Cease to Blush

by Billie Livingston

  She nods pleasantly.

  “I’m Special Agent Dodge and this is Special Agent Richards.” Badges flash.

  “I’m Celia—you know that. My roommate, Annie West.” She clasps her hands.

  “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  Celia sets herself on the sofa. The agents remain standing and look to Annie who, other than to fold her arms, doesn’t budge.

  “Do you know a Sam Giancana, Miss Dare?” Dodge asks.

  “No.”

  “No? Sam Giancana,” he repeats firmly.

  “I was introduced to him once. But I wouldn’t say I know him.”

  “Do you know John Rosselli?”

  “I’ve met him.”

  “Everybody knows these guys,” Annie says. “What’s your beef?”

  Celia gawks at her. Dodge stares at Celia. “Miss Dare, I believe you know John Rosselli quite well. Does he pay your rent?”

  “Why would I need someone to pay my rent?”

  “Does he buy you gifts?” Dodge asks.

  “We both get gifts every night we’re onstage,” Annie snipes.

  The men ignore her. “John Rosselli is your boyfriend, Miss Dare?”

  “We have some friends in common; he’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Are the two of you lovers?”

  “Are the two of you?” Annie spits.

  The men look at her, expressionless, then back at Celia. “You haven’t been performing lately, Miss Dare, why is that?”

  “I took a couple of months off.”

  “It makes one wonder how you’re managing to pay your bills. Perhaps you might be doing some things you’re not proud of.”

  Annie takes a step forward. “This girl makes six, seven grand a week when she’s onstage. Why don’t you go catch a rapist and leave us the hell alone.”

  “You could be a big help to the security of your country, Miss Dare.” Dodge hands his card to her. “Your friend Mr. Rosselli is facing some serious charges. We’d like to keep him out of trouble but we need the help of people like yourself to do it.”

  “Oh you Boy Scouts, always helping old ladies and gangsters across the street.” Annie opens the front door. The two men nod to Celia and leave.

  Peering through the blinds, Annie watches them climb into an unmarked vehicle in front of the building. “Pricks. Does Bobby know you’re friends with Johnny?”

  “No.”

  Annie turns back from the window. “It’s all the same rats in the same damn maze.”

  Once Celia unsticks her mind from the FBI, she calls Marty Sugar.

  “You’re booked in L.A. next week,” he says. “At the Grove. Then Caesars Palace.”

  “You said you wouldn’t book me till I had a new show.”

  “Well, use an old one,” he says.

  “Look, I’ve been thinking maybe I want to sing, you know, just straight legit singing.”

  “Celia, honey. Striptease is your whole gimmick. No one’s gonna pay to see you sing if you ain’t gonna show ’em your ass. No offence, sweetheart, be a realist.”

  “I need some time off.”

  “Eight for the week, they’re payin’. Ten at Caesars. Don’t make my head ache. Just be a good girl, collect your cheque and take a vacation later.”

  In Los Angeles, Johnny takes her to dinner at his favourite, La Dolce Vita. She tells him again what was said when the FBI showed up. Annie’s remarks make him guffaw. “Are the two of you?” he repeats. “I’ve missed you.”

  “That girl dump you or something?”

  “I remember the first time I saw you. You walked into the Copa Room full of piss and vinegar. You remember that? Frank and Dean were onstage. You were really something.”

  She releases a bored sigh.

  “Don’t be like this. Sons-a-bitches might deport me, you know.”

  She glares into her hands.

  “I’m twice your age—that, I can’t forget. And I’ve had these pricks on my tail and I never wanted you mixed up with that. Now, they want to charge me with this shit at the Friars Club. After everything. No loyalty.” He gives her a steady look. “Loyalty is more important than anything.”

  “You think I’m not loyal?”

  “They came to your home and you played it exactly right.” He reaches into his pocket and sets an oblong box of royal-blue velvet between them.

  Heat runs up her arms. She opens the box to a diamond-and-sapphire necklace and her breath is caught by the shimmer. He comes round, lifts the necklace and fastens it at the nape of her neck. He kisses the crown of her head. “When I beat this thing, I want you here to stay.”

  Later, in her suite at the hotel, he says, “I’ve realized how foolish it is, keeping you at arm’s length. They show up at your door regardless. And we can as easily beat them together as apart.” He turns her chin but she ducks from his mouth. “What’s the matter?”

  “You can’t just disappear then change your mind and expect me to be there.”

  “What’s the longest you’ve gone without hearing from me? You think I keep in touch with everybody that way?”

  She moves to cross her legs. He catches her thigh as it comes across and takes the back of her neck in his other hand. She pushes half-heartedly at his shoulder.

  “I’ll never walk away,” he tells her. “Let me take care of you.”

  A swampy mess of love and doom oozes in her and she opens her mouth to him.

  The L.A. papers carry stories of both Bobby and Johnny. Up on charges of wilful failure to register as an illegal alien, photographs appear of Johnny arriving at court each day via limousine, dark suited and tanned, his steely hair coiffed, his eyes solemn.

  Adjacent pages show Bobby, vibrant and boyish, on the campaign trail. When Ethel appears beside him, Celia closes the paper.

  He calls her in Vegas.

  She recoils and craves at once. “How’d you know I was here?”

  “Your roommate spilled the beans. I hoped you might meet me in Portland tomorrow.”

  “Ethel got a toothache?”

  “I—tomorrow should be a quieter day. Will you come?”

  “In other words she just left.”

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  Rubbing at her forehead, she sighs. “Nothing. I can’t, I’m working.”

  “I really want to see you. It’s been—”

  “I can’t just drop everything because you found a moment away from your wife and your dogs and your kids and your campaign. I have a life too.”

  “I’ve got a lot on my plate, you’re damn right. But I still want to see you. I thought you felt the same way.”

  “Someone’s at my door, I have to go.”

  As if on cue a knock comes at her hotel suite along with Johnny’s muffled voice.

  “You knew I was married, we both knew I was married,” Bobby says in her ear.

  Another knock at the door and, “Are you awake, honey?”

  “I have to go.” She hangs up. “Coming.” Rushing to the door, she holds her trembling hands behind her back as Johnny stands there smiling.

  “What are you doing in town?” She shows her teeth, hoping it looks like a smile.

  “How can I stay away? Did you hear the good news? They’re extending your Vegas engagement. Due to popular demand.”

  She tilts her head. “Everyone seems to know what’s going on but me.”

  Bobby calls back at the end of the week. “I’m sorry about our last conversation.”

  “I’m sorry too. I have a lot of guilt about you.”

  “You’re not even Catholic.”

  “Still in Oregon?”

  “They hate me here. It’s a big teamster state. Will you meet me? Please?”

  She closes her eyes. Johnny’s gone back to L.A. for a court date.

  After her show that night, a knock comes at her dressing room.

  “Miss Dare,” Agent Dodge says as he opens the door. Richards nods.

  “Hello, gentlemen,” she greets t
hem as nonchalantly as she can. She removes the last pin from her wig and pulls it off.

  Dodge takes an envelope from his jacket and pulls out a sheaf of black-and-white photographs. He gazes at the top one a moment then sets it on the vanity in front of her: Johnny coming through the lobby of the Ambassador. “That’s from a week ago. You were staying at the Ambassador Hotel, were you not, Miss Dare?”

  “So?”

  “Are you still saying you don’t know this man?”

  “I never said I didn’t know him. I’m acquainted with him.”

  He lays three more in front of her: Celia and Johnny leaving the Ambassador; Celia and Johnny entering La Dolce Vita.

  “Oh look, here’s one of you and John Ro—excuse me—Filippo Sacco—leaving Romanoff’s restaurant. Seems fond of you. How do you feel about him, Miss Dare?”

  She removes her earrings. “I have nothing further to add.”

  “Show her those two,” Richards suggests. “They’re my favourites.” It’s the first she’s heard Richards speak and his voice is snaky.

  Dodge sets down a picture of Celia with Annie at the peace rally in Central Park last year.

  “So what. Me and fifty thousand other people.”

  “Lending aid and comfort to the enemy, your president would say. But this one …” He sets a picture down of Celia sitting on someone’s shoulders, raising a joint to her lips. “Smoking an illegal substance as Americans burn their draft cards onstage.”

  She throws her last piece of jewelry on the vanity. “What do you want? Yes, I know John Rosselli. We’ve had dinner together.” Pulling a tissue, she scoops a blob of cold cream. The room is quiet. “What!” she suddenly bellows. “What do you want?”

  Leaving the pictures, they let themselves out.

  She grabs the phone. “The fucking FBI were just here. In my dressing room.”

  “Here too,” Annie says. “Two different guys. They were asking where you were from, how long I’d known you.”

  “They had pictures of me with Johnny. And me with a joint at that damn demonstration.”

  “Shit.”

  Johnny calls her at the hotel. He’s been convicted of failing to register as an alien. The Friars Club trial will start in three weeks. In the meantime he’s free on bail. “I gotta go to Boston for a couple days. My ma’s sick. Don’t worry. They just want to rattle you. That’s the right hand—the left one does not want to see me testify. This thing’ll go away, you’ll see.”

  Two days later she is in a Portland hotel room tangled in sheets and Bobby. “If I don’t win, I’m going to kidnap you,” he murmurs.

  She pushes her face into his neck and dozes off.

  Bobby’s howl comes to her in the dark. He bolts upright, panting as her voice tumbles over him. “What? What?”

  “Oh Christ,” he whispers, trying to catch his breath. She rubs his back. “It was just a dream.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  She puts her arms around him. “I get so scared.”

  “No point being scared,” he says. “If they want to kill me, we can’t stop them.”

  Before she leaves for the airport that afternoon, she checks in with her agent.

  “Jeez, good that you called.” Marty sounds peculiar. “They want you back at the Grove for two nights. So, ah, yeah, you just head back.”

  “Why would they want me back there?”

  “Your ticket’s at the airport. Don’t worry Everything’s jake.”

  Outside the nightclub, her picture isn’t up. Bobby Darin’s is. She asks at the hotel desk if Darin cancelled. Not that they are aware of.

  Twenty minutes after she’s checked in, Johnny shows up. He closes the door and leans back against it. “Where were you the last couple days?”

  She folds her arms. “Vegas. Remember, you were there too.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, kid.” He doesn’t blink.

  “The FBI showed up at Caesars. They had pictures.”

  He walks toward her. She backs until she’s flat to the wall.

  “I don’t want you to lie to me again.”

  “I was in Oregon.”

  “With who?”

  “None of your business.”

  He raises his hand. She flinches, her head knocking the wall. Laying his palm across her throat, he sets his fingers lightly into her flesh.

  “I’m not scared of you,” she says.

  “I don’t want you to be. I want you to care enough not to fuck me. I tell you I want to share my life with you and you run off and screw that little puke.” He takes his hand away. “I brought you back here to save you from your goddamn self.” He grabs her by the face. “You want me to marry you? I’ll marry you to-goddamn-day!”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re sorry.” He unzips his pants and hikes up her dress. “I love you. You’re going to stop this.” Pulling fabric aside, he pushes himself inside her. “Are you going to stop this?”

  Nodding, she kisses him, crying. “I’m sorry.”

  That night on the news: Robert F. Kennedy Loses Oregon Primary. Next stop, California.

  Nineteen

  THE MOMENT THE DOOR TO MY APARTMENT DOOR CLOSED, I went to the living room and shut Frank Sinatra’s big yap smack in the middle of him doing it his way. I had a sudden urge to throw up. Or make myself throw up. Heading for the bathroom, I put my head in the toilet, stuck my finger down my throat and heaved. I felt better instantly; lighter.

  My Frank hadn’t bothered to turn the lock behind him. I flipped it myself, which seemed suddenly useless. I called a 24-hour service and placed an order for a guy to come and replace it. I called Leonard while I waited for the locksmith but he didn’t answer. Last I’d heard he was heading to the monastery for a couple days to get a feel for the place.

  After the locksmith left, I winced at my reflection in the mirror, took off the fur coat and broke out the makeup remover. I stood under hot water for a good half hour, letting it batter every bit of me, soaping and scrubbing.

  I towelled off and stalked naked to the kitchen, grabbed a big green garbage bag and began tossing everything I saw that felt like a louse in my flesh. I threw in the long blonde wig and the hot-pink bra and thong, the webcam; I snatched the motorcycle helmet off my shelf, double-checked it for spycams and trashed it. I chucked the candle, my cigarettes, the ashtray, the dildos and vibrators; I ripped the Arabian Nights satin from the nails in the bedroom ceiling. I chucked the ivory cushions Frank had bought, then stripped the bed and jammed it all in tight. I paced from room to room, filling another bag.

  Clean lines, I said out loud, no clutter.

  Ecstasy can be, as Frank put it, speedy. Drugs may or may not be the reason, but in the two years I’d lived in this apartment, this was the first time I’d not only felt an urge to clean out my fridge but had acted upon that urge. Most of the condiments had expired. I vacuumed the living room, washed my dishes, scrubbed counters and mopped my kitchen floor. I cleaned the grime from my bathroom sink and tub, wiped smudgy fingerprints from the doorjambs and light switches. It was weirdly exhilarating.

  Around two in the morning, I hauled her trunk from the closet into the living room. I dragged the carcass of her coat from the bathroom floor to the trunk and tossed it on top. Taking pictures down off my wall, I grabbed a hammer from my junk drawer and nailed the mink up by its collar and sleeves to the newly cleared space. There was a small tear under the collar I hadn’t noticed before and under the nailhead’s single eye, it looked like a grimace. I spread her things underneath: the heart, the dress, the shoes, the photos. I laid her letters out. I set out my notebooks and biographies: The Chic Mafioso, Pack of Rats, The Story of RFK, By Cover of Assassination, Judy Campbell’s My Story and sat in the middle, read snatches aloud, the overlaps and conflicts, truths and lies. I scrawled and ranted and drank glass after glass of water. I charted John Rosselli’s whereabouts. L.A., Florida, Cuba, murderer, lover, orphan supporter. I charted Bobby’s campaign trail. On my VCR, I r
an footage of his speeches, watched him brush the thicket of hair off his forehead over and over. His speech in the ballroom before he was killed in the kitchen. Shot by Sirhan Sirhan. Shot by a bodyguard. There were six bullet holes. There were eleven bullet holes. One mysterious girl in a polka-dot dress. Dozens of girls in polka-dot dresses.

  By six in the morning, everybody on my TV screen was dead and I was filled with a morose longing. Billy Graham’s pulpit-pounding drawl echoed: Are you living in a vacuum, no purpose, no challenge, just existing? Some people pop a Prozac when coming down from Ecstasy to avoid the Tuesday blues. In the past there was always company for my misery.

  I went into my bedroom. Several hundred dollars lay crumpled in my top drawer. Frank had given me about fifteen hundred over the last couple weeks, playing some kind of sugar-daddy pimp role. Not wanting too much cash on me, I’d been chucking it in my bra drawer. I piled the bills on my dresser top and packed an overnight bag.

  In San Francisco, I rented a car at the airport and wondered if I should be driving after twenty-four hours without sleep. I grabbed a coffee, got on the highway and headed for Danaville.

  Parked in Annie’s cul-de-sac again, I leaned to look through the passenger window at the milkshake-pink plaster of her house. It was dessert. The home of Hansel and Gretel. I thought I could make out movement through her window. I grabbed the mini photo album, my notebook and purse then paused to stretch out one hand and observe its tremor. In the rearview mirror, dark circles pooled my eyes. “No guts, no glory,” I said and turned off the ignition.

  The sun was high and my skin felt as though it was sizzling with toxins. I waffled at her front steps then headed around to the back.

  The flowers in her rock garden were a shrill of colour under the glare. Annie lay on her chaise lounge, the big umbrella tilted against the sun, sweaty glass of iced drink at her side, romance novel in her hand. She looked up, slight alarm in her voice, as she said, “Yes?”

  I stuttered out a greeting. “Hi, Annie. It’s me, Vivian, Celia Dare’s daughter.”

  “Oh for godsake,” she said with exasperation and slapped the open book on her stomach before she pulled herself up and tossed it on the ground. She sat on the side of the lounger for a moment, her head drooping, shaking her face at the grass.