Buster Midnight's Cafe

by Dallas, Sandra

  After she left, Whippy Bird said she didn’t think Anna Bates was sincere. May Anna said sincerity in Hollywood was as hard to find as virginity in Venus Alley.

  When John Garfield stopped by, May Anna introduced us and said we were friends of hers from Butte. Now we’d never cared much about John Garfield until he said, “Nice place, Butte. Nice mountains.” So you can believe he was one of our favorites after that.

  May Anna didn’t pay much attention to him. She was watching a fat man in red pants make his way past the tables. When he reached ours, May Anna grabbed for his hand. “David!”

  “Oh, hiya, honey.”

  May Anna was all keyed up, and me and Whippy Bird looked at each other wondering what was going on. “When I read the script for Debutantes at War I thought, oh, my God, the part of Esther was written just for me. I know it was,” May Anna said, not letting go of his hand.

  He wasn’t what you’d call friendly. He looked down his nose and said, “Sorry, honey. It’s an ingenue role.” Then he pulled his hand away, leaving May Anna looking crushed. Then he noticed Whippy Bird’s curls. “Are they real?” he asked.

  “Are yours?” Whippy Bird asked, looking at his bald head.

  “Son of a bitch,” May Anna said when he left.

  “Damn fool,” Whippy Bird said. After she explained to me what ingenue meant, I asked why May Anna didn’t play women her own age.

  “How many movies have you seen with thirty-one-year-old heroines?” Whippy Bird replied.

  I thought about that later while I sat next to May Anna’s swimming pool, watching her slap on suntan lotion. Maybe it wasn’t so easy being a famous movie star.

  We heard the phone ring. Then the maid came out and announced it was May Anna’s agent. She went inside, and we couldn’t help but hear her. “The son of a bitch told me I was too old. Twenty-six is not too old!” Me and Whippy Bird looked at each other. “You tell him I can sing like a bird.”

  Me and Whippy Bird were still looking at each other when Whippy Bird said, “Is a chicken a bird?”

  Then we heard May Anna say, “It’s a good thing Sing Sing didn’t produce Snow White. They’d of cast me as the old witch. Listen, I need that job. I need the smack. They’re talking about not renewing my contract. You get the part for me or I’ll find somebody who can.”

  “May Anna has troubles,” Whippy Bird said.

  “She doesn’t live a life of ease like we thought,” I replied.

  We heard May Anna slam down the phone. A minute later she came out with a cigarette in her hand, flicking little bits of ash off her bathing suit.

  “Why don’t you retire, May Anna?” I asked her. “You’ve got plenty of money. You could sell this house and live any place in the world and never have to work again. You wouldn’t have to go back to Butte. You must make more money than Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”

  “Franklin Delano Roosevelt doesn’t pay rent. And he gets free limo service. I don’t own this place, I rent it,” she said. “And I owe for three months.”

  “Then why don’t you move someplace you can afford?” Whippy Bird asked her.

  “Ha!” May Anna said and stubbed out her cigarette on the table then threw the butt behind a statue. She lit another with a silver table lighter then took a long draw. “Nobody lives any place they can afford in this town. It’s all appearance. You have to look successful. It’s a rotten place, where everybody’s always watching for signs you’re on the skids.” She picked bits of tobacco out of her porcelain teeth with the red nail of her little finger then sat down with her feet in the pool.

  “The funny thing is, I didn’t care about being an actress when I came here. I wanted to make money and be famous, be a movie star is what I mean. Now I want to be good. I’ve been taking acting lessons, and I think I’m getting better.” She looked embarrassed when she said it, but she didn’t need to. It’s OK to brag to your best friends.

  Whippy Bird sat down next to her by the pool and splashed her feet in the water. “May Anna, we know you’re better. People used to go to see you because you’re beautiful. Now they go to see you because you’re an actress.” You might think that Whippy Bird said that because she was May Anna’s friend, but that’s not so. Whippy Bird is a good judge of acting. In the fifties, while we were watching Medic, a doctor show on television, Whippy Bird saw an actor she liked. She wrote him a letter of encouragement, maybe it was the first fan letter of his career. He even wrote back to say thanks for your support. That actor today is Dennis Hopper.

  “Why don’t you quit the movies and marry Buster?” I asked her. For a minute, I was afraid I’d gone too far. Buster and May Anna weren’t any of my business. I didn’t know what was going on between them. We hadn’t seen Buster in a long time. We hoped to see him in California, but May Anna told us he had gone to New York for a fight.

  “Sometimes I wonder myself why I don’t marry Buster. I guess it’s always in the back of my mind. I know that someday I will. But in this town, marriages don’t last very long. Everybody tries to get you married. If you’re married, they try to get you divorced. Besides, I’ve been dating one or two other men.”

  The maid came back out and said May Anna’s agent wanted her again. While she was on the phone, Whippy Bird said, “Effa Commander, we have to stop spending May Anna’s money.”

  “You mean the money she hasn’t got,” I said.

  “We can stop taking the limo for one thing and find a street car, and swear off these fish eggs.”

  “I should have brought along our gas ration coupons,” I said.

  May Anna was smiling when she came back. “I’m going to have a party on Saturday night. A farewell party for my two best friends from Butte, since they’re going home on Sunday. My agent will bring David Veder. He’s the producer of Debutantes at War. The one you met. I’ll sing.”

  Me and Whippy Bird stared at May Anna. “Oh, I know. I sound like a dump truck. But I’ll hire a loud band. David’s hard of hearing anyway. Everyone will tell him I’m wonderful. Besides, I think having a party is a fine idea. You can meet everybody—and they can meet you.”

  Having a party is an easy thing to do in Hollywood. A secretary from the studio invited all the people, and May Anna’s cook did all the work. I don’t know why May Anna even had a cook because all she ate was dry toast and tuna fish out of a can. In fact, on the cook’s day off, when I fixed pasties and apple pie, May Anna said it was the only decent meal she’d had since she left Butte, even though she didn’t eat much of it. She said she had to be careful since the movie screen made you look fat.

  Since me and Whippy Bird decided to help May Anna save money, Whippy Bird told the maid she would help clean the house, but the maid got mad and said the house was already clean. I told Cook—May Anna just called her Cook—I’d help her in the kitchen. She said she didn’t need me, but after May Anna talked to her, she said she did.

  I thought ham sandwiches with plenty of mustard would be nice or maybe egg and onion sandwiches, which was a favorite of Buster’s. But Cook said people liked little cream cheese sandwiches with the crusts cut off. They didn’t sound very good to me, but I guess people who like fish eggs eat other damn fool things, too.

  Whippy Bird said I ought to make something special for the party, so I decided on Ginger Ale Salad, which is one of Whippy Bird’s favorites. Cook said I didn’t have to go to all that trouble, but it’s not as much trouble as you might think. Besides, it was for May Anna, wasn’t it? Whippy Bird said it was the best thing at the party, but she’s always handing out the compliments. I will admit, though, that when the party was over, the Ginger Ale Salad was gone but there were plenty of cream cheese sandwiches left. The Ginger Ale Salad only serves eight, though, and May Anna invited about a hundred and fifty people. I was surely a dummy for not making more.

  Now I’m going to tell you who ate my Ginger Ale Salad. Mr. Errol Flynn, that’s who. Me and Whippy Bird saw him standing there by himself, and we dared each other to go up and sa
y hello. We knew the best way to break the ice would be to say could we have your autograph. But after seeing how people were always after May Anna, we thought if we asked for an autograph we would look like a pair of amateurs instead of childhood friends of the famous star Marion Street. We had to find another way to meet him, which Whippy Bird did, as you might expect.

  She marched right up to Mr. Flynn and said, “Hi, I’m Whippy Bird, and this is Effa Commander.”

  “You mean there really is a Whippy Bird and an Effa Commander?” he asked, giving us his famous smile that you have seen light up the screen. You can bet that made us feel fine to think May Anna told people in Hollywood about us. Then he lifted his finger, and in about three seconds, there was a waiter with a tray of champagne glasses. He gave one to each of us.

  When the waiter left, Mr. Flynn offered us a cigarette from a silver case. We said we didn’t mind if we did. It hit me and Whippy Bird at the same time that we were in Hollywood, California, drinking champagne and having Errol Flynn light our cigarettes.

  He asked if we were having a good time and even complimented us on our dresses, which was nice because May Anna bought them for us as a treat that morning. She said she wanted to show us off and didn’t expect we’d packed our cocktail dresses.

  So she sent us in the limo to a dress shop. We didn’t want her to pay, but May Anna told us she got dresses for a discount because she was a movie star, and shops wanted her to wear their clothes as an advertisement. Me and Whippy Bird never figured out why that shop would want to sell dresses to May Anna’s friends at a discount. Maybe they thought people in Butte would send them mail orders.

  The clerk was waiting for us when we got there. I wanted the red dress that had sparkles all over it, but the clerk said the black one looked better, and Whippy Bird whispered that maybe May Anna had already ordered the black one for me. We thought since it didn’t have sparkles, it might be cheaper, though we couldn’t tell for sure because there weren’t any price tags. We each got a strapless black dress. The clerk wrapped them up and put them in the limo for us. We didn’t even have to carry the shopping bags.

  That night, after we admired ourselves in the mirror, Whippy Bird said, “Maybe we are destined to be rich and famous.”

  “I’d rather have Pink,” I said, starting to cry.

  “The boys would be so proud of us dressed up like this,” Whippy Bird said, and she began to cry, too.

  We sat on the bed and cried until May Anna’s maid knocked on the door to tell us the guests were ringing the door bell. I wiped my eyes and smiled at Whippy Bird and said, “The boys surely would not like those fish eggs.”

  “Chick would tell May Anna to let them hatch.”

  After Mr. Flynn told us how nice we looked, a waiter came by with a plate of cream cheese sandwiches, which we all turned down, and that’s when Whippy Bird said to be sure and try the Ginger Ale Salad because I’d made it. Mr. Flynn said he surely would. I told him I would send him the recipe, which I did, and got a nice note back from his secretary saying Mr. Flynn asked her to write and thank me.

  After he left, I told Whippy Bird to come with me to the powder room, which is what they call a bathroom that doesn’t have a bathtub. That was so she could pull up my bra. Since I’m flat chested, my strapless bra kept slipping down, and every now and then Whippy Bird had to hike it up in the back. With all those skinny women at the party, the powder room surely was busy.

  When we came out, we stood for a few minutes looking at all the movie stars. There was Ann Sheridan and Ida Lupino and Dennis Morgan and John Reide, who was English and had a little mustache. May Anna told us he was one of the other men she was dating, so we looked him over. He wasn’t as handsome as Buster, and he was throwing down May Anna’s booze, which we did not appreciate, knowing she was strapped. Me and Whippy Bird thought we’d say hello, but he turned away and snapped his fingers for a waiter. We forgot about him, though, when we saw David Veder. “There’s the damn fool son of a bitch,” I told Whippy Bird. He was off by himself in a corner looking like a pig with pink pig skin and a flat pig nose and no hair.

  “Come on,” Whippy Bird said. “We’re going to help May Anna get that part.” We marched right up to him, and Whippy Bird used the same line that had been so successful with Mr. Flynn. She said, “Hi, I’m Whippy Bird, and this is Effa Commander.”

  The son of a bitch looked at her like she was crazy. “Yeah?” he said. “What kind of bird is a Whippy Bird?”

  Whippy Bird laughed and laughed just like she hadn’t heard that line hundreds of times in her life already. “Why that’s what Marion Street asked me the first time I met her in Butte, Montana,” she said.

  “Butte?” he said. “Butte, Montana?”

  “That’s our hometown,” I said. “Marion Street’s, too.” We practiced saying Marion Street instead of May Anna. If she wanted people to think that was her name, we wouldn’t give her away.

  “My grandfather was from Butte. Moses Veder. He had a pushcart.”

  “That’s a hell of a way to make a living. Especially in the winter,” I told him.

  “Yeah. That’s what he said. Froze his feet once. Nice old guy. My father left because of the winters. Not my grandfather. He’s buried there.”

  “We’ll look for his grave,” I said.

  “What?”

  “We’ll put flowers on his grave.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “We take the Jackpot—that’s our car—down to the cemetery every month. Me and Whippy Bird have three generations of family to visit there. Sometimes we have too many flowers, so we put them on the graves that don’t have any. It’s sad. People move away, and there isn’t anybody to take care of their plots. Sometimes me and Moon—he’s Whippy Bird’s little boy—we walk around and look at the stones. Now he’ll have a name to look for. Moon reads good.” I didn’t see any reason to tell him there were five cemeteries in Butte.

  “So you’re friends of Marion’s from Butte?” he said, which was dumb because he already knew that. “She show you the studio?”

  “We ate in the commissary,” Whippy Bird said, but he didn’t remember us. “You stopped by our table. Marion asked you about Debutantes at War.”

  “Yeah, she sure wants that part. Must be pushing thirty- thirty-one.”

  “Twenty-six,” we said together.

  “Yeah? Ain’t that something? So am I. I been twenty-six since 1910.”

  “She was always the prettiest girl at school,” I said. “There wasn’t anything she couldn’t do. Act. Dance. And she sings like a bird.”

  “Yeah, I heard her sing.” He looked at us so long that both me and Whippy Bird burst out laughing. We were mortified until he started laughing, too. “You girls are all right.”

  “If you ever come to Butte, we’ll take you to the Rocky Mountain Cafe,” Whippy Bird told him.

  “Our treat,” I added.

  When a waiter came by, Mr. Veder put his glass on the tray and said he was leaving.

  “But you can’t leave before she sings. She’s been taking lessons,” Whippy Bird said.

  “You ever heard of dubbing?” he asked us. “You tell Marion Street not everybody is lucky enough to have real friends.”

  He turned to walk away, then he stopped. “I doubt there’s a stone,” he said. “Any grave will do.”

  Me and Whippy Bird were glad he hadn’t stayed to hear May Anna sing because Whippy Bird lied when she said May Anna was taking lessons. Even with the band playing as loud as it could, May Anna didn’t sound like much. Still, everybody clapped and said, “That was so moving, darling,” and “You’ve got yourself a real voice there.” Whippy Bird said, “People sure tell a lot of lies around here.”

  “Like you,” I said.

  Of course, we never told May Anna about our conversation with Mr. Veder, and it was just as well. Debutantes at War was the worst movie she ever made. We didn’t do a favor for either May Anna or Mr. Veder, though it did keep May Anna work
ing for the next year.

  After everybody left, May Anna said we were her good luck charms because Mr. Veder told her agent to call him in the morning.

  “I guess he’s not a son of a bitch anymore,” I told Whippy Bird and May Anna.

  “But he’s still a damn fool,” Whippy Bird said.

  The next day, we took the train back to Butte. All across the miles me and Whippy Bird nudged each other, saying, “I saw Errol Flynn look down the front of your dress,” and “Did I tell you Ann Sheridan ate your Ginger Ale Salad?” We had so many good things to remember being together as the Unholy Three again. Still, as much fun as we had, we knew May Anna wasn’t a happy person, any more than she’d been happy in Butte.

  “It looks like there’s one thing that matters more to May Anna than anything else in this world, and that is being a movie star,” Whippy Bird said. “She cares more about that than she cares even about Buster.”

  “That’s a terrible thing to say.”

  Whippy Bird thought that over. “You’re right, Effa Commander. I take it back. I was wrong.”

  But she wasn’t.

  CHAPTER

  14

  I was fixing Moon’s Cheerios and Ovaltine when the telephone rang. I set the bowl down in front of him and patted the top of his head.

  “Phone,” Moon said, picking up his Charlie McCarthy spoon and digging in.

  Whippy Bird didn’t even let me get through the hello. “Effa Commander, have you seen the paper?” It was a silly question because we only read the paper of an evening so how would I have seen it? “No,” I said. “I was just giving Moon—”

  “Oh, of course, you haven’t. That was a stupid thing to ask,” Whippy Bird said. “Besides, you would have called me if you had. I was just hoping not to have to tell you.”