“That’s gratitude. I give you a nice dress and you notice the defects.”
“Thank you for the squirrel dress, Stany.”
“Fuck you and you’re welcome. Find your mark, Pen. Move and don’t move.”
CHAPTER 20
Lucille Ball’s farewell to Desi Arnaz was touching and sincere. Make no mistake on this romance.
—Photoplay, November 1940
At the Florentine Gardens, the dorm had two bathrooms to serve sixteen girls, so we broke bath nights into rounds. Bedroom Three, that was us. We bathed on Tuesday nights, no more than twenty minutes each. Bedroom Four bathed on Mondays, Bedroom Two bathed Wednesdays, and nobody bathed Thursday through Saturday because those nights we worked a late show at the Gardens. Bedroom One, first floor, took Sundays. We all hated Bedroom One. The Sunday girls took two-hour baths and brought books inside with them before they locked the doors. With four girls to a bedroom, eight to each bathroom, that meant no toilet in the house for at least four hours and no hot water after that. All stockings had to be washed before Bedroom One took their baths. Those were the rules, they’d been the rules for ages, they wouldn’t change.
Madge didn’t like the rules. She said Sunday girls used to be Granny’s nieces: “They’re like old horses. When he gets a new niece he puts the old one out. Except we don’t have a pasture so they get Bedroom One.” She sat on the Zanzibar bandstand before rehearsal. She helped me button a new costume that looked a lot like the old costume, with ruffles instead of feathers, and a short skirt.
“I tell you, I’m going to be Granny’s niece. Hold still. At some point he’ll get tired of Apache, and here I am.”
“She won’t be Apache soon.” The new routine was on bullfighting, Hail the Bullfighters, something like that. We’d all be picadors and carry spears to stab the poor bull.
“Whatever her name is, she’s headed for Bedroom One. It’s my turn. There. You look great. Except your hair. Why don’t you try pin curls? Here’s Granny,” she said. “God. He’s got the bull hat.”
Granny set a big box on a table. A couple Picador Girls followed Granny onto the dance floor, and more girls walked in from backstage.
“Take a spear, take a spear.” He waved his lit cigarette over the box, then put the cigarette between his lips and kept talking. “Not you, Charlotte. You’re my bull. Tie that cap so the horns don’t slide. Christ, are those your ears? You look like Clark Gable. Take off the hat. I don’t know, pass it to someone, anyone. Yes, she’ll do. Penny, tie it on. Straighten those horns. Pull your shoulders back, the horns tilt. You’re top-heavy.”
Some girls laughed. The hat hurt my head.
“Now, here’s the deal. We’re filming a simple, three-act talkie at the Gardens, along the lines of Broadway Melody but different. A look at what goes on backstage at Hollywood’s most famous revue. Warners will shoot everything at their back lot. They’ve got a cast, and no, you’re not in the cast, just a few background scenes of the Zanzibar and the bull revue.”
Aha. Nobody laughed now, with me wearing the bull horns. I’d get film time. Nothing like film time to make the horns beautiful. They’d all be picadors, but where would the camera look? At me. At the bull trying to stay alive.
Granny clapped his hands. “Is there a problem? Now you all want to be the bull? Too late. Charlotte, you can’t be the bull without surgery on your ears. Listen up. When the matador flips her cape a third time, the picadors circle and raise their spears waaay up, waaay up—picadors, spears waaay up—that’s fine, let the ribbons trail—here, bull in the middle. You’re trapped, see? You’re angry. Picadors, move in. Bull Girl, you’re surrounded. Picadors ready to strike. What’ll you do?”
I snorted. I dropped my head, and the horns wobbled and weaved right and left. On the bandstand behind me, musicians wandered in from the kitchen and watched me spin circles in my tiny picador jail.
“Striking, striking—stab those spears—”
And the phone rang. It sat on a table next to the kitchen swing doors, and Granny answered because mostly the calls were for him.
“Penny? No Penny here.”
I said, “Granny, it’s for me.”
“We’re in rehearsal. We have no time for phone calls.”
“Please. Just this once. Then I’ll do the bull better. I’ll be a great bull. Just this once?”
He passed me the receiver. “Four minutes. Not five. Hear?”
I snorted my bull snort. By the stage the Picador Girls watched me until Granny turned them away. “That’s not a stab. You stab roast duck that way, not a bull. Circle up, let’s try it with music. Matador, where’s your cape? Christ, I leave for one second—”
From the receiver, an old man’s voice spoke in my ear. “Penny Harp? Hello?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I’m calling from Hollywood Receiving Hospital.”
I couldn’t think a minute, with picadors in the room. I hadn’t tied my cap tight, and the horns slid.
“Hello? You’re looking for a missing girl?”
“Yes,” I said.
* * *
Madge drove me the next afternoon. I’d been there a few days earlier and hardly noticed the receiving hospital. It sat next to Hollywood Division on Wilcox, they were both made from the same brick. Pretty handy, when you think how many criminals get shot or beat up. Stitch crooks at the hospital, then cops push them next door to get booked, then on to jail right there in the division basement. It’s a fast process. It’s like making a Ford.
Madge parked near the end of the block and got out of her car. She lit a cigarette and waited for me. I didn’t open my door.
“Right place?”
“Yeah, but I hate to get out. There’s the cop station. Conejos could be around.”
“Anyone could be around.” She picked tobacco off her tongue with her fingernails. She ignored the pretty fountain that made the grass strip between the police station and the hospital look like a tiny park. “We’re around, how about that? Get out of the car.”
I did, and held up a hand to block my view of the station. What a coward I am. One arrest for murder, one night in an interview room with Conejos yelling and my new sneaky lawyer digging for what I knew, one cab driver on a Hawaiian trip to avoid testifying, Stany paying for the whole mess, bail and lawyer and ridiculous sunbathing cabbie, and I couldn’t look at the building. I kept my hand by my eyes until I stood in the hospital’s lobby. Even then I had trouble. The lobby seemed hollow, like the police station. One reception desk by the door, far-off sounds of crying, like the police station. Women’s League volunteers instead of cops, but still.
We waited in reception off the surgery ward. One other man sat on a bench but didn’t notice us. He leaned forward with elbows on his knees, no tie, hat on the seat beside him, cigarette passing mouth to fingers, mouth to fingers. He tapped both feet. Madge raised her eyebrows a couple times, and we sat with the man about twenty minutes until a nurse banged open the door and stared at Madge and me. I think the nurse wanted us to talk first, but we didn’t talk, and she stood there waiting. She was skinny, the kind that scares old ladies and makes them bake prune cake. Her uniform sank on her.
“Who’s here for Dr. Frith?”
I raised my hand.
“Both of you?”
Nod. “You’re Agnes the nurse?”
“I’m Pam.”
“We’re supposed to wait for Agnes.”
“Agnes was his wife. He was the best doctor in this hospital. He’s tired. He’s here all night sometimes. He shouldn’t see you. But does he listen to me?”
“No,” Madge said.
The nurse turned and walked down the hall. We followed, up stairs, down another hall, to a small office.
Dr. Frith was an old, wispy-haired guy with a cigarette holder and a hanging skeleton. Through his one office window he had a nice view of the police station. He rocked in a chair behind a metal desk, and his hand shook. Dust sat on his desk, the file cabinet.<
br />
“Agnes,” he said to Pam the nurse.
How could you keep from hugging him? A weak doctor who loves his dead wife so much he sees her in every girl. I wouldn’t want him near me with a bone saw, but if he called me Agnes, I’d answer him. I’d make-believe I was Agnes so he’d smile and eat his afternoon snack.
“You called me,” I said.
“Maybe. Why would I call you? Why would I want to?”
“You saw my friend on Halloween.”
“When was that?”
“Last day of October.”
“When?”
“Two weeks ago,” I said. There are no other ways to say it. Halloween is always Halloween.
“Blond, she was. Like you, but pretty.”
“That’s her.”
“I never called. Open the window. Agnes, tell this girl how I like things.”
Agnes shook her head at me. She moved her lips: No window. She raised her hand and walked her fingers across air, then ran her fingers and lifted them up and then falling, fingers falling out a window. Not fingers, she meant a person. Don’t open the window or he’ll jump.
“She was pretty,” I said. “What else?”
“What else what?”
“The girl you saw on Halloween.”
“Are you still here?” He chewed a cracker.
“The girl,” I said.
“Agnes?”
“Not Agnes. The girl on Halloween. What did you see?”
“Oh, the girl. She was blond. Listen, you see that bottle in my equipment case? Bring it here.”
No bottle, said Agnes’s hand. Behind Dr. Frith, her hand waved at me.
“It’s empty,” I said. “How about tea?”
“Goddamn it to hell.”
“We’re going,” Madge said.
“No, Madge, wait. He saw Rose. He did. He can tell us.”
Dr. Frith looked at Madge. Maybe he hadn’t seen Madge until now. He got big eyes and set his cigarette holder on his desk. Wispy white hair slid from his forehead. He said, “Goddamn. How much for a tickle?”
“I’m gone,” Madge said.
“Tickle in the tunnel,” said Dr. Frith.
“Madge . . .” I ran into the hallway after her. “He could help us. Be patient, I’m sure he’ll—”
“Pull out a huge knife?” She walked the hallway fast, each step a little bounce in her rubber soles. “He’s a nut, Penny. He’s every nut in the nut dish. If he were forty years younger he’d have us tied under his desk.”
“He loves his wife—”
“And they’ll never find the body. I’m leaving.”
We passed the room where the nervous guy still sat, elbows on his knees, feet tapping. He looked up when we crossed the doorway, paused, then dropped his head.
“We’ll try again,” Madge said. “We can visit the hospitals this time instead of posting flyers. Posting was a bad idea. You should have listened to me. We make a list, we go to each hospital, we check to see our flyer is on the bulletin board. We can bring more flyers and post them. The trick is to post and ask, do both. This time we’ll steal paper from Paramount. There, are you cheered up? Where’s that smile, Bull Girl?”
“He knows something, and you want us to walk away.”
“Not walk, more like a quick trot.” She pushed the hospital’s front door and the air smelled great, clean, wind and sun in my face. Inside the hospital I couldn’t think, with the air full of bandage smells, tape, and infection. A guy tapping his feet, bouncing his knees, waiting for bad news. If Rose came here, she was scared. She’d have smelled the same things I did. If she was here, someone saw her. Someone checked her in.
“Oh, I’ve got it. Oh, yes. Yes! I’ve got it, Madge. Where’s the ambulance entrance?”
“In back probably,” Madge said. “Why?”
“That’s where emergencies go. If someone brought Rose here, they’d go to the ambulance entrance.”
“Rose wasn’t here. You’re going to believe a nut?”
“Madge, he knew she was blond and pretty. She was here. Dr. Frith’s office isn’t that far from the back of the hospital. What if he saw her? I don’t mean as a patient, I mean he happened to see her walk by or he passed a room she was in. Don’t do that with your eyebrows. It’s possible.”
“Our flyer said she was a blonde. He never saw her. He read her description on the flyer. What a mess.”
“I’m going to the ambulance entrance.”
“You’ll ruin your shoes, walking through that grass. At least take the sidewalk.”
“You coming?” I started to ruin my Wallflower shoes.
“Goddamn you,” Madge said, and she followed me.
CHAPTER 21
Don Ameche, who was glum and blue all through the shooting of Down Argentine Way while his wife lay so ill following the birth of his new son, is all life and fun and pep again, now that Mrs. Ameche and the baby are home.
—Photoplay, November 1940
The ambulance entrance was more like a doctor’s office, with a few people sitting around holding their arms or elbows, whatever hurt.
“You can’t see Dr. Ostrander.” A nurse checked off names on a list. She sat at a desk by the door and wouldn’t look at us. “These people are waiting, and besides, he’s with an emergency.” No, she hadn’t seen Rosemary. No, she hadn’t worked Halloween. Only the doctor and the surgical nurse worked that night, but we couldn’t see them because we didn’t hurt anywhere. Could we please go now so she could help those in need?
“I know plenty of girls like you,” Madge said. “I’ve met them all. You wear a little hat and that makes you important.”
“That’s right,” said the nurse. “I’ve got the hat.”
“I’ve got five bucks,” Madge said. She handed a bill to the nurse. “We won’t take more than a tiny minute.”
“He’s behind this curtain,” said the nurse, and she pulled the curtain so we could step behind. She slid the five into her blouse.
The curtain divided a big room. On the nurse’s side, the nurse with the hat, was the reception desk and chairs for people holding what hurt them. On our side was a row of beds with smaller curtains between, and at the back, a long counter full of books and medical things, pill bottles and jars of cotton or throat sticks. A man in a doctor’s coat stood at the counter reading a book. People lay on the beds, curtains open or pulled shut.
“There he is. What’s his name? Asslantern? Go ask him before he cuts someone open and we have to smell it. I already smell sour milk. A whole sour refrigerator.”
“I can’t pay you back,” I said to Madge.
“The five? Sure you can. There’s always a way. My feet are wet from that grass and I want out of here. Go ask him.”
I did. I walked right up to him, and he heard me and turned, and he sure wasn’t Robert Taylor, but close. He had the brown hair and eyes, but this doctor’s smile was bigger than Bob Taylor’s, really big, so his lips stretched beyond his cheeks. It was a beautiful smile until the top of his face sat on his smile and weighed it down.
“We’re looking for a young woman about my age who might have come here on Halloween night.”
“A young woman,” the doctor said. “Is she missing?” He kept flipping pages of the book. He kept smiling.
“No, not missing, no. We need to find out what happened to her on Halloween.”
“Why?”
I couldn’t think why, at least no reason I wanted to tell him. I shifted a bit. The doctor found the page he wanted and started to read.
“Gangrene,” he said. He turned the book toward me, and I saw the ugly picture. Gangrene. “Smell that?”
We all smelled that.
“I don’t have time to wait for your answers.” He closed his book. “Why?”
“What?”
“Why do you want to know about a young woman?”
Gangrene, that’s all I could think of.
“She might’ve skipped out,” Madge said. “Didn’t pay her ho
spital bill.”
“Ah. And who are you?” He meant me.
“Her sister,” Madge said.
“Ah,” again. He smiled. “Maria, bed four is the amputation. Bed one can wait. Where’s our ether? Sorry,” he said to Madge and me. “You can talk to our billing office. They’ll know who skipped payment.” He tried to leave; he had to amputate someone’s gangrene.
“Not the bill,” I said. “It’s her. Something happened to her on Halloween. Please, she was blond, taller than me, looked like Lana Turner only not those thighs, green dress, bad cut on her hand.”
I could see him decide. He took a pencil from his coat pocket and bit on it. He looked at Madge and me the way a doctor does when he’s deciding to tell you the bad news. Without his smile he was lovely to watch. He put the pencil back in his pocket.
To Maria: “Have her phone her husband. We need his consent. Do you have the form?”
To me: “She was here.” He held up his right hand and with one left finger he fake-sawed the soft skin between his right thumb and finger. “Sliced, through tendon and muscle. She told me she’d cut her hand on broken glass, but then she also told me her name was Glinda the Good Witch.” He smiled, and his face sank to his chin, like a rock on a stretched rubber band.
“How deep?”
He sawed again, then pointed to his hand. “Tendons cross here below the thumb’s second joint. The radial artery runs beneath. She nicked the artery.”
“You fixed her hand?”
“I would have. She needed stitches. I left her in that bed”—he pointed to a bed with a woman in it whose leg twisted funny— “and told Maria here to clean her up. We were busy. Your friend’s hand wasn’t the worst I saw that night.”
The woman in Rose’s bed cried into a telephone: “I prayed all morning, I’m sorry!”
“Time to go, girls.”
“The cut, was it serious?”
“Yes, serious, a cut to her radial artery. Not as serious as it could have been, and certainly not as serious as others. I had many patients. When I came back, she’d gone.”
The Glamorous Dead Page 11