The Fame Game (10 page)

Now Dick was her only friend. She saw him every other night, and she never asked him what he did when he was not with her. She thought he might be working, or more likely with other girls, but she also knew enough not to ask any questions. He always asked her what she did, and she told him truthfully that she read, studied her new lyrics, and went to bed early.

She had no interest in looking for other men. Now that she had her own room, Hatcher Wilson really thought he was going to get in at last, but she kept telling him no, and she told him not to waste his money taking her out to dinner because she didn’t want to be his girl friend. Once in a while she had a Coke with him in the hotel bar, always a Coke and always just one, so he wouldn’t have to spend much money, and only because she wanted the girls to see her with him and forget about Dick Devere. But even that plan backfired, because by now Hatcher had balled each one of the other girls, and they were jealous because he still liked Silky the best.

She wished she could like him more. He was a good-looking boy and dressed well, and he was talented in her field so they should have a lot in common. But he had nothing to talk about. He kidded around, and flattered her, and bragged, and they talked about their work, but she might have been anybody. Hatcher had never read a book in his life and didn’t intend to. He thought women were to look at, and show off with him when he went places, and something to screw, but that was all. His aspirations were something he shared with his buddies in his own group; the guys, the boys, the gang; and he felt it was somehow unmasculine to share these feelings with Silky. The more she saw Hatcher, the more she missed Dick.

She was becoming dependent on Dick for everything. He advised her how to dress, corrected her grammar, enlarged her vocabulary; but always in a very nice, constructive way—nothing at all like the way Mr. Libra did it. She told Dick she was Pygmalion, and he answered that Pygmalion was the sculptor, not the woman he created, just as Frankenstein was the doctor, not the monster. He’d do that: answer with logic or a correction, but never a real answer.

Silky and the Satins had professional photos taken for publicity, and Silky gave one to Dick. She bought a real silver frame and put the picture in it, figuring even if he didn’t think the picture was much at least the frame was worth something. But whenever she went to his apartment she saw her photo there on his dresser. It made her feel wonderful. She asked him for a photo of himself, but he said he never had owned one.

Sometimes they went out, but more often she went over to his apartment after rehearsals and cooked something. She was a fair cook, but he was teaching her that, too. She figured she’d be a great wife someday, after Dick got through improving her, but she didn’t want to think about that because she knew that as long as he was alive she’d never marry anybody. She didn’t have to bring up the subject; she just knew he would never marry her. She wanted badly to be married before she was dead, because she’d grown up around so many people who’d had children and never married the man that she was determined it would never happen to her. She went to a doctor and got birth-control pills. She was glad her mother was dead and didn’t know that she’d ended up going around with a man who would never marry her, but at least she knew her mother would be glad to know there wouldn’t be any grandchildren who knew they only belonged to their mother.

They went off on tour then, and did some clubs, and Silky always telephoned Dick after the last show was over, at about two thirty in the morning, and of course sometimes he wasn’t there and sometimes he was but she didn’t know for sure if he was alone. She knew men were like that, and she knew you could never mention it or there would be a big fight and the woman always lost. She never mentioned him to the girls and they never mentioned him again either, except that if ever a rich-looking white guy from the audience would come backstage after the show they would give Silky mean looks as if she was going to grab him. She was so busy worrying about remembering everything in the act, the jokes, the bits of business, and all the new lyrics, and worrying about not losing her voice from the strain of doing all those shows, that it gave her something to think about and kept her from caring what the girls did to her. She had her own room on the road, too, and she usually did her make-up upstairs in the room so she wouldn’t have to spend much time with them in the dressing room. The people who came backstage from the audience always flipped over her and wanted her autograph, but usually if they were guys they ended up liking the other girls just as much as they liked her because the other girls were friendlier.

In small towns people recognized them on the street, and asked them for their autographs, and all the girls had taken to wearing their stage make-up and false eyelashes and wigs when they were offstage too, to keep up their image. Silky was just as aware of that as the other girls were, and she always wore big dark glasses in the morning if she had to go out to eat and didn’t have her eye makeup on.

Without Mr. Libra to supervise them every minute, the other girls were gaining weight. Mr. Libra flew to whatever club they were at to be at their opening and supervise them, and he’d hired the twins’ older sister Ardra to be their chaperone, but Ardra didn’t do much except stay with them and enjoy all the attention they were getting, and Mr. Libra had other clients to attend to in New York, so the girls were pretty much independent. After a few clubs all the girls had to have their costumes let out, except for Silky. Mr. Libra discovered that, and he blew the roof off.

“I’m not spending money on four ugly sows,” he screamed. “You see this? This is a list. I want you to write down every single thing you eat and drink, and give me the lists every time I see you. If you lose your looks, you’re going right back to that slum I picked you out of, and I’m going to get four other girls who look just like you and call
them
the Satins. You think you can’t be replaced? You can be replaced in one minute. One minute! There are hundreds of little black slum bunnies just waiting for me to give them a chance to be the Satins. There are plenty of girls who can go ‘Ooh, ooh, ooh’ just like you’re doing now. Just
watch it
.”

He didn’t say a word about replacing Silky, and it was so obvious that she was afraid they might take all their anger for Mr. Libra out on her when he was gone; but he had really scared them by yelling at them and when he got finished all the girls were crying and they didn’t look at Silky at all. She thought Mr. Libra had really gone too far. You couldn’t expect people to work and do their best when you told them they were worthless. The girls had feelings, too. Silky was really mad at him. She still liked the girls, and she hated Mr. Libra.

“He has no right to talk like that,” she told the girls when Mr. Libra had left. “He’s the rottenest man in the world. Who does he think he is, Hitler?”

“Hitler? Hitler?” Honey said. “Who the fuck is Hitler? Somebody from one of your books?”

“What did you do, sleep through school?” Silky said. “Hitler was this white cat who went around killing children. He killed only about eight million people, is all. Mostly Jewish people.”

“What the fuck has Jews got to do with them?” asked Ardra, who didn’t like Silky any more either.

“He killed them because they were a minority and he hated them,” Silky said.

“Yeah?” said Tamara. “When was this?”

“Before we were born,” said Silky.

“Yeah? Where did he live?”

“In Germany.”

“Well, no wonder I never heard of him,” said Honey.

“What was his name again?” Tamara asked.

“Hitler.”

“Oh, yeah …” Beryl said. “I remember him. We had him in history class.”

So they began calling Libra Hitler, and it made them feel a little better.

They came back to New York to do the Let It All Hang Out Show, and Silky resumed with Dick. Then Dick was going to direct the Asthma Relief Telethon, and the girls would be on that. At the telethon Hitler-Libra introduced them to his new secretary, Gerry Thompson.

Gerry was a really classy-looking girl, with straight red hair. She knew how to dress, too, Silky noticed at once. And she was pretty, and probably smart. Dick seemed to like her immediately.

The minute Silky saw Dick looking at Gerry she got really sick to her stomach. It was one thing to imagine all the girls he took to his apartment at night when she wasn’t there, but it was another thing to see him in action. She thought she was going to choke. This Gerry was probably the kind of white girl he liked to date, and she was going to be trouble. The worst of it was she was nice, and not a bitch at all. It was obvious that Gerry didn’t dislike him but she wanted to get rid of him because she knew he belonged to Silky. There had been a sort of understanding between the two girls immediately: Silky knew Gerry liked her, and she felt friendly toward Gerry. It wasn’t Gerry’s fault that Dick liked her—she was just the kind of girl he would like—and that made it almost worse. It was as if Silky was powerless to change anything.

But Silky knew one thing: she’d been fighting for her life as long as she could remember, and she wasn’t going to give up now. This Gerry looked soft, like a girl who’d always had things her own way and never had to fight for anything. Silky could teach her a thing or two about fighting. She wasn’t going to let Dick just drift away. She was going to make it her business to really make friends with Gerry, so the girl would feel too guilty to let Dick get anywhere. And she was going to be so sweet and cool around the house and so much a woman in bed that Gerry wouldn’t stand a chance. Dick was her whole life. What would Gerry know about a man who was a woman’s whole life? It was just sickening to think that this pretty, classy-looking girl who’d always had everything could just walk in and take away the one thing that meant everything to her, a girl who’d never had anything at all before. Silky knew one thing: if Gerry thought Dick was going to be just another romance she was going to have to put up a hell of a fight.

CHAPTER THREE

The morning after the telethon
Time
Magazine came out, and there was great jubilation in the Libra office because Franco, the dress designer who was one of Libra’s clients, was in it. His new collection had just been shown, and the highlight of the collection was the bride’s dress which customarily closed every designer’s showing—but Franco’s bride’s dress was called “The Empress’s New Clothes” and was a mini-tent made completely of transparent vinyl, worn with nothing whatsoever underneath it but body make-up and a G-string covered with stephanotis like a bride’s bouquet. There was a photo in
Time
of Franco with the naked bride, and a caption which said: “Nobody tells the Empress.”

“How do you like the
bird’s
bouquet?” Libra asked Gerry, laughing at his own joke. “A bouquet on the bush is worth two in the hand. Jesus, I wonder what Ingrid puts in those shots.” He placed the issue of
Time
in the place of honor on the coffee table. “Franco should be here any minute and you’ll meet him. Damn jerk’s real name is Alvin. He calls himself Franco because he doesn’t know it’s the name of a Spanish dictator.”

Lizzie came out of the bedroom wearing beige wool overalls with wide Mickey Mouse suspenders which attached with oversized pearl buttons above the bosom. Her hair was in the two ponytails and she was wearing her horn-rimmed glasses. She helped herself to a cup of coffee from the breakfast display which Gerry had learned was to be a permanent feature every morning. “Franco made these for me,” Lizzie told her. “How do you like them?”

“They’re darling,” Gerry said. She did not add that they would be more darling on a four-year-old.

“I think we should give him a party,” Lizzie said to Libra.

“Who’s going to pay for it—you?” he said.

“I’ll pay for it,” Lizzie said. “From our joint account.”

“The B.P.’s are already giving him a party,” Libra said. “Let them pay for it. You can go free.”

“I certainly will,” Lizzie said, and went over to the appointment book on the desk to check.

The doorbell rang. Gerry opened the door. It was Elaine Fellin, in her fox, wearing a pair of very dark glasses.

“When does Franco get here?” Elaine Fellin said, by way of greeting. She dropped off her coat and collapsed into the nearest chair.

“If you two girls think you’re going to stay here and learn any secrets, you’re sadly mistaken,” Libra said. “You can congratulate him and then I want you both out.”

“I got up early to see him,” Elaine said. “I didn’t even sleep off my pill. I won’t even let you see my eyes.”

“When does Daddy get back?” Lizzie asked her.

“Today, the son of a bitch. I called him last night and the hotel said he wasn’t taking any calls. I screamed at them and said I was his wife, but they said that’s what all the fans say. He was fast asleep, the stinker, while I had to stay up and worry. He didn’t even bother to call me.”

“Husbands are rotten,” Lizzie said.

“Thank you,” said Libra.

“Oh, I don’t mean you, darling. You’re sweet.” She smiled at Gerry. “Sam is a very good husband. Daddy is a lousy husband.”

“He used to be nice,” Elaine said in her dead voice.

“Would you like some coffee, Mrs. Fellin?” Gerry asked.

“I can’t eat in the morning, it makes me sick,” Elaine Fellin said. “Do you have any Bloody Marys?”

Gerry went to the bar to make some.

“What do you expect when you marry somebody in show business?” Libra said to Elaine. “They’re all children. He was rotten to his first two wives—why should he treat you any differently?”

“
They
were
horrible
,” Elaine said.

“
They
were
horrible
,” Libra imitated her. “That’s what wives always say.
He
was ducky, I suppose?”

“You have no right to criticize Daddy,” Elaine said, her dead voice taking on a semblance of expression. “I can say what I want, but
you
keep out of it.”

“I love loyalty,” Libra said drily.