by John Kaye
“I’m not gonna help you,” Bonnie said.
“That’s okay,” he replied, adjusting the rearview mirror as he accelerated back into traffic. “I didn’t ask.”
When Clay pulled in front of the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Omaha, there was a long line of young people waiting to see A Star Is Born, starring Judy Garland and James Mason.
Bonnie said, “I met Judy Garland once. I went to a party at Bing Crosby’s house, and she was there.”
“Sure thing.”
“I did. I even went to the horse races with her and Van Johnson and Janet Gaynor. Audie Murphy was there too.”
“And I’m Ted Williams.”
“Don’t believe me.”
“I don’t.”
Bonnie opened the door and stepped inside the shade from the marquee. “I’ll be sitting in the sixth row,” she said over her shoulder as she walked toward the box office. “On the aisle.”
Two hours later, during the second feature, Clay fell into the seat next to Bonnie. After a few long breaths, he said, “I got seventy dollars.”
“I don’t want any.”
“It’s for gas, stupid.”
“You’re a criminal.”
“So what?”
“And you’re gonna get caught, too, if you keep it up. How old are you?”
“None of your business.”
“You’re way younger than me. I know that. You could change, but you probably won’t.”
“You don’t know nothing about me,” Clay sneered, squeezing her arm so hard that tears came to her eyes. “Not a goddamn thing.”
An elderly man holding a flashlight appeared in the aisle next to them. He shined the yellow beam into Clay’s face. “Everything okay here?”
Clay raised his hands to block the light. “Yeah. Everything’s fine.”
“He ain’t bothering you, is he?” the old man asked Bonnie.
Bonnie shook her head.
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
As soon as the usher disappeared up the aisle, Clay unbuckled his jeans and stuck Bonnie’s hand inside his underwear. “Jack me off,” he said, his mouth close to her ear. “Okay?”
Bonnie felt him thicken inside her fingers. When she squeezed him, he made a sharp moan that drew a look from the couple seated across the aisle. “That was quick,” she said, half smiling as she slid down in her seat. “I hope it felt good.”
Clay didn’t reply.
As she continued to stroke him, Bonnie opened her shirt and uncovered her breasts. “Here,” she said, and she pulled his face to her chest. “Kiss me.”
When she felt Clay’s mouth close on her nipple, Bonnie took in a breath and her lips shaped the words I love you. But she didn’t mean them and she never let them out of her throat.
After the movie ended, Clay decided to steal another car. “The Pontiac’s too hot,” he told Bonnie as they walked south on Douglas. “Anyway, I think the alternator is ready to go.” He stopped in front of Chloe’s Diner on North Dodge. “I’ll meet you here in awhile. Okay?”
Bonnie thought for a moment, not quite meeting his eyes. Then she glanced across the street and her face seemed to sag. A black woman in a white maid’s uniform came out of the Hotel Sherwood with a four-year-old boy. They were holding hands.
Clay said, “What’s wrong?”
Bonnie looked dazedly at the two figures moving away from her, still holding hands, and when they disappeared around the corner she turned and stared at Clay, her flat voice hiding the deep ache inside her chest. “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong.”
An hour later, while Clay Tomlinson was coasting slowly out of the Sears parking lot in a shiny silver 1953 Chevy, Bonnie Simpson was riding in a Greyhound bus moving south on U.S. 75.
“A girl said to give you this,” the waitress at Chloe’s told Clay when he entered the nearly empty restaurant. She handed him a folded napkin. Inside was a Topps baseball card with Ted Williams’s picture on the front. “She also said to be careful.”
Clay felt his mouth go dry. “Just ‘Be careful’? That’s all she said?”
The waitress nodded. “Yes,” she said, “that’s all.”
Around midnight that evening, Bonnie’s bus stopped for gas and oil at a small service station in Morgan City, Louisiana. Outside, giant mosquitoes swarmed around the headlights, and above their high whine Bonnie heard a gentle blues playing on the jukebox in the diner next door. The song was “Please Hurry Home” by B. B. King.
December 3, 1969
Indian summer followed Bonnie across the Great Plains as she rode another Greyhound bus west from Detroit in 1969. Along the way she was struck by the number of young people they passed traveling on foot. The men had hair down to their shoulders, and they were dressed mostly in blue jeans and boots and Mexican shirts. Many had guitars slung over their backs. Flutes and tambourines were in evidence, too, along with dogs and young children, some carried papoose-style by strong-boned girls with daisies strung through their long blond hair.
For a while Bonnie found it odd that these dusty vagabonds rarely beckoned to the passing traffic with their thumbs. But it became clear to her after several miles that this was unnecessary, because the similarly dressed travelers who picked them up in their junky cars and vans already knew their destination.
“They’re all goin’ to San Francisco,” said Bonnie’s seatmate, a man somewhere over the age of seventy, with a shock of white hair and bright baby-blue eyes. “They’re having this big musical deal with the Rolling Rocks or something. I saw it on the news. . . . Hey, check that out,” he said, turning in his seat as they passed a Day-Glo school bus that was parked on the shoulder of the highway with cottony black smoke billowing from the engine. A bundle of men were gathered around the open hood while the women—some of them topless—sunbathed on the roof. “Now that’s what I call sightseein’.”
Bonnie laughed a little while the bandaged fingers of her right hand fidgeted nervously with the broken zipper on the red imitation-leather purse that was resting on her lap. Inside—along with her wallet and her bus ticket to Los Angeles—were four apples (two red and two green), a leftover turkey sandwich wrapped in tinfoil stained with blood, a bleacher ticket stub from a Boston Red Sox-Detroit Tigers game she attended with her therapist back in the summer of 1968, three black-and-white photographs (including one of her mother in Hollywood, circa 1942, standing in front of the entrance to Paramount Pictures), four hundred and forty dollars in twenty-dollar bills, rolled tight and secured by a thick black rubber band, and a .22 caliber pistol.
“Where you goin’?” Bonnie’s husband, Freddie Bousquet, had asked her on Sunday night, when he saw her folding her clothes into the cheap canvas suitcase that was now resting in the luggage rack above her head.
Bonnie told him LA.
“You leaving me?”
“I guess.”
“I could stop you,” he said, following her into the kitchen. “You know that, don’tcha?”
Bonnie’s hand reached for a knife. Trying to remain calm, she spread some mustard on two pieces of rye bread, before she sliced a tomato and carved the leftover Thanksgiving turkey. “But that means you’d have to kill me.”
Freddie laughed, but he stopped laughing quickly when he saw the thread of blood spilling into the sandwich from a deep gash in Bonnie’s thumb. “Jesus,” he said. “You fuckin’ sliced the shit out of yourself.”
“It’s just a nick,” Bonnie said lightly, and she used the back of her hand to wipe the perspiration off her forehead, leaving behind a jagged red streak above her eyebrows.
“You’re gonna need stitches in that. I’m serious. We’re goin’ to the hospital,” he said, but when he reached for her wrist, Bonnie jerked her hand away, and several drops of blood splattered on his face and the white-tiled floor.
Freddie struck her face with the back of his hand, drawing more blood out of one nostril, but Bonnie remained silent, standing motionless, staring at him blankly until th
e wall phone rang and he roughly pushed her aside and nearly knocked over a chair in his hurry to grab the receiver.
A woman said, “Is Bonnie Simpson there?”
“Yeah, she’s here.”
“May I talk to her, please?”
“For you, cunt,” Freddie said loudly, and Bonnie, shaking inside and trying to control herself, turned her back on him and ran cold water from the sink over her hand. “I said it’s for you,” he yelled once more, jabbing her in the back with the mouthpiece several times before he flung the receiver on the counter next to the toaster and stalked out of the kitchen.
Bonnie wrapped her thumb in a paper towel and lit a cigarette, waiting until Freddie was out of earshot before she picked up the phone. Then, softly, she said, “I told him.”
The woman on the other end sighed deeply. “That’s good,” she said.
Bonnie took a step backward so she could see through the hallway into her bedroom. Freddie was rooting through her suitcase with both hands. When he looked up and saw her staring at him, the muscles went tight in his face.
“Bonnie, are you still on the line?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You remember what I told you way back when?”
“Yes,” Bonnie said, watching transfixed as Freddie opened his fly and sent a stream of urine onto her freshly laundered clothes. “I remember.”
“You’re not crazy,” Bonnie’s therapist, Rosellen Clark, told her when she first came to see her at the Wayne State Mental Health Clinic in downtown Detroit.
“I’m not?”
“Nope.”
“Then what am I?”
“You’re just . . . depressed.”
Bonnie remained silent for a moment. “I’m just depressed, that’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“But—”
“You’re sad. You cry. Your husband beats you. That does not make you crazy,” Rosellen explained. “In fact, you’re normal compared to some of the folks I see every day. For instance, earlier this morning, this white fellow walked in here and claimed he was turning into a piece of cheese. Called himself Monterey Jack and took a seat on the floor right over there in the corner next to those bookshelves. Said he had to stay in a cool dark place or else he’d get all moldy and his skin would turn as green as grass. He said it with a straight face, too.”
Bonnie didn’t laugh or even smile as she gazed past Rosellen’s shoulder with her head inclined to the side, listening, it seemed, to the small fan purring in the corner of the room. Presently, a fly buzzed through an open window and circled Rosellen’s large Afro twice before it landed on her framed MSW certificate that hung on the wall behind her head.
“I have to go,” Bonnie said, sliding back her chair and standing up.
“What’s your hurry?”
Bonnie pointed to the clock on Rosellen’s desk. “I’ve been here an hour.”
“At least.”
“Then my time is up, isn’t it?”
Rosellen shook her head no. “We got lots of time, sugar. Relax.”
“I’ll come back next Wednesday,” Bonnie said, and she took a step backward and reached for the doorknob. “We can talk more then.”
Rosellen checked her calendar and frowned. “I’m taking next Wednesday off,” she said. “I’ve got tickets to see the Red Sox play the Tigers. But I’m free the Wednesday after that.”
Bonnie shrugged.
“Wait! I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you come with me?”
“To a baseball game? Are you kidding?” Bonnie asked. Her tone was suspicious. “Can you do that?”
Rosellen smiled at her. “You can do anything you want if you’re tryin’ to help someone. At least that’s the way I see it.”
Bonnie stood, thinking, her hand still on the doorknob. The door clicked open and she said, “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“No maybes. Gotta put it on my schedule right now. Yes or no.”
“Okay,” Bonnie said, and for the first time that day she smiled. “Sure. Why not?”
The following Wednesday, at noon sharp, Bonnie Simpson met Rosellen Clark at the will-call window in the parking lot in front of Tiger Stadium. The temperature was already in the 90s and climbing, and by the time they reached their seats in the upper deck in left field, Rosellen’s tawny face shone with sweat and Bonnie’s white cotton blouse was clinging to her back.
After Denny McLain struck out the side in the first inning and the cheering around them stopped, Bonnie told Rosellen how she celebrated her thirteenth birthday on June 6, 1949, the day after she arrived in Los Angeles for the first time, from Buchanan, Michigan.
“I went to Chasen’s, this fancy restaurant. I was with my mom,” she said wistfully, closing her eyes for a moment as she stepped back slowly through her past. “I had a steak and a Caesar salad and a piece of chocolate cake for dessert. I think it was the best dinner I ever had. That summer I saw the ocean for the first time, and I took my one and only tennis lesson, and I got a crush on a man named Terry Tibbles. Terry’s middle name was Nicholas. So naturally everyone called him TNT, a nickname that just fit perfect with the job he had on the movie set in the mountains where we stayed for a while; he made things explode.
“‘I can make the stars cry,’ he told my mom one night outside our cabin by the lake. The porch light was off, but the brightness from the moon threw their shadows against my wall. Soon their faces came together and I heard their lips touch, and right then I knew what I wanted most was to have a man hold me in his arms at night. Someone to hold me tight.”
In the bottom of the seventh inning a bizarre incident took place down on the field. The bases were loaded with two out and Tiger manager Sparky Anderson sent up a pinch hitter for the weak-hitting right fielder, Earl Fulton. His name was Ricky Furlong, and he struck out on three blistering fastballs to end the rally and the inning.
But instead of turning and walking back to the dugout, Furlong remained at the plate with the bat cocked uselessly behind his ear, staring out at the now-vacant infield. Time was called and both managers and all four umpires convened at home plate. Several minutes went by as they stood in a close circle around Ricky, scrutinizing him dumbly as they tried to talk him off the field. Eventually they gave up and Sparky motioned to his dugout, and two of Ricky’s teammates came out and lifted him up by his elbows, transporting him back to the clubhouse like a cracked marble statue.
“There’s something seriously wrong with that boy,” Rosellen told Bonnie after the game, while they were walking through the parking lot in the shimmering heat. “He’s going to need help. Lots of help.”
December 6, 1969
The overcast morning light was an hour away, and a mild Santa Ana condition was blowing in vagrant breezes from the northeast when Bonnie Simpson’s bus pulled into Los Angeles on Thursday, one day behind schedule. After she bought a cup of coffee and a postcard at the Greyhound station on Vine Street, she strolled up to Sunset Boulevard and sat patiently on a bus bench while the night sky faded into a mixed hue of silver and gray clouds.
The traffic was sparse, but cars with single men driving would beep their horns lightly as they passed by her corner. They must think I’m a prostitute, Bonnie said to herself, as she watched a blue Cadillac circle the block twice before pulling to the curb in front of her. “Need a ride?” the driver, a fat man, asked her, but Bonnie turned her face away and directed her gaze in the opposite direction. “You sure?” he said. “I can make it worth your while.”
Bonnie remained silent and the fat man called her an ugly name under his breath. The stoplight blinked to green; and Bonnie heard the car window close up electronically as the Cadillac rolled slowly through the intersection.
When the light turned red again, a city bus stopped to discharge a potbellied man in his early thirties, with a big, doughy face and dirty red shoulder-length hair. He proceeded to the corner, where he unfolded a canvas chair and propped up a sign by the lamppost that read MAPS TO THE MOVIE STARS
’ HOMES. He took a seat and glanced at Bonnie, and when he smiled she noticed that a large chunk of his lower jaw was missing.
Bonnie smiled back and said, “Good morning.”
The man inhaled. “Yes, it is,” he said, the side of his face collapsing as the air pushed the words out of his mouth. “It’s a wonderful morning.”
After she rented her apartment in the Argyle Manor, Bonnie took a shower and walked the three short blocks down to Hollywood Boulevard. She bought a street map and a copy of Photoplay at Nate’s News on Las Palmas; then she crossed the street and continued west until she reached the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.
The last time Bonnie was in Los Angeles, in 1949, she and her mother spent the better part of a Sunday afternoon wandering through the forecourt of Grauman’s, examining the celebrity footprints and handprints that were embedded in the concrete. Bonnie remembered seeing a pretty young woman sitting in a wheelchair in front of the box office, weeping like a child. Suddenly, the woman threw herself on the ground and began clawing at the cement, screaming, “He loves me, only me! I was the only one he loved!”
Bonnie’s mother said, “Don’t stare,” and she pulled her away from the circle of tourists who instantly gathered around the woman. Crossing the street, Bonnie overheard a man say, “Her name was Maria Casey. She played a dance hall girl in Stampede. She was having an affair with Rod Cameron. When he broke it off she threw herself off the roof of her apartment building.”
The warm wind swayed the tops of the palm trees on Melrose Avenue as Bonnie stood in front of the main entrance to Paramount Studios. From her pocketbook she took out the photo of her mother posed against the high walls.
“That’s my mom,” Bonnie said to the guard standing in the kiosk by the front gate. “She used to work here.”
The guard glanced at the photo while he waved through a black Cadillac convertible with a sleek-looking blonde behind the wheel.