by Vanda
“Take this,” Mercy said at the door, handing me a book wrapped in brown paper. “It’s just out. Spring Fire. It’s the beautiful story of two girls in love. Of course, one of the girls ends up in a mental institution in the end, but you can overlook that, can’t you?
* * *
When I returned later that afternoon to The Haven, a heaviness in me, Max stood outside my office door. He greeted me with, “I have a surprise for you.”
He stepped out of the way, and I saw Bartholomew Montadeus Honeywell, IV dressed in a blue suit and red bow tie standing there. “Hi,” he said brightly.
I stood frozen, staring, unable to imagine how Bart Honeywell could be a surprise for me.
“Don’t you get it?” Max asked. “He’s your assistant.”
“He is?”
“Yes!” Bart said, with glee. “We’re going to be working side by side. Won’t that be peachy keen?”
“Oh, yeah. Peachy double keen with ice cream. Max, can I see you a minute?”
Max grabbed his coat from one of the tables where he’d thrown it. “Sorry, no time. Business meeting. You two work things out.”
My eyes followed him dashing out the door. I sighed and turned back to Bart, who smiled at me. I wonder if it’s too late to hire Bertha.
Chapter 51
BART BEGAN WORKING at the club, and he was a big hit. Every night he worked. When he worked. When I could find him. He always wore the sharpest attire—generally wearing a dinner jacket with a formal shirt and bow tie, white or black, for evenings. During the day, which didn’t require dressing up, he still wore the latest style—wide-legged trousers with cuffs turned up and tapered double-breasted sport jackets that showed off his waistline. Fat ties. He never wore anything less than the latest, and since his beginning salary wasn’t much, I knew he had to have a “side” business going. I was pretty sure that the “side” business was one of two things. I just hoped he wasn’t involving The Haven.
He always had a ready grin for everyone who entered The Haven. Women loved him. He flirted with them and made them feel special while making their husbands and boyfriends worry. Dragging their spouses to The Haven, women eagerly wanted to be teased by Bart. His presence certainly was an asset to business. When he was there.
The night Liberace was headlining at The Haven, every table was taken. He was always one of our biggest draws. The ladies loved him. That was something I never could figure out. The place bulged with demanding patrons. It was rumored he was going to star in his own fifteen-minute TV show on NBC in July, which was probably another reason people were clamoring to get tables.
The kinds of wealthy patrons we catered to didn’t expect to be kept waiting, or to have anything go wrong. At the last minute, our maitre’d, Joseph, called from the emergency room with a broken leg. The assistant cook was having a hissy on the kitchen floor because the head cook didn’t like the way he’d cut the radishes into rosebuds. I needed Bart to help get us through the dinner hour, always the toughest time, and he wasn’t to be found. People were squawking, “Where are my mashed potatoes?” and no Bart.
A customer dashed up to me. “My pennies, my pennies! I didn’t get my pennies!”
“What?”
“From the cigarette machine! I put in a quarter, but my pack didn’t contain the two pennies change. Look!” He pushed an unopened pack of Chesterfields in my face. “See? There’s a tear in the cellophane. Someone stole my pennies!”
I sighed, knowing there’d be more guys shoving cigarette packs in my face. The vending machine guy had swiped the two pennies change again. Where was Bart? I instructed Bertha to make good on the change out of her tip jar and keep a record so I could make it up to her at the end of the night.
“Oh, yes, Al,” she said. “I’d do anything for you.”
Why did she say things like that? I spun away from her, hurrying into the thick of the room. Then stopped.
Walter Winchell. Center table. Sitting with his entourage of hangers-on. No wife. Damn! When did he come in?
“Walter, how good to see you,” I said.
“Of course, it is,” he said with that damn air of superiority. If the people back home knew what a snob he was, they wouldn’t have been so eager to worship him. “We’re waiting for our food, you know.”
“I’ll have your waiter over here in a jiffy. Rudolfo! Rudolfo!” Max warned me never to allow Walter Winchell to feel less than extremely important.
I leaned on the wall near hatcheck, “Bertha, you didn’t happen to see Bart, did you?”
“I saw him go out back a while ago. He was with a customer.”
I bounced off the wall and ran past our huge stage, glowing with lights as the Harlington Honeys danced across it. I dashed out the back door into the alley. It was dark and cold. Only moonlight illuminated our trashcans. Then I heard—“Ooh, aah,”—and ran toward the sound. In the dim shadow of neon, I saw Bart. He had his penis in one of our customer’s behinds. “Hi,” he smiled at me, “I’m a little busy now, but I’ll be along in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
Despite being tempted, I said nothing about the metaphor he used.
The customer, upon seeing me, endeavored to pull his shirttail over his rear—I gathered, in the interest of modesty—while continuing the activity. “Oh, Jesus,” he said to Bart, “don’t stop.” And then to me, “You won’t tell, will you? Oh, god, I shouldn’t be doing this, but—but …”
“Look, Bart, I need you. Finish up and meet me inside. Don’t drag this out.”
I probably should fire him, I thought as I walked back inside. I can’t. I’ve never fired anyone before. I saw my father slumped over on the porch chair during the depression after he’d been fired. I can’t do it. Maybe I could get Bertha to do it. Boy, would that be an awful passing of the buck. Shame on you, Al. At least I found out Bart wasn’t back there selling drugs.
The customer who had been with Bart returned to his seat and gave his wife a big kiss on the cheek. I’m sure he told her he was out sealing an important business deal. She seemed pleased with whatever excuse he gave, and she caressed his hand as the Harlington Honeys did their final kicks. Later that night, I got quite a large tip from the gentleman. The next morning, four-dozen long-stemmed red roses arrived along with a huge box of candy. In the afternoon, it was a gold bracelet. Oh, yeah, this job had its perks.
None of it kept me from thinking about George, uh, Christine Jorgensen. Oh, there were jokes. Lots of jokes. Everywhere. Christine Jorgensen was the number one joke for a while. Everyone had some dirty thoughts about him—her? Along with embarrassing personal questions they wondered about out loud. Things people had never talked about in public before, especially not in mixed company, were now being whispered about right out in the open.
Max, Bart, and I were sitting in my office after the last show when Bart said to Max, “Did they really cut his …” he looked at me, then back at Max. “You know—did they actually cut it off?”
“I spose,” Max said. “But what I want to know is what did they do with it? I mean how do you get rid of thing like that?”
The two broke into wild laughter. I sat there with my hands folded in my lap, listening to them. Max looked up at me, his face suddenly red. “I’m sorry Al. I forgot you’re not one of the guys. No! I didn’t mean that!”
“It’s okay,” I said. I wasn’t sure if was okay or not, but I was finding fewer and fewer things shocking.
Chapter 52
May 1953
“DID YOU READ the latest?” Max asked, coming into my office. He ran a hand through his hair and paced back and forth. “I have friends who work in government jobs.”
“Yeah, I read it,” I told him.
“It’s nuts. They’re so scared of us that they make laws against us. When’s it gonna end?”
“Well, it’s not just us.” I picked up The Times. “They’ve got the same law for criminals, alcoholics, and drug addicts.”
“Oh, terrific. We’re in good comp
any.”
Marty burst through the door. “Let’s have breakfast, Al. Well, hello, Max.” He smiled that special smile he reserved for Max. “I didn’t expect to find you here at The Haven office. Wanna join us?”
“Not this morning. I’m too upset to eat.”
“You haven’t read the papers yet, have you?” I asked.
“No. What is it? Broadway closing up shop?”
“Here.” I handed Marty The Times. “Read about President Eisenhower’s Executive Order 1050. It explicitly states that ‘sexual perversion’ is grounds for banning people from federal jobs.”
“Damn, they’re really out to do us in, aren’t they?”
“People have been getting fired for the mere suspicion of homosexualism for years,” Max said. “That’s why Scott quit his job in the State Dept a few years ago. Afraid he’d be fired. But this—why did Ike have to make it a law?
“Well—I don’t ever want a government job,” Marty said. “Yuck. Do you?”
“That’s not the point,” Max said. “This stuff spreads. How long do you think it’ll be before other industries think it’s a dandy idea not to hire gays too? The government did it, so why not follow their example? This law puts us all in even greater jeopardy than before. You were in the service; so was I. Well, the country we sacrificed and fought for only eight years ago doesn’t want us. We’re not citizens any more. None of us.” He slammed the paper down on my desk and stormed out.
* * *
“You’re where?” I said into my phone later that afternoon. “Okay, okay, stop crying. No, he can’t do that. We have a rehearsal now. I’ll be right over.”
I ran into the main dining room, where the Harlington Honeys, in tights and leotards, sat on the stage or stood around smoking and waiting. “I’ll be right back,” I said to Sadie Toulouse, our new musical director. She wasn’t easy to get, and I didn’t want to lose her after all that wining, dining, and groveling.
“I am not used to being kept waiting,” she said in her over-done French accent.
“Look, have the girls show you a few of the routines.” I told her. “I’ll be back in a few seconds. Have a drink to relax you.”
“I do not drink when I work,” she said, incensed. I dashed out the door and hurried toward the police precinct on 54th. I couldn’t believe they’d arrested her. Sally Susie? Could anyone be more down-home innocent than that girl? I didn’t have time for the police and their games. We paid them mucho dough to stay out of our lives. We had a new show opening next week, we were way behind schedule, and I had a temperamental musical director who was liable to walk out any minute. I pushed through the heavy precinct doors, and found the sergeant at his desk. “Sergeant Henry, I don’t have time for this. I have a show to get up.”
“No time for what? What happened?”
“You arrested one of my girls.”
“One of yours? Nah, couldn’t be. We would never...”
“Sally Susie?”
“She’s one of yours? Yeah, me and one of my guys was patrolling the area and …” He whispered, “Al, we picked her up for … I can’t tell you.”
“What do you mean you can’t tell me?”
“Well … it’s not something anyone should say to a nice girl like yourself.”
“Prostitution? Dang it, Henry. That girl just blew in from Oklahoma last week. She doesn’t know the first thing about anything, let alone prostitution.”
“I’m sorry, Al, but we caught her in the 47th Street Diner.”
“And? I don’t recall them passing a law against going into the 47th Street Diner.”
“And she went from her table where she was sitting alone to another table to talk to another girl who was also alone, and that is against the law.”
“That law was made for catching prostitutes, not all girls.”
“How can anyone know who’s who and which is which? Especially when they’re in the 47th Street Diner.”
“The kid doesn’t know anything, so she wanders into a somewhat sleezy diner …”
“Often frequented by ladies of the evening, begging your pardon.”
“I don’t have time to debate this with you. I need her. Now. She’s not guilty of anything, and you know it.”
“There are papers to process and …”
“Look, Henry. Forget the papers. This is a nice innocent girl from Sweetback, Oklahoma. And I know you’re a good guy and wouldn’t want to harm the reputation of a girl like that. Haven’t you enjoyed those ringside seats I’ve been giving you and your wife over the past few years?”
“Oh, yes, Al, very much. We’d never be able to afford …”
“I love making you happy, Henry. Truly. Now, I have to get back to the club and I really need Sally for rehearsal. So why don’t you give her a lecture about not going into sleazy diners, as if there were any other kind in this area, and then send her back to me within the hour. How’s that?”
“Sure. Of course. Love those Harlington Honeys.”
“I know you do. Maybe she’ll give you an autograph.”
“Yeah?”
I hurried back to the club, and to my shock, Bart was working with Sadie, having the girls show her the Harlington Honeys repertoire. Through my office window I could see a package sitting on my desk. I slipped in through my door. It was here! We all knew it was due out; we’d been waiting five long years and now, finally, it was here. I had put in my order at the 8th Street Bookshop a while ago because I’d anticipated it would be hard to get. I tore off the wrappings and stared at it. The Kinsey Report on Human Female Sexuality.
I was right about it being hard to get. The book was flying off the shelves. Everyone was talking about it, especially at my school. It sure blew the lid off some prized notions. And for the first time in public, people started putting the words “women” and “sex” in the same sentence. That kind of open conversation was brand new, but we were all drawn to it. We discovered that quite a few American women weren’t as pure as everyone thought.
Critics from all corners came out to tell the world that Kinsey was wrong. Billy Graham on the radio said, “Thank God, we have scores of women who still know how to blush.” The Chicago Tribune said, “Kinsey is a real menace to society.” Cosmopolitan had a long article pointing to all the flaws in the research, and ended with an anecdote about a woman holding a baby while she looked adoringly at her husband. The guy completely missed the point of Kinsey’s report: Maybe women didn’t want to be so holy, maybe they wanted to be human.
Of course, I couldn’t talk to anyone at school about the seven percent or the four percent, or whichever number you wanted to choose, depending on the category, of women who were regularly having sex with other women. I couldn’t find one article that said anything about that, good or bad. We were so indecent and horrible, Billy Graham, who yelled about every single sin from the largest to the smallest, didn’t dare mention us on his radio program. But I couldn’t forget Kinsey’s numbers, so I pressed them into my heart, knowing there were lots more of us out there somewhere. We only had to find each other.
Chapter 53
“PLEASE COME, JULE,” I begged, sitting in her dressing room between shows at The Copa. She was in the middle of another six-month contract. “You’re the one who said I should go in the first place. I’m the only one in my family to get a degree. I don’t know what I’ll do with it, but Max says no one can ever take it away from me.”
“He’s right. You are to be congratulated,” Phillippe, her French make-up man, dabbed mascara on her eyelid. “It’s a wonderful accomplishment. You should be proud.”
“I want you to be proud of me.”
“I am.”
“Please to hold still,” Phillippe demanded, switching to the other eye.
“But you won’t come. Max has been breaking my back to get this degree for years.”
“Al,” she tried to interject.
“How can I do this without you?” I whined like a child. If anyone heard me, they�
�d never have believed that I was the one who had pushed Juliana’s and Lili’s careers to the top. “Everybody’s going to have their family there.”
“And you’ll have Max, Shirl, Mercy, Scott, and Virginia.”
“But they’re not you. You’re like my family.”
“But I’m not your family.”
“Ouch.”
“Juliana, dear,” Phillippe said, applying a coral pink blusher to her cheekbones. “You zimply must stop wiggling, or zis is going to end up on your nose.”
“Sorry, dear. Al, why do you make me say things that hurt you? You know I can’t go. You know how I feel about being in the same room as Max.”
“I can’t choose between Max and you. Max has been like a father. He’s been looking forward to this for years.”
“I’m not asking you to choose. Max should be there. Now, can we get back to business?”
“Yeah, I spose.”
“Don’t look like that. It breaks my heart.”
“Obviously, not enough.”
“Phillippe please, no more.”
“All right, ma cherie, but do not blame me if your face to shine like a Christmas bulb under zose harsh lights.”
“She looks beautiful and you know it,” I told him. “Go.”
Phillippe huffed and wiggled his hips at us as he left.
“Here,” Juliana said, holding some sheet music toward me. “A young composer sent me this song in the mail. John Wallowitch. Have you heard of him?”
“No,” I said, taking the music.
“I like it, but I wanted to see if you thought it’d be right for me.”
I put it in my brief case. “I’ll look it over. You won’t come to my graduation, maybe the most important day of my life next to your big opening, because you wanted to have sex with Max, but couldn’t. That’s nuts.”
“What?”
“Virginia told me what happened.”
“Did she?” She sat back in her chair, amused. “I would expect her to say something like that. She’s been hot for Max for years, so she thinks everyone is.”