The Fame Game

by Rona Jaffe

  “Are you angry?” Mad Daddy asked. “Did you want to stay?”

  “Of course not. I wouldn’t have stayed for anything.”

  “I couldn’t have stayed.”

  “We didn’t have to stay. You’re not supposed to suffer, you know. Libra wanted us to have fun. We have the car for the whole weekend. Where do you want to go?”

  “I want to stay in the car,” Mad Daddy said. “Forever. It’s like a womb in here. Do you think we can stay in the car?”

  “Sure.”

  “We’ll get a lot of gas and we’ll just drive around. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Gerry said. She smiled at him and raised her glass. “Cheers.”

  Mad Daddy raised his glass. “Up theirs.”

  They drank, and he smiled at her. Soon he was humming to the music and doing a take-off of the newest discothèque dance while sitting down. He was funny, and she laughed.

  “Would you care to dance with me?” he said.

  “I’d love to.”

  “Nice place they have here. Not too crowded for this time of year.” He opened his overnight bag. Even though he had been nearly in tears and frantic to escape the house he had remembered to bring their shells. He took out a pink, whirly one. “Funny ashtrays they have here, though. I think this fag modern decorating goes a little too far sometimes.”

  It took two and a half hours to drive back to New York, and then the chauffeur asked them where they wanted to go and Mad Daddy told him to fill her up and just drive around. Central Park was closed to traffic so they drove to the Village, then back up Fifth Avenue, then down Park Avenue. It was six o’clock and Gerry very badly wanted a bath and a change of clothes. Their limousine had stopped being a womb; it was now a trap, the pod of an astronaut who has lost the mother ship and is doomed to orbit forever in lonely space. They had heard all the tapes several times and drunk all the liquor.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” she asked.

  “Yes. Why don’t we stop and buy some Chicken Delight and eat it in the car?”

  “Now listen,” she said. “I think we should go someplace—it’ll be good for you. And you shouldn’t sit around in that wet bathing suit forever in this air conditioning.”

  “It’s dry,” he said.

  “I’d like to freshen up, as they say.”

  He was immediately chagrined. “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t realize … you probably have something you want to do tonight. A date or somebody you can call up? I’ll take you home.”

  “No, no, I’m all yours. I just don’t want to be all yours with pneumonia.”

  “I’ll take you to a restaurant if you want … but … well, if we go to a nice place Elaine’s friends will be there and she’s so jealous, she’d make something of us being together. And we can’t go to the movies on Saturday night. Well, I don’t want to take you to a dump, either. What do you want to do?”

  “Well … what would you like to do?”

  “I’ll tell you what I’d like to do,” he said shyly. “I’d like to go to your house and watch television. And I’ll cook. I’m really this great cook. Do you have any spaghetti?”

  “Single girls always have spaghetti,” Gerry said. She wondered if Bonnie was at the apartment, and hoped not.

  “Tell Melvin where,” Mad Daddy said.

  The chauffeur took them to Gerry’s apartment and Mad Daddy told him he could go home. When she and Mad Daddy got upstairs Gerry realized with relief that there was no sign of Bonnie, just an upheaval of make-up and discarded clothes, the sure indication that Bonnie was gone for the evening.

  “That’s the bathroom,” she said, “and here are some towels. You may even use them, even though they are expensive.”

  “I’ll just use the corner and fold it,” he said. “Don’t do a thing while I’m gone; I’ll make the whole dinner.”

  Bonnie, who didn’t pay the electric bill, had left the air conditioner on as usual, so the apartment was comfortably cool. Gerry put some records on the turntable while he was showering, and made drinks. She’d been drinking on and off all day, but she wasn’t high, just tired. She straightened up Bonnie’s mess and made the bed. Then he came out of the bathroom, dressed in clean clothes and smelling of her cologne, and she took him into the kitchen, gave him his drink, and showed him where all the food and pots and pans were.

  “Go away,” he said.

  She took a shower and dressed, and put on fresh make-up. When she went back into the kitchen she found that he had boiled a pot of water.

  “Just sit there,” he said. “I’m going to cook. Wait till you taste my spaghetti. It’s my specialty.”

  “Can I watch?”

  “Sure.”

  She sat on the kitchen ladder and watched him. He put a package of spaghetti into the boiling water, then he opened a can of spaghetti sauce and put it into a saucepan to heat.

  “Do you want any spices or anything?” she said.

  “Oh, no, that’ll spoil it. Just if you have some grated cheese we can put it on the table.”

  “What about salad?”

  “Oh, let’s not bother with that. I don’t like salad much, do you?”

  “Not particularly.” She took out two plates and some forks and spoons. She didn’t have any wine in the apartment but there was still some of the champagne Libra had sent her, nicely cold in the refrigerator, so she opened it and put it into the ice bucket with ice and a towel around its neck. It looked very jazzy.

  Mad Daddy drained the spaghetti and put it on a meat platter he had found, poured the canned sauce on top of it, and held it out with a flourish as if he was Brillat-Savarin. “Wait till you taste that!” he said.

  They had spaghetti and champagne in the living room, while the sky turned black outside and filled with stars. Downstairs in the gardens of the other brownstones there were people sitting in beach chairs to get away from the heat, and some people had set up a grill. The smoke from grilling steak climbed in the still night air. Someone was playing with a poodle, tossing a ball for it to retrieve. It was a perfect city summer evening.

  “Isn’t that good?” Mad Daddy said, helping himself to another heap of the spaghetti he had made.

  “I bet you make great Jell-O, too,” Gerry said.

  “What people don’t know about great spaghetti sauce,” he said seriously, “is that you mustn’t fuss with it. It’s perfect just the way it comes from the can. People fuss with food and then they ruin it.”

  “I love it with champagne,” she said. “Why not have it with champagne? I love everything with champagne.”

  “That’s right. All those rules are silly.”

  She was surprised, but it really was one of the best meals she had ever eaten. She thought of all those marvelous meals Dick had bought her in his favorite restaurants, and she realized that every one of those meals had been marred with tension—hers. She really hadn’t enjoyed anything she’d eaten with Dick; she’d been too nervous, too much in love. Love was a mess. Who had said love made everything else seem better? That was a lie. Love interfered with every one of life’s functions. You lost your appetite or had indigestion, you slept badly, you either couldn’t go to the bathroom at all or you went all the time from nerves, you couldn’t concentrate on things, your skin broke out. Being in love was a mess. I’m never going to fall in love again, Gerry thought. She felt as if she was sailing peacefully on a cloud.

  “Television!” Mad Daddy cried happily. He jumped up and turned on the set.

  “Coffee?” Gerry asked.

  “No, no, look—the Marx Brothers! We don’t need coffee, there’s champagne left. You can’t miss the Marx Brothers!” He took a pillow from the couch and settled himself comfortably on the floor in front of the television set, about two feet away from it like a child. Gerry put the champagne and the glasses on the floor and sat down next to him. He jumped up and got a pillow for her. The program was some sort of special—a mélange of old movies of old comics, the Marx Brothers, W. C. Fields, the Keystone Co
ps, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton. It was far better than the usual Saturday-night fare. Mad Daddy watched it avidly, laughing, looking at her every time there was a bit he particularly admired, to make sure she appreciated it too. “Aren’t you glad we stayed home?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  During the commercial she took the dirty dishes into the kitchen and he followed her with the platter and forks, putting everything into the sink. She wondered if he was as helpful in his own home. Married men were usually on their best domestic behavior when they were visiting girls, but on the other hand, he didn’t have to do anything, she really didn’t expect a man to be helpful around the house.

  “Don’t wash the dishes,” he said.

  “I didn’t intend to.”

  “Good.” He rushed back to the television set.

  After the comedy show they watched a very inferior movie which she remembered halfway through she’d seen before, but she didn’t mind because watching a bad movie at home on Saturday night was a peaceful thing to do. There was a rather good English thriller after that, then the news, and then a vampire movie.

  “Aren’t we lucky?” he said happily. “Vampire movies are my favorite. I think I’ve seen every one of them. Do you have any popcorn?”

  As a matter of fact, she did, the kind you popped yourself. Bonnie always bought popcorn and potato chips when they went to the grocery, eating the potato chips secretly because they were bad for her complexion. Gerry wondered briefly where Bonnie was tonight.

  “Making popcorn is another of my specialties,” Mad Daddy said, taking over with the same culinary authority he’d had with the spaghetti. He held the wire-handled dish of popcorn over the flame and shook it while the popcorn popped and the foil top of the dish bloomed, giving forth an aromatic scent. “I knew you’d have popcorn,” he said. “I think I’ll marry you.”

  “Okay. It’d be fun to be married to you.”

  “Nobody else seemed to think so.”

  “You need an older woman like myself.”

  “Old?” he said, staring at her. “Old? You’re just a kid.”

  “Ha. Some kid.”

  “What are you,” Mad Daddy asked, “Nineteen? Twenty?”

  Here we go, Gerry thought. He throws up and runs. “Twenty-six.”

  He kept staring at her in amazement. “Well, don’t tell anybody, because they’ll never know.”

  “You’re going to burn the popcorn.”

  “I never burn popcorn.”

  He put the popcorn into a bowl she handed him and sprinkled extra salt on it. “Elaine is twenty-six,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “I still think you’re nineteen.”

  They turned out the lights and watched the vampire movie in the dark, eating the popcorn and washing it down with the last of the champagne. Then all the television stations were off except one which had a movie from the Thirties about two song writers, one of whom was in love with a girl who was in love with the other one. They watched it, of course. Gerry wasn’t concerned that Bonnie wasn’t back yet because Bonnie often stayed out until nine in the morning when she didn’t have to work the next day.

  The sun came up with the test pattern.

  “That was a perfect evening,” Mad Daddy said. “Didn’t you think so?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked at his watch. “Let’s go walk in the zoo.”

  “The zoo?”

  “Yeah. There won’t be anybody there yet. We can see everything.”

  “You’re not allowed in at five in the morning, are you?”

  “Of course not. That’s the fun of it. Come on.” He jumped to his feet and pulled her up.

  She was so tired she was getting numb, but still she didn’t want to tell him to go away so she could sleep. She went with him to the street where he found a cab and directed it to an all-night cafeteria, where he bought containers of coffee and huge pieces of artificial-looking Danish pastry wrapped in cellophane. Then the cab took them to the Fifth Avenue entrance to the zoo. The city looked very clean and fresh in the dawn. There was no one in the street and you could look for blocks in either direction and not see any traffic. Early morning sunlight sparkled on windowpanes of the big buildings, and a light breeze stirred the leaves of the trees in the park. There was no one to tell them they could not enter the zoo, just a sign which they ignored, so they went in.

  A few animals were awake, looking at them curiously. They strolled from cage to cage, sipping their coffee, eating their Danish pastry, which tasted as artificial as it looked, but wonderful.

  “Get up, lion!” Mad Daddy yelled at the lion’s cage. “Robert F. O’Brien is coming! Don’t let him catch you asleep on the job.” The lion yawned at them. “Rehearsing already,” he said.

  A man in a uniform came out of one of the animal houses and looked at them suspiciously. Mad Daddy nodded and smiled at him. “Good morning,” he said pleasantly.

  The man’s face defrosted slightly.

  “You keep a very clean zoo,” Mad Daddy said. “We just got married this morning. This is our honeymoon.”

  The man shrugged. “Congratulations.”

  “You see, we met in the zoo. So we wanted to come back for sentimental reasons.”

  “That’s nice,” the man said without much enthusiasm.

  “Isn’t it?” Mad Daddy said happily. He steered Gerry away toward the bears’ cage. “See, Seymour,” he told her. “He didn’t even notice you were a man.”

  “You’re a nut.”

  “So are you. Running around like that, in a dress.”

  She giggled, and then she remembered Bonnie, and Dick, and she stopped giggling. She wondered if Dick would have liked Bonnie if he had thought she was a girl. No … Bonnie wasn’t really Dick’s type … he’d run through all the models of note. Dick had really liked Bonnie because Bonnie was a boy. Dick seemed far away now, like a stranger she’d once known. She could look at him objectively and it didn’t hurt any more. She wondered if Dick would ever have the courage to go out with Bonnie alone, and she knew at the same time that if he did, neither Bonnie nor Dick would ever tell her, and that it didn’t matter. Dick could do anything he wanted to now; if he didn’t want her it didn’t matter who he wanted.

  “You look sad,” Mad Daddy said.

  “No … just sleepy.”

  He started walking back toward her apartment building. She wondered if he meant to come up … she wondered if Bonnie would be there … she wondered if Mad Daddy would like Bonnie … She knew she had to go to sleep now because she was so tired she was getting paranoid and sorry for herself.

  When they got to her building he went upstairs with her. He didn’t look as if he was expecting to go to bed with her; he just looked like he didn’t want to go home. She knew he was alone in his apartment and she wondered if he was afraid to be alone, or if he found it a relief. There were a lot of things she was curious to find out about him, but there would be time …

  Bonnie was in the kitchen, wearing Gerry’s bathrobe and making scrambled eggs.

  “Out all night, you big tart,” Bonnie said cheerfully.

  “Same to you. Where were you?”

  “Oh, I had a date with some guy I wrecked,” Bonnie said, and gave Gerry a big smile of triumph.

  “Anyone I know?”

  “No. You wouldn’t want to know him either.”

  “This is Mad Daddy,” Gerry said. “Bonnie Parker.”

  “Hello, Bonnie,” Mad Daddy said. He smiled politely and looked at Bonnie with no interest at all. Gerry felt her heart soar.

  “Do you want some eggs?” Bonnie asked. She pouted and simpered at Mad Daddy; she couldn’t help it, really, it was as instinctive with her as breathing. When she didn’t flirt with a stranger she ran away and hid. It depended on how secure she was feeling at the moment. Since she was usually afraid of strangers it was evident she was feeling very secure right now. She really must have wrecked that guy, whoever he was.

  “I’d b
etter go home,” Mad Daddy said. “I have to write some shows tomorrow. I always leave it till the last minute. I keep trying to stay ahead, but I never can. Nice meeting you.”

  Gerry walked him to the door. He put his arms around her.

  “Hey,” he whispered in her ear, “that roommate of yours—is she a dike?”

  “Of course not!”

  “Well, she looks like a dike. When I first looked at her, the first second, I thought she was a guy.”

  “Don’t say that!” Gerry whispered, horrified.

  “Boy,” he said, “Models … feh! You’re beautiful. I love you. Good night.”

  “Good night.” Then he kissed her. She had known all along he would be a champion kisser. It went with the whole kid thing of him, and she knew he would be a champion necker, too. She wondered about the rest of it. They stood there in the doorway, kissing, while the opened door closed softly again. “I better go,” he said. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Today, I mean. Go to sleep.”

  And he was gone. Gerry stood there, touching her lips. She could still feel him. She knew now that it was inevitable; they were going to have a romance. She wondered what it would do to their friendship. He was so perceptive it was scary. If he’d spent five more minutes with Bonnie he would have known she was Vincent. Like a child … a dress and make-up couldn’t fool him, because actors and clowns wore costumes and make-up, too. What an incredible man Mad Daddy was! A child and a man … a precious person.

  She walked slowly back to the kitchen, looking at Bonnie. Had Bonnie changed? They’d been so close, maybe she had changed and Gerry hadn’t noticed. No, Bonnie looked the same. Thank God! Gerry remembered her mother saying you should never eat capon because it had male hormones in it. Well, from now on she wouldn’t even let Bonnie eat chicken. She smiled appreciatively at Bonnie, lovely even after a long, hard night, and went into the bedroom, stopping only to peel off her false eyelashes before she fell into bed and was asleep.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Lizzte Libra lay in the Las Vegas sun, her body oiled, her eyes closed, listening to the mournful drone of Elaine Fellin’s voice. If it had been anyone else she would have been whining, but Elaine’s dead voice was incapable of a whine. Her rotten kid was off playing by the pool with some other kids she’d found, sending off shrill yips of pleasure. Eyes still closed, Lizzie adjusted the top of her suit to avoid a strap mark. This was the first year she’d bought a one-piece suit, and it depressed her beyond measure. (“I do think bikinis are better for the young girls, don’t you, madam?” the snotty salesgirl had said. “This power net will hold in the little bulge around the tum-tum.”) Wouldn’t the bitch faint if she knew the names of some of the famous stars who had enjoyed themselves very much indeed atop that little bulge on the tum-tum! Her boyfriend probably worked in a drugstore.