away from his arm, and
saying that I wasn’t in charge of him. Calling me
sister,
in that contemptuous tone.

I could still hear Celia talking about Edna and Arthur’s marital arrangement—“They’re
continental,
Vivvie”—and looking at me as if I were the most naïve and pitiable creature she’d ever encountered in all her days.

I could still hear Edna’s voice, calling me an infant.

Who wants to be an infant?

So I proceeded.
I rooted about that bed from one corner of the mattress to another—trying to be continental, trying not to be an
infant
—digging and pawing at Arthur and Celia’s Olympian bodies for proof of something necessary about myself.

But all the while, somewhere in the only remaining corner of my brain that was not drunk or sorrowful or lusty or stupid, I perceived with unblurred clarity that this decision
was going to bring me nothing but grief.

And boy, was I right.

NINETEEN

What befell me next is quickly told.

Eventually our activities ended. Arthur and Celia and I immediately fell asleep—or passed out. Awhile later (I had lost track of time) I got up and put on my clothes. I left the two of them sleeping in the hotel room and ran the eleven blocks home, clutching at my shaking, underdressed body, trying and failing to stay warm despite the cruel March
wind.

It was well after midnight when I opened the door to the third floor of the Lily Playhouse and rushed in.

Instantly, I could see that something was wrong.

First of all, every light in the place was blazing.

Secondly, people were there—and they were all staring at me.

Olive and Peg and Billy were sitting in the living room, surrounded by a cumulus cloud of dense cigarette and pipe smoke.
With them was a man I didn’t recognize.

“There she is!” cried Olive, leaping up. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Peg. “It’s too late.” (This made no sense to me, but I didn’t pay the comment much mind. I could tell by her voice that Peg was very drunk, so I didn’t expect her to make sense. I was far more concerned about why Olive had been up waiting for me, and who was this
strange man?)

“Hello,” I said. (Because what else do you say? Always helpful to start with the preliminaries.)

“We have an emergency, Vivian,” Olive said.

I could tell by how calm Olive was that something truly terrible had happened. She only became hysterical over insignificant matters. Whenever she was this composed, it had to be a real crisis.

I could only assume that somebody had died.

My parents? My brother? Anthony?

I stood there on my shaky legs, reeking of sex, waiting for the bottom to fall out of my world—which it subsequently did, but not in the manner I was expecting.

“This is Stan Weinberg,” said Olive, introducing me to the stranger. “He’s an old friend of Peg’s.”

Nice girl that I was, I made a polite move to approach the gentleman and shake his hand. But Mr. Weinberg
blushed as he saw me nearing him, and turned his face away. His obvious discomfort at my presence stopped me in my tracks.

“Stan is an editor on the night desk at the
Mirror,
” Olive continued, in that same disconcertingly flat tone. “He came over a few hours ago with some bad news. Stan has offered us the courtesy of letting us know that Walter Winchell will be publishing an exposé tomorrow afternoon
in his column.”

She looked at me plainly, as though that should explain everything.

“An exposé about what?” I asked.

“About what happened this evening between you and Arthur and Celia.”

“But . . .” I stammered around a bit, and then said, “But what
did
happen?”

I promise you, Angela, I was not being coy. For a moment, I truly didn’t know what had happened. It was as though I had just shown
up on this scene—a stranger to myself, and a stranger to the story that was being told here. Who were these people, anyhow, that everyone was talking about? Arthur and Vivian and Celia? What did they have to do with me?

“Vivian, they’ve got photos.”

That sobered me up.

In a panic, I thought:
There was a photographer in the hotel room?!
But then I remembered the kisses that Celia and Arthur
and I had shared on Fifty-second Street. Right underneath the streetlamp. Beautifully lit. In full view of the tabloid photographers who had been crawling outside the Spotlite earlier this evening, waiting for glimpses of Brenda Frazier and Shipwreck Kelly.

We must have given them quite a show.

That’s when I saw the large manila folder in Mr. Weinberg’s lap. Presumably, it contained these photos.
Oh, God help me.

“We’ve been trying to figure out how to stop this from happening, Vivian,” said Olive.

“It can’t be stopped.” Billy spoke up for the first time—and proved by the slur in his voice that he, too, was drunk. “Edna is famous, and Arthur Watson is her husband. Which makes this
news,
girlie, fair and square. And what news it is! Here’s a man—a semistar, married to a real star—caught
kissing what looks like two showgirls outside a nightclub. Then we see this man—this semistar, married to a real star—checking into a hotel with not one, but
two
women not his wife. It’s
news,
baby. Nothing this juicy can be stopped. Winchell dines out on this kind of ruin. Christ, that Winchell is a
reptile
! I can’t bear him.
I’ve hated him since I knew him on the vaudeville circuit. I never
should’ve let him come see our show. Oh, poor Edna.”

Edna
. The sound of her name hurt me all the way down to my bowels.

“Does Edna know?” I asked.

“Yes, Vivian,” said Olive. “Edna knows. She was here when Stan arrived with the photos. She’s gone to bed now.”

I thought I might throw up. “And Anthony—?”

“He knows, too, Vivian. He’s gone home for the evening.”

Everyone knew. So there was no
hope of salvation in any direction.

Olive went on, “But Anthony and Edna are the least of your worries right now, if I may say. You have a far bigger problem to contend with, Vivian. Stan has told us that you’ve been identified.”

“Identified?”

“Yes, identified. They know who you are, at the newspaper. Somebody at the nightclub recognized you. This means that your name—your full name—will be
printed in Winchell’s column. My objective tonight is to stop that from happening.”

Desperately, I looked at Peg—for what, I could not have said. Maybe I wanted comfort or guidance from my aunt. But Peg was leaning back on the couch with her eyes closed. I wanted to go shake her, and beg her to take care of me, to save me.

“Can’t be stopped,” Peg slurred again.

Stan Weinberg nodded in agreement
solemnly. He didn’t look up from his hands, which were clasped over the hideously innocuous manila folder. He looked like a man who operated a funeral parlor, trying to keep his dignity and reserve as he was surrounded by a collapsing, grieving family.

“We can’t stop Winchell from reporting on Arthur’s dalliance, no,” said Olive. “And of course he will gossip about Edna, because she’s a
star.
But Vivian is your
niece,
Peg. We cannot allow her name to be in the papers in a scandal like this. Her name is not necessary to the story. It would be ruinous for the poor girl’s life. If you would just call your people at the studio, Billy, and ask them to intervene . . .”

“I’ve told you ten times already that the studio can’t do anything about this,” Billy said. “First of all, this is New
York gossip, not Hollywood gossip. They don’t have that kind of clout over here. And even if they
could
fix it, I can’t play that card. Who do you want me to call? Zanuck himself? Wake him up at this hour, and say, ‘Hey, Darryl—can you get my wife’s niece out of trouble?’ I might need a favor of my own from Zanuck someday. So, no, I’ve got no pull here. Stop being such a mother hen, Olive. Let
the chips fall. It’ll be ugly for a few weeks, but it will pass. It always does. Everyone will survive it. Just a little squib in the papers. What do you care?”

“I’ll fix things, I promise,” I said, like an idiot.

“Can’t be fixed,” said Billy. “And maybe for now you should keep your mouth shut. You’ve done enough damage for one night, girlie.”

“Peg,” said Olive, walking over to the couch to
shake my aunt awake. “
Think
. You must have an idea. You know people.”

But Peg just repeated, “Can’t be stopped.”

I found my way to a chair and sat down. I had done something very bad, and tomorrow it would be splashed across the gossip pages, and it could not be stopped. My family would know. My brother would know. Everyone I’d grown up with and gone to school with would know. All of New York
City would know.

As Olive had said: my life would be ruined.

I hadn’t tended to my life very carefully thus far, to be sure, but I still cared about it enough that I didn’t want it
ruined
. No matter how recklessly I’d been behaving for the past year, I guess I’d always had a distant thought that someday I would probably clean myself up and become respectable again (that my “breeding” would kick
in, as my
brother had said). But this level of scandal, with this level of publicity, would preclude respectability forever.

And then there was Edna.
She already knew.
Here came another wave of nausea.

“How did Edna take it?” I dared to ask, in a hazardously shaky voice.

Olive looked at me with something like pity, but did not answer.

“How do you think she took it?” said Billy, who was not
so pitying. “That woman’s tough as nails, but her heart is constructed of the more typically flimsy composite materials—so, yeah, she’s pretty broken up about it, Vivian. If it had been just one bimbo chomping at her husband’s face, she might have been able to handle it—but two? And one of those girls was
you
? So what do you think, Vivian? How do you
think
she feels?”

I put my hands over my face.

The best thing for me to do right now, I thought, would be to never have been born.

“You’re taking an awfully self-righteous position on this, William,” I heard Olive say in a low, warning voice. “For a man with your particular history.”

“Christ, how I hate that Winchell.” Billy ignored Olive’s comment. “And he hates me just as much. I think he would light a match to me if he thought he could
get insurance money for it.”

“Just call the studio, Billy,” Olive pleaded again. “Just call them and ask them to intervene. They can do anything.”

“No the studio
can’t
do anything, Olive,” said Billy. “Not with something as red hot as this. This is 1941, not 1931. Nobody has that kind of weight anymore. Winchell’s got more power than the goddamn president. You and I can fight about this till
next Christmas, but the answer will always be the same—I can’t do anything to help, and the studio can’t do anything to help, either.”

“Can’t be stopped,” said Peg again, and sighed—a deep, sickly sigh.

I rocked in the chair with my eyes closed, nauseated by self-disgust and alcohol.

Minutes passed, I guess. They always do.

When next I looked up, Olive was coming back into the room wearing
her coat and hat and carrying her purse. I suppose she’d stepped out for a moment, but I hadn’t taken notice. Stan Weinberg had gone, leaving his horrible news behind like a stench. Peg was still slumped on the couch with her head knocked back against the upholstery, muttering something insensible every once in a while.

“Vivian,” said Olive, “I need you to go change into something more modest.
Do it quickly, please. Put on one of those flowery dresses you brought with you from Clinton. And get yourself a coat and a hat. It’s cold out there. We’re going out. I don’t know when we’ll be back.”

“We’re going
out
?”
Christ, would this night of horrors never end?

“We’re going to the Stork Club. I’m going to find Walter Winchell and talk to him about this myself.”

Billy laughed. “Olive’s
going to the Stork Club! To demand an audience with the great Winchell! Ain’t that a tickle! I didn’t know you’d ever
heard
of the Stork Club, Olive! I would’ve guessed you thought it was a maternity ward!”

Olive ignored this, other than to say, “Don’t let Peg drink any more tonight, Billy, please. We will need her clearheadedness to help us manage all this mess, just as soon as we can get her
back to her senses.”

“She
can’t
drink any more,” exclaimed Billy, waving to his wife’s prostrate form. “Look at her!”

“Vivian, hurry,” said Olive. “Go get ready. Remember—you are a modest girl, so dress like one. And tidy up your hair while you’re in there. Take off some of that makeup, too. Clean up as best you can.
And wash your hands with a generous amount of soap. You smell like a brothel,
and that won’t do.”

It’s incredible to me, Angela, to realize that so many people these days have forgotten Walter Winchell’s name. He was once the most powerful man in American media, and that made him one of the most powerful men in the world. He wrote about the rich and famous, to be sure, but he was just as rich and famous as they were. (More, in most cases.) He was loved by his audience
and feared by his prey. He built up and tore down other people’s reputations at will—like a kid toying about with sandcastles. Some even claimed that Winchell was the reason FDR got reelected—because Winchell (who was passionate about America joining the war and defeating Hitler) outright commanded his followers to vote for Roosevelt. And millions obeyed.

Winchell had been famous for a long time
by doing nothing more than selling dirt on people, and for being a pretty snappy writer. My grandmother and I used to read his columns together, of course. We hung on his every word. He knew everything about everyone. He had tentacles everywhere.

Back in 1941, the Stork Club was essentially Winchell’s office. The whole world knew this. I certainly knew it because I’d seen him there dozens of
times when I was out on the town with Celia. I would see him holding court from the throne that was always reserved for him: Table 50. He could be found there every night between 11:00
P.M.
and 5:00
A.M.
This is where he did his dirty work. This is where the denizens of his kingdom would come slithering forth like Kublai Khan’s ambassadors, from every corner of the empire—to ask for favors, or
to bring him the gossip he needed to feed the monstrous belly of his newspaper column.

Winchell liked to be around pretty showgirls (who doesn’t?), so
Celia had sat at his table a few times. He knew her by name. They danced together often—I’d seen it. (No matter what else Billy said about him, the man was a good dancer.) But despite all the nights I’d been at the Stork, I’d never dared to go
sit at Winchell’s table myself. For one thing, I wasn’t a showgirl, an actress, or an heiress, so I wouldn’t have been of interest to him. For another thing, the man scared me to death—and I didn’t even have a reason back then to be scared of him.