Cease to Blush

by Billie Livingston

  “And they’d all end up at the Slipper too. I wasn’t in town three days when I got invited to have dinner with Frank Sinatra! This was when they were all there at the Sands: Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr…. when those fellas were around, the whole place was buzzing. So I had dinner with Frank and his friends late one night after the show. And they had their funny way of talking, you know, like surfers and beatniks, calling everyone Charlie—Charlie Cool, Charlie Suave, and like that—and everything was a gasser. You just wanted to be around them. Dean was so funny. He used to put on this Southern accent and he’d say, You ain’t drunk if you can lie on the floor without holdin’ on. Afterward we all went back to Frank’s suite in the Sands and carried on till five or six in the morning. That was normal with him; Frank wanted everyone up playing with him till he said it was time for bed. Nobody minded though—being around Frank, you really felt like you’d made it. He was cute too, big blue eyes—you couldn’t see straight when he was turning on the charm. I stayed with him after everyone left this particular night. Big gorgeous suite. Anyway, it was nine in the morning and we hadn’t even gone to sleep yet and the phone rang. Frank went out to the other room to get it. Sounded like he was trying to smooth someone out a little and then next thing you know he smashes the receiver down and he’s slamming things around, eff this and eff that. There were lots of stories about his temper, guys sued him for assault and so on—it’s like all the fury of the world when you’re next to it. He came storming in the bedroom and I said, Who was that? Everything okay? Well, that did it for me. None of your effin’ business who that was. What are you still doing here anyway, pig?

  “I couldn’t move I was so stunned. He yanked the blankets off and pulled me by the hair. He says, Get your fatass outta my effin bed … I jumped up and got myself together fast as I could. I never had anyone talk to me that way in my life … still makes me sick to my stomach to remember. By the time I got downstairs, I was crying so hard, I couldn’t see straight. Then I got to my room and my damn key wouldn’t work and I started to kick at the door, like a tantrum, you know, I was so mad. Then this little blonde opens up in her bathrobe. Thought I was losing my mind. She says, What’s going on? Must’ve thought I’d been attacked. May’s well have, the way I felt. I said, He called me a pig, Frank Sinatra called me a pig. I guess that was the worst part. The singer? she says to me like I’m nuts. And I start blubbering—maybe I thought she might still be sore at me for sending her to that carnival show. So she says, You want me to call the po—oh eff the police. What room is he in? Next thing I know, she’s marching us back upstairs. I was saying, No-no-no, he’s crazy, I don’t know what he’ll do. And she’s banging on his door and we hear him cussing in there and he opens the door and she lights into him. You so-and-so, you rapist! I said, No-no-no. He didn’t. Jesus, I felt like an ass. She wouldn’t back down though. So, he says something like, Who the hell are you, her mother? And then she tells him to apologize. And then Frank gets this very smug look on his face. He could be a very weird cat, I’ll say that much for him. Didn’t even look at me. He said, All right. I’m sorry I haven’t laid eyes on you sooner, fireball. Fireball, he called her. Oh, that made her mad. She said, There’s nothing cool about you, Mr. Sinatra. You’re just warm grease. Huh! I used to tease her about that later when we got to be friends. I haven’t thought of that in a while. Warm grease. Anyway, he apologized. I was half-scared of her myself.”

  Annie shook the ice around her glass and took a sip. I looked down into my own glass. Spiked lemonade wasn’t sitting very well today. “You were friends after that?”

  “Ah, well, a little later. Teddy wasn’t around because he had that tax stuff to deal with and she didn’t have anyone. This old boyfriend of hers came looking for her, giving her a hard time. Had an argument about his car. Anyway, I got her out of a bit of trouble with him.”

  “Okie Joe? Was this the candy-butcher guy?”

  “Yeah.” She looked at me.

  I couldn’t tell if I’d said something suspicious or if she’d just forgotten what she was going to say. “Sorry. You got her out of trouble with this old boyfriend.”

  “Yes. I did. He was bothering her at her hotel room and I ran and told Frank about it and also this fella named Johnny that kinda looked after things in town and him and Frank told the guy to take a hike and then we all got to be friends after that. Frank even gave her a part in whatsits, that picture they were shooting. But it got cut. He was good to his friends.”

  “Johnny Rosselli?”

  Her eyes flicked up. “What’s that?”

  “Was the Johnny who looked after things in Vegas Johnny Rosselli?”

  “Yeah. I think so.”

  “They dated though, right? Celia and Johnny?”

  She shrugged. “No. I don’t know. He looked after her when Teddy went away. We saw him around Vegas and New York. He had an apartment in L.A. She did some lounge singing and then she got into Buddhism or something, met some beatniks and went off to San Francisco. I didn’t see her for a while. Then she put together a couple good shows singing and stripping and she was getting kind of famous because nobody else did that then. And then she quit.”

  “Just like that? How come?”

  She shrugged again. “She danced a while and then she quit. That’s how it goes. Can’t be a stripper your whole life, you know.” She looked around the kitchen and yawned. “I think I have to go lie down for a while. This is my usual time to lie down.” She set her glass on the countertop.

  “Oh. Okay.” I looked down at the pictures still strewn on the table and gathered them up.

  “It was nice meeting you. I gotta lie down.” She led the way down the hall to the front door.

  I trailed after her. “Would you have time to chat again? Tomorrow maybe?”

  “I’m busy.” She opened the door and put her hand on my back. “Good meeting you.”

  “Maybe I could just come for a shorter time?” I stepped out onto the stoop.

  “I’m very tired right now,” she said, closing the door as she spoke.

  “Could I—” Door shut, she turned the lock.

  “Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry,” I muttered, staring at the peephole as it darkened with her eye. Waving sardonically, I turned and fwap-fwapped down the front steps to the car.

  Erin opened the door with a kind of bored flourish as if she were raising the curtain on something swell but didn’t have the energy to say, Ta-dah! She looked the same, short chic honey-coloured hair. “Oh my god, look at you!” she said and hugged me. She leaned back with an appraising eye. “You broke up with Frank.”

  I reached down for my suitcase. “No. Why would you say that?”

  “Oh.” She moved back inside the apartment, grinning. “I don’t know, it’s kind of a girl thing to do: change the hair when you split up with a guy.” She closed the door and took a quick eyeball through the peephole. “Just put your bag in the corner. Come on in the kitchen, I’m making us a pitcher of sangria. You want tacos for dinner?”

  I followed her in, staring around the spacious creamy-white apartment, the sliding door open to a balcony, the high ceilings, the long hall leading to what appeared to be a decent-sized bedroom. Her living room looked like something out of a tampon ad. A low faux–Japanese style table sat between the cream sofa and loveseat. Sitting on a pale wooden stand that matched the table was a flat broad television. I recognized a painting on the wall from her apartment in Vancouver as well as a hip-high black-and-slate glazed vase she’d bought from Sally at one of her shows. Or rather the stockbroker she was dating at the time bought for her. Big dried heads of ivory and purple hydrangeas exploded out of the mouth with a sense of entitlement.

  When I first met Erin, she looked like a mud-flap girl: a long wave of thick platinum hair, body by Pilates and rocketing C-cup implants courtesy of the stockbroker who also paid the rent on her downtown high-rise apartment. She assumed she would become Mrs. Stockbroker until he came to her, two years
into the relationship, and announced that he would be wed the following weekend to an equestrian from Southlands. The following morning, she went out and bought a Town and Country magazine and studied the contents before getting herself a three-hundred-dollar haircut and a manicure that brought her nails down to an elegant but sensible length. She hired a makeup artist to show her exactly how to duplicate a money face. From then on she was a honey-haired, big-knockered Audrey Hepburn.

  “I don’t know if my gut can take tacos. How can you afford this place?”

  She glinted as she cut up an orange. “Alimony.”

  Sitting on a stool on the living-room side of the kitchen counter, I watched her squeeze and drop the fruit wedges into a glass pitcher. “Ah yes. George had a few choice words to say. Something about an insurance policy?”

  She rolled her eyes and set her knife against an apple. “What, he didn’t mention the Saab?” Off my raised eyebrow, she gave that deep-throated laugh I used to love. It generally meant she’d broken some rule, spoken or otherwise. “The car was in my name. If he hadn’t screwed everybody he owed with his Chapter 7 declaration, he wouldn’t have needed to put the car in my name to begin with.” She poured Triple Sec over the fruit and stirred it around with a wooden spoon. “Anyway, he was cheating on me.”

  “Did you really change your name to Marcella?”

  Uncorking a bottle of wine, she said, “I didn’t change it. Marcella is my middle name. Why should I be saddled with Erin for the rest of my life? I mean, look at me, darling.” She gestured at herself. “I am Marcella.”

  “How did you know he was cheating?”

  “I was friends with this computer guy. He liked me and he didn’t trust George. So he found out for me. This guy knew everybody. He asked me one day, if I could meet any celebrity who would it be? And I said Harrison Ford, who he knew, of course. Just like that, boom, he set up a lunch date.”

  My brain ticked over that a second. “So, you went out with Harrison Ford?”

  “No.” She smiled fondly. “Harrison was always busy when I could make lunch and I was always busy when he could. Harrison was really pissed about it. Meanwhile I was trying to get this Internet business off the ground. I had these amazing designs and I thought I could start up an on-line clothing shop. Which George was investing in.” She smirked. “He didn’t know it, but he was investing. And then everything fell apart. It could have been an empire.”

  Ice in the pitcher, she took two glasses out of one cupboard and ripped open a bag of lime-flavoured tortilla chips with her teeth.

  “I thought you were going to be a massage therapist when you came down here.”

  “I was just so burnt out from catering … George said he’d put me through school so I thought massage would be cool. But then on the first day, oh my god, they split us up into pairs. And we had to take off all our clothes. So then this girl, she starts massaging my chest! Not my thing. I didn’t want to do massage anyway. I mean it’s kinda gross, touching strangers’ skin like that. I didn’t tell George though.” She laughed giddily at the thought. “I just skipped class and went for coffee, got my nails done or whatever.” She pushed a glass of sangria toward me and we moved our party into the living room. “So, what’s with the new ’do, anyway. It’s dark.”

  “You hate it?”

  She tilted her head. “You could bag yourself a politician with that look. Me, I’m going for a producer. They like blondes.” She batted her eyes playfully. “You still haven’t told me what the hell you’re doing down here.”

  “My mum died.”

  “Oh Christ, I’m sorry.” Her hand reached over. “When? Jesus, how is Sally? She must be wrecked.”

  “Week ago. And now it turns out she used to be a stripper named Celia Dare.”

  Marcella choked on a chip then burst into a coughing fit mixed with laughter. “The feminist who ate Vancouver was a peeler?”

  I nodded. “Google her. Celia fucking Dare. I came down to try and talk to this old stripper who used to be her roommate but she was about as useful as tits on a bull. I was just getting some juicy stuff and she kicked me out.” I stared into my glass a moment. “She slept with Frank Sinatra.”

  If Marcella were a slot machine, three cherries would have rung across her forehead. “You know what Ava Gardner said about Sinatra: Someone asked her, ‘What do you see in that 120-pound runt?’ and she said, ‘Well, there’s only 10 pounds of Frank and 110 pounds of cock.’ Did she fuck John Kennedy?” Marcella asked, electrified. “Everyone fucked John Kennedy.”

  “She booted me out before I found out. She was kind of a cranky old bitch.”

  “That’ll be us in a few years.”

  I reached into the chip bag. “What was George in the hospital for?”

  “He’s got Crohn’s; didn’t I ever tell you that? He was in the hospital every five minutes. So he had yet another operation and he ended up going septic when he was home recovering. Every time he got sick, I had to play nursey. So there he is, temperature up to 104 and I call 911: no no no, he doesn’t want to go to the nearby hospital, he wants to go to Stanford. Then at Stanford he went totally delirious and thought somebody cut off his penis. His sister came to see him and he made her check to see if it was still there. I would’ve checked for him but he was saying all this weird shit to me.” Her voice dropped to a dramatic growl, “‘I know who you are. And I know what you’ve done …’ And there I am, his wife for chrissake, and he hasn’t given me power of attorney, he hasn’t sorted out his will, there’s bill collectors at the door. We were borrowing against his life insurance policy when he was sick before so I forged his name again and got out what I could before everything went to shit.” The words rattled off her tongue like stage patter—then that laugh again. I didn’t recall her laughter sounding so manic. I couldn’t figure out if it was just nerves or actual cruelty.

  I wiped sangria and lime salt off my mouth. “You cleaned out his life insurance policy?”

  “What was I supposed to do? He was hardly working, his ex-wife was bitching for more child support—what would have happened to me if he died? What kind of man leaves his wife in that kind of position? And the bank account was a joint account, so it wasn’t his. He wants the car back, he wants his money back, he wants, he wants. I have to pay my rent. San Francisco ain’t cheap and this is where I have to be if I want to get a decent job. Not way the hell out in Marin County. So now he’s threatening to sue. Never should’ve called 911.” She crunched another chip—“Just kidding”—and made a face like a ten-year-old.

  The phone started blinking in intermittent red bursts. “I keep my ringer off,” she said, checking the call display before picking up. “Hello? … Hi-i-i, how are you? … Oh nothing … Sure, what time were you thinking?” She checked her watch. “Okay. I’ll see you then.” She put the receiver down with a wince. “I’m sorry, Viv. I forgot I had plans tonight. I’ve been seeing this guy I met just down here at Vesuvio’s. Well, actually, I met him first at Stanford Hospital—he’s the head of cardiology. I was having coffee when I first moved into town and ran into him again.” Her eyes lit up. “Recently divorced, no kids. He’s so cute—totally naive—I guess from being married so long and hanging out in the ivory tower. I should see if he has a friend I can introduce you to! Anyway, no rush, he’s not picking me up for another hour or so. Feel free to hang out here as long as you like. I’ll give you the spare key.”

  Nine

  ONCE MARCELLA WAS OUT THE DOOR IN AN OUTFIT BEFITTING the trophy wife of a heart specialist, I turned on the TV. Nothing much on. I tried calling Frank once more. His line rang a few times and suddenly: “Yeah.” Frank has call display.

  “It’s Viv,” I announced with some vague hope that a burst of joy would bounce back at me. No such luck. “Where are you? You haven’t called me back.”

  “Busy.” He spoke away from the phone. “Sure, gimme another …” Back into the receiver he said, “Really busy.”

  My gaze drifted around the roo
m. “Are you mad at me?”

  Silence, then, “Whatever, Vivian.” A DJ’s voice traipsed in the background.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call before I left. But I’m feeling less weird now, not so lost, you know. Which is kind of ironic since I’m … and I found the lady my mother used to know.” Hoots and clapping came through from his end. “Where are you?”

  “I’m at the Number Five with Brian, grabbing a beer, catchin’ the show.”

  “Seems like you’re always in strip joints lately.”

  “Guess so.”

  Normally I wouldn’t care. Rather, I don’t care when it’s once in a while. It just seems a bit pathetic when a guy’s in a strip joint every other day like some divorced sad sack who needs a place to cry in his beer.

  “Well, I just wanted to check in and say hi. I’ll probably be a couple more days here.”

  “Oh! ’member this chick? She’s totally ripped.”

  I assumed this was directed at Brian. “Bye,” I murmured and clacked my phone closed. Staring blankly at the television screen, I recalled a photographer who did publicity shots for strippers telling me that most of them were man-hating lesbians. “You would be too,” he said, “if you were stuck with the assholes who hang out in strip joints all day.”

  Picking up the remote I clicked past old footage of Lawrence Welk squeezing his accordion on PBS to a reality show with three men and three women competing for the fastest tightrope walk over a hundred-foot gorge. The men wore baggy jeans and T-shirts, the women wore Lycra crop tops and tight hip huggers. One of them had on a pair of the striped low-rise jeans currently sitting in my suitcase. I peered at her washboard abs and thought about getting a gym membership.

  On A&E, black-and-white snippets of an old nightclub act flashed across the screen. A bullish dark-haired man buffooned around stage, bellowing in broken Italian and English and blowing away at his trumpet intermittently. Beside him a woman in a black taffeta dress with a full skirt and slim bodice folded her arms, a worse than bored face balanced on her long thin neck as the trumpet player jumped around for her attention. The screen cut to the same woman in colour, older and heavier now, with the same short black bangs framing her face. “The thing about Louis …” she said. White print spelled her name out along the bottom of the screen. Keely Smith, singer, wife of Louis Prima.