Odditorium: A Novel (3 page)

In November of 1946, under the name Flossie McCall, she was doing a specialty act at the Cathay Theatre in Brooklyn. To an uptempo arrangement of “You’re the Top,” she danced up a flight of steps, leaned over backward from the uppermost stair, picked up a glass of beer in her teeth and drank it down. One evening, after a particularly boffo Saturday matinee, a darkly handsome man came to her dressing room and presented his card. He had eyes like grommets.

“Pete Sparn, personal management. You got a great bit there, sugar.”

He took her out for oysters between shows. Dolly was so beguiled that she was unable to swallow her food. When, calling attention to the dessert cart, Sparn touched her bare arm, she felt the membrane surrounding her heart split down the middle, and then a great swelling in her chest, a torrential rush of blood.

So fierce was the heat and excitement within her that at the very next performance she lost her rhythm, plunged from the top of that stairway and broke her back. The doctors said Dolly would never dance again. Confined in a complex traction set-up, she lay in the hospital for weeks, alternately numb and delirious, sometimes afraid to sleep because of the wildly lascivious dreams that would descend on her, leaving her tangled in pulleys and straps, the bedsheets puddled with sweat.

When at least she was released, twenty pounds lighter and using a cane, Dolly had less than ten dollars in the bank and no prospects, but there in the lobby was Sparn with roses, a basket of fruit and the offer of a brand-new career as his personal secretary. The cane clattered to the floor as she grasped his camel’s-hair lapels and sobbed her gratitude.

Sparn paid for typing lessons and a fresh wardrobe (an unflattering selection in severe governess grays). He revamped her grooming habits and put her on a diet of steak and shellfish. He brought her bulging cartons of
Billboard
and
Variety
back issues, requiring a daily oral report on what she had read. He coached her in the proper way to behave on the telephone and how to deflect hustlers who came to the office.

“I promised I’d make you into something and I will,” he said.

Dolly proved herself an obedient subject, soaking up information like a sponge, memorizing in less than four days the name and hierarchical rank of every talent booker and summer stock producer in town. She grew into the job with astonishing rapidity, slithered through the office in her corrective shoes, the image of placid efficiency from a vocational slide show. Most of all she wanted to become “indispensable,” and after a while, largely unbeknownst to Sparn, she did. Dolly cast herself in “Man’s Favorite Secretary” as the sympathetic, symbiotic underling who could anticipate the thoughts and wishes of her Boss. But only up to a point, as it turned out.

On the very day when she had at last summoned the courage to invite him home for May wine and sauerbraten by candlelight, Sparn asked her to run down to the engraver’s to pick up his wedding invitations.

That night Dolly destroyed much of the contents of her apartment, and did not return to work until the following week. She did not attend the ceremony uniting Sparn and the 16-year-old daughter of Falco Andretti, importer of olive oil and ricotta cheese. She did not attend the elaborate reception held at the Ansonia Hotel with a thousand dollars’ worth of white chrysanthemums and entertainment by Red Kingston and his Mellow Fellows. She did not join the bon voyage party catching kisses and paper serpentines launched by Sparn and his bride, bound for a Havana honeymoon, from the railing of the S.S.
Paloma
.

Instead she raged and shivered and wept, living on doughnuts and coffee, sleeping on the linoleum floor of the office and often waking spattered with dried blood from having abused the flesh of her arms and legs during the night with a fountain pen, until that moment when her body became only a body, a pulpy, self-propelled machine, and she did not have to weep ever again.

Now as she stood quietly by his desk awaiting instructions, Dolly did not see a bloated old man, but the handsome Johnny who had come to her dressing room: that smoothly cast face, those black grommet eyes, the swaggering energy she had imagined taking physical form as a crown of cartoon lightbulbs on his head. So much time. So much time that had not passed.

“Think you can clear my calendar for this Friday? Time I sat in on a Cougarettes game.”

“I don’t see any problem. I always hold the fort for you.”

“You’re a gem, Dolly, a gem of the first water.”

The Cougarettes were in command, leading 4-0 after five innings; several at the far end of the batting order went into the stands to hawk candy bars and the souvenir illustrated programs, fifty cents a copy. Flora was on the cover—a grainy action photo taken when she still bleached her hair and wore it in a ponytail. Flora was on page one—a still grainier picture of her shaking hands with Hector Rosario, a welterweight from Miami, and under it some biographical highlights: 70 no-hitters, 23 perfect games, 4500 strikeouts, a lifetime E.R.A. of 1.12. The finishing touch was her unique accomplishment of last season, setting a man down on one pitch, a figure-eight windmill change-up he’d wiffed at three times.

Flora was also on deck. After replenishing her chaw (mentholated snuff inside a wad of bubble gum), she stepped to the plate and rocked a whistling liner into the gap in left center for an inside-the-park home run.

“That’s a Hall-of-Famer, folks. You’re looking at a Hall-of-Famer right there.” Rhythmic clapping from Coach Vinnie Sparn at his position behind the chicken wire screen. “Five up, let’s get some more…. Come on, Wanda, little bingle in there.”

Right next to Vinnie was a plastic trash barrel of iced beer, one dollar a can. Just another managerial task, keeping the crowd happy. He wore a sun helmet, and around his waist, a canvas apron with his initials on it. As Vinnie made change he looked nervously to his left where his father was sitting. Nodding excitedly to himself, Sparn calculated the biorhythm cycles of the Cougarette players on a specialized, mail-order slide rule, and made notes on a pad.

Dad just loves these unannounced visits, Vinnie thought. The bastard. Not much of a show; no wonder he isn’t paying attention.

How Vinnie dreaded the arrival of the old man. It always came at the wrong time. Not last night, when they’d been up against a decent factory team and had pulled in close to a grand, but today, on a crappy Little League field across from a laundromat against a squad of local “All Stars” (a disheveled group Vinnie had recruited in bars and union halls at ten bucks a man). The uniforms they wore came out of a cardboard box in the back of the Cougarettes’ bus and fit badly. The crowd was sparse and abusive.

Dad is going to shit a brick, Vinnie thought. I just know it.

Sparn was motioning him over with emphatic swoops of the hand. Vinnie tried to hide under the brim of the sun helmet, but it was too late.

“Good game, huh? A little dry, Dad? Want a brew?”

“How we doing on them? What kind of deal are you getting?”

Vinnie turned around to cheer through cupped hands. “Let’s bring another one home, Roxie. Show us some chili pepper up there.”

Sparn rapped him on the top of the helmet with his ball-point. “I’m talking to you, Vincent. What I called you over here for is I got to know how many posters you put up last night?”

“Well, see we’ve been running low on posters and I thought, you know, not to spread yourself too thin and all, so I …”

“You’re low on posters? So for Christ’s sake tell Dolly about it and we’ll get some more printed up. What the hell do you think I have you call in for every night, if not so we can stay on top of this thing? Do you read me? Let’s communicate, okay?”

“Right, Dad. I’ll let you know.”

“Great. Beautiful. Let’s stay in goddamn touch on this stuff.”

Vinnie kicked the dirt, but was inwardly relieved when Roxie Vasquez bounced into a double play to end the inning. Just one more to go, he thought, and we can get out of here.

The room Tildy and Roxie shared was the only one with operational hot water. It was filling up with funky, gritty bodies.

“You better watch your ass, girl.”

“Turn your fuckin’ face around.”

There was some scuffling going on in the shower line. After an eighty-mile bus ride, with windows open since the air conditioning was out, the Cougarettes’ collective mood was right nasty.

“How’d you like to eat this shampoo bottle, Wanda?”

Wrapped in a couple of towels, Tildy sat at the head end of the bed turning the pages of a newspaper. Roxie was cross-legged at the other end, searching for tunes on a transistor radio and wedging cotton between her toes before applying a fresh coat of nail polish.

“You just sitting there, Frenchie. You want to use my hairbrush or something?”

“I’d probably break it.” Tildy spoke without looking up from her paper. “Haven’t touched this hair in years. That’s the secret to these great curls.”

“You ought to brush once in a while.” Roxie shook her head. “You could get spiders living in there.”

According to the souvenir program, Roxie was a pearl diver from Corinto, Nicaragua. Actually she could not swim a stroke and came originally from Oakland. One night she had beaten Vinnie up outside a bowling alley and Pete Sparn, on one of his surprise visits at the time, had been so impressed that he fired his left fielder on the spot and gave Roxie the job.

“I can handle a bat, no problem,” Roxie said. “I used to be a bouncer at the Hoja Roja in Modesto.”

That’s-Mary, who was late for everything, came dancing through the door in slippers and a chenille robe. Beer from a paper cup sloshed on her hand as she shimmied to the back of the line.

“Gimme some more volume, Rox. I’m in a party state of mind.”

“When haven’t you been in a party state of mind?” Tildy asked. “You ought to retire from ball and move to Vegas.”

“Thinkin’ about it, thinkin’ about it … Come on, Roxie, make it loud … ‘Heart’s desire creates love desire, goin’ higher and higher….’ Woo, will you look at that. I just greased these hip joints this morning.” That’s-Mary slanted forward on the balls of her feet and shook her ass as if it was on fire. “I’m a tiptop bebop can’t-stop butt-monger.”

“All right, T.M. Get down with it,” somebody shouted from the front of the line.

“If you don’t watch that beer, Mary, I’ll be all over your butt like two miles of wet cement.”

That’s-Mary patted the wet spot on Wanda’s back. “No harm in a little beer. You’re headed for the shower, ain’t you? We’re all headed for the shower. Hell, we ought to bust on in there and have us a shower party, all of us together.”

“I ain’t into no freak scenes,” Wanda said flatly.

Up front, there was growing concern about the hot water supply. They were kicking on the door and yelling. Heidi, who was the youngest and so absorbed with hygiene that she changed panties after every meal, had been in the bathroom for almost ten minutes now.

“Open up, Heidi!”

“Give somebody else a chance, huh? You think we don’t sweat just like you?”

Tildy threw down her paper and stood up; the top towel came loose and her conoid breasts popped free, still wrinkled and pink from the steaming water. “Everybody’s welcome to shower in my room, but not with this mess going on. If you can’t cool down and stop acting like babies, I’m gonna throw everybody out.”

“That’s fine for you. You already had your shower.”

Vinnie, who had been lurking in the hall for some time hoping for a quick flash in the crowd of tit or bush, stepped inside rattling the keys that hung from his belt. “Let’s work it out, ladies. What’s the problem?”

Tildy made no effort to cover up. “The problem, Vinnie, is this dog-shit motel you booked us into. If we had more than one shower, there wouldn’t be a problem.”

Vinnie, who could not look at her, feigned interest in the swap-meet landscape painting on the wall. Autumn in Vermont, just like mother used to make.

“We’re working on it,” he said.

“Mm-hmm.” Tildy pulled a T-shirt over her head. “‘We’re working on it.’ You should have that tattooed across your chest.”

“Aww, don’t be so hard on Coach. His daddy’s been after him all day long as it is.” That’s-Mary, who had bobby-pinned the empty beer cup to her hair as a party hat, twirled over to Vinnie and threw her arm around him. “Let’s have some fun, Coach. Wanna play a game with me?”

Vinnie smiled up at her. She’s always so nice to me, he thought. No matter what. That’s Mary.

It was he who had given her the name. During their first season, Pete had arranged to lease the team bus for a nominal cost with the understanding that free parking-lot tours would be conducted at each game. Patrons were encouraged to avail themselves of a photo opportunity, posing with Flora and the others in front of the sparkling Scenicruiser. One afternoon, at a youth camp outside Cairo, Illinois, Vinnie was conducting an old bat and her three grandkids through the vehicle, demonstrating the multiple settings of the reclining seats, the individual ventilation controls. He was about to throw open the door of the heavily chromed, ultraviolet-flush restroom, when he noticed a figure slumped across the rear seats. After a bottle or two of Tokay and a veal parmesan po’boy, the then Mari-ellen LoPinto had crawled onto the bus, passed out and vomited all over herself while asleep. The bat reeled back, pressing a hanky to her face and shooing the kids down the aisle.

“Gee, I’m … uh, uh … that’s Mary,” Vinnie stammered in explanation.

Now, coming in to score, she would jump on the plate with both feet, spread her arms and shout, “That’s Mary!” Pete Sparn liked her grasp of show biz. He called her “That’s” for short.

“Wanna scrub my back, Coach?”

She stretched out this last word and Vinnie felt the warm, wet exhaust of her speech on his eyelids. Sweet Lord, did she really mean it? A genuine invitation? Could be, could be. The way her eyes went right to him and the skin went a little white at the crimped corners of her mouth. But not with all these others around. Impossible. They’d eat me alive.

For a few extra seconds Vinnie stood there just watching That’s-Mary breathe. Finally he said, “Really thanks, but I’ve got to go make some calls.”