I, Fatty

by Jerry Stahl

  The next morning, a Tuesday, we were slated to check out and head south, back to work. I showered and stepped into the hall in time to see Dr. Beardslee again, flat-footing his way down to Virginia's room. Better him than me was how I figured it. Like I say, I was paying for her room—as well as the lovely Maude Delmont's—and the way those two drank that was no small stack of cabbage. They might as well have run a hose from the still straight to Maudie's tonsils. On the elevator going down, I noticed a pleasant-looking lady, a nurse, giving me the onceover.

  "Aren't you . . . Roscoe Arbuckle?"

  "Well," I said, "I'd hate to look like this and not be Roscoe Arbuckle."

  She managed a polite chuckle, started to talk, then stopped, then started back in again. I think the phrase is "cute as a button." "You know, Mr. Arbuckle, I'm a nurse. My name's Meg Jameson, and I have to tell you, this Virginia Rappe, she's . . . she's not well."

  "You're telling me," I said.

  She wanted to know if I'd noticed any symptoms—itching, burning, redness . . . I realized where she was going—by now we were stopped on seven—and asked her straight out, "You mean she's got the clap?"

  "Gonorrhea," she whispered, aiming her eyes at the little lit-up numbers over the door. "Plus she was bleeding. Not fresh blood, though. Like she had some wound that opened up. If I were you I'd get . . . looked over."

  I could tell this was as awkward for her as it was for me, so I just held up my hand for her to stop. "Lady . . . I mean Nurse . . . you got it all wrong. I never touched that girl. She collapsed after too much firewater and I tried to help her."

  Nurse Jameson squinted at me. "But Miss Delmont, she's saying you . . . " She straightened her uniform and stared down at her white shoes. "She's saying things about you."

  "Maude Delmont will say anything about anybody," I told her, trying to keep it pleasant. Two respectable people having a chat. "That's how she makes her living."

  The nurse and I parted with a handshake in the lobby. But just to be safe, I called Dr. Beardslee back. He said the patient was doing fine. He'd had to catheterize her, as she'd had some kind of bladder problem and hadn't relieved herself in over 24 hours. "Near as I could tell," he said, "that could be why she had the stomach pain."

  "No other complications, then?"

  I didn't want to ask about the gonorrhea. Then he'd think I was worried about pissing razor blades.

  "Nothing to fret about, Mr. Arbuckle."

  I left a $50 bill with the doc's name in an envelope at the desk, another 50 for Nurse Jameson, and set off to find Fred and Lowell for the ride to the ferry. The more time I spent in San Francisco, the less I wanted to spend. Everything was painful, starting with my leg, and I had the insane notion that if I just got back to Los Angeles, everything would be better. Or maybe I just wanted to panic in familiar surroundings.

  My mind still hadn't wrapped itself around the unfolding drama. But my ass was already sweating.

  Los Angeles Bounce

  By Wednesday I'm back at the studio, working. Glad to jump in with both of my size 12 quadruple D's. Freight Prepaid, our last gem, was in need of editing. And I had some story ideas I wanted to sketch out for our next one, The Melancholy Spirit. How's this sound? There's a spirit named Ek that comes down and takes possession of a mild-mannered professor. Whenever Professor Milquetoast's in the grip of Ek, he gets drunk and goes wild. Doing all kinds of stuff the professor wouldn't do. Pretty philosophical, huh? Was Ek making the professor into something he wasn't—or was the spirit just showing the professor for who he was?

  I met a real nice girl named Doris Deane on the ferry home. Since Minta—minus a couple of hooch-fueled smooches with Alice Lake—I hadn't really been too involved with the fair sex. But something about this Doris got me. I even mentioned her to Schenck, on Thursday, when we met to catch up on production. "Just make sure she doesn't meet Adolph Zukor" was all Joe had to say. "Right now you're on his disloyal employees list."

  In all the hubbub with Virginia, I forgot all about Paramount Week. "He's still eatin' bugs over that, huh?"

  Schenck bobbed his head up and down. "Oh yeah, the boss doesn't forget stuff like that." Then we got on the subject of the party up north, and when I told him that Fischbach, Maude, and Virginia had showed up, Joe started playing with his tie. He did that when he was nervous. "I thought I saw Fischbach talking to Zukor at the Formosa. Last week."

  Schenck did not have to say why that would seem odd. How often does the King of England slop rashers and mash with a chimney sweep? But I didn't give it much thought. "Maude and Virginia," Schenck went on, in that wrong way of talking he had. "Those two dames . . ."

  When I told him, "Yeah, and Fischbach found the bootlegger, so they were all pretty well oiled," Schenck got that spooked expression again. Did everything but strangle himself with his tie. For a sec I misted up thinking about Daddy.

  "Roscoe," Schenck said, bringing me back. "I know Fischbach. Fred is not the go-get-the-bootlegger type."

  "Uh-oh" was all that came out of my mouth.

  That Thursday night I got a weird call. Somebody from a place called Wakefield Sanitarium, in San Francisco. A shaky-sounding guy who called himself Dr. Rumwell asked if I knew a certain Virginia Rappe. At first I thought it was Buster. "Dr. Rumwell" was his style. He'd once woken me up pretending to be Chief Wannaspankee, asking for a donation for the Fat Little Navajo Fund.

  I didn't recognize Buster's voice, but for all I knew he could have hauled some rummy off a bar stool to call me. When I said, "Sure, I know Virginia, who doesn't?" the shaky guy kind of cleared his throat and said, " Are you the father?" "This isn't Buster, is it?" I asked. But the way Dr. Rumwell replied, gathering all his shaky dignity together to inform me, "I assure you, sir, there are no Busters in my family!" made me think the call was legit. It sounded so much like something Keaton would say I just knew it wasn't him.

  "So, are you the father?" Rumwell repeated nervously.

  I told him I may be no spring chicken, but I'm not that old. "I think I'd know if I had a daughter 10 years younger than me. I'd be in Ripley's Believe It or Not." I figured 10 years was just about what I had on young Virginia.

  I could hear the doctor not saying anything for a second of two. Then he sputtered an anxious "Thank you, sir" and hung up.

  On Friday, I told Buster about the call, and he gave me a big fake slap across the face. "Wakefield's an abortion clinic. Rumwell wasn't asking if you were Virginia's father, numbnuts. He was asking if you're the spud who made her a mother."

  When that sank in—us big lovable galoots can be naive—all I could do was shake my head. I told Buster about Maude Delmont, and we both figured maybe she was trying to shake me down on a paternity suit. Buster stroked his chin and made that deathbed-serious face of his, and we both burst out laughing.

  Buster knew about my problems south of the border. I could always tell him anything. I mean, we were both raised on the stage. We'd been put—and kicked—through the same paces. There was nothing either of us could do that the other would judge. Pretty soon, I'd realize that's the definition of a friend. And that Buster was the only one I had.

  That Friday was pretty much the last day of my life. The last day of it as me, anyway. The me who thinks about gags, and movie plots, and funny angles, as opposed to the "fanged lard-monster" or "sex-crazed blimp" I was about to be labeled. Chatting with Buster, I was already on the slide from "beloved family entertainer" to "lock-up-your-daughters monstrosity." I just didn't know it.

  Branded

  There were lots of things I should have known but didn't. But what, really, do you ever know about the future? If you're lucky, you never have to see how wrong you were about everything . . .

  Friday morning, at 10 a.m., Virginia's bladder ruptured. Right in time for the nurse's coffee break, she went into a coma. Her bladder popped, then she got the peritonitis. By Friday afternoon, infection had spread inside her body. By nighttime, it was about to spread outside of it. Courtesy o
f Maude Delmont, my personal Typhoid Mary, it was going to spread to me.

  While I was spending the day sketching out plot gags for Are You a Mason? and The Man from Mexico, Maude was still in San Francisco spinning her own funny tale.

  See, Virginia died at one-thirty in the afternoon, and by two o'clock Maude had already made two phone calls: one to the San Francisco Police Department, one to the San Francisco Examiner. I didn't know any of this, of course, until I got a knock on the door. A couple of mugs in sheriff's outfits—San Francisco sheriffs—handed me a summons. The littlest monkey, who owned jug ears that would have held up a gravy boat, pulled out an official envelope. He got his dirty prints all over it trying to get the letter out, then read, in a halting tone, "By the powers vested in me by the Police Department of the City of San Francisco, I am hereby authorized to remand you to the care of said department, and return you for questioning, on charges of murder in the first degree."

  "You gonna tell me who I murdered," I quipped, "or should I ask Buster, since he's the one paying you?" I snipped the butt off a cigar and sipped a brandy while they pondered their reply. His practical jokes were getting to be masterpieces.

  "Not just murder," the other cop, a real hatchet-face, declared after they'd conferred. "Murder and rape."

  At that point I stepped outside and yelled into the yard, "Very funny, Buster." But Buster didn't answer. So I stepped back in. I didn't know what to think. You hear people say, "Oh, such-and-such felt like a bad dream." But that's not how it is. It's just the opposite! When the worst thing in the world actually happens, it feels absolutely real. That's what makes it so bad. It's everything else that feels like a dream.

  "How'd you like it, crushing that little girl?" the hatchet-faced cop asked me. His expression was nakedly hateful.

  Slow as I am, it finally started to dawn on me. "Maude Delmont." My voice came out like a croak. "That's who's saying this?"

  Both cops just looked grim. The little one piped up again, making fists at his sides as he talked. "Virginia was Maude's best friend. And you made Maude watch while you took your sweaty way with Virginia. That tiny beauty. That angel!"

  "Easy, Floyd," said the bigger cop, putting his hand on emotional young Floyd's shoulder. "Easy there, partner."

  Floyd made a manly face and soldiered on with his story. "Maude said Virginia was a virgin."

  "She said what}" Should I have laughed or cried?

  "You heard me!" the cop snapped back. The little fireplug kept hopping from foot to foot, like he was going to either wet his pants or punch me in the face. He was that indignant. "You kept screaming at Virginia, 'I've waited five years for you!' You acted like a pre-vert."

  "Maude said that}" I was flabbergasted. I knew the woman was capable of lies, but why these lies? And why, by the way, was I talking to the police? "Who'd she say it to?" was the one question I managed to ask.

  Hatchet-face pulled a rolled-up newspaper from his back pocket and slapped it in my hand. I unrolled it and saw the Page One headline: DYING GIRL LAID BLAME ON COMEDIAN! Then, just below, "So Charges Woman at Bedside of Orgy Victim to SF Police."

  The first thought I had was "Orgy victim?" Where was the orgy? My heart felt pumped full of bad air. What was going on? I looked up at the policemen, but their eyes were dead. If I were a balloon, I'd have flown backward around the room and sputtered to the floor. It was that wrong. The picture on the front page showed a "Miss Rappe" I'd certainly never seen. Her hair was cut like a Sunday-school teacher's, falling demurely above the shoulder straps of a humble gingham dress she might have made herself, with a matching bonnet.

  "She was mad at me," I heard myself say to the cops. I'd polished off a snifter of brandy, but the drunk was sucked right out of me. My own voice sounded tinny and faraway.

  Even though it was horrible, it seemed silly. That was the way things felt, for the next day or so. Horrible and silly. The idea that I'd killed Virginia, the idea that people believed I'd raped her to death—one second it would make me lose my breath and nearly upchuck, the next I'd start laughing, then lose my breath and nearly upchuck. Why would anybody have to rape Virginia Rappe?

  "So you did crush her?" one of the cops said.

  "Not Virginia," I said. "Maude. The one who made this up. She was mad. She thought I insulted her."

  "Whyzzat?"

  "Not to tell tales out of school," I told the boys from Frisco, "but I had to 86 Mademoiselle Delmont when she started showing her breasts to the bellboys."

  Did I mention that before? Lowell's pajama bottoms hid her well enough, but his tops were missing all the buttons, and Maude kept finding an excuse to lean over and pick up nickels. Real class.

  "These people were a breed unseen by churchgoers . . ." That was the one line I read in the papers I agreed with. When I told Maude to play ladylike or vacate the premises, Lowell got to be the White Knight—the reward for which, in this case, was getting to toss her in the tub with her knickers on. Lowell even thanked me later for getting Maude riled up. "Gave me the chance to play tough guy," he winked. "Maudie likes tough guys."

  After that, I could not stop contemplating how I'd riled Maude up. It got me thinking, had I spent a lifetime riling people up and not knowing it? Making folks so mad that they wanted to do things to me? Was my Dad just first in a line that stretched to Adolph Zukor, Maude Delmont, and a cast of thousands I'm just too dense to have noticed?

  When the sheriffs announced that we'd be leaving for San Francisco tomorrow at seven, I felt like I was trapped in a script that needed a rewrite. I figured it wouldn't hurt to improvise, so I said the first thing that came to mind. "Ever ride in a Pierce-Arrow? It's got a toilet."

  Red Meat

  So it was that I was tooling north at the wheel of my trusty Big Man-mobile, the pair of San Francisco's Finest wedged between Frank Dominguez, the lawyer Schenck lined up, and Al Semnacher, Virginia's manager. Al said he'd be happy to ride up and vouch for me. Schenck didn't tell me Semnacher's next call was going to be to Zukor and Lasky. I'd find that out later. For now, my pariah status was still in its fetal stages. Horrifying as it all seemed to be—the headlines, the lies—I could not help treat it, at least partly, as a joke. I dressed as if for a formal occasion. Minta had once bought me a set of emerald plus-fours, with jacket and hat of the same material. I figured I'd march them out.

  My part-scared, part-larky outlook was altered after Schenck called and told me not to talk to anybody on the drive north. He hung up before I could ask him why. He called back later to say that no hotel in San Francisco would take us. We'd have to check in at the Olympic Club, a rooming house outside the city, under pseudonyms. I said I'd sign in "Will B. Good." Joe didn't laugh. "Remember," he said, with what sounded like genuine dread, "San Francisco already hates us. You're going to be red meat."

  Well, how do you prepare for that? With a helmet, if you're smart. But we already know I wasn't smart.

  We were three blocks from the Olympic when the first rock hit the car. A swarm of women, upper-crust and angry, waved posters in front of the car: FATTY WILL FIT IN THE GAS CHAMBER! VIRGINIA —THE BEAST WILL PAY!

  Maybe that's when it really hit me. This was worse than I'd imagined—though I hadn't imagined much. It still seemed ridiculous. In the abstract. But not when a young lady who looked about Virginia's age, in a starched collar and Salvation Army cape, rammed her face right over the windshield and spat. There's nothing abstract about spitting women. Not when they look at you like you're missing a noose.

  Photographers were everywhere when we pulled in. Dominguez and Sherman had to make a wedge so I could squeeze into the lobby. Ever since I could actually afford to stay in them. I'd loved walking into hotels. The way the 'hops run over, the manager's smile when he offers you cigars and a handshake. Or when some shy kid with his dad wants an autograph. I could never stay unhappy about anything in a hotel lobby. Until today.

  The Olympic desk clerk looked so uncomfortable, I felt bad for him. I slid a 50 his w
ay on the counter and said, "It's going to be okay," though maybe I was talking to myself. The clerk just stink-eyed the greenback, then inched it back to me with the nub of a fountain pen, like he didn't even want to touch it. After that he threw the check-in card across the counter and said, as coldly as he could, "Sign here."

  The bellboys had scattered, so our bags were still sitting in the Pierce-Arrow, unfetched. I slipped the 50 back in his direction, left it there, and gave him my biggest smile. "Buy your mother something nice. She deserves it."

  I called up Buster long distance and said, "J'accuse!" He said, "Gesundheit," and told me to be careful. "There's blood in the water, Roscoe. Don't take your trunks off." That's how Buster and I spoke to each other. Every conversation was half gag.

  The deal was, I would check in to the Olympic Club—where I'd been so warmly welcomed—then drive with my lawyers down to the Hall of Justice. This was Dominguez's idea. Don't act guilty! But the two S.F. assistant DAs who met me at the curb were not impressed. In time I'd get to know Izzie Golden and Milton U'Ren pretty well. Golden was a ham-loving Jew. U'Ren was a tough guy who must've taken a lot of poot about his sissy name. In a way it must have been a lot like being a fat kid.

  The Laws of Nature, Gone

  It all happened so fast. But since nothing like it had ever happened before, I could not believe it was happening now. If you saw an apple fall up, you wouldn't believe that, either. Until you fell up after it. And knew gravity no longer applied. Think how that would feel, and you have an inkling of my days and nights.

  This was unprecedented madness. One minute I'm still a movie star, the next I'm plunked behind a battered desk, 100 watts in my face, and these DAs are walking around cracking white folders off the table. "We got three affidavits, Arbuckle. Maude Delmont, Zey Prevon, and Alice Blake. They all say you dragged Virginia into the bedroom, you overpowered her when she resisted, and you tried to rape her."