“Then what is he waiting for?” she asked. “Why doesn’t he sign me?”
“He says the studio won’t let him go without a star.”
“Shit,” she said disgustedly. “Nothing ever changes. Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?”
“He said the studio wants me for it. They’ll give him the go-ahead if I commit.”
She couldn’t contain herself. “For Christ’s sake, what’s stopping you then?”
“That’s why I had to see you,” he explained patiently. “I read the book. I don’t know whether I’m right for the part. It calls for an older leading man.”
“Don’t worry, you can do it,” she said firmly.
“But the age,” he protested.
“Remember Jimmy Dean in
Giant
? He played a forty-year-old man when he was still in his early twenties. And you’re as good an actor as he ever was. You’ve got the same quality and excitement.”
She could see the actor’s ego take over. “Do you really think so?” he asked. “Jimmy Dean?”
She nodded. “What do you think turned me onto you in the first place?”
“I’ll be damned,” he said in a wondering voice. “I never thought of that.”
But she could see that he was pleased. “If you do it I could write the ass off it,” she added. “Together we could make sure that everything was perfect.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “It’s really a hell of a part.”
“Once in a lifetime,” she said. “An actor’s dream. It will put you right up there with McQueen and Redford.” She laughed. “George Ballantine. Superstar.”
He laughed, then his face grew serious. “But what about the director?” he asked. “Jimmy Dean had Kazan and George Stevens. We’ll need a top man. Coppola, Schlesinger, someone like that.”
“You name him, we’ll get him.”
“I’ll have to think about it,” he said. “I’ll talk it over with my agent.”
“You tell him what I said. The important thing is that we can work together.”
“Sure.” But he was already thinking of something else. “Do you think Margaret could play the girl?”
“I thought you said she was firm in the series?”
“She could get out for a feature,” he said. “Besides it would look better if we were all together on the project. Especially after what happened.”
“Why not?” She nodded. “It would be great box-office chemistry.”
“I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Why don’t you come over to the house for dinner tomorrow night? I’ll have my agent over and we can all talk it out.”
That was the last thing in the world she felt like doing. “Why don’t you explore it first?” she suggested. “Maybe we can get together on the weekend when I get my strength back.”
“Fine,” he said, getting to his feet. A rueful expression crossed his face. “Shit,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets.
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know what there is about you, JeriLee,” he said with an embarrassed laugh, “but every time I’m around you I get a hard-on.”
“You do say the nicest things.” She laughed. She got to her feet and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “But you’ll also have to save that until I get my strength back.”
“He’s gone?” Angela asked, coming out of the kitchen.
JeriLee nodded.
“I don’t like him,” Angela said flatly. “It was his fault you went through all this and he didn’t give a damn how you were feeling. He would have gone right into your bedroom if I didn’t stop him. The selfish chauvinistic son of a bitch.”
JeriLee looked up at her and laughed. “And besides that, he’s an actor, which makes it even worse.”
“I don’t see what’s so funny,” Angela said. “I wouldn’t talk to a man who put me through a thing like that.”
JeriLee shook her head. “It wasn’t all his fault,” she said. “It still takes two, you know. And if I hadn’t been in such a hurry I would have stopped and put in my diaphragm.”
***
The doctor straightened up. “You’re doin’ okay,” he said. “You can start getting out tomorrow if you don’t overdo it. If you get tired I want you to come home and go to bed.”
“Okay, Jim.”
“Come into the office after the weekend,” he said, “and we’ll give you a final check.”
“I’m beginning to feel like a used car.”
He laughed. “Don’t worry about it. You should have another fifty thousand miles left in you. Besides I have an idea for a new part that should make the motor run without any more problems like the one you just had.”
“What’s that?”
“I just received the clinical reports of a new I.U.D. they’ve been testing. It’s a small copper coil and I think you’ll be able to tolerate it.”
“Order one. I’ll try anything.”
“I already did,” he said. “Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Jim,” she called after the doctor, then picked up the ringing phone. “Hello.”
It was her agent. “Who was that?”
“My doctor,” she said wearily. Agents were all alike. They had to know everything.
“What did he say?”
“I’ll live. I can start going out tomorrow.”
“Good,” he said. “We have to have a meeting.” His voice lowered to a confidential whisper. “I’ve got some very big news but I don’t want to talk about it on the phone.”
That was another quality of agents. Everything had to be top secret. None of them would trust the telephone even if they were reading the headline from the daily newspaper. “It is about George doing my picture?”
The surprise showed in his voice. “I thought you were in bed. How did you find out about it?”
She laughed. “For Christ’s sake, Mike, you know about George and me.”
“No, I don’t,” he said. “What about George and you?”
“That was George’s baby that I aborted.”
“The son of a bitch!” he erupted. Then there was a moment’s silence and his voice lightened. “But that should make things easier for us. He has to listen to you. You can make him take the part.”
“I can’t make him do anything,” JeriLee said. “All I can do is try to talk him into it.”
“He owes you something,” Mike said.
“Nothing,” she said flatly. “That’s not the way I live. I’m a big girl. I didn’t do anything I didn’t want to do.”
“Can you come into the office in the morning?” he asked. “I’ve got to make you understand how important this is.”
“Eleven o’clock okay?”
“Fine,” he said. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
“So am I,” she said. The phone clicked off and she put it down. He was a good agent but he lived in an ancient world.
Angela was on the couch reading the trades. She looked up. “What did the doctor say?”
“I’m better. I can go out tomorrow.”
“That’s good,” Angela said. “Have you thought about dinner?”
JeriLee shook her head.
“Steaks or chicken?” Angela said. “I took both out of the freezer.”
“Steak,” JeriLee said promptly. “I need the strength.”
Angela got to her feet. “I’ll get started then,” she said. “I’ll fix salad and french fries.”
“We’ll have a bottle of red wine with dinner,” JeriLee said. “The good wine. The Chambertin you gave me. I was saving it for a night like this.”
Angela smiled. “You didn’t forget?”
“I didn’t forget,” JeriLee said.
“Candles on the table?” Angela asked.
“The works,” JeriLee said. “I’ll roll a couple of joints. We’ll have one before dinner and one before we go to bed.”
Angela smiled. There was a happy sound in her voice. “It will be just like old times.”
JeriLee watched her go into the kitchen. There was something very touching about her. Like old times.
Only the very young could think like that. Or the very old. There was no such thing as old times. Only good times and bad times. And sometimes the good came with the bad and other times the bad came with the good. It all depended on where you were in your head.
Like the time JeriLee Randall became Jane Randolph. Or the time Jane Randolph went back to being JeriLee Randall. She didn’t know which. And that wasn’t even old times.
It hadn’t been that long ago.
Chapter 11
The amber spot set in the ceiling over the tiny platform on which she was dancing blurred everything in front of her and the loud acid rock drowned out all other sounds in the crowded club. Her face and body were covered with a fine patina and the perspiration ran in rivulets between her naked breasts. She gulped for air between smiling parted lips. She was beginning to feel exhausted. Her back and arms were aching, even her breasts were sore from the gyrations of the dance. Suddenly the music stopped in the midst of a wile movement, taking her by surprise. She stood for a moment, then raised both arms over her head in the standard gogo dancer’s bow, giving the customers one last free look as the spot died.
As she looked challengingly at the men staring at her from the crowded bar, their eyes fell from her gaze. There was no applause, only the beginning of the swell of conversation. She dropped her arms, came down from the platform and went through the small curtain behind it.
Through the sound system she could hear the voice of the club manager. “Ladeez an’ gentlemun, it is with great pride that World á Gogo presents the star of their show, direct from San Francisco, the girl you have all read about, the girl you all want to see, the original, the one and only, the Blond Bomber, Miss Wild Billy Hickok and her twin forty-eights!”
Billy was waiting behind the curtain, her giant breasts thrusting forward against the thin silk kimono. She was holding a small vial in one hand and a short hard straw in the other. “How’s the crowd out there tonight, Jane?” she asked.
“Okay, Billy,” JeriLee answered, reaching for her terry cloth robe. “But it’s you they came to see. All I could do was try and warm them up for you.”
“Fuckers, all of them,” Billy said without rancor. She put the straw in the vial and held it to her nostril. She snorted once in each nostril. Then she held the vial toward JeriLee. “Want a hit, Jane?”
JeriLee shook her head. “No, thanks. It’ll keep me up the rest of the night and I want to get some sleep.”
Billy put the vial of coke and the straw in the pocket of her kimono. “The gogo dancer’s maiden aunt,” she said.
JeriLee nodded. Coke, bennies and ammies. Without them the girls couldn’t make it through their nightly four to six half-hour turns, seven nights a week. Billy slipped out of her kimono and turned to her. “I look all right?”
JeriLee nodded. “Fantastic. I still don’t believe it.”
Billy smiled. Her eyes were beginning to shine as the coke hit. “You better believe it,” she said, touching her breasts proudly. “Carol says that hers are bigger than mine but I know better. We went to the same doctor and he told me she stopped at forty-six C and mine are a real forty-eight D.”
JeriLee knew she was talking about Carol Doda, San Francisco’s first topless dancer. Billy hated her because Carol got all the publicity. “Good luck, Billy,” she said. “Go out there and kill them.”
Billy laughed. “I know how,” she said. “If they don’t applaud, I’ll just drop these on their fucking heads.”
Billy disappeared through the curtain and the music stopped. JeriLee knew that the club had gone black while Billy took up her position. A moment later there was a roaring from the crowd as the amber spot went on. Then the music crashed and the applause and the whistles began.
JeriLee smiled to herself as she started back to the dressing room. Tits were what they had come to see. Now they were happy.
There was no one in the dressing room she shared with two other girls. She closed the door behind her and went directly to the small refrigerator. The pitcher of iced tea was half empty. Quickly she opened a tray of ice cubes and emptied it into the pitcher. Then she poured the tea into a tall glass, spiked it heavily with vodka and took a deep swallow.
She felt the cold liquid running down her throat and gave a light, gentle sigh of relief. Vodka and iced tea helped. It gave her a lift while replacing the fluids she sweated out during her turn.
Slowly she took off the short blond wig she wore and shook her own long brown hair down around her shoulders. Gogo dancers didn’t wear their hair long. The customers didn’t like it. Sometimes long hair covered the breasts. She opened a jar of Albolene and began to remove the heavy layer of makeup from her face.
The door opened and the manager came in. She looked at him in the mirror. He took out a handkerchief and mopped his face. “It’s murder out there,” he said. “There isn’t enough space to breathe.”
“Don’t bitch,” she said. “Last week you were complaining you could shoot pigeons in there.”
“I’m not complaining.” He put his hand inside his jacket, took out an envelope and tossed it on the makeup table. “That’s for last week,” he said. “Better count it.”
She opened the pay envelope. “Two hundred forty dollars,” she said. “It’s all there.” She glanced down at the payroll slip. The gross was three hundred and sixty-five dollars but with deductions, commissions and expenses all that was left was two forty.
“You could have doubled that in cash if you’d have listened to me.”
“It’s not my game, Danny.”
“You’re a strange one, Jane. What is your game anyway?”
“I told you, Danny. I’m a writer.”
“Yeah. I know what you told me,” he said without belief. “Where you goin’ next?”
“I open in Gary on Tuesday.”
“Topless World?”
“Yes.”
“Good spot,” he said. “I know the place. Lots of action down there. The manager’s name is Mel. Give him my best.”
“I’ll do that, Danny,” she said. “Thanks for everything.”
There was a sound of applause from the room as he opened the door.
“Wild Billy really turns them on,” she said.
He smiled. “She puts on a show. Too bad there aren’t more like her. Ten girls like her and I can retire in a year.”
She laughed. “Don’t be greedy, Dan. You’re doin’ all right.”
“Ever think of having yours done up like that?”
“I’m happy the way I am.”
“She pulls a grand a week, for just one turn a night.”
“Good luck to her,” JeriLee said. She took another sip of her iced tea. “I couldn’t walk around with a pair like that. I’d keep falling on my face.”
He laughed. “Goodbye, Jane. Good luck.”
“Bye Danny.”
She turned back to the mirror and finished removing the makeup from her face and throat, then went over to the sink and washed with cold water. After lighting a cigarette she finished her iced tea. She was beginning to feel better. Maybe she could get a little work done when she got back to the motel. Tomorrow was Sunday and she could sleep late. She wasn’t making the connecting flight to Chicago until Monday morning.