“Okay, now you got it? Never hit fifteen, seldom hit fourteen, think about hitting thirteen, and take a look at what the other players have before hitting twelve. If there are a lot of face cards, then maybe you hit twelve because then you think there’s a good shot another face card isn’t coming up.”
“Got it,” she said as he dealt.
“You sure?”
“Yes. It’s about quick adding and figuring out all the possibilities fast,” she told him matter-offactly.
“Are you a kid?” Richie asked squinting at her. “Or are you actually a dwarf pretending to be a kid?” Now Nina had two cards and so did he.
“Hit me,” was her reply.
“I like Atlantic City. Some people say it’s low class. But I don’t notice that. Probably because I live in Los Angeles where their idea of culture is frozen yoghurt.”
The jokes. Cee Cee decided she’d better call Bernie Adelman in Los Angeles and ask him to do a little work on the jokes. Like the frozen yoghurt joke. That wasn’t working so great because this audience didn’t know what culture had to do with yoghurt. Or maybe even what yoghurt was. And maybe she ought to change the order of some of the songs. For the first few minutes after she made her last exit, Cee Cee’s head would always spin while she tried to come down from the pounding adrenaline-high she had to produce every night in order to do her demanding act.
Covering every inch of that huge stage and never dropping her vivacious, outrageous character for sixty-three minutes was a killer, with only two brief breaks when she rushed into the wings to change costumes while the boy dancers did their interlude. Probably, she thought, this was what it was like to be an Olympic athlete.
Her body had to be stretched out and limber for the dancing, her voice had to be warmed up and loose for the singing, and the energy behind every move and every sound had to be bigger than anything
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she put out for films and television. Grand enough to fill the Circus Maximus so that each person who paid their money to see Cee Cee Bloom that night felt that she had been there just for them.
Once, years ago in New York, she had gone to see a matinee of Marne, and during the curtain call, Angela I,ansbury had looked down into the front section where Cee Cee sat looking up at her with awe, and Angola Lansbury winked. In spite of all the sophistication Cee Cee had about the theater, she still remembered believing on her way home that day that Angola Lansbury had winked specifically at her, Cee Cee Bloom, and it was that kind of intimacy she now wanted to make every person in her audience remember when they went home from her show.
Wanted them to remember all of the jokes and songs, her “Saucy Sassy Ladies” segment where she brought the house down in a clingy dress, singing as Mae West,
A guy what takes his time
I’ll go for any time
I’m a fast movin’ gal that likes ‘em slow.
Got no use for fancy drivin’
Want to see a guy arrivin’ in low.
I’d be satisfied
Electrified
You know
With a guy what takes his time.
And every night she fine-tuned the moments, never happy unless it all worked perfectly. Sure it was only Atlantic City, but if you were going to do it, you might as well goddamn do it right. Some performers came offstage and didn’t want even to think about their work until it was time to go on again, but Cee Cee was already making mental notes during the encore and the curtain call, pushing herself to make her show its best.
The few minutes immediately after her final bow was usually the best time to do the postmortem, because everything was still fresh in her head. She stood sweating in the wings, wiping her face with a cool towel handed to her by her dresser, who placed another larger towel around her shoulders, and a big plastic Evian bottle in her hand,
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and Cee Cee caught her breath and drank the water, rerunning her performance in her head.
“Great show,” she told the dancers as they passed her with a sweaty grab of the hand or a pat while she waited for the band to finish their final notes, and for Artie Butler, her mnsical director and conductor, to come offstage, so the) could rehash the show together. Where did it feel rushed? Slow? When did the audience seem restless? What needed to be cut? Added? Revamped?
So much had changed since Cee Cee’s days of performing live. Now light cues were all computerized so there could be no making changes at the last second when it would be too late for the lighting designer to reprogram the timing. Cee Cee remembered wistfully those days of playing small clubs with Hal, and how she used to be able to stand offstage about to do her encore, and peek through the curtain, trying to psych out the mood of the audience by their faces, and to figure out if they’d prefer “Knock Me a Kiss” or “Guess Who I Saw Today.” A nod to Hal was all he used to need, and a nod from him was the cue to the lighting man who stood in the back.
“I notice that Atlantic City seems to draw a much older crowd than Vegas. I just saw a waitress ask a man who finished dinner at that table if she could take his plates, and the man handed her his teeth.”
Dumb. Dumb. It gets a laugh, but that joke always sounded to her like one that Milton Berle stole from Henny Youngman who borrowed it from Fat Jack Leonard. Tonight, as she and Artie talked, they walked toward several well-wishers who had found their way backstage to congratulate her. Every night of the run there was a group of people who had either come to the show from New York, or were working on the boardwalk themselves and were about to open in a few days. Tonight she gave a hug to Merv Griffin, remembering her first shots on his television talk show years before, and how kind he’d been to her when she was nervous, assuring her every time his show broke for a commercial, “You’re doing great.”
Behind Merv there were several other people Cee Cee didn’t know, who had somehow managed to get backstage to meet her, and she shook their hands and said her thank-yous to their compliments and then was glad to see Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme waiting to say hello too. Steve and Eydie were opening next week. They were raving
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about Cee Cee’s show, and when Cee Cee happened to look at the man who was waiting to talk to her standing behind Steve and Eydie, her heart stopped and she didn’t hear another word Steve or Eydie said, because the man behind them was John Perry, her ex-husband, who was smiling now, knowing she had seen him.
Steve and Eydie’s lips were moving and Cee Cee was nodding to them and saying an automatic “thank you” every now and then, hoping they thought she was listening, because she couldn’t be rude but, dear God, she prayed, let them hurry up and finish what they’re saying and go. And finally they squeezed her hands and said goodbye and congratulations a few more times, and when they were gone she was standing in the cool darkness of backstage, face-to-face with the only real love she’d ever had in her life.
Neither of them spoke, and after a minute of sizing him up, still slim, no paunch, gray temples, hardly a wrinkle, eyes still as big and blue as ever, Cee Cee counted on her fingers behind her back, trying to figure out how old he had to be by now. Let’s see. They were married in 1960, broke up in ‘70. Now it was what? 1985. So she hadn’t even seen him in fifteen years, which meant that he was … had to be… holy shit, the man was fifty-six years old, and goddam mit, did he look great.
“I know you,” she said to his smiling face.
“And I know you.”
“Boy, do you look good!” she said. His skin, the springy rosy way it looked, his big chest and muscular arms, and his wonderful brown curly hair, which now except for a little bit of gray in it was the same as she remembered. The son-of-a-bitch still had looks that could break your heart. And best of all was that expression on his face she knew so well, the one of abject appreciation when he took her in, his eyes seeming so grateful to look at her, as if no one else in the world existed and nothing el
se could distract him, as if a bomb could go off right next to him and he wouldn’t notice because he was so rapt looking at her. How she had missed feeling the warmth of that look.
“And you, Cecilia, not only look great, but apparently are still tearing the world apart with your extraordinary talent.” There was a long silence as their eyes searched one another’s, but Cee Cee broke it.
“So let’s fuck,” she said. Then she howled with laughter at her own joke and he did too, and they fell into one another’s arms, alternately
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holding one another tight for long warm hard hugs, then at arm’s length to look at one another and rejoice, and then hug again.
“Where in the hell have you been? In Ohio, for Christ’s sake? Who stays in Ohio all these years and doesn’t surface once in a while and call a person?”
“Well, I was lucky,” b.e said. “I had the distinct advantage of being able to see you whenever I felt the need. All I had to do was turn on the television or pick up a newspaper or a magazine or drive by a billboard.”
“Yeah. I do have a tendency to be rather high-profile, don’t I?” “You are, shall we say, visible.”
“J. P., I can’t believe I’m actually looking at your face. I was always kind of figuring I’d just never see you again. I knew you got married. You wrote me that years ago. But I didn’t know if you…”
He nodded. “I’ve got three kids. Two boys and a girl. All in various stages of trying to be in show business. And they’ll be envious as hell when I tell them I stopped in to see you. After me, they’re your biggest fans.”
“Where are they?”
“In Ohio with Katie. Their mother. I’m here, believe it or not, on business.”
“What kind of business?”
Now he flushed, and for the first time she noticed a little sweat on his brow, even though there was a draft of air so cool in the wings where they were standing that it made Cee Cee need to pull the towel she wore tighter around her shoulders.
“It’s nothing. It’s silly. Look why don’t you go and do whatever you’re doing and I‘1| call you tomorrow if that’s all right. Maybe we can get together and just talk?”
Tomorrow. How could she wait to talk to him until tomorrow? She wanted to take his hand and drag him into her dressing room and have him fill her in on what he’d done every second since they’d been apart. And okay, maybe she did feel an urge to hold him close and see how it felt to kiss him again, touch him again, find out if he still had any feelings for her besides admiration for her stardom. Liar, she thought, you could drag him into bed this minute with the rush of feeling you’re having. Crazy and wrong as she knew that was, she was afraid that was what she would do if it wasn’t for… Nina. My God.
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Wait until John saw Nina. He would know the instant he saw her that she was Bertie’s daughter. The first time he ever met Bertie she was sixteen. Not so many years older than Nina was now. Cee Cee remembered telling Nina about those days only recently.
“You never knew John Perry,” she had said, feeling melted the way she usually did when she thought about him. “We split up long before you were born. I met him when I worked in his funny little theater in Beach Haven. He was someone out of this world. Your mother thought so too. She was an apprentice at the thcatcr and I was a singer.”
“For a while my mother was in love with him too,” Nina had said,
and hearing that truth come from her surprised Cee Cee.
“Did she tell you that?”
“My mother wasn’t like you, Cee Cee. She never told me anything. But I didn’t have to hear the words. It was just the way she always talked about meeting him when you two were young, and how handsome he was, and then she would say, ‘And all the girls were crazy for him,’ with this look in her eyes, and then she’d say, ‘But he married Cee Cee.’”
“Funny,” Cee Cee had said, liking the story because it made her sound so triumphant over every other woman in the world, until Nina added, “I think she was trying to tell me that you don’t have to be pretty for someone good to fall in love with you. To say that it’s what’s inside that counts. You know?”
“I do know,” Cee Cee had said, hurt with the kind of a wound she now understood a daughter could ive to a mother under the guise of being matter-of-fact.
“How is Bertie?” John asked. He beamed as he waited for the answer.
“She’s gone,” Cee Cee said, then saw right away that he hadn’t understood what she meant by gone, because the smile was still on his face. “I have her daughter because Bertie died. Two years ago.”
Cee Cee tried to identify what came into his eyes next. From the minute she had seen him watch Bertie walk across a room that summer in Beach Haven in 1960, before she’d admitted to Bertie or even to herself that she loved John Perry, Cee Cee had been afraid that it would be John and Bertie who would get together. Both of them were so beautiful, so confident, and part of some cool Christian world a
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person like her would never understand or be able to enter. And somewhere in a sick, niggling little place in her chest she’d always held the fear that it was only a matter of time before the two of them fell in love. She could still recall every detail of that night in 1960 at the Sunshine, the theater John once owned.
It was after the cast party for Damn Yankees, in which Cee Cee had starred as Lola. She and Bertic had taken a walk on the beach. There were tiki torches blazing everywhere, making the night seem romantic, and Cee Cee had felt confident and important and strong about her future as a performer. And as the two friends walked Cee Cee had searched her mind for a way to talk to Bertie about how much she loved John. To tell the only person in whom she had ever confided how much she wanted to make love to this man, and how she was living on the secret fantasy that someday he would be hers, and before she could get the words out, to her horror, Bertie confessed to her instead that only the night before John had taken her virginity.
After that, even when Bertie was far away and Cee Cee and John were married and Bertie was safely married to Michael, Cee Cee hated herself for wondering if every time Bertie asked about John in a letter, or John casually asked, “When did you hear from Bert last?” if the two of them weren’t secretly longing to be with one another.
“My God. I remember now reading that you’d become the guardian of a friend’s child, but I had no idea it was Bertie’s. What happened?” John asked. The look on his face was pure sorrow.
“She had ovarian cancer. She moved away from Florida where she had been raising Nina because she wanted to die alone in peace and quiet.”
“And?”
“And she made the mistake of calling me to say goodbye. So I flew up there and took over her care.”
“And God knows, that was certainly the end of the peace and quiet.”
They both grinned.
“You do know me, don’t you?” she asked.
“Is the child okay?”
Cee Cee nodded. “Considering the circumstances. And that she’s stuck with me.”
“What’s she like?”
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“You’ll meet her. She’s like her mother, as raised by me.”
“Now that’s a combination to be reckoned with.”
“You bet it is,” she said, putting her hand out and reaching for his.
“So come along and start reckoning.”
“You want me to meet her now?”
“Unless you can’t. Unless there’s someone waiting for you?” Please
let there be nobody waiting for him, she thought and almost let out a whoop of joy when he gave her his hand. And the instant she felt its familiarity, she was flooded with a series of flashbacks of their years together. Years of deep love and great fun and very hot sex. The bad part had been the way he had taken over her life where Leona had left off. Pushing he
r to achieve and then standing back and taking the credit when she did. Living through her success, and on the one hand loving it because it took them to a height and a lifestyle he might never have had without Cee Cee, and on the other hand resenting it mightily because he was completely dependent on her for that high.
For Leona it had been okay, because she had no talent of her own
and had always known it would take Cee Cee to get her anywhere. But John had aspirations for himself and a male ego she had tiptoed around for years, stopping herself a million times from telling him his ideas for her were too small, clich6d, wrong. Instead she had tried desperately to please him, to make his ideas work for her, terrified if he ever knew how little she really needed him professionally, he would lose interest in her personally, sexually, completely. And finally, after ten years of his being told, “Hey, buddy, would you get outta the way,” when he stood in the wings, and after signing endless bar tabs and credit-card slips and hotel charges “John Perry for Cee Cee Bloom,” he sat depressed and hurt in a dark Miami Beach hotel room one night smoking a cigarette, and told her what she knew he would have to say to her sooner or later which was, “I want a woman who will bask in my glory.”
“You breathe all the air in the room,” Bertie used to tell her. “And there’s no more left for anybody else.” It was funny when Bertie had said it. And it had always been all right with Bertie for Cee Cee to be the one with the big hungry ego. Bertie was content to play the part of the fan. But J.P.‘s frail ego had doomed the continued success of their marriage.
When they walked into the dressing room, Nina and Richie were
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each staring at their respective hands of cards. Nina picked one up from the pile on the table then shrieked a winner’s shriek.
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