The Glamorous Dead

by Suzanne Gates

  “Rose?” A little louder.

  “Penny, I’m cut.”

  “Where are you?”

  “On the floor, there’s blood and I’m woozy. . . .”

  I got cut, too, when I climbed in the window. Little cuts from the window frame on my forearms and thighs. They stung. I rubbed my skirt over my arms to knock out any stuck glass. The window led to somebody’s bedroom, with a mussed bed and nobody in it. Rose lay curled on a wood floor.

  “Can you walk?”

  “I’m woozy.”

  “What’s cut?”

  “My thumb, here, look . . .”

  “God. Take your coat—where’s your coat?”

  “Outside. I couldn’t climb with my coat on. I tried to open the window. I don’t know why it broke. . . .” She lay curled on the floor except for her hand with the cut thumb. She held up the hand and blood pulsed, ran down her arm to the floor, and Rose’s head rolled back and forth like she said no. “It doesn’t hurt, but I don’t feel good.”

  I tried to rip the front drape off my dress, tried again with my teeth to tear threads, then I cut the drape with a big glass shard. The glass slipped and cut both my palm and the dress. A deep cut clear across my palm, first a white line and then blood bubbled through the white line and ran down my wrist.

  My palm stung, but nothing like Rose. Her whole thumb wobbled. Her blood ran hot on my arm where I held her hand. I wrapped my dress piece around and around the cut, and I heard our breathing loud, like someone pounded the floor. Blood seeped through the cloth.

  “Hold it here. Tight, so the bleeding slows.”

  “Your dress—”

  “I hate this dress. Can you stand?”

  “Woozy,” she said.

  “Shake it off. You need to stand, then you need to climb down that ladder.”

  “I can’t climb the ladder. I can’t stand.”

  I shook her. “You can stand. You’ll get down that ladder and run—you’re going to run—to Sunset. Got that? Then you’re flagging the next car. You need a hospital.”

  “You go and I’ll wait here.”

  “Rose, stop it. I don’t need help. I need to clean this floor and hide the ladder. Both guys left.”

  “You saw them?”

  “I saw them. They ran. Let’s not talk about it now.”

  “I’m sorry, Pen. I should have—”

  “Later. Here, stand. That’s it—slow—move your feet a bit—lean against the wall.”

  “Is this Stany’s room? Nice colors, hmm?”

  “I’ll hold your arm. Lift that leg. Can you balance? Do you know what to do?”

  “Climb down. Run to Sunset. Hospital.” She stood on the ladder outside the window frame and rested her cut hand on a rung.

  “Go,” I said.

  “I hate you. I get so mad.”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “You hate me, too. Don’t you? Don’t you?”

  “Go down the ladder, Rose.”

  “I’ve got dust inside me. I miss my tiny girl. She was in my arms, Pen. Do you know what it’s like?”

  “Get off the ladder.”

  “I hate you for not understanding. Admit it, Pen. I’m not going until you admit it. You hate me, too.”

  I broke. I wanted to take that ladder and push it. Through the window frame, pressing her forehead against the same rung as her hand, Rosemary cried, and we both watched blood seep from her bandage. Yes, I hated her. The force of it made me hold my stomach. I wanted to fly out that window. I wanted the ladder to fall.

  “I hate that you’re bleeding and you’re still beautiful. God, I hate you,” I said.

  She nodded. That seemed to be enough, what she’d wanted to hear. She climbed down the ladder and waited on the grass, good hand still gripping a rung, then she let go and ran across the yard to the pool and beyond it, to the hedge and beyond it, and I heard gravel crunch, her kicking the wood gate to get over, then nothing.

  I stood in our blood. I’d knelt in it when I’d ripped my dress for a bandage. I had a crazy thought: I’d clean so well that Stany would come home and see a window broken in this room but not know why. A bird? Maybe. Or kids playing baseball. The street had kids, didn’t it? I could find a baseball and toss it in.

  I’m sure I could find a baseball at one in the morning, in a neighborhood that did everything to keep me out except lock their top windows.

  Witless.

  I needed a towel to clean the room. Nice colors, like Rose had said, yellow, or would be in daylight. A bed and nightstand, dresser, the usual bedroom stuff. The unusual part was the little boy on the far side of the bed, staring at me, pulling his pajama arms to cover his hands. Red hair, or would be in daylight.

  “I have a girlfriend,” he said. He looked about seven or eight. “Her name’s Joan.”

  CHAPTER 10

  The Jack Bennys are wild with joy that a new baby of their very own is on its way to keep their adopted daughter, Joanie, company.

  —Photoplay, November 1940

  Stany sat in the studio commissary with Paulette Goddard, both of them drinking coffee and knitting for England. She didn’t invite me, so I ate lunch by myself and watched other girls eat and pretend not to stare at Paulette Goddard’s hand. They wanted to see the scar where Rosalind Russell bit her. Behind Stany’s table, mirrors tiled the length of the wall and reflected a row of two women holding knitting needles and skeins of yarn. A whole row of Paulette Goddards and Barbara Stanwycks. I could reach my hand and touch Paulette Goddard getting smaller until her mirrored head became a tiny dark spot.

  “Penny, come here. Set down your tray. Aren’t there waiters to pick those things up? Meet my friend Paulette. Paulette, this is Penny. Penny, Paulette. Now that we’re all good friends, let me tell Paulette your secret. Penny’s a Farm Girl.”

  “A Farm Girl? Really? You must know a lot about farms.”

  “Knitting, Paulette dear. Farm Girls have to know about knitting. Isn’t that a prerequisite? Knitting and farms? Penny, where do I place my needle after I’ve purled?”

  “I’ve never knitted in my life,” I said.

  “You’re a dirty little liar.” Stany tapped me on the nose with her needle.

  Paulette said, “Can’t you pretend? We’re dropping stitches all over.” She smiled at me and held up her needles and yarn. On her hand I saw a curved row of red dots: teeth marks. She said, “I pity the poor Englishman who gets this sweater.”

  “Why don’t you just buy a couple of sweaters and mail them to England?” I asked.

  “She’s a kidder,” Stany said, and she turned back to her knitting. Paulette began counting her stitches. Around the room, extras had stopped eating. They all stared at me, at my new friend Paulette. I picked up my tray and left.

  Stany joined us later on set, and Preston had to pick yarn fuzz off her white crepe. He laughed and smoked and picked fuzz, and we extras watched him from the bow of the SS Southern Queen. Today we were passengers on a ship and our job was to peer over the railing, look down, and pretend the ship floated on an ocean. That’s all: look down and pretend. While all this pretending went on, Edith Head tied white chiffon around Stany’s hair and pulled the knot to the right. Then Stany leaned on the Southern Queen’s railing beside an old man I’d seen in movies but couldn’t remember the name of, and since nobody introduced him to the extras, we all looked at him and shrugged. Nobody could remember his name.

  Our afternoon went on with Stany and the old man talking, Preston posing Stany’s hands on the railing this and that way, and the extras looking from fake ship to fake ocean until I thought I could see water there below the floor’s cement blocks, there beyond where the ship’s rail ended and other sets in Stage 9 wavered like foggy islands. One Wallflower got seasick and had to sit. The other Wallflower kept hopping and complaining her shoes were small. During our break, a coffee girl handed me a note. Inside, the slashed, slanted writing of Barbara Stanwyck:

  Afterward wait for me.
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br />   I thought about that note all afternoon. I kept fingering it in my pocket. At four o’clock the SS Southern Queen docked in Stage 9, and Stany left for her dressing room. I left, too. I didn’t wait for Stany. She had plans for solving the crime. I had plans, different ones, and I walked past Stage 4 out to the Bronson Gate and stood at the bus stop on Marathon. Any minute it would rain. My hair had gone curly, and every dark cloud in the sky looked ready to drop.

  I’m not selfish. Not really. I didn’t want to get jailed for Rosemary’s murder, but more than that, I didn’t want Will jailed. I knew he probably killed her. He hated her for leaving Buena Park and hated me more, for taking Rose and for leaving him with the family. So he killed her and made me walk on the grave. I understood his reasons. I could make Conejos understand them, but then I couldn’t stop the series of things that would come of it: Will arrested, so there’s no one to organize pickers, and the crop doesn’t get in or get sold, so no money, and then Mom sells to the Knotts. Okay so far, but then Mom and Daisy go where?

  Will could rot. He could get jailed for murdering Rose, and I wouldn’t care. But then Mom and Daisy . . . I’d have to go home, and Teddy Marshall lived there. He showed up all over, he walked the town. I wouldn’t date him again. I wouldn’t live in Buena Park.

  I saw my bus down the street. Quick stop for two guys, then motoring onto our block, a swerve to the curb for the Paramount stop, then the bus horn and burning, squealing brakes when an old Dodge cut it off. The car squeaked and stopped and barely missed a good clip from the bus. My bedmate from the dorms, Madge, leaned across the Dodge’s passenger seat and rolled down a window.

  “Get in. Don’t let anyone see you.”

  “I’ll take the bus.”

  “Get in,” she said. She pushed the passenger door open. It squeaked. I slid into a saggy, squeaky seat.

  “Shut the door hard, will you? Harder. It has to click. Where to?”

  “Nowhere you’re invited,” I said.

  “I’ve got a quarter tank of gas. You’re planning shit or you’re mad at Stany, whichever. Right or left?”

  “Turn right.”

  “Stany looked for you. She came out of her dressing room and asked where you’d gone. All those girls who hate you? Get this. Stany asks the question to nobody, to the air, and girls jump up and down to answer. That fucking Career Girl—the one with the nose, sniffy—she hits Wallflower and pushes her back, then sniffs to Stany how you’ve already gone. She’s probably sucking Stany’s tits right now.”

  “You’ve got a foul mouth.”

  “Which way, right or left?”

  “Turn left.”

  “Reach in the glove box, will you? Hand me my flask.” She took it from me, unscrewed the top, and drank, then passed it to me. Bad whiskey, but I drank.

  “How far up Sunset?”

  “Keep driving,” I said. It was cloudy out, late afternoon. Close to rain. On Sunset cars honked and stopped. At the corner of Gower a man waved an American flag and a sign: DEPORT GERMAN SERVANTS! Lots of honks, lots of folks with servants.

  Madge honked. “Fucking Germans,” Madge said. “Can’t the studios do something about Germans? Don’t look like that. Let me guess,” Madge said. “I’m a good guesser. Stany wants something from you. Why else would she be your friend? I mean, who are you? But you have something she wants. Or your friend did, but she died. I don’t know what you’d have. You’re a fucking Farm Girl. Pass the flask. So it must be something she’ll learn, something she’d learn now or later on. You remind her of someone she used to know, from her stage days. That’s it—you remind her. So she wants to keep you out of trouble. How am I doing?”

  “Turn right at Beverly Glen.”

  “My, we’re in fancy town now.”

  “Park anywhere. Can I trust you? Can you keep a secret?”

  “No and no,” she said. “Fucking Germans.”

  “I need to find out what happened to Rose. It’s going to rain, so I’ve got to find out now. Last I saw her was around here, and I’m looking for clues.” I opened the car door. It squeaked.

  “What clues?” Madge stretched herself out of the driver’s seat and pulled her skirt down in the back. Her puddle brown hair looked dull and her pin curls frizzed.

  “Blood. Any drops of blood, a trail of blood or bloody fabric. You want to help? I’m looking in bushes and grass, along the road, here and on Sunset, both ways.”

  “Blood? Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

  “Look for blood fast, before it rains.”

  “Bring the flask,” Madge said. “Hell, open the trunk. The whole bottle’s in there.”

  CHAPTER 11

  Important point to Jeanette MacDonald is a good speaking voice, clear, crisp, but never shrill.

  —Photoplay, October 1940

  Stany had a son. On Halloween I saw him. I’d never thought of him, hardly heard about him, maybe in Photoplay with a spread of stars’ kids in Hollywood, or the big custody trial a couple years back, but that was more about Stany and her drunk ex than about the kid I saw in Stany’s yellow room. She must have wanted a kid, she’d adopted him. All the women stars adopted except for Dottie Lamour, and look at her hips.

  “Are you here to kidnap me?”

  “No.”

  “Because you could, then make my mom pay you to get me back.”

  I tried to cover the blood with my hands. I measured space to the bedroom door, first bed then kid then door. Then whoever was downstairs, because this kid wasn’t in the house alone.

  No, that wouldn’t work. Okay, I’d go down the ladder and leave this mess. It wasn’t my mess. I should still be dancing at the Palladium.

  I backed to the window, and glass cracked under my shoes.

  “I’ll write the ransom note,” the kid said.

  I felt behind me for the window frame. My fingers touched putty, then a chunk of glass that tipped free and hit a ladder rung. I jumped but didn’t turn. I couldn’t stop staring at the kid. He stood behind the bed and never moved except to pull his pajamas and talk. He didn’t look scared. I could see him better now, the room wasn’t so dark to me, and if I hadn’t heard running outside the room, feet hitting a wood hallway harder and louder, each hit nearer and closer, I might have talked to the kid. But I couldn’t make my mouth do anything.

  I lifted each leg through the window, and the ladder shook again, faster than when I climbed up. I made my feet do what my mouth wouldn’t. I slammed each rung loud, but not as loud as the yellow door banging a wall, someone running to the window through glass and blood and then at the window frame, a woman’s voice yelling down, “I called the cops. Run, you bitch, I called the cops!”

  CHAPTER 12

  Blackmailers, kidnappers, unscrupulous servants, shrewd lawyers, opportunists of all kinds, demented people of every description always have been the stars’ natural enemies.

  —Photoplay, November 1940

  It hadn’t rained for over two weeks, since before Rose disappeared, before Halloween. Rose dripped blood that night even with my torn skirt wrapped around her thumb. She’d been bleeding bad and fast. Say the wrap on her thumb held for two blocks, if she ran. Then blood would drip, because rayon doesn’t suck up liquid like cotton or silk. She’d be running and dripping, and it hadn’t rained since then, so somewhere I’d see her trail and know where she turned, which way on Sunset, where she flagged down a car and got in. And from there—I didn’t know.

  I should have come as soon as Rose disappeared. I felt sick that I’d stayed away, and sick to be here now. If I’d come to Sunset after Halloween, if I’d looked for blood on the roadside, that would have meant something bad happened, worse than getting her thumb cut. To stay away had meant hope that she’d return. I’d stayed away, and she’d died, and now I felt sick.

  “Look everywhere. Madge, right? Look for blood on leaves. And you’re looking for dried blood, not red.”

  “I know,” Madge said, and we looked on Beverly Glen by a triang
le park I’d only seen once before. Now it held a mom with a baby carriage and umbrella and dog, and two boys smoking by a king palm. It doesn’t change, does it? Rich or poor, the boys find a park to smoke in.

  “Part branches and look at the ground. She could have hit a fence or that ivy.”

  Madge kicked a rock at me. “You want me to look or not? You through with the lecture? Look on the ground. Look in the air. Look on the fucking sidewalk. It’s getting dark.”

  We looked. We split and walked the triangle, through the park, to Sunset. Cars passed us both ways. This far east on Sunset, through Beverly Hills, through Holmby Hills and Bel-Air, there were no sidewalks. Sunset was paved and narrow with inches of gravel on each side. Then high hibiscus bushes and hedges or iron meant to keep out people like us.

  “Here,” Madge said. “Is this blood?”

  “Tar.” A car sped by and honked. We’d be easy to hit, so close to the road.

  “Is this blood?”

  “Tar, Madge. It’s tar.”

  A few minutes more, cars passing close to the gravel, one car swerving toward us to make us run, then: “Is this blood?”

  “Tar,” I said. “Or oil or dried skunk or”—I bent over the tar—“blood. Maybe it’s blood. I don’t know.”

  “Feel that? Rain. It’s too dark. I can’t see the goddamn road until a car comes by. You’ll get us killed out here. I see more tar. There, too.” She opened her handbag and pulled out a lighter. She flicked it, and I saw where she pointed: splashed on the gravel maybe two feet apart, small, dark brown circles that could have been blood. I wasn’t sure. Madge lit a cigarette with her lighter.

  I knelt and touched a brown circle. Rain wet my hand. Not many people bleed this far up Sunset Boulevard. If the circle was blood, then it had to be Rose’s blood. Her blood, under my hand. Shielded from the rain by my hand. I touched the last tiny part of her to live above ground. I scooped the gravel into my palm, rocks, sharp bits, squeezed in the hand that was sore already from a Halloween cut. I squeezed so tight I cried out.