Cease to Blush

by Billie Livingston

  He starts to chuckle. “What the hell’s Teddy the goddamn Ghost? He your pimp?”

  Men’s voices in the hall now. A little laughter, growing louder until they stop right outside. “… yeah, on stage. With Prima—Rosselli said she killed.” A light rap on the door. “Celia. Baby, it’s Frank.”

  She and Joe look toward the suite’s front door. Joe sits on the floor, his back against the bed and hauls her shoulders back against him, her head under his chin, the knife at her neck.

  From the hall: “Frank, maybe the girl just don’ like you.” Celia recognizes the Southern drawl Dean uses from the Copa. “Maybe we should just go find you a girl who do like you.”

  “I just thought it’d be a nice gesture to have a little celebratory cocktail, that’s all. Awright, fine. I’m leavin’ her a glossy.” The sound of something sliding under the door.

  Then a woman’s voice shrieking down the hall, “Frank! Frank, wait.”

  “Who dat?”

  “It’s Annie, y’blind sonuvabitch. Could see those Charlies from Albuquerque.”

  Annie’s words come in a rush. “Frank! She’s in there—some guy’s got her in there!”

  Then from Dean: “Well, if we’re interruptin’, then what the hell we—”

  “No! He pushed her in there. I saw him …” She bangs on the door. “Celia!”

  Inside, Celia and Joe face the door. He shh-shhes into the top of her head. She feels his muttering jaw graze her hair and suddenly the gaunt bony face of her first singing teacher floats in her eyes, her voice in Celia’s ears as she tried to coax corrections. Enunciation is important, Audrey. It finally hits her, that’s who Okie Joe reminded her of, the familiar way he stuck his tongue a little too far between his teeth whenever he pronounced th.

  Joe mutters above her head, “That bitch is never gonna leave.”

  She listens to the murmur against her skull, feels the rhythm of his jaw, tenses her shoulders under him, waiting. Enunciation is important.

  “Now, you tell th—”

  She slams the top of her head against Joe’s jaw. His teeth cut the tip of his tongue and he howls. She howls along with him. Then clamps her teeth onto the fleshiest part of his knife hand.

  “He’s hurting her!” Annie shrieks in the hallway.

  “Get out of the way,” Frank yells and slams his skinny shoulder into the door.

  “No offence, Frank …” Dean pulls him aside and gives the door a shoulder check.

  The door cracks but holds until both men hurl themselves together.

  Okie Joe does his best to slap her head off his hand, his wrecked tongue lisping blood, before he drops the knife. Celia snatches it up, pushes herself off the floor.

  Joe lunges and grabs her ankle. “ou fugging bish.” He yanks hard and she falls as the door crashes open and Annie, Frank and Dean charge into the bedroom.

  Annie rushes Joe and kicks her silver pump into his jaw. “You goddamn pig-shit-bastard,” she screams. Celia wriggles free.

  Joe punches back at Annie’s legs. Frank pulls Annie back and boots Okie Joe in the stomach with his polished black dress shoes. “What’re you? A fuckin’ rapist?”

  Joe grabs hold of Frank’s leg. “Geg off me, ‘ou peech of shi’ …”

  Frank looks at Dean. “What’d he say?”

  Annie’s face is covered in sooty tears as she helps Celia, who stares disconcerted at the little pocket knife she still grips. Funny how much bigger a thing looks when it’s at your throat.

  Frank grabs Okie Joe by the back of the head.

  “Wai’, jus’, sop, sop!” Joe yells, holding his hand up.

  “Whoa, there, Frank. Pally’s got somethin’ to say.”

  “She shole my car, and ah my mo’ey.”

  Wrapped in Annie’s arms now, Celia interjects. “No! You stole! You stole everything I had. I took it back!”

  “ying’ bish, I—”

  Frank boots him. “Don’t call her that. You took, she took it back. Sounds fair.”

  Dean slips his arms around Celia and Annie. “Why don’t I take you ladies up to my room.” Celia is glued, her eyes wild on Joe’s gory face. “Come on, honey.” Dean gently pulls her along like a high heel snagged on carpet. They head for the bedroom door. “Good night all,” Dean calls over his shoulder.

  “Hey, Dago, where y’goin’,” Frank gripes.

  “You got this under control, there, Frank. It’s your kinda party. Come on up and join us when you’re through.”

  A quiet tap at the broken door as someone else comes in. Dean glances. “Ah, Mr. Rosselli, you handsome devil. Me and the girls is cuttin’ out but Frank here’s in for round three.”

  Pausing, Rosselli reaches for Celia just as she bends to pick up Frank’s picture, a stupefied look on her face as she reads, Celia, You’re cruel, baby! But when you’re right, you’re right. Frank. She drifts from the room and Rosselli pushes the broken door closed after them.

  Noon the next day, there’s a rap at Annie’s door. Annie puts her robe on and opens up to Rosselli, a newspaper under his arm. He’s changed his clothes but he looks as if he hasn’t slept. He comes in and orders them some breakfast and coffee while he waits.

  Eventually both women come out with their dressing gowns and faces on. Johnny hands Celia an envelope with Prima’s three hundred as he pours coffee. They eat and make disjointed small talk. When breakfast is finished Johnny sets his paper beside Celia’s plate. “You might want to have a look at that.”

  On the front page in bold print: MAFIA BIGWIG BUSTED and a mug shot of Teddy. Teodoro (Teddy the Ghost) Gossitino was arrested and charged with one count of first-degree murder, two counts of racketeering, three counts of tax evasion … Celia’s mouth hangs.

  Johnny fidgets with his napkin. “He called last night but I didn’t want to say anything, what with your big gig and all.”

  Celia glares. “He called you? He couldn’t call me?”

  “He had one phone call to take care of you, business and himself.” He gives her wrist a squeeze and says, “The murder rap is crazy, never stick, but the tax thing …”

  Celia pulls her hand back and rests her fingertips over her eyes.

  “He doesn’t want you visiting, he doesn’t think it looks right.”

  Johnny and Annie trade looks. Celia’s shoulders start to shake and Annie says, “Honey, don’t worry. You have friends; everything’ll be fine.”

  Celia takes her hands down. “Why is everyone such a liar? Oh, I’ll look after you; Peggy Lee used to dance carnival; you’re the kinda girl I wanna marry; I just got in with the wrong crowd; Keely’s sick! Don’t you worry! When someone starts moving their fucking lips, I should worry!”

  Johnny’s face registers something like amusement. “He also told me to keep an eye out that you don’t use foul language. He doesn’t want you to sound low class.”

  She picks an untouched piece of toast off her plate and throws it at him before slamming into the bedroom. Johnny winces. “Ah, she’ll be okay. I gotta see about getting her another room till we figure out what to do. Should probably get her back to New York.”

  “I’ll be moving into an apartment on Paradise Road tomorrow,” Annie says. “She can bunk with me.”

  “Unless we have her declawed, I don’t think you wanna live with her. She talk about her family?”

  “Just that they didn’t get along. Same’s a lotta girls around here.”

  Johnny gets Celia moved into the Tropicana but she won’t speak to him. She won’t answer her phone and she won’t come out of her room. She puts the Do Not Disturb sign up.

  After three days, Sinatra agrees to give it a shot. He taps at her room. “Baby, it’s Frank. You all right?” She doesn’t answer. He sets his voice on snake charm. “I know you’re in there. I’m worried about you, baby, s’not good holin’ up like that for too long. Start seeing pink elephants. Trust me, I been there.”

  Celia rests her forehead on her side of the door, loneliness getting the uppe
r hand on anger.

  “Baby?” With no answer still, his voice starts to edge up. “Whaddya got to be so reactionary for? … I’m sorry. I should be more understanding about what you’re going through—it’s just that—seeing you fucked up, I get fucked up.”

  My phone rang. I jumped.

  “Where the hell are you?” Marcella.

  Still in Café Greco and it was dark out. I stared down at the words on the page, and saw my Frank smeared all over Sinatra.

  “Hello-o!”

  Disoriented, I checked my watch. Nine o’clock. “Uh, I’m just on my way. Sorry, I should’ve called.”

  “Shit, Vivian. I thought we were going to hang out tonight.”

  “Yeah, we are. I’m almost there. I’ll see you in a minute.” I closed my phone, eyes still stuck on my handwriting. Fanning the pages back, I shuddered, remembering the sense of my own foot kicking Okie Joe’s face to a bloody pulp. “Jesus, what is wrong with you?” I muttered, and closed the tablet.

  Once, before I left home, I told my mother an ugly dream I’d just had, hoping for help in deciphering its meaning. “Who dreams dreams like that?” I stood in her office in my T-shirt and underpants, still shaky from the looming sense of indifferent violence, my role as voyeur rather than participant. “What does that say about me?”

  “What were you doing again?” she murmured without turning her head. She’d already been awake some time and was hunched over her desk, marking papers.

  “You’re not listening,” I said testily. “It was like watching a play. I wasn’t even in it.”

  “Whenever you dream, you are all the characters.” She looked up at me. “You play them all.”

  Twelve

  “WHY WOULD FRANK SINATRA GIVE YOUR MOTHER A CAR?” Marcella asked as she stared at TV and ate a bowl of low-fat frozen soygurt. On screen two average-looking women underwent radical plastic surgery in preparation to compete for who was the prettiest. “I’m thinking I might get lipo done on my gut.”

  I glanced at her belly. It was flatter than mine. “Because he gave her a part in Ocean’s Eleven. But it got cut out. And the books all say he was giving his buddies parts in that thing right and left, paying them with cars and stuff. In one of the letters, she said he gave her a car.”

  “Look at her tits.” Marcella sucked on her spoon as she watched the screen. “Like grapefruits on a whippet. Mine are better than that. Do mine look that bad?”

  I sat at the opposite end of her ivory couch with the shoe-box on my lap. Glancing over the letter in my hands, I said, “First you’re bitching that I haven’t spent any time with you and now you’re glued to this so-called reality shit.”

  “You should talk. You make up so-called reality about your dead mother in cafés when you could be here with a real live person doing real live things. And now you’re going to fuck off back home to be with that fuck-up boyfriend of yours.” She stared at her bowl for a moment then glanced at me. “Sorry. George’s lawyer sent me a letter. They’re threatening to deport me if I don’t return his car and his lithograph and his fucking espresso machine and blablabla. Easy for him and his big-shot lawyers. How am I supposed to compete with that? I phoned that asshole computer guy and he’s not returning my calls. He gave me an investment cheque a little while ago and the bank just told me it bounced. Do you think they could seriously deport me? I mean, that account was joint!”

  I folded my mother’s letter. “I don’t know.” Picking out the Good Housekeeping page, I reconsidered the plight of the airline hostess. On the other side, beside the tampon ad, was part of another article, “Why They Are Afraid to Marry.” Six basic fears that may drive a young woman to flee in panic from what should be the happiest moment of her life.

  “Why is he doing this to me?” She slammed her bowl on the Japanese table. She rubbed her forehead and dropped her hands. “Are you really going to do this porn-from-home thing? What does the porn guy think you can make?”

  I shrugged. “The numbers keep changing. I’ve heard everything from two grand to ten grand a week.”

  “Fuck. We could do that. You could bring your stuff down here and we could do that.”

  “Why don’t I go have a shower and we’ll go out for a drink. My treat.”

  She brightened slightly. “Okay. There’s a place down the block that’s not bad. I’ve run into this A&R guy from Sony there a couple times. Can you sing?”

  I rummaged for my toiletry bag. When I got to the bathroom, the idea of a shower beating me down was too much. Plugging the drain, I ran hot water for a few minutes and dumped in some of Marcella’s lavender bubble bath. As I turned off the taps, I could hear her on the telephone. “Yes … but … I thought you were screwing around on me. I know I’m messed up, I should have kept on my meds, but George …” She gasped to get her breath. “I’m so scared. You’re the only man in the world I thought would never abandon me and every time you went up to Vancouver—but I thought you were—and every time you got sick, it felt like you were leaving me again. Please don’t hate me. I realize more and more that I need therapy. A lot of this is because my serotonin levels are so messed up. I need to get back on the Paxil and I need to quit drinking. But every time you threaten me … I will… you’re right. I just get scared … Of you and of my life and having anything good in my life … I’m really trying … I’m not bad, I’m not malicious. I love you …”

  Early next morning, with a hangover not strong enough to slow me down, I packed up and scrawled a thank-you note. Marcella’s earplugs and sleep mask blocked all from her personal universe but did nothing to spare the world her snore. Outside in the hall, I slid the spare key back under the door and headed to the parking garage.

  Marcella needed Paxil—my anxiety was so bad, I was scared I might throw up. I wondered if this was how dogs and cats feel before an earthquake. I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to stay. Seemed like I accomplished nothing by coming down here and yet the idea of home, of film sets and Sally and the house and having to find a new agent, auditions, Frank—none of it was drawing me. The guilt over my disinterest made me feel worse.

  I called Leonard. “Hey,” he said, his voice dull. “You’re up early.”

  I checked my watch. 8:00 a.m. “You sound weird.” Great. If anyone was supposed to feel like home and hope, it was Leonard. “What’s the matter? You sick? Are you sad?” I punched the cigarette lighter in and took out a smoke while I waited for it to pop.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Fidgeting with the electric window, I lit my cigarette. “What did you do, crack up my car?”

  “No.” He sounded like a wet Kleenex.

  “Well, I’m on my way home. I’m going to try and see if I can do the drive all in one go.”

  “Why?”

  “I miss you too, fuckface.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I can’t afford another hotel. I should have a cheque at the agency when I get back but most of it’s going to go to my Visa bill and my rent … the phone bill.” Leonard was quiet. “Tell me what’s wrong when I get back?”

  “I think I need a shrink.”

  “Maybe we could get a group rate. I better go. God knows what it’s costing me to use my cell down here. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  Once I was on the road, I changed course and headed off on Highway 26 to Danaville. Maybe if I just came clean with specific questions then we’d be square with each other and I wouldn’t be playing games and she wouldn’t need to be evasive and I could feel good about the whole thing. I didn’t even have her damn phone number. How could I have left without her number?

  Coming into her cul-de-sac, I pulled up in front of her house and wrote:

  When did you and my mother Celia become roommates? Vegas? After T was arrested?

  Where did red heart come from?

  Did Celia date Bobby Kennedy?

  Why wouldn’t Celia’s mother talk to her? Did she talk to her stepfather?

  I flipped th
rough Judy Campbell’s book.

  Did Celia like Peter Lawford? (Nobody likes him in books.)

  Maybe Annie would respond better if I said Celia, if I didn’t make it so personal. In reality I had no idea why she’d shut down all of a sudden.

  A taxi pulled up in front of my car. Annie’s front door opened and there she was dragging her suitcase onto the stoop. I threw open my door and rushed over to her.

  One look at me and she pursed her lips. “I told you no. I’m going to see my daughter.”

  “Could I get your phone number and maybe I could—”

  “Phone number’s unlisted.”

  “I just have two questions for you,” I pleaded, “three, it’ll only take a second.” I took her arm and her bag as she hobbled out on her cane.

  “Don’t help me. I’m not some old cripple. Just twisted my ankle and if it wasn’t for you … don’t help me!” She shook her shoulder free.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that my mother’s gone and it’s too late to ask her and I really appreciated you letting me see her letters but in some ways I just have more questions like, like did you guys become roommates in Las Vegas when you were working at the Silver Slipper?”

  “Yes,” she said, exasperated. “I told you that.”

  “Oh, ah, I’m sorry. And in her letter—why wouldn’t her mother talk to her? What did Stewart—he’s the stepfather, right?—what did he say that would make her mother hate her?”

  The cab driver had got out of the car and was holding the back door for her. I couldn’t recall ever seeing a cab driver do that for me. Not in the sluttiest outfit I owned. “What do you think?” Annie huffed. “Her mother was jealous of her. That’s how it always is. He told the mother, I don’t know, that Celia kissed him or something. He took her to Elmo’s for her birthday and her mother was out of town for a funeral or something and her mother didn’t like it. Okay? Now, let me get my plane.”

  “Elmo’s? Is that the El Morocco? She told me she went there for her sixteenth … but … okay,” I chased her as she started walking again. “So, she dated Bobby Kennedy? You said she didn’t like John. Did she like Bobby?”