The Fame Game (6 page)

“This is Dick Devere,” Sam Leo Libra said.

So this was the infamous Dick Devoid, with whom she was going to fall in love, according to Mr. Libra. Well, well. Gerry was not impressed. They shook hands and Dick began discussing the show with Libra. He did have a wonderful voice, low and deep and cultivated—the unlikely sort of sexy voice Gerry had often heard from these undernourished specimens who looked as if their mothers had starved them in childhood. She’d made blind dates with quite a few by telephone in her youth, and had always been disappointed when she saw them in person. Silky was hanging on every word, not bothering to pretend she wasn’t listening. Her big eyes were shining—the first time Gerry had seen them look anything but sad. She wondered if Silky was in love with Dick Devoid.

Finally Dick said to Libra, “Why don’t we all go and get some coffee?” but he was looking at Gerry.

Libra looked at his watch. “Not me. I have to meet some people at Reuben’s. You take the girls.”

“Gerry?” Dick said. He gave her a charming smile.

She looked at Silky. Silky’s eyes had gone flat again. My God, the girl was jealous! “I have to get up early tomorrow,” Gerry said. “Some other time, if that’s all right.”

“Maybe we’ll have lunch together this week,” Dick said.

“Whatever Mr. Libra says,” said Gerry.

“I don’t care who either of you have lunch with,” said Libra. He looked almost too pleased.
Well, now, isn’t this a bitch
, Gerry thought in dismay.
Either I antagonize Dick, and Libra, or I antagonize Silky, and eventually Libra. And what about me? I have a headache and I want to go home to bed
.

“I’ll call you one morning at the office,” Dick said.

Gerry smiled politely.

“Good night,” Silky said. She gave Gerry an apologetic smile, as if to say it wasn’t her fault about Dick and the lunch, or Dick and anything.

“I’ll just drop the kid home,” Dick said casually, taking Silky’s arm. “Where’s your rabbit?”

“My
lapin
is in the dressing room upstairs,” Silky said. She grinned and stuck her tongue out at him.

They went off, and Libra took Gerry outside to a cab. “What do you think of him?” Libra asked.

“He’s all right.”

“I hear he has a cock like an elk.”

“I really couldn’t care less, Mr. Libra.”

“Well, a lot of other people care,” said Libra cheerfully.

“Silky?”

“What about her?”

“Are she and Dick going together or anything?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I just wondered,” she said.

“
No
,” Libra said coldly. “They’re just friends.”

“This is off the record,” Gerry said. “I just want to know so I won’t make any
faux pas
with the clients.”

“There is nothing between them,” Libra said firmly. “If there is, let Silky tell you for herself.”

“I see.”

“What do you see?”

“I hope she doesn’t get hurt,” Gerry said.

“That’s her business, isn’t it?” Libra said. “You can’t change anybody’s nature. Why don’t you just enjoy yourself? Nobody’s going to get our friend Dick Devoid. Not for long, anyway. He only wants to have a good time. What’s wrong with that? Why do girls always make such a big emotional crisis out of everything?”

“Do you mean me?”

“I mean all girls. What a nuisance you all are! Thank God I’m a happily married man!”

Gerry looked at him as her cab pulled away. She wondered if he really was going to Reuben’s on business, and she wondered what Lizzie Libra had done with herself this evening and the many other evenings like this one. At least Dick Devere was single.

CHAPTER TWO

When silky morgan was ten years old her mother died of tuberculosis in the hospital. They were living on South Street then, the famous street of the song, in South Philadelphia, an area composed of Negroes and some Italians. Her mother had been sick at home for a long time, and after she went away to the hospital Silky’s father came back home for a while to take care of the kids. They lived in a red-brick row house, three stories high, with about twelve people in each small apartment, although in Silky’s family there were only eight, counting her father when he was home. When they came back from the funeral someone had marked up their front door with big splashes of white paint: a skull and crossbones, and the letters TB three feet high. It was the first time her father had cried after her mother’s death; he cried and cursed and pounded on the door with his fist until his knuckles bled. Then he made Arthur, her older brother, get some water and yellow soap and try to scrub off the white paint. They didn’t have enough money to buy paint to cover it up. Her father said it was the goddam Eyetalians who done it—a Brother would never do a low thing like that.

But they couldn’t get the paint off, not Arthur, not her father, and it stayed there, finally peeling, while the seasons changed and the memory of her mother’s soft face gradually became as blurred in her mind as the paint on their door. She dreamed of her mother almost every night. Nobody ever came near them during that time; the neighbors avoided them in the halls and backed away from them on the stairs. Arthur told her TB was catching. She wanted to catch it so she could go to heaven where her mother was. Her father didn’t even wait for the paint to disappear; he disappeared first, telling the woman next door to look after them. She was the only one who didn’t avoid them, although for several weeks she wouldn’t let them play with her kids. Then she relented. And the day Silky knew her father had gone away again, this time for good, although she didn’t know that at the time, the woman next door took her on her lap and hugged her, and said: “I’ll be your Auntie Grace now. I’ll take care of you the best I can, so you come to me when you need a mama.”

Silky didn’t think anybody had ever had a father as handsome and wonderful as hers had been. He was like Santa Claus, disappearing and then coming back, and almost always leaving a little brother or sister behind. Younger than she was Cornelius, then William, then La Jean, then the baby, Cynthia. Her own Christian name was Sarah, although her father had nicknamed her Silky when she was just a baby. Her mother told her she looked exactly like her father. He was tall and strong, with hair black as night; even when he was older, it never had a speck of gray in it. To her he was a sort of celebrity. When he came around everybody was happy. But then after a while he would begin to sit around the apartment doing nothing all day, just looking out the window, and then one morning he would be gone.

Auntie Grace had ten children of her own. Two of them, the twins Cheryl and Beryl, were Silky’s age, and as long as she could remember the three of them had been best friends. They did everything together. And when they were fourteen they all decided that they were going to become famous singers. They were in junior high, and there was a girl in their class named Tamara who wanted to be a singer too. She brought along her older sister, Honey, and the whole bunch of them would meet every day after school to practice popular songs. They learned them off the radio, or hanging around the Record Shack. Honey, who was sixteen, was going around with a boy named Rudolph, who had stolen a phonograph. He stole a whole bunch of new records too, and after school they would hang around his apartment and play the phonograph and try to copy the singers on them until Rudolph got bored and took Honey into the bedroom and threw the rest of them out.

Sex was something Silky took for granted at a very early age. She knew how not to catch a baby long before she was old enough to have to worry about it, but even though she started doing what her friends were doing when she was about fourteen, she didn’t think sex was much. She hated school, but she liked reading, and in one of the books she took out of the library she read that all famous people had to make sacrifices for their goal. She couldn’t give up food, because there was never enough and she was always hungry. Usually she got through the day with a sweet-potato pie from the grocery and two or three nickel Cokes. When her mother had been alive she remembered having lunch money to take to school, but after her mother died and her father went away she never had any. Her older brother, Arthur, who worked in the filling station, gave her money once a week, and the rest of her brothers and sisters ate at Auntie Grace’s. She didn’t like to eat there; Auntie Grace wasn’t her family, and she felt uncomfortable. Many evenings Auntie Grace or Cheryl or Beryl would catch her hanging around down on the street and make her come upstairs to their apartment to eat dinner. Sometimes she was so hungry she had to forget her pride and come along. No, giving up food was out of the question, but she wanted to sacrifice something. She didn’t smoke or drink. She thought of giving up Cokes, but that didn’t seem significant, so finally she decided to give up sex.

That was when she was sixteen. So even though she flirted with the boys at school, hoping one of them would buy her a hamburger or even take her to the Soul Kitchen for a real meal, she managed to stay out of bed with them, knowing in her heart it wasn’t such a sacrifice as she pretended it was because sex meant nothing to her.

Cheryl and Beryl didn’t know who their father was. They pretended that their mother’s boyfriend was their real father, and all their friends went along with the pretense. Their mother’s boyfriend was a nice guy, although once he went after Silky. That was when she was seventeen, and it was one of the things that made her decide to run away to New York. She couldn’t hang around Auntie Grace’s knowing that guy was always looking at her and trying to cop a feel. She thought it was disgusting for an old man like that to go after a kid like her.

She still thought of herself as a kid, even though she plastered her face with make-up she shoplifted from the five-and-ten with Cheryl and Beryl, and teased her hair up high. They were always running around with their hair in rollers in those days, either that or teasing it up to look sophisticated. She had a big bust, and she wore tight Orlon sweaters, mostly hand-me-downs from Auntie Grace’s older daughters; Marie, who worked in a beauty salon and made a lot of money, and Ardra, who worked in a five-and-ten, not the one they stole from. They would never steal from Ardra’s five-and-ten; she might lose her job.

The five girls decided to drop out of school that spring and hitchhike to New York. Auntie Grace didn’t care. She had just lost a baby in the sixth month, and she was always complaining how much work she had taking care of the kids she had already. The five of them were just dying to get out of school. Honey could barely read. It was a big secret about Honey not being able to read—if you really wanted to make her mad at you, you would ask her, “What does that sign say?” Or, “What’s playing at the movies?” She’d either make something up or give you a hell of a smack. Tamara couldn’t read so good herself. She and Honey had had about ten different fathers and nobody ever made them do their homework. Silky remembered when she was only about six, how her mother had watched over her every night to be sure she did her homework, busy as she was with all the rest of the family. She was glad she could read so well now, because with reading you didn’t need school, you could get a whole education by yourself as long as books were free. She swore to herself that after she dropped out of school she would read a whole library book every week, and she did.

One morning Silky and her friends packed everything they owned, which wasn’t much, into shopping bags, and hitched a ride to New York with two guys in a white Cadillac. Honey and Tamara and Cheryl and Beryl drank a lot of beer on the way down and took turns screwing each one of the two guys in the back seat while the other one drove, but Silky told them she had syphilis and they’d catch it. They wanted to take her to the clinic when they reached Manhattan, but she told them she was too embarrassed, and cried, so they let her alone. She had been scared to death that one of the guys might say: “Oh, that’s okay—I have syph too,” but they didn’t. They kept far away from her. She was still keeping to her vow; no sex until she was famous.

Honey and Tamara had an aunt in Harlem, so they all stayed with her for a while, hitching rides downtown all the time so they could hang around music publishers whose names they had found in the phone book. Honey got a job waiting table, but she got fired the next day because she was trying to remember all the orders on account of not being able to write, and she couldn’t read either. Then Silky went to work there and supported the rest of them. Cheryl had a lot of boyfriends who laid bread on her, and Beryl was going steady with a guy who they all suspected pushed dope. He gave them all free pot, and both the twins turned into big heads. Tamara had found herself a white boy named Marvin, who had pimples and lived in the Village. He’d run away from his rich Jewish family in Lefrak City, and he thought it was really a gas to be screwing a black chick. Tamara privately called him the Village Idiot, but he couldn’t do enough for her. So in a way they were all doing their bit to keep the group eating until they got their break.

Summer turned into fall, then winter, and it was cold. They still hadn’t been able to get an audition for anybody, but they practiced every day. Silky was working nights, and the others were dating. Then one night Silky met a guy in the place she was waiting table who knew a lot of people in the music publishing business, and he got the girls an audition. They had named themselves the Satins, but after they auditioned the man at the music company told them they would do better if they made one of them the lead singer, and he made them each try out separately. It was a toss-up between Honey and Silky. Silky
said
Honey should get the lead singer bit because she was the oldest, but secretly she knew that if anyone got it but her she would just die. Then the man said it should be Silky because she had such an interesting voice. He named the group Silky and the Satins.

The other girls didn’t seem to mind so much at first, because what was a lead singer when they weren’t working anyway? But about a month later the man had them come back to audition again, and then he let them cut a record. It never got anywhere, and that winter they really thought they were going to starve for sure. Honey got pregnant and had an abortion in New Jersey. It cost them every cent they made on the record, and then some, but they had vowed to stick together and this was part of it. After that Honey broke out in a rash from the penicillin she’d had to get in the clinic after the abortion, and they were all afraid she was going to die. The doctor at the clinic said she could never have any more kids, but two months after she got out of the clinic she was knocked up again—from Tamara’s Marvin. Tamara said she was going to kill that little Jew bastard, but the other girls talked sense into her and rich Marvin paid for Honey’s abortion, at a Village doctor who was much better than the one in New Jersey, and after that he really couldn’t do enough for Tamara because he was so upset. Tamara said she was thinking of marrying him to give his family a heart attack, so then she could inherit all that money.