by Jerry Stahl
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, remember
ing 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?"
I was too shocked to respond. Did he really think that? Just to do something until my face stopped burning, I announced that I would see to it Virginia got her own room, and find her a doctor. Before I closed the door Virginia was at it again, mewling insanely, "He did this! I'm bleeding, Maudie . . . He did this to me!"
Who thinks, in moments of panic, about the import of their actions—or the actions of others?
Still in a daze, I ducked out to track down the hotel manager and the physician on duty. After much back-and-forthing, I finally corraled a nervous fellow in wire-rims, one Harry J. Boyle, assistant manager. He informed me, with visible distaste, that the hotel's regular physician, Dr. Beardslee, preferred not to "attend to improprieties." I went back upstairs, where one of the guests, a local entertainer named Mae Taub, summoned her own doctor, a fellow with the odd name of Olav Kaarboe. Minutes later, Kaarboe stepped in with a black bag and monocle. He observed Miss Rappe, tongue lolling out of her mouth as she soaked in the ice bath, and declared—with the full weight of medical knowledge behind him—that she'd "overindulged." Deep.
Before Doc Kaarboe departed, another fellow showed up, a stolid citizen who introduced himself as Glennon, the hotel dick. This Glennon, who had the demeanor of a cinder-block wall, took stock of the situation. He decided it was nothing too out of the ordinary, and—taking me aside by the door—asked if I'd mind if he "stopped in for a taste" before leaving. I told him I didn't mind at all, though I confess I found the request a little peculiar.
The second the doctor and the house detective were gone, Virginia started yelping again. By then I'd just about had it. "I can't have her screaming bloody murder in my suite!" I snapped at Fischbach. "Can't you keep her quiet? She's your friend."
"Oh, but she's much more than a friend to you," Fischbach sneered. Meanwhile, Maude, who'd been guzzling moonshine nonstop since arriving, had passed out at the head of the bathtub and was snoring like a stalled Ford.
"Look, Fred," I said, trying to stay calm. Once I started blathering I couldn't stop. "I don't know what you're getting at, but you know damn well all I did with that girl was try to help, to get her to stop convulsing. Everybody's seen how Virginia gets when she drinks. At Keystone she'd get crocked and rip her clothes off every other week. She looked fit to die when I saw her, so I tried to help. End of story. Now give me a hand while I carry her down to 1227.1 made arrangements with the management. She can stay until she feels better."
Fischbach listened, but didn't bother to reply. He just kept looking at me with that rotten sneer. We lifted Virginia's soaking cold body out of the tub. I wrapped it in my dressing gown and together we carried her down the hall and put her to bed. By this time, I don't mind telling you, I needed a drink. Who'm I kidding? By now I needed a lot of drinks.
Back in the party suite, people were carrying on like nothing had happened. Fully dressed now, I walked back in time to see Lowell Sherman doing his famous chicken walk between two obviously polluted showgirls. He was trying to "peck" their tops off with his gums—a trick at which, for whatever ungodly reason, he was adept—and soon enough he had the first girl naked down to her bra. Swinging her blouse from side to side in his mouth, an unsavory spectacle, the middle-aged Lowell then dropped it and began to chicken-peck at the giggling dancer's brassiere. "Get hot! Get hot!" someone yelled from the other side of the room, and I finally put my foot down.
"Keep it up, Lowell, and I'm going to stick you in a tub full of ice cubes with Virginia. I don't want any bootleg orgies on my nickel, okay?"
I hated feeling like the party poop, so I decided now was a good time to get some air. The truth was, my leg-burn was killing me, and I figured I could kill three birds with one stone—get out of the hotel, line up some morphine if I was lucky, and stash the car on the Frisco-to-Los Angeles ferry, the Harvard Steamer. You had to hit the steamer early to get a spot. And there was no way I could drive back with that kind of pain in my clutch leg. Ever the optimist, I figured the whole mess with Virginia would blow over by the time I ambled back. I could not have been more wrong if I'd bet the farm on the Kaiser.
I got back to the hotel after dark. Riding up the elevator, I could hear the screams before the car even got to 12. When the doors opened, I leaped out and ran down the fleur-de-lis-carpeted hall. I remember the fleur-de-lis 'cause Daddy owned a tie, his only one, of the same pattern. He used to strangle me with it.
I clambered straight into 1227. Virginia's room. Banged through the door just as a silver-haired gent wielding a sy
ringe was leaning over the patient. He dabbed a cotton ball to her exposed buttock—was I the only one who saw bite marks?— then plunged the morphine home. Don't ask how I knew it was morphine. Hopheads are funny that way. Like piggies snuffling truffles in the mud.
"Dr. Beardslee," the silver fox announced, like I ought to recognize the name. He shook my hand after he unscrewed the syringe and packed it back in his bag. Apparently, the St. Francis physician had finally seen fit to make an appearance. "Roscoe Arbuckle," I said, "glad you could take a peek at her." The doctor gave me an odd look, then asked, in the most somber tone imaginable, "What happened to this child?" "Child?" I wanted to say. "She's had more bones buried inside her than Forest Lawn!" But instead I inquired politely, "What do you mean?"
Before our chat could progress further, Maude Delmont, wide awake now and dressed in what to her demented way of thinking must have passed for schoolmarm garb, grabbed the doctor's arm and led him urgently towards the door.
"I'll tell you what happened!" she cried, casting a backward glance in my direction. "I'll tell you exactly what happened."
For an instant I had the jitters, then caught myself and almost laughed. What can she possibly say that would put me in Dutch? Why would she bother? Sure, Maude was a bad bag of applesauce, but really, why would she do anything to me? Roscoe, I thought a second later, don't be a feeb. For a price, Maude would do anything to anybody. Then again, I was paying for her room—and Virginia's. Digs weren't cheap at the St. Francis. And let's not even talk about the five bathtubs of antifreeze Maude guzzled in the course of her stay. I could not imagine she'd want to annoy me and risk getting stuck with the bill. Why look a gift Clydesdale in the mouth? I figured it was the pain in my acid-burned thigh, or the painkillers I'd just bought to kill it, that made my thinking so cloudy.
By now my whole leg was throbbing. I felt like a bear dragging around the trap he stepped in. So I gulped more painkillers, then limped back to the party. I was thirsty for a nightcap. But what I really wanted was to forget all about the alarming Bambina Maude Delmont and the hapless Virginia Rappe. It was my party, wasn't it? Those two were just the flies who buzzed in and gunked up the ointment.