Authors: Jerry Stahl
"You want them gone, you get rid of them," he blurted finally. "I came up here to scout locations. I'm going to borrow your car and go find some seals. Besides—"
"I know," I finished for him, "you have a hangover."
"Right!"
With that Fred dashed out of the room before I could stop him. I galloped down the hall, bellowing, "You're not taking my Pierce-Arrow!"
I was just fleet of foot enough to see him fly through the closing elevator doors. I pounded the buttons, thinking I'd ride down to the lobby in the other car and corral him. But when car two arrived, a dozen revelers spilled out. Two showgirls, Dollie Clark and Bet Campbell, still in their matinee-wear; Victor, the hotel chef, accompanied by a quartet of waiters, and a handful of San Francisco denizens who happened to be in the hotel and heard about the Hollywood party on 12. There was enough clinking when they moved to know somebody'd brought their own refreshments. Either that or they'd been pilfering glassware.
I wanted to just blast past them, but I never liked to be rude. Everyone seemed delighted to see me in my PJs. So, swept up by this merry band, I let myself be led back to my suite, where the party was definitely in full swing. And, speaking of pajamas, Maude Delmont was now wearing Lowell Sherman's jammies and smoking like a coal-mine fire. While Virginia, laughing raucously, leaned on the piano, tossing back orange blossoms as fast as Art Fortlois, that rancid underwear salesman, could slip them to her.
"Less blossom and more gin!" Virginia kept screaming, laughing hysterically at her own joke, then repeating it and laughing again. A swarthy Italian in shiny gold tights had obviously entranced her, and between drinks she draped herself on the foreigner, pointedly ignoring the nervous customer who'd brought her, Art the Undie Peddler.
Shiny Tights turned out to headline at Barnum and Bailey. He was an aerialist. What's more, in a couple of hours, Banini, the Flying Tuscan, was going to walk on a wire from the penthouse of the St. Francis to the roof of a building across from it. The circus was famous for publicity stunts, which explained why he was wearing gold tights in public. As a gag, I asked him if they came in my size.
I was considering changing into day clothes when Art Fortlois, in the grips of jealous pique, hit the Flying Tuscan in the head with an orange squeezer. At that point the aerialist's mother strode in. She was a six-foot store-dyed redhead packed in a lady sheriff's costume, complete with six-shooters and spurs the size of tiny wagon wheels. Mommy dragged the boy tightrope walker out by his ear, screaming at him in front of the whole party.
"You wanta to die?
Stupido!"
She had the thickest Italian accent I'd ever heard outside the vaudeville stage. Everybody felt embarrassed for the kid, even Fortlois, who'd just brained him.
"You wanta to fall and ruin the good name of your father and grandfather? That'sa why you want to inhale this movie whore?"
Her English was flawed but her sentiment unmistakable. Then again, maybe Moms Banini said exactly what she meant to say. Turns out she was right about the danger of her boy breathing Virginia's gin fumes. The Flying Tuscan turned out to have a worse day than I did. Two hours after leaving the festivities, he slipped off the high wire. Fell 12 stories in front of a good crowd. He crashed through the roof of a fruit stand and landed on a bachelor Chinee who'd stowed away from Peking two weeks ago.
The Chinee broke his back. Banini died on the spot. It was a perfect front-page death. But nobody got to see it on the front page on account of another catastrophe—the one that was about to happen under my nose.
A Calamity
Virginia had been in hysterics since Handsome Highwire's Mother dragged him out of the party. She slammed down another four drinks before Art stopped her. He tried to shush her and she laughed in his face. And that, friends and neighbors, is the very moment her good friend Maude chose to go off with Lowell. Perhaps the impressionable Miss Delmont was overcome by a sudden desire to sneak into the bathroom with Lowell Sherman—or, more likely, she knew what was coming.
Either way, as soon as her sweet Virginia started showing her "symptoms"—giggling hysterically, hiccuping, whipping her head from side to side like a dizzy show pony—Maude quickly got Lowell to disappear with her. Lucky for Maude, Lowell was never particular. He didn't care if a woman was 18 and plum-lipped or 50 with back hair. All Lowell wanted was to get her in a bathtub, in her underpants. That's what did it for him.
I'd witnessed the panty-bath routine the last time we shared a hotel, down in Tijuana. Lowell would fill a nice tub for a lady—his thoughtfulness almost shocking—then break into his patented
"Oh, honey, I almost forgot. For a shot I'm working on, would you mind leaving your drawers on when you step into the tub? I just need a few pictures .
. ."
So now Fred Fischbach's gone, and Maude and Lowell are locked in Lowell's bathroom, in soggy heaven. It's just me, a paralytic Art Fortlois, and a bevy of showgirls dancing with slumming society types and Hollywood drunks—along with a bootlegger or two and the odd hophead. None of whom do a thing but stare when Virginia drops her glass to the carpet and screams. Her hands flail at the air in front of her, then she begins tearing at herself, ripping at her own throat, her hair, her clothes. In seconds she's torn her dress to shreds. One breast dangles over the torn cotton, the nipple bleeding where she'd scratched it.
I'd seen Virginia's drink-and-rip routine before. At Keystone. That's why I wasn't worried when she hit the ground and started to convulse. "Get some ice!" I hollered to no one in particular. While a pair of showgirls attended to that, I saw my chance to slip out. I wanted to take a shower and get dressed.
Just before I stepped into the hall, Virginia suddenly jumped up and staggered to Lowell's bathroom. She began pounding on the door and shrieking that she was dying. Maybe Lowell and Maude were underwater and couldn't hear. After she gave up pounding, Virginia collapsed again. I closed the door to the suite as Alice and Dollie, both well armed with towel-wrapped ice, descended on Virginia's naked frame.
What happened next—and what didn't happen—would haunt me through every dark night for the rest of my life. Retiring to my suite, I made a call to Minta. I still did that sometimes, when I felt unhinged. But Minta wasn't home, so I decided to get my clothes out before I took a shower. As I hadn't even unpacked my bags, I had to dig through my suitcase to find fresh shorts. It was slightly inconvenient, but the way people were running around I was scared somebody might walk in later, after my shower, when I was in the altogether. There were plenty of cases where some chickie flew in a guy's hotel room, planted a hot one on his lips, and held it till some slimy shutterbug showed up and snapped it. So I wasn't taking any chances—I wanted to get everything ready now.
This must have been when Virginia slipped in, when I was busy excavating my boxers. Clothes in hand, I tried to open the bathroom door. It was blocked. Finally I shoved it open enough to pop my head in—and spy Virginia, on hands and knees, worshiping at the white altar. I shouldered through the door, held her steady while she upchucked, then propped her on the seat and cleaned her mouth. At one point she tipped sideways and I barely caught her, by the throat, before her head hit the tub. I figured the best thing for the girl was rest, so I put her in one of my shirts, stretched her out on my bed, and ducked back in for a quick shower.
Five minutes later, I'm wrapped in a towel, still soaking, and I decide to check on my ill and unwanted guest. At first I don't see her. Then I hear—the hoarking, the grunts. Virginia's curled on the floor between bed and wall, puking like a seasick sailor and writhing in agony. Disgusting, but I've been there, so I don't judge.
My first thought was that ice might help. What else can get a drunk undrunk better than ice? But first I peeled my shirt off trembly Virginia and used it to clean her soiled body. Then I lifted her back on the bed. I made sure she looked comfortable, and I made a decision. A bad one, naturally.
That Sinking Feeling
I did not even realize how upset the whole episode had got me until I ran into Fortlois. The undie drummer was lounging on the ice chest, a showgirl curled on his lap, strumming a ukulele. I grabbed the instrument and pushed him out of the way. Art wanted the instrument back, so I said, "Leave now and take your two ladyfriends with you, you can have the uke."
It annoyed me how Fortlois, and everybody else, had started drinking and laughing again after Virginia ran off. Not for the first time, it struck me that I didn't know half the people at my own party. I just knew they were drinking my liquor.
Fortlois puffed himself up and said he wasn't responsible for Maude or Virginia. He said Fischbach was the one who introduced them a day ago. This news was so alarming, I decided not to think about it, and to focus on the hell at hand. Ice. I needed ice. But when I opened the ice chest, there was no ice. Thinking fast, I grabbed a bottle of ice-cold champagne instead.
Buster once told me, if you ever have to wake up a Dumb Dora, some dizzy drunkette so prestoned you don't even know if she's alive—you ring her doorbell. I didn't know the term, so Buster explained: you find her vulva and place an ice cube square
on
the little buzzer. Then push.
I don't know if it's bragging or complaining, at this juncture, to confide that I had no idea exactly what a vulva looked like, or where it was. I knew, in a general way. But this was hardly the time for basic anatomy lessons. Laying the icy bottle to one side, I gathered up my gumption and dove in, feeling a little bit like a miner without his miner's light. I parted Virginia's lady-lips as best I could and searched for my quarry. Virginia, in turn, began to squirm at my ministrations.
Pleasuring the girl was hardly my intent. And though it would have been hard to look—or breathe—beyond the horrid young woman's bile-marinated torso, the all-white of her rolled-back eyes, I confess that for one instant, to my own surprise, I felt reeling desire. Excitement like I'd never known. When Virginia groaned, I groaned. Our own little call-and-response.
Then I remembered what I was doing. Under her rouge, Virginia was pale as thin ice. I placed my hand chastely on her forehead and recoiled from the burning heat. Her fever must have been massive. It was like touching a Dutch oven. That's when, remembering my duty, I fumbled to expose the vulval bump—or doorbell, as Buster called it—and pressed the wide bottom of the bottle against it, the business end pointing up to her breasts.
Virginia's head, which had begun to loll unnaturally, seemed to jolt forward on contact with the icy glass. Still working the bottle, which had slipped somewhat lower between her thighs, I leaned over to press my ear to Virginia's breast, listening for a heartbeat. What with the clamor and blaring Victrola down the hall, hearing anything was near impossible. I had to close my eyes to concentrate, hefting my bulk sort of above and diagonal to her nude body.
One ear, and half my face, were pressed to Virginia's naked breast. My left hand squeezed around her neck, checking for pulse. My right wrapped around that chilled champagne, urging it—as medically proscribed by Doctor Keaton—firmly along the nub of what, to the best of my knowledge, you would call the vulva. When, from out of nowhere, shocking myself, I heard myself think: I
can see why so many men want her.
I immediately felt nauseous and, with a hot rush of panic, suffered another jolting thought:
This would look pretty bad if somebody saw.
No sooner did this occur to me than I heard voices in the hallway. Someone started banging on my door. And then, before I had the chance to hoist myself off the exposed Virginia, in stormed Maude Delmont. Her gasp, looking back, was probably more happiness than shock.
I could feel Maude taking in my massive anatomy—clad only in boxer shorts—and the sweating bottle wedged between Virginia's parted thighs. Then she raised her eyes to my mouth, still poised within suckling distance of Virginia's beefy nipple, and screamed.
It was all accidental, of course. But I could feel the thoughts taking shape in Maude's brain even before she shrieked, bringing in Lowell and the others. I quickly gathered myself up on the bed. Tried to look respectable—but how? I was a fatso in his boxers on top of a naked girl. I turned my head to see Maude's face, aghast, then watched, with the gorge rising in my gullet, as Fred Fischbach stormed in. Before he was through the door he was already hollering, demanding to know what the hell happened when he was away. Self-righteous as a parson.
Maude's plate-shattering screams did more to wake up Virginia than my ill-fated champagne bottle. She leaned over the obviously febrile girl and whispered in her ear. A second later, Virginia bolted upright, eyes wide as a zombie doll's. She began flailing at the air in front of her, as though fighting off an invisible ogre.
Maude grabbed Virginia and whispered in her ear again. The girl snapped out of it long enough to jabber what sounded like "No, Daddy, no!" Then Virginia pointed at me, shaking wildly. She began shrieking, in a deranged voice, "Don't touch me! Maudie, please, don't let him hurt me anymore!"
Maude, now trying to look virtuous in Lowell Sherman's striped pajamas, scooped Virginia up from under me, as if saving her from the jaws of hell. I had Fischbach to thank for the presence of this professional blackmailer and the hysterical young psychotic in her arms. But you wouldn't have known that from his reaction.
"Fred, you saw what happened," I piped up lamely, "somebody yelled ice." But Fischbach just stared past me, towards the bathroom. Where the newly noble Maude held Virginia across her lap, in
Pieta-like
fashion, plunked atop the closed toilet seat.
Alice Blake and Zey Prevon rushed back in with buckets of ice and dumped them in the tub. Then Fischbach, in full hearing of all the women, let out a hollow little laugh. "Fatty, old boy, I guess you got what you wanted, eh?"