The Glamorous Dead

by Suzanne Gates

  “Don’t do this. Don’t worry yourself. Think of the bright years ahead, what you’ll do and see, the money. You can provide for your mother and sister. Maybe move them to Hollywood, hey?”

  I’d never told Granny about my mother and sister.

  “Granny, do you have a shovel?”

  “What?”

  “Do you have a shovel?”

  “I—no, I don’t think so. Hammers, yes, for set construction, and saws and nails. You’re not looking for more blood on Sunset, are you? We have a broom and dustpan.”

  “That’ll do.” I found the broom and dustpan. I quit talking to Granny, because when he said your mother and sister I saw him clear, and behind him, the studio. I’d never told him that Madge and I looked for blood, so Madge must have told him. Behind Madge, the studio. Paramount has a big payroll.

  Granny said more, but I didn’t hear him. Instead, I heard myself at the Bronson Gate: I wonder what Zukor’s cleaning up before I come back.

  I carried my broom and my dustpan out the stage door to the alley, beside the full trash cans, next to stacks of bottles and boxes and laundry bags. I scared off a bum mooching food. In front of me was the dirt that used to mound over Rose, dug up and shifted around, rained on, walked on, hard as wood. Girls passed me, dorm and back, dark came, and I chopped at the dirt with one edge of the metal dustpan.

  I made a pretty good pile of dirt chunks. By the time the Career Girls opened the stage door, I’d dug past chunks into soft dirt that scooped easy into my dustpan and rose in puffs, making me choke. I could smell her. I smelled Rose, and I guess that’s why I’d dug, to be close to Rose.

  One Career Girl didn’t like it. “Besides making a mess, you’ve got a cloud of dust and everything’s filthy. Look at my blouse. I bought this at full price.”

  The other Career Girl, the one who’d cried by the publicity office, didn’t talk. I spilled dirt on her shoe, I blew dust toward her A-line skirt and she didn’t notice. They both reached the dorm, and when one girl held open the front door for the other, in that borrowed light I saw in my hole something shiny. Sharp, too—it cut my finger. I scraped with the side of my dustpan, scraped more, and couldn’t see anything now, but the dustpan hit whatever it was, dug around it, hit more of it. I’d dug deeper than Rose had lain.

  Behind me the stage door opened. Granny said to me, “I’ll have to tell him, you know. Mr. Zukor won’t like what you’re doing.”

  “I don’t have a contract yet. I haven’t signed anything. Can you move to one side? The light’s blocked.”

  “Sheryl, stop digging.”

  “Give me your handkerchief, Granny.”

  “You’re bleeding.”

  “Granny, your handkerchief.” I took it from his hand and wound it around my fingers, then reached into the hole and pulled at something thin and sharp and springy. It didn’t give. The dustpan again, banging away at dirt, freeing more of the thing, then a tug with my wrapped fingers. Didn’t give.

  “Let me try,” Granny said. He propped the stage door and knelt. He took the dustpan and used its handle to break dirt from the hole. We both felt the release and snap of whatever it was, and I held the thing up in Granny’s handkerchief: two spirals of wire.

  “The garrote,” I said.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Right, because you use so much wire here at the Gardens.”

  “It could have been in the ground for years.”

  “With no rust?” I threw the wire at the garbage cans. “Doesn’t matter now. Who would I tell?”

  “That’s my girl,” Granny said. “Help me fill this hole.”

  CHAPTER 36

  The domestic and parental urge seems to be sweeping all Hollywood these days, with those homes that aren’t preparing for their own little ones getting ready for adopted babies.

  —Photoplay, November 1940

  I needed to wash the dirt and blood off me. In the dorm, upstairs, I knocked on the bathroom door. I rattled the knob. Down the hall, the door to my room opened and a Career Girl stuck out her head. She walked the hall in her slip and came up beside me.

  “Cree.” She called me by my Indian name. “Let her alone.”

  “I’ve got to wash up. I’m dirty all over.”

  “Use the first bathroom.”

  “With the nieces?”

  “The kitchen, then. Use the sink.” She slid one hand in front of me so her whole arm pushed me from the door. “You smell.” She sounded like Madge.

  “Who’s in here?” I reached under her arm and rattled the knob again.

  “Look what you did. Now the door’s bloody.”

  “Who’s in here, I said.”

  “It’s Lorraine, okay? Let her be. She’s had it rough. Use the sink off the greenroom.”

  We heard crying from inside the bathroom. The Career Girl’s arm dropped. She turned to the door and yelled, “Lorraine, I’m here. Lorraine.”

  “I’m still bleeding,” Lorraine said, through the door. I hardly made out the words. My face got cold. I knew why a girl bled, and where. I bled from my finger just standing there, but I didn’t need to call out through a door. I didn’t need to lock a door while I bled. A girl locks the door to bleed for three reasons. She has her monthlies, that’s one reason. She gets pregnant and miscarries, that’s two. She gets pregnant and spring-cleans, that’s three.

  I didn’t go to the kitchen. I went to the greenroom, and on the way I put all the scenes together. One scene: Madge and the Career Girl Lorraine at a Zebra table, Madge talking, Lorraine crying, until I came in and saw them. Another scene: Abbott outside his office, patting the Career Girl Lorraine on the shoulder and yelling at me that I’m late. Scene three: the Career Girl Lorraine walking past my dirt heap while I’m digging out the garrote, letting me sprinkle dust on her clean shoes.

  I did use the sink off the greenroom. I washed and thought, I dressed in my ugly checked skirt and thought. Tonight I didn’t have to parade in the revue line. I was a contract girl now. I watched the Indian show from the Zebra doorway, a line of sequined Indians, step-touch, sway, and I thought.

  What did Abbott tell the Career Girl outside his office? I hadn’t heard him. Yesterday I’d run late, I should have been at the sound stage already, and I’d hurried past Avenue M. Wet streets. Little pools of rainwater and garbage. Career Girl crying, I’ve got a secret. Abbott in his doorway, his hand on the Career Girl’s—Lorraine’s—shoulder. Comforting. We’ll take care of it. At Paramount, we’re family.

  And extras? Were extras family, too? Lorraine had no contract. The most she’d done was walk by Hank’s table in a fake dining room of a fake ship. She did get camera time. If not lost in edits, she’d be in the picture and maybe have her name on the screen. Career Girl played by Lorraine Someone.

  So the Career Girl might have a screen credit. Bad publicity if a Career Girl’s pregnant. Career Girls weren’t married, so they couldn’t get pregnant. Lorraine must not have known the rules. She got pregnant.

  Where would she have an abortion? None of us, except Madge and me, were from near LA. We came from everywhere else, Nebraska and Missouri, Stockton or Lodi, and we didn’t know about illegal places except what we heard in the news. A Career Girl couldn’t walk up to some house in the Hollywood Hills and knock on the door: I hear you’ll do abortions. Can I come in? Plus, the house might be miles from Hollywood. It could be anywhere. We wouldn’t know where to go.

  Who would know? Abbott, he knew, because he worked in publicity. That’s what publicists did: They herded girls and fixed problems. Once in a while they faked interviews. Stany’s publicist faked an interview with Photoplay. How did I know? I read the interview. Stany discussing mothers in Hollywood, children in Hollywood, how they’re raised full of values. The Hollywood child, beloved and guided. Except it wasn’t Stany discussing, it was Helen Ferguson, Stany’s publicist. Stany was at home calling her kid a little fuck.

  Publicists fixed. Why else would Abbott pat Lorraine’s
shoulder?

  That’s what I saw yesterday, then. That’s what Zukor feared I would tell. I didn’t think it secret enough to buy me a two-year contract, but okay, I saw Abbott help a girl get an abortion. I could keep shut about that.

  Lorraine—how did Lorraine know who to ask? Who told her, Abbott can help you, he knows an abortionist, go to Abbott? I didn’t know Lorraine or her friends. Maybe one of her friends knew Abbott. How would she know which friend to ask? We didn’t have many friends. We didn’t talk to each other. When there are only so many jobs, you’ve got to be sneaky and willing to steal and lie. Sometimes I’d meet a nice girl, someone who wanted to be friends, but she didn’t last long. She was gone by the next cattle call. Our friends were the ones who moved here with us, like Rosemary, and even she lied to me. Madge was a friend, but she’d lied to Granny about me.

  Say Lorraine had friends, but that wouldn’t matter. No unmarried girl goes around saying she’s pregnant. As soon as we knew a girl’s secret, as soon as the studio knew, she’d be fired. She’d ride back to wherever on a Greyhound bus. I didn’t know anyone who wanted to go back to her past. That’s why we were here.

  Except Madge. She came to LA to get Zukor’s help, and Zukor said he’d help and then gave Madge a job. I’d thought Madge meant a job as an extra, but maybe Zukor gave her a different job. I thought again of Madge talking to Lorraine the Career Girl in the Zebra Room. Lorraine had been crying. I thought of the three Lorraine scenes: Lorraine and Madge, then Lorraine and Abbott, then Lorraine crying through the door of Bathroom Two.

  Then I added another scene, without Lorraine: Madge arguing with Abbott, the day I’d first worn Stany’s gray squirrel dress. That day Madge was wearing the stolen blue dimity gown, and Abbott stood with her, and they argued. Why would Abbott argue with Madge? She hadn’t been late to our morning call. She wore the best dress in our group, so why have words? Abbott and Madge, Madge and Lorraine, Lorraine and Abbott.

  Lorraine talked to Madge. Or Madge guessed, if she saw Lorraine crying or throwing up. If Madge knew Abbott well, she might think Abbott could help. Or was I right, and Zukor had given her another job—the one where Madge watched for extras who got pregnant, and then directed them to Abbott?

  I went to the greenroom and looked for the other Career Girl. Not Lorraine, the other one. I couldn’t remember her Indian name. Nez Perce or Sioux. She sat at the mirror almost to the room’s end and wiped her face with a tissue. I didn’t talk to her. I pretty much knew that Madge was the one who had helped Lorraine, told her to talk to Abbott, and Abbott had sent her to an abortionist. But Madge didn’t have any friends, like I already said, so I couldn’t ask them. Instead I asked a girl Madge had hated.

  Apache was pulling on stockings. She sat on a stool and tugged white gloves onto each hand, then crunched up one stocking to its foot so she could slip her leg in. I stood in front of her and she raised her face.

  “You need something?” She’d drawn her upper lip too high. A lot of girls did that because it looked good on stage. Close up, her mouth looked like a pig snout.

  “Tell me about Madge,” I said.

  “Madge.”

  “You know, the dead girl.”

  “Which one?” Apache snapped a garter closed and lit a cigarette in her snout.

  “She stole your gin.”

  “Oh, her. Why do you want to know about her?”

  “Because she’s dead, I guess.”

  That made sense to Apache. She nodded. She hadn’t taken her headdress off, so the feathers wobbled. “I liked her. Sorry she’s dead.”

  “Really?”

  “Of course not, stupid. I’m sorry she’s dead, yeah. But she was something.”

  “Do you know anything about her?”

  “You mean where she’s from, what movies she liked, all that?”

  “I guess,” I said. I wasn’t as good as Conejos at interviewing.

  “No.”

  Conejos would ask something sneaky now, something to get Apache mad. When people get mad, they talk. They can’t stop themselves.

  “Madge thought your mouth looked like a pig,” I said.

  “Who cares? She’s dead and I’m not.”

  I was a failure at interviews. Penny Harp was not a detective. Penny would go her whole life without making anyone talk. I wasn’t sure about Sheryl, though, so I tried again as her. “You remember the night she took all your pins and your headdress fell off?”

  “It was evil. I’ll never forgive her for it. I had to buy new hairpins and everything.”

  “That day she helped me a lot. She drove me to where I last saw Rosemary, and we looked around.”

  “Who’s Rosemary?”

  “The other dead girl.”

  “Go on,” Apache said.

  “So we found Rosemary’s blood. Madge helped me that day. Did she ever help other girls?”

  “Wait a minute. What about the blood?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “We found the blood and then it started to rain. Now, there’s nothing left.”

  “You don’t know it was blood, then.”

  I was a failure as Sheryl, too. Madge didn’t help girls get abortions. I was stupid to think so. The heels of my feet ached, my eyes hurt, my whole day was terrible, with no answers I could use. First my brother gone, then the phony death certificate, finding the garrote, Lorraine.

  “You know about her side job.”

  “What?”

  “I said,” Apache said, “you already know about her side job.”

  “Sure,” I said. I didn’t know a thing. “Great side job.”

  “If you think so.”

  “Why? Didn’t you think it was great?”

  “Being a mole for Abbott? What’s great about that? It’s not like she got any good roles out of it. I don’t know how much she earned, but if there’s no camera time, what’s the use?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “What’s the use. Do you know what she told Abbott?”

  “No. What?”

  “I mean, what did she tell Abbott?”

  “Only one thing, that’s all I know. Her entire job was one thing.”

  “What thing?”

  “You know, if a girl needs help.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I wonder how much she earned. I could use a side job. I’m moving to Bedroom One. Did you hear?”

  “No. Really?”

  “I’ll need a side job.”

  The nieces came and went. The girls came and went. If I owned the Greyhound bus line, I’d be rich with the money spent trucking these girls around. Some stayed a while, like me. Some needed help, like Lorraine. And there was Madge, stealing gin, watching for signs. She fixed girls for Abbott, who fixed messes for Zukor, who made the world go around. A moving picture studio is a world, it truly is. MGM and Warners and RKO, they’re worlds, too. Every world gets dirty and needs a little tidy-up. See Abbott, he’ll help. He’ll send you to—not the usual abortionist, like a chiropractor or med student. He’d go top of the line, a real doctor. He’d have that doctor on contract. Like Dr. Ostrander. Disappear into a side office and come out when needed, to help the studio. Come out to drag away Spencer Tracy.

  Granny stuck his whole chest through the greenroom door. “Sheryl, when you’ve changed, let’s have a late dinner. I’d like you to meet someone.” No one stopped dressing. It was Granny, after all.

  “I’m wearing an ugly skirt,” I said.

  Apache hit my leg, hard. “Who’s Sheryl? Does she get my bedroom?”

  * * *

  The one time I tried to wear honest clothes, and I was asked to sit in the Zanzibar. I couldn’t do it. I ran from the stage door to the dorm, upstairs to my bedroom, to the closet. I knew I didn’t own anything worth dressing in. All the stolen clothes on my side were gone, taken by Conejos. He’d searched through all my stuff with Madge. This Penny Harp’s? She buy it or steal it? This hers? She buy it or steal it? How about this?

  He hadn’t touched Madge’s stuff.
He didn’t know that Madge’s stuff used to be Rosemary’s. Her clothes still hung on the right side. I pulled out a couple of evening gowns that seemed too fancy for the Gardens. One crunched like good rayon and had a white sequin flower that started by one breast and wrapped around the waist, shooting sequined leaves over the opposite hip. If I wore that gown, the whole room would stare. It was a Rosemary gown, not a Penny gown. I hung it back up. Then there was the bright pink gown I’d loved when Madge had held it: sweetheart bodice, sheer to the neck. I couldn’t touch its hanger. But Rose had a stolen silk suit that I liked, with an ankle-length skirt, wide satin lapels, and a peplum. I looked good in black silk, so I zipped and buttoned and tried not to stare in the mirror.

  In the Zanzibar, I saw Granny wave. He sat alone. I’d expected a director, like King Vidor or Preston. If not a director, I thought Granny might have me meet another contract girl. I didn’t expect Granny alone at a table on the kitchen side. I walked through dancing couples to his table.

  “Was I too long? Did I miss whoever it was? I had to change.”

  “No, not too long. You did well,” he said. “Do you want a drink? You sure? Keep your chin high when you walk. Every door you walk through, you’re walking onstage. Even if it’s to the farmer’s market. You look fine. Your hair and makeup need work, but the suit is nice.” He frowned, and his forehead wrinkled. He talked loud so I could hear over the orchestra. “The suit has an Irene touch. Where did you get yours?”

  “Madge,” I said. “Who am I meeting?”

  “Nobody. Call it a test.”

  “Now you’re testing me. Did I pass?”

  “Yes, except for your hair and makeup. The way you walk, too. You need to work on that. And jewelry. Try to make your voice deeper. Do you smoke? That would help. I had a call from Paramount. You sign your contract tomorrow. Be at the studio by three thirty, that’s in the afternoon. You’re due at Zukor’s office at five, but you’ll need work done first. And for God’s sake, don’t go digging in dirt before you show up at the studio. Next time I babysit, I’m asking for combat pay.”