Cheap Diamonds

by Norris Church Mailer

  21

  * * *

  ON THE WAY TO MAX’S

  The cabdriver slammed on the brakes, swerved, and stopped near the curb to pick up the beautiful blonde. She was a classy-looking dame. Black fur coat, big hat. Probably one of those Upper East Side socialites slumming downtown. He wouldn’t mind a fare uptown. As she got into the car, though, he saw in the mirror that she wasn’t quite as classy as he had thought. She might even be one of those high-class hookers, wearing a lot of makeup, fake jewels.

  “Max’s Kansas City, Seventeenth and Park Avenue South.”

  “Oh, boy,” the driver muttered as he heard the voice that was soft but not quite female, “I got a live one.” He looked again, hard, in the mirror and confirmed it was one of those men that aren’t really men, but like to dress up like women. He would have put her out, but the meter was running, so he just shrugged and set off across Broome, turning right up Sixth Avenue. It takes all kinds, and he had definitely had all kinds in his cab. He could write a book, and would one of these days, if he ever got the time. Working twelve-hour shifts didn’t leave much time for anything else.

  “Why are we going this way?” Miss Sally said, leaning forward to talk through the hole in the scratched-up bulletproof plastic window. “We should have gone east. This is out of our way.”

  “It’s faster, lady. Keep your hat on. I’ll get you there.” Sheesh. This guy was as pushy as a real dame.

  As they threaded through the traffic, an old red Chevy with New Jersey plates and fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror pulled up beside them. Three guys with fifties-style crew cuts were hanging out the windows, hooting and hollering, drunk as skunks.

  “Look at the blonde, guys! Woo woo! Hey, sweetheart! Give me a kiss!”

  “That’s all I need,” the driver mumbled. “Yahoos from Jersey out for some fun in the big city and me with this thing in the car.” He tried to change lanes and lose them, but the traffic was too heavy and they pulled closer to him.

  “Hey, sweetheart! Blondie! Look here! Don’t be bashful!”

  Sal put his head down and tried not to look at them. What was wrong with people? Why couldn’t they just mind their own business? It seemed like after the riot last year at the Stonewall bar on Christopher Street, a lot of antigay creeps had come out of the woodwork. Gay bars had always had to pay off the police just to exist, since it was illegal to have homosexual sex or even dance with another man, but sometimes the police would pull a fun little raid anyhow, just for laughs, or maybe because the payoff money was late that month. For whatever reason, on the night of the Stonewall riot, things got out of hand. When nine cops came in and started putting people in paddy wagons, the gays fought back—something unheard of. Usually they just covered their faces, paid a fine, and went quietly back to the bar the next night. But it was 1969. Nobody wanted to cover their faces anymore. They were tired of being arrested and beaten up just for being who they were; like blacks in a white world, except there was not even a “separate but equal” place for gays. They had to find their own places the best way they could. Sal hadn’t been there that night, but some of his friends were. When the cops started putting people in the wagon they got a little rough and somebody in the crowd threw a lipstick, then somebody else bounced a beer can off a policeman’s head, then it started raining anything they could get their hands on. As more things were thrown, the cops ran inside and barricaded themselves in the bar, smashing up all the mirrors and furniture and the cash register in a rage. People outside uprooted a parking meter and rammed it into the door. Guns were pulled, reinforcements were called in, and still the crowd didn’t disperse. Men in high heels had discovered they were quite the equal of men with macho.

  The riot raged over three days. Miraculously no one was seriously hurt, but things were starting to change; organizations were formed. No more back of the bus, Ma. We’re queer and we’re here! Still, it hadn’t all changed in a year. Not by a long shot. Max’s Kansas City was one of the few places, if not the only place, in New York that embraced everyone, from straight Wall Street types to artists and writers to rock stars and transvestites who wore feather boas and mascara. It was mecca for Sal and his friends, but right now, getting there seemed to be the problem. Sal was as strong as the next guy, but in a situation of one high-heeled queen against three drunk bigots, it was wiser to try to avoid trouble.

  “Can’t you go any faster, driver? Let’s get off of Sixth. Make a right here.”

  “I can’t fly over two lanes of traffic, lady. I’m doing the best I can.”

  “Hey, blondie! Look here! Want a beer?”

  In spite of himself, Sal looked out the window at the crew cuts, who were holding out cans of beer and were weaving closer, close enough that one reached out and touched the cab. Sal’s glance met his small piggy eyes. Even through his drunken haze, he saw Sal was not the gorgeous girl he thought she was.

  “Well, take a look at that, guys! That ain’t no lady! Hey, faggot! Suck my dick!” He hurled the beer can at the window, but it was nearly empty and bounced off.

  The cabdriver had managed to get over to the right lane, but the Jersey car was glued to him, then pulled slightly ahead, nosing the cab into the curb. As the taxi was forced to stop, the red car blocked its escape, and all three of the guys jumped out and ran for the cab. The driver locked the doors, but the men started rocking the car and smashing at the windows. The driver, a big guy himself, who was—not for nothing—from Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn, grabbed a sawed-off baseball bat from under the seat and flung open the door, whacking one of the guys on the shoulder as he got out. He managed to bloody another one’s nose while two piled on top of him. In the melee, Sal opened the back door and ran. He was sorry he had worn his highest platform shoes and a tight sequined skirt. People on the street stopped and stared as Sal awkwardly scurried down the sidewalk holding on to his hat, which threatened to fly away and take the wig with it.

  “Hey! She’s getting away!” The two guys got off the cabbie and took off after her, mercifully leaving the driver to deal with the other one, who was holding his bleeding nose and wanted no more of the bat. He ran after his friends, all of them nursing bruises and itching to take their rage out on somebody weaker.

  The cabbie jumped into his car, backed onto the sidewalk, and drove away, cursing his lost fare and wiping blood from his scraped knuckles.

  “That’s the last time I’m stopping for somebody because of their legs,” he grumbled.

  The first two thugs reached Sal and one grabbed his hat, pulling it off along with the wig.

  “Whoo-ee! I scalped me one, Bobby!” They laughed as Bobby put the wig on his own head.

  “Give me that wig, you filthy beast!” Sal was scared, but that wig was human hair and cost a fortune.

  The two men started throwing the wig back and forth, like children, with Sal in the middle, trying to grab it and screaming, “Somebody call the police!”

  A couple walking down the street ran across to the other side and stood watching as the third guy came running up to join the fun.

  He grabbed Sal’s coat and threw him down to the sidewalk, getting his nose blood on the fur, which hurt Sal more than the fall to the pavement.

  “Nooooo! Not the monkey fur!”

  Then he forgot the fur and realized there was no way he was going to get out of this one alive.

  In a flash, he wondered if Lale would be sorry.

  22

  * * *

  RESCUING MISS SALLY

  We were cruising up Sixth Avenue on our way home, since I’d told Ron I had to get up early in the morning. He really wanted to go somewhere for a drink, but I’d had enough drinks for one evening, and said frankly I thought he ought to get home to his wife, and he couldn’t do anything but agree with me. I didn’t want him to think I was preaching to him or anything, but there was no sense in aiding and abetting him when he was sort of cheating on her, friend and colleague or not. I sure wouldn’t like it if my husba
nd came dragging in at two in the morning after being out with someone like me, no matter what he said.

  The wind had gotten a lot colder and, let me tell you, it was a job trying to hold on to that stupid duck and his jacket, too, and I wanted more than anything to get someplace warm, like my bed. I was going to have to get a heavier coat and soon. Or wear longer pants.

  As we got near West Fourth Street, some kind of commotion was going on.

  “Look, Ron! Those guys are mugging that woman! Oh my gosh! They pulled off her…wig! Wait a minute. Isn’t that…it looks a lot like…?”

  “Oh, my God. It’s Sal! Hang on, Cherry!”

  Ron revved the motor and came roaring down on the guys, who had just thrown Sal to the street. One of them jumped out of the way as the Harley bumped up on the sidewalk, and two women who were coming out of a store screamed and ran back inside.

  “Ron! Cherry! Help!” Sal struggled to get up, which wasn’t all that easy with the tight skirt and platforms he was wearing.

  A few more people came out from adjoining stores to see what the ruckus was about, one of them yelled, “Call the cops!” and the guys, seeing they were in trouble, decided to split and ran back down the street to their car.

  Sal was shaking, looking kind of weird and sad in the smeared makeup without his wig, which was lying in a heap on the sidewalk. He retrieved the crumpled red hat, which had been stomped. A rhinestone spider on the band was all bent up. I leaned down and picked up Sal’s wig, handed it to him, and Ron said, “Get on behind Cherry, Sal! Let’s get out of here!”

  Sal hiked up his skirt and jumped on and we roared back out onto the street with me hanging on for dear life to Ron and that stupid duck, Sal hanging on to me with one hand and putting his wig back on with the other. My coat was bunched up and twisted around my neck and I thought I would choke, but off we went, up Sixth Avenue, just as a police siren started wailing.

  “Go to Max’s!” Sal yelled in my ear, and I yelled it on to Ron. We made a right on Fourteenth and headed to the East Side. I guess, for better or worse, I was finally going to Max’s Kansas City.

  23

  * * *

  WAITING IT OUT

  As soon as Lalea was born, they knew they couldn’t do anything for her in the hospital in Fort Smith, so they sent her by ambulance, siren blaring, to Arkansas Children’s Hospital, which was one of the best in the country. Cassie had to stay in the hospital for another several days, she was so weak from blood loss and grief, but as soon as she was allowed to go home, she drove the Thunderbird to Little Rock, over her mother’s and everyone else’s protests. Since she’d gotten there, she hadn’t come back home even once, and nothing anybody could say or do would make her leave the baby.

  The neonatal ward of the Arkansas Children’s Hospital was decorated in that trying-to-be-upbeat, cheery way children’s hospital wards are, with fall pumpkins and funny scarecrows painted on the window that separated it from the waiting room. Murals with giraffes and elephants and monkeys ran around the soft blue walls, and balloons festooned the cribs. The nurses wore smocks printed with bright fish or animals. It takes a special kind of person to take care of sick babies every day, and all these women were special. There were seventy-two beds in all, separated into pods, eight incubators in each pod, the dividing walls laden with beeping monitors. Six of the incubators in Lalea’s pod had babies in them, most of them preemies. Lalea was seven pounds, a giant next to some of the other babies, and they had put her off to herself in the corner, to give her privacy, they said, but really, Cassie knew, it was to keep people from staring at her and freaking out.

  The parents were allowed to go into the ward and see the babies only after scrubbing their hands with antiseptic and putting on a mask and a bright-yellow sterile gown over their clothes. Cassie’s hands were chapped from all the harsh scrubbing, since she did it several times a day, and lotion didn’t seem to help much. The nurses were great about letting her sit beside Lalea, but she couldn’t stay at the incubator all the time, so, like several other women had done, she made herself a camp out in the waiting room. Each of the mothers had their areas staked out and the others knew not to encroach on anyone else’s space. Some had brought coffeemakers and pillows and blankets from home, and most passed the time knitting or reading or doing crossword puzzles. One woman worked on a king-size quilt that took up a whole sofa, so no one else could sit there. The sofas were in high demand, since you could actually sleep stretched out on them, and the ones who had been there the longest jumped on them just as soon as they became available. Cassie slept in a recliner, with her canvas bag containing a can of deodorant, toothbrush, bar of soap, and couple of changes of underwear on the floor beside it. At night, the nurses handed out pillows and blankets and collected them in the morning. Cassie used her purse for a pillow, afraid someone would steal it while she slept, although that wasn’t too likely since she slept only in catnaps and startled awake with every sound. She had dark circles under her eyes from lack of sleep. Too, the old chair tended to fold up with her if she relaxed, so she had to lie rigid to keep it open.

  In a hospital, there was little difference between night and day. In the middle of the night there was always activity, people going in and out, the nurses working on their tiny patients, talking, laughing, making small noises, their rubber-soled shoes swishing on the polished floor, the smells of their midnight lunches wafting in the air. Even if she’d had the money for a motel, which she didn’t, Cassie didn’t want to leave the baby for even a night. Something might happen, and she wouldn’t be there. She was all the poor little scrap of life had in the world, and she wouldn’t abandon her now. Her mother, Annie, came when she could, but she had to work at St. Juniper’s all week, and it was a hard three-hour drive through the mountains to Little Rock. None of her friends had even come once, except for Baby and Bernadette, and she didn’t expect to hear from George and Janet Hardcastle after the way Janet had acted. She suspected George might have come, but he was the kind of man who tried to keep the peace, and Janet probably wouldn’t let him, old henpecker that she was. So screw them. She didn’t need any of the Hardcastles.

  Lalea’s doctor, Charles Fulton, was the head of the pediatric department, a wonderful white-haired man with kind blue eyes that radiated love and confidence. But even Charles Fulton wasn’t God Almighty and couldn’t promise her a miracle. When she first got there, after he had examined the baby, he took Cassie to a special private room set aside for just that purpose and talked to her for a long time.

  “Cassie, I don’t have to tell you, this little girl has got a lot of problems. Besides the obvious one, which is one of the worst cleft palates I’ve ever seen, she has a problem with her heart. A lot of babies with cleft palates do. Somehow, in the womb, when the palate is developing, the heart develops at the same time and something went wrong with it, too. The great vessels in the heart are transposed. It more than likely will cause renal failure, which in real language means the heart just stops working.”

  Cassie knew the news would be bad, but hearing it said out loud made it real. Her face went pale, and he took her hand.

  “Was it something I did that caused this?” she finally asked. “One night when I was first pregnant, I got drunk. I drank nearly a whole bottle of wine. But I never had another drink after that. Not a single one.”

  “I don’t think that would have done it,” he said. “It’s not good, but there’s a lot of women who drink a whole lot more than a bottle of wine when they’re pregnant and their babies are fine. You can’t blame yourself for this. It just happens sometimes. Nobody knows why but God.”

  “I do blame myself. God is punishing me for what I did. I wasn’t married to her daddy. I’m willing to be punished, but why does He have to punish that baby, too?” She broke down then, and the doctor put his arm around her shoulders and she sobbed into his white coat while he held her.

  “I don’t believe that’s true, Cassie,” he said gently. “God doesn’t go arou
nd punishing girls for being in love and having babies. What kind of a God would that be? He created us to love each other and have babies. God didn’t make it a sin. Preachers did that. I don’t know why Lalea is like this, but I believe with all my heart that it isn’t something you drank, anything you ate, or something you did. It just happens sometimes.”

  “Isn’t there anything you can do for her? Can’t you operate and fix her a little bit or something?” She looked up at him, tears in her clear blue eyes. He was silent. “She’s going to die, isn’t she?”

  This was the part of his job he hated the most. “No operation is going to make her into a normal baby, Cassie. And I’d be less than honest if I didn’t tell you that most babies like her don’t live long.”

  “How long?”

  “Nobody knows that, my dear, but God. A few weeks at most, I think.”

  Cassie straightened up and wiped her eyes. The life had drained out of her and she was empty. She felt old, like she would never laugh again. In spite of what the doctor said, she knew in her gut that the night she drank the bottle of wine and tried to kill herself was the moment it all went wrong. That was the night the great vessels in the heart transposed and the palate didn’t close. She should have just let the train take them, but she didn’t, and now she had to face the consequences of what she had done.

  “Are you all right, Cassie?” he asked. “Do you want me to call the chaplain to be with you?”

  “No. I just want to sit here by myself for a while. Thank you for all you’ve done for us, Dr. Fulton.”

  “I’ll check back with you a little later, then.”

  He left her, his step heavy. He envied doctors who could be casehardened and not hurt for their patients. He’d never been able to do that, and it took its toll.