Cease to Blush

by Billie Livingston

  Who’s out on the sidewalk with her arms folded? Katie. She was shaking her head and handing me this I-told-you-so face as they brought me to the car. I kissed my fingertips at her with a loud smack the way Teddy used to do. The photographer was yelling, “Celia! Over here!” Flash flash. (Linda thinks this part sounds cool.) Then this very sweet young cop ran up with a blanket and said, “Jesus, cover the girl up,” and he wrapped it around me before they stuck me in the back seat. It was scratchy but better than nothing.

  I saw Kevin come out just before we took off, yelling like a madman. “Beauty is truth and truth is beauty. That’s my girlfriend, man.” I was pretty touched actually. The fink reporter ran after him. I bet Kevin was sorry he opened his mouth.

  When we got down here to the station they demanded ID and of course I didn’t have it. I said, “It’s in my pocketbook, you goon.” My bag was still on the floor at Harry’s. Poor Harry himself sat there waiting to get booked. I felt bad for him. He had his head down and his hands cuffed in his lap. I apologized while the guy who arrested me banged out my name on the typewriter. I said, “I guess I got carried away, Harry.” Harry said, “S’alright, honey. Who knew lookin’ so good was a crime.” He’s very sweet.

  I said to the cop, “How come I’m under arrest for something that happens every day in nightclubs all over town?” And he said, “For one thing, they don’t got a licence for this type of performance. For another, you got totally naked on your upper half.” (He was a real genius that guy.) I said, “Pasties? The rest of the boob, no problem, but the pink part in the middle, that’s criminal. Is that what you’re saying?” I was feeling like a freedom fighter all of a sudden. He says, “I don’t make the rules, lady. Address?”

  Then Kevin came charging in. A cop stopped him first but then he ran over to the desk and he had my pocketbook, my dress, and slip and everything. He said, “I got here quick as I could.” And suddenly I was happy. “Kevin! You CAME.” I was still in my blanket and I jumped up and hugged him in it. Kevin said, “What gives? What’s the charge?” And I said, “Nipples. What did that reporter ask you?” Kevin said, “Shit, THAT guy. I told him you were a jazz singer and an outlaw and tonight you shed light on our existence by baring yourself before god and man. Like Buddha.”

  He was very excited that he got to talk to that reporter. It made me feel less excited about what I did. I don’t know why. Then Kevin said, “I’d bail ya, baby, but all I got’s eight bucks. Katie’s got three.” Then I felt even less excited. I decided I better bite the bullet. I said, “Go home and look in the bottom of my suitcase. There’s a velvet pouch with some pearls.”

  He got this funny surprised look as if that was a very strange thing. “I never told you because they’re sentimental to me and I was waiting for an emergency.” He didn’t say anything. I guess he was mad. I said, “Kev, please! Just pawn them and get me out of here. They’ll set bail tonight.” And the cop said, “Morning.”

  “What! I can’t stay here all night!”

  The cop didn’t give a damn though. He just wanted my ID. Kevin finally said, “Okay, babe. I’m going to go back to the house and do like you said.” And he left. He didn’t even kiss me goodbye until I asked him to. He came back and kissed me like it was a big chore. Then that crummy cop said, “Won’t be seein’ him again.” I said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about. He’s my BOYFRIEND!” So, now I’m waiting. At least they let me put my clothes back on. Kevin hasn’t come back yet. I think maybe I should try to sleep. Where the hell is Kevin?? I guess the pawnshops are still closed.

  June 4. Morning.

  I’m awake. Not that I slept anyway. You know me, I can’t sleep in my own bed half the time never mind a JAIL cell. A different cop just came by. He was older and very nice. He slapped the morning paper up against the bars to show me and guess who’s on the front!!! I have to send this to you. You won’t believe it. The headline says, “Debauchery or Botch-a-me?” with a picture of me handcuffed with my arms over my boobs and I’m giving the Teddy kiss-off! They got that on film! Oops, I have a CALL!!

  I’m back. I can’t goddamn believe this. I don’t know whether to scream or cry. Or laugh, it’s so stupid. I’m so STUPID! The cop was very nice though. He said, “We don’t normally let detainees receive calls but it’s about your bail. And this seems crazy to me, pretty little thing like you being in here.” Anyway, the call was Kevin. He said, “I’m not coming down.” I said, “Didn’t you find them?” “Katie’s pregnant,” he said. What the hell’s that got to do with the price of eggs? I said, “So? Where’s Conner?” And then Kevin said, “Conner! Sonuvabitch is too busy shooting up to get it up.”? I just about gagged. He said, “Baby, try to understand. You were my girl, but Katie’s my soulmate. This country’s no place to raise a kid, you know, with Cuba and the A-bomb and everything. We’re thinkin’ about Mexico. You’re a gone chick, baby. What you did for us is beautiful.” And he hung up. Then the old cop was patting my shoulder. He didn’t hear but he knew all right. He said, “Life’s shit sometimes, kid.” I guess I’m pretty typical and ordinary and it IS all shit when you get right down to it. So here I am. Stuck in a jail cell. Truth is beauty, beauty is truth—What a load. Oh god, now I AM crying. Even Linda already got bailed out. And the other girl from Harry’s threw up so they just took her somewhere else.

  3:30 p.m.

  Jesus, Annie, you won’t believe this but I’m on a plane now. The cop came back right after I stopped writing you and said someone arranged for my release. Whatever that means. A lawyer. I’ve never seen him before in my life but he’s sitting right beside me now. His name is Leonard Trigliani and he said he was designated as my legal counsel. By John Rawlston he said. I was racking my brains trying to think where I knew that name and I finally remembered that you said Johnny uses it sometimes. In Florida, didn’t you say? Anyway, he put me in this very sharp Cadillac and said, “Your Los Angeles belongings have been shipped back to New York City where I will be accompanying you this morning. You have a reservation at the Plaza.” Actually, that’s when I remembered about Johnny because he stays at the Plaza sometimes. I just can’t figure out how he knew. Somebody must have seen the paper and told him. Oh boy, this picture of me in the paper. This is quite a hangover, waking up to this. Anyway, then Leonard Trigliani took me by the house so I could get my stuff, and suddenly I didn’t want any of it. The house looked so dank and dirty from the Cadillac. I just wanted to go home. The only person I’ll miss is Gordy. I can hand you this letter!

  Midnight.

  I just got to the hotel. I tried to call but you’re not there. The lawyer was right. All my stuff from Johnny’s in L.A. is here in the closet. God, I’m glad I never brought my mink with me to San Francisco. Imagine if Kevin hocked that. I’m going to have a hot bath. Fine, I’m a bourgeois princess. Oops, the phone!

  I thought it was going to be you but it was Johnny. He said, “I leave her alone five minutes and look what she does.” It was so nice to hear his voice. I said, “How do you always know where I am?” And he said, “You think I don’t know anyone in San Francisco? Besides, you exemplify the moral depravity of the nation’s youth. How could I resist?” Then he asked me if I was really going around with a commie—the article in the Chronicle is loaded with Kevin shooting off his big yap. I thought maybe Johnny would be mad at me but he said, “No, honey, of course not. I just thought you should be in New York with Annie instead of that place of mine. Things are a little hot in California.” Anyone who knows him or Sam G is getting a lot of hassle right now, he says.

  I don’t even feel bad, you know. I keep thinking I should feel embarrassed because I was in the paper practically naked but I feel sort of excited. Isn’t that goofy! Johnny says you’re coming home tomorrow. I’m glad he got me a room for the night. It would’ve been lonely to come home to the apartment without you there. I can’t wait to see you!

  Love, Celia the Flasher

  xoxox

  As my gaze eased up from th
e page, the snort of the espresso machine shoved me back into my own reality. Suddenly the clatter of dishes, the chatter and laughter of teenagers and old men as they stirred their coffees all felt so jarring. I pushed the heels of my palms against my eyes and tried to imagine what a man could say to make a woman hate her daughter. My foot kicked out reflexively and heads turned as the chair across from me jumped back.

  My chest heaved and I swallowed, terrified I was going to start crying right there in the coffee shop. To Josie it had never mattered what I did: I was the most miserable cunt imaginable and maybe she couldn’t stand me but she never stopped loving me.

  At the bottom of the box was an old Time magazine. June 18–25, 1962. The cover featured a grainy reproduction of mayhem: cops and young bohemians. Among them a thin blonde wearing nothing but heels, handcuffs and a pair of French briefs. It was my mother. On the cover of Time. I flipped it open to look at the credits or the story but all I could find was “Outside a San Francisco coffee house.” Maybe here, along Columbus Avenue. How could they have her on the cover of a magazine and not give her name? There were about a dozen people in the shot and I wondered if one was the fink reporter. A folded piece of newspaper fell out as I flipped through. The bottom half of the San Francisco Chronicle’s front page: Debauchery or Botch-a-me? Celia Dare exemplifies the attitude of our disaffected youth in coffee house raid. Kevin sounded as unbearable in the news as he did in her letters, but there was nothing directly from her. It described Dare’s “disdain of social mores and conventions” with her depiction of Rosemary Clooney as “a booze-soaked call girl.” Celia, it said, was “the product of divorce.” A psychiatrist spoke on the dissolution of the American family and its repercussions as evidenced by a higher incidence of prostitution, drug use and disregard for public decency. Time had more shrinks and crime statistics along with the prophecy of doom.

  “Excuse me,” I said to a guy clearing the next table over. “Do you know if Harry’s Drink is still around?”

  He said he’d ask the manager and came back a minute later to tell me it used to be down off Divisadero about twenty-five years ago but it was long gone now.

  As I put the letters and magazines back in the shoebox, another page fell out, torn from Good Housekeeping. Page III. What’s it REALLY like to be an AIRLINE HOSTESS? “Even if you’re not particularly interested in being a stewardess, you might like to know what, besides glamour, the job consists of.” Criteria for landing the job seemed to be mainly looks and a “pleasing personality.” It mentioned the pay, which wasn’t enough to keep one in cabbage soup and that the marriage rate was notably high. “Over 50 percent of the girls resigning from one major airline give matrimony as the reason.” Teddy the Ghost must have made a real impression on her. On the back was an ad for Tampax. Beneath a picture of a model kicking off her high heel, it said, “Today’s smart girls never let the time-of-the-month interfere with fun and freedom. Why do you? Why don’t you change to the comfortable, dainty way of sanitary protection … its special shield never lets your fingers touch it. What could be daintier for changing and disposal?” My mother’s thinly veiled disgust at the sight of her own hairy legs came to mind. Bleaching them on her bed. Sally’s hoots of laughter. Cell in my hand, suddenly I was dialing. When Sally answered, I was paralyzed for a second. “Sally? It’s Vivian.” My voice echoed clunky in my skull. “I’m in San Francisco.”

  “Vivian …” She paused. “What are you doing down there?”

  “Figuring it out.”

  “Oh.” She laughed uncertainly. “Are you by yourself?”

  “I’m staying with a friend. I found Annie West. I just read a bunch of old letters Mum wrote to Annie and … and you should see them. They’re so—she’s only eighteen. I guess she wanted to be a stewardess too, and there’s this crazy Good Housekeeping list of qualifications and, ah … I thought of you. I don’t know why.” I looked out the window onto Columbus Avenue, the steady stream of traffic and tourists, urban professionals who could afford the rent and the beggars who couldn’t, pleading for change.

  “Oh. Yeah, she did. She said that. Funny now, isn’t it? Are you okay? Vivian, I’m sorry I …” She trailed off.

  “So, Annie West, she kind of kicked me out when I asked too many questions—Mum dated this mobster and was friends with this other one—did Mum ever date Bobby Kennedy? Is that who the heart’s from?”

  There was a moment of silence. “Sounds like you probably know more than I do.”

  After we said goodbye I wanted to erase the whole phone call. At least I hadn’t told her when I’d be back. I didn’t want to see her. I didn’t really even want to talk to her. And what help was she anyway? I should probably go buy a Bobby Kennedy book now. I took out the pad from Marcella’s apartment and reread the last of what I’d written. Louis Prima and Sinatra. All of them around the table. I pulled out Pack of Rats and riffled through the dictionary of hipster slang. I looked up things I’d heard Prima say on TV the night before. I peered at Judy Campbell’s memories.

  Eleven

  WHEN SHE OPENS HER EYES, CELIA IS BACK IN HER SUITE under the bedcovers, still in her dress. With the blackout drapes closed, she can’t make anything out. She snaps the light on, squints at her wrist. Two o’clock? Her head is fogged in. She remembers only bits and pieces. After Keely and Louis left for their next show, everyone kept drinking and joking. The casino hopped. She remembers going to the Silver Slipper with them, Frank on one side of her and Johnny Rosselli on the other—she learned to shoot craps. She and Frank were laughing. He hadn’t seemed so bad last night. She remembers coming back in a guestmobile, Frank and Johnny crowing like roosters at the rising sun and her laughing until she got hiccups. Johnny brought her into the suite, made her drink a glass of water. It was the next day already and still no Ghost. “Where’s Teddy?” she asked him. “He disappeared on me.”

  “Ghosts’ll do that.”

  Celia giggled, then started to cry. “I’m all alone.”

  “What am I, chopped liver? You just had too much to drink. You let Johnny tuck you in. Teddy’ll be back before you know it.” He gave her a tissue, took her hand and led her into the bedroom.

  The maids had turned down the bed and she stared at the open triangle of bare white sheet before she sat, the ice blue of her dress flouncing around her. Taking the chocolate off the plumped pillow, she peeled off the wrapper and stuck the candy in her mouth, sighing as it melted. Rosselli lifted the covers until she dutifully folded herself under.

  “You’re really nice.” She reached up. “You’ve been nice to me the whole—all night.”

  “You’re family.” He kissed her forehead and said goodnight.

  “You’re going?”

  He sighed and walked to the wall, pulled a chair over. They both looked out the window at the orange sun making its way around dusky little Vegas.

  Now she’s awake again, the chair is back against the wall, Rosselli’s gone and the drapes are closed. She shuffles into the bathroom, winces at her reflection and sits down to pee. What do people do during the day in Vegas?

  Back in the bedroom, she unzips her dress, holds the bodice to her chest and makes her way to the glass doors, sticking her nose through the drapes. The sun pierces. A few guests lounge around the pool, some in short sleeves, most in slacks. Cocktail girls stroll. No floating crap game though. She opens the doors to let some air in. She’d thought it would be like Miami, hot all year-round. Ducking out of the curtains, she drops her dress and heads for the shower.

  It’s three by the time she has herself in a chaise lounge, daiquiri in one hand, movie magazine in the other. She’s just read that Sophia Loren uses olive oil to keep her skin beautiful, when a voice bellows, “Hey, Dare, whatcha doin’ down d’ere?” A few heads turn. It calls again, “Hey, Celia, I Dare ya!”

  She looks behind her but the light is too bright. Soon, a shadow blocks her sun and she lowers her sunglasses. “Hi, Frank.”

  “Hey, baby, what’sa matt
er? Am I back in the leper colony?”