by Vanda Writer
“Let us in,” Mercy’s voice came muffled through my door.
I unlocked the door and pulled it open, plastering a smile on my face. “Hi.”
“Come on, let’s go,” Mercy said. “We’re taking you out.”
They both wore long winter coats buttoned to the neck. Mercy’s hat was a small platter type while Virginia’s was more elaborate, with a peak pointing upward. The two of them showing up at my door seemed very odd. I hadn’t spoken to Mercy much since I got back from Paris. All my energy had been focused on the “Schuyler” problem. All else had faded from existence. Oh and, of course, there was the Virginia problem too. But I didn’t see her all that much, even though she was still living with me. Only enough for her to greet me when I got home at four in the morning and to complain that I was never home, and my long hours weren’t good for me, and she was lonely, and on and on until I finally collapsed into my bed. It was probably like having an annoying wife.
“I’m really not up to going out tonight,” I sighed, my heart feeling like it weighed two tons. “It’s thoughtful of you both to come get me, but . . . Please don’t think I don’t appreciate it, but I have so much paperwork.”
“Enough work,” Virginia said. “You work too much. Put on your coat.”
She grabbed my coat from the rack and started aggressively stuffing my arms into the armholes, almost hurting me. “No, look,” I objected, “please, this is kind, but—”
“Your hat,” Mercy said, plopping the round navy blue hat on the crown of my head.
“First,” Virginia said, grabbing my hand and pulling my listless self out of the office, “we have special tickets.”
“To what?”
“You’ll see,” Mercy said.
“And afterwards,” Virginia continued, “we’re taking you out for a nice dinner, so we can talk about it. We have reservations at Longchamp’s. It’s simply scandalous to eat at a restaurant that elegant and at night without men, but who cares?” She threw her hands into the air. “Throw caution to the winds. We’re going to be daring tonight. It’ll be a delicious girls’ night out. That’s right isn’t it, Mercy?”
“You betcha’, as Shirl would say.”
“We’re going to talk about what?” I asked.
“The thing we have the special tickets for.”
“But I can’t stay out that late. I have two shows to get through later tonight.”
“Lucille said she would cover for you. She’s just as worried about you as we are.”
“Is she?” I said, doubtfully. Then I remembered it was Bertha, not Lucille who betrayed me. I’d exonerated Lucille. Distrusting Lucille had become a habit.
Mercy and Virginia walked me out past the Haven’s doors. We stood under the awning. “You haven’t been up to anything since you got back from Paris,” Virginia said. “I don’t know what that Juliana did to you, but—”
“Nothing! She didn’t do anything to me,” I said, angrier than I expected to be. “She was wonderful. More wonderful than, than . . .” I had to stop, or I would start crying again.
“I’m sorry,” Virginia said, sincerely. “Sometimes I say things I don’t mean.” She touched my hand.
Mercy left us and marched past Giorgio to the curb, whistled through her fingers, and yelled, “Taxi!”
“Mercy!” Virginia and I both exclaimed, shocked. Giorgio, whose job she’d just usurped, looked pretty shocked too.
“I’ve never heard you make so much noise before,” I said.
“And on the street,” Virginia said. “What has happened to our demure, little Mercy?”
“Shirl taught me that.” Mercy beamed with pride. The cab slid into the curb. “So I’d never get stranded when she wasn’t with me.” She threw open the door with the force of a truck driver and ordered, “Get in.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Get in,” Virginia said, giving me a push.
We all slid in with me in the center. “Should we tell her?” Virginia asked, leaning over me toward Mercy.
“Yes!” I said.
“Oh, not that,” Mercy said. “We’re not telling you where we’re going until we get there. You mean the other. Don’t you, Virginia?”
“Yes. Should we?”
“Go ahead. Why don’t you do it.”
“Tell me what?”
“I’m going to live with Mercy and Shirl!” Virginia declared.
“You are?”
“Yes, she is,” Mercy said. “We’ve got that extra room no one’s using. I’m going to clean it out and she can have it. And since Shirl and I aren’t out as much as you, Virginia won’t get so lonely.”
“I’m sorry I made you feel alone.”
“No,” Virginia said, tapping my knee. “You have your career. Mercy and I live more quietly so it’ll be a better fit. And their TV has a remote control!”
The cab took us into the campus of Brooklyn College. Walking past the bold buildings and the sculpted lawns reminded me of the simplicity of my life at City College. I recalled my first meeting with Marty when he saved me from being trampled by the cops. The things we’d done together, and the talks we’d had, came tumbling back. To cover my sadness, I laughed extra loud with Virginia and Mercy.
As we were about to enter the college auditorium, I noted a large poster propped up on an easel. It said, “TONIGHT Dr. Murray Banks Speaks On, ‘Our Sex Life: Integrating the Kinsey Report—Male and Female.’”
“What are we doing here?” I asked.
“It’s supposed to be very enlightening, and funny too,” Virginia said.
We situated ourselves in the center on the hard wood seats that school auditoriums always seemed to have. Warmed by the heat, we squiggled out of our winter coats. The auditorium was filling up fast. Male and female couples came in, and so did quite a few small groups of women like us who chattered and giggled. This was something of a daring adventure. To come out on a weekday evening to a school auditorium and listen to a man, a psychologist, talk about sex. I’d never heard of such a thing. If only I’d been in a more festive mood.
We didn’t have to wait long before Dr. Murray Banks, a pleasant-looking young man in a gray suit and tie, walked onto the stage. There was polite applause as he sat casually on a high stool to address us.
“When the Kinsey Report for Males first came out,” he began, “I saw a woman on the subway reading it. I asked her how it was, and she said, ‘There’s no plot, but lots of action.’”
The audience laughed.
“Most people are sexual cripples,” Dr. Murray continued. “Commentators are often criticizing Dr. Alfred Kinsey’s work because they think this statistic or that statistic isn’t correct, but Dr. Kinsey’s great contribution has nothing to do with statistics. It makes no difference if the percentage of women having premarital sex is 20 percent or 80 percent or any other such statistic. Kinsey’s great contribution was bringing sex out of the basement and letting us talk about it in the light of day.”
I looked around the auditorium. People were leaning forward, hanging onto every syllable. He went on to define terms like orgasm and coitus without hesitation or a blush. People giggled, but they didn’t walk out. Dr. Murray said he approved of masturbation. “There is no evidence to indicate that masturbation causes blindness. Most boys, 98 percent, and a majority of girls, 64 percent, do it, and it is healthy. A preparation for marriage.”
Virginia hid her eyes behind her gloves, and I wondered if that gesture revealed a guilty conscience. But I couldn’t picture her doing it. She was too proper. There was quite a lot of tittering and naysaying coming from the seats around us, but this guy just went on.
He explained that men have more extramarital sex than women because women have a natural instinct to take care of children and build a home. They can’t be running around with all the bucks in town and do that. Since I never felt any kind of “instinct” to have children and make a home, I wondered where I fit. Just a “deviate” I guessed.
Then he used the word “homosexuality” right out loud from the stage of a college auditorium, and I gripped the arms of my chair. “Sigmund Freud, the great psychoanalyst,” he said, “has told us that we all have some amount of homosexuality in us” —Really? — “only some people have more than others.” My heart thumped in terror, and I looked around to be sure we weren’t about to be raided. “Some people have quite a lot of homosexuality in them, and that makes them exclusively attracted to people of their own sex. There is nothing wrong with that. They do not deserve society’s condemnation, or pity.” He never once used words like pervert, deviate, or queer, or even medical terms like invert, third sex, or lesbian. He accepted us as equals. I couldn’t stop staring at him. Mercy leaned over and whispered, “This is our surprise. I heard about him on the radio. Of course, the religious folks and even other psychologists claim his books and talks are evil plots to destroy society, but—”
“We can’t talk about this at Longchamp’s,” I whispered back, still staring at this man who must’ve been an alien from outer space. “If someone heard us, we’d be arrested.” Mercy and Virginia giggled. I couldn’t join them; I was filling up with too much gratitude. For those few moments in that college auditorium, listening to that doctor’s words, I almost felt safe. Like I was a part of the human race.
Chapter Eight
April 1956
“Who we got lined up for tonight?” Max asked, bursting into my office. Lately, he’d been hanging around the Haven more than usual.
“I gave you the schedule last week,” I told him. “I booked Johnnie Ray for the early show all month to bring in the teen crowd and then—”
Max threw himself into the chair next to my desk. “Johnnie Ray? He hasn’t had a hit since ’51, and he drinks. Are you sure?”
“Yeah, I am, Max,” I said, with anger seeping into my voice. “He’s not coming cheap. ‘Just Walkin’ in the Rain’ is at number two, headed for number one, probably by the end of the week. “And when Johnnie sings ‘Cry,’ we’re going have to peel the teenaged girls off the floor. Teenaged girls come with teenaged boys with money to impress them. Our reservations list is filled to capacity, which hasn’t happened in a long time, and since when did you stop trusting me?”
“I haven’t. I haven’t.” He leaned forward in his chair and laid his forehead in the palm of his hand. “It’s just . . . business has been . . . well, you know and . . . I’ve had thoughts that maybe we should close the Haven and concentrate on the Mt. Olympus.”
“No! You can’t. The Haven’s your dream. You made it my dream. We’re on Swing Street. The Haven’s our baby. What would I do without her?”
“You’d work at the Olympus with me.”
“No. That’s no good. I built the Haven up from the bottom. You gave her to me. You think it’s my fault she’s in trouble, don’t you?”
“No. We’re struggling at the Olympus too, but maybe if we concentrate on one place—”
“No. I can pull her out of this slump. I know I can. Give me more time. I can do it. We’re on Swing Street.”
“Swing Street,” he sighed. He put his hand on top of mine like we were talking about our teenaged kid who was going astray. “It’s killing me, Al, but things are not the same. Not like the old days. There are more parking lots in this area now than night clubs. And all those shuttered clubs: Three Deuces. Famous Door. Sometimes I wonder if we’ll be next.”
“You can’t think like that. I can pull us out of this. I know we’re losing money, but . . .” It was the first time I had said it out loud, and a chill ran across my back. “Johnnie’ll be good tonight. I’m going to make everything turn out all right again. You’ll see. We can’t lose the Haven.”
“Who’ve you got for the late show?”
“The Bonnie Sisters.”
“The Bonnie Sisters? Who the hell are they?”
“They had that hit last year, ‘Cry Baby.’ Well, it wasn’t a top hit, but it got to number eighteen. And they are local girls. Our audience likes that.”
“How come I’ve never heard of them?”
“Sister groups are hot right now, only . . .”
“Only?”
“Only—they’re not really sisters. They’re nurses who work at Bellevue.”
“Oh, Al, they’re nobody.”
“No, they’re not. You shouldn’t say a terrible thing like that about anybody, but . . . these were discovered by Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Show! TV, Max!”
“Okay. Maybe they’ll work out.”
I couldn’t tell him yet that after hiring Johnnie, I was running low on money for this month’s show. He’d find out soon enough.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll leave it to you. You’re the one with the college education.”
“And don’t forget Johnnie Ray comes with Dorothy Kilgallen. Whatever strange relationship those two may be having, she’ll give him a good review. We’re going to pull out of this slump and be on top again. You’ll see.” I crossed my fingers behind my back.
“I know,” he said. His voice sounded tired. He pulled himself up straight in his chair. “Johnnie Ray being with Dorothy sure is a strange combo. First, the kid’s only twenty-five and she’s got to be what? Fifty?”
“I don’t think she’s that old.”
“Well, what about her husband? Doesn’t he mind?”
“She never seemed to mind his extracurricular activities or all the girls he got in trouble. Jiminy, he could’ve at least used protection.”
“No, he couldn’t. He’s a Catholic. Go forth and multiply. The part I don’t get is Johnnie is such an obvious queen.”
“Obvious to us. Not so obvious to straights. Remember those teenaged girls who’ll be fainting for him tonight? The straights may hate us, but they can’t recognize us even when we’re sitting in their laps.”
“I know, but Dorothy’s no fool. She’s in the business. She must know. So, what’s she doing with him?”
“Providing cover? Hoping to change him? Who knows? Any way you look at it, it’ll be great for us. Be happy, Max. Be happy the Haven isn’t going to close its doors.”
“At least not tonight.” He sighed.
“Never.”
“My little optimist.” He headed for the door.
“Max.”
He stopped but didn’t turn back to face me. “Yeah?”
“I’m going to fire Bertha. I think—no, I know she’s the one who’s working with Schuyler against us.”
“Then, you can’t fire her.” He shut my door and rushed back to the chair next to my desk. “If you’re right, if Bertha really is working with him, then you must never fire her.”
“Why?”
“Remember when Tallulah Bankhead’s maid stole thousands of dollars of her jewels?”
“No.”
“You really must pay more attention to gossip. Tallulah was about to have the maid arrested when the woman threatened to give the vivid details of Talu’s, shall we say, rather creative sex life to the press. Things our people know about her, but the public doesn’t; things like her switcho-chango sexuality and other sordid activities, such as not always wearing clothes when she gives a dinner party and the cocaine. It would’ve ruined her career, so she kept the maid in her employ and never told the authorities. If you think Bertha’s the one, then you can never let her know you suspect her, and you certainly cannot fire her. Our business is shaky enough.”
“Well, what the heck am I supposed to do with her?”
“Relax for one. Then contain the situation. Be extremely careful about what she sees and what you say around her.”
“That’s like trying to run this place with a gun at my head.”
“Exactly. Don’t forget that image.”
As I predicted, our room was packed. We’d sold standing room too, so I had to push my way through the mob gathered at the back and around the tables. I wore a blue short-sleeved dress with a slight flair and white polka dots. I stood in the middle of a cluste
r of weeping teenagers. Johnnie Ray was singing his top hit, “Cry,” which meant he was crawling on the stage floor, pulling at his hair and crying real tears as he sang about the girl who left him. Teenaged girls screamed, the boys smoked and tried to look cool; a few combed back their pompadours in memory of James Dean, but most sported crewcuts, or the side parted combed-back style that Max and Scott wore. Max had a big grin on his face as he gave me a thumbs up.
Giorgio, our doorman, tapped my arm. “Yes,” I said, getting his drift right away. I should know what he meant. We’d been doing our duo routine for six years. Giorgio went back out to manage the door while I hurried to the office. I’d already prepared the envelopes, so all I needed to do was get them out of the safe. I walked back through the main room, pushing past the dense crowd, occasionally getting elbowed in the ribs. Dorothy Kilgallen sat up front. She looked as hormonally excited as the teenaged girls. I gave her a quick smile as I passed her. I must’ve been in the back when she first came in. She was sensitive about not being acknowledged, so I knew I’d have to make it up to her later.
I pushed past the front door and stood under the awning with Giorgio. “Where’d they go? They’re usually right out front.”
“There.” He pointed.
I ran down the three shallow steps to the sidewalk where the cop car was parked in front of the truck. That truck’d be getting a ticket tonight for parking in my guys’ favorite spot. Chunk, sitting in the passenger seat, rolled down his window. I bent toward him and held out the two envelopes. He took both and gave one to Murray sitting behind the wheel. I was about to run back inside—it was freezing out—when Murray said, “Wait! Dis ain’t enough.”
“It’s the same as always.”
“I know,” Murray said, leaning his elbow on the steering wheel as the motor hummed. “Dat’s da problem.”
“Startin’ today, we gotta have double,” Chunk said. ‘Less’n you don’t give no damn ‘bout what happens to yer place.”