Buster Midnight's Cafe

by Dallas, Sandra

  “And Buster, too,” I said. Like Whippy Bird said, I wasn’t out there just to help out May Anna.

  When I walked into the living room, I saw right off May Anna surely did not look like the Queen of the Silver Screen. Her eyes were red. There were lines on her face that I hadn’t seen when we were there the year before, and she’d lost weight. She must have weighed less than ninety pounds. She was nervous, too, pacing back and forth, putting her cigarette down then forgetting it was there and lighting another. But I didn’t say you look like hell, May Anna. Instead, I hugged her and said that since Whippy Bird was right with us in spirit, we were the Unholy Three together again.

  I recognized May Anna’s agent, whose name was Eddie Baum. She introduced me to another man named Jim McDonald, who was a press agent from Sing Sing. They were discussing her testimony, and when I asked where’s the lawyer, the agent said he didn’t want to take up my time when he was sure I was tired and wanted to rest up after my trip. May Anna said she felt better with me in the room, though, and since I didn’t come all the way from Butte to rest up, I stayed. So they ignored me.

  “Now that we’ve settled the makeup, wardrobe is making up a black suit. Fitted waist but not cut too low,” Jim, the press agent said.

  “Don’t you think a dress would be better, maybe a little Peter Pan collar? You know, innocence?” Eddie asked. He patted May Anna’s hand until she put it in her lap.

  “Nope. Confusing. She’ll never play Joan of Arc after this. But if Marion pulls it off, she’s got a shot at The Sin of Rachel Babcock. She needs it after that Debutantes at War bomb. We don’t want her to look like she’s in training for the Virgin Mary.”

  “Do you really think I have a chance?” May Anna asked.

  “A good one, baby, if you handle yourself right,” Eddie told her. He moved to sit on the arm of her chair then leaned against her shoulder.

  May Anna nodded. “What about a hat? Maybe a little black one with a veil.” May Anna stood up, walked back and forth for a minute, then sat down in another chair.

  “No veil. We don’t want to cover the face. The cameras’ll zero in on it. A picture hat’s too flashy. I’ll talk to wardrobe. A bow, maybe. You could start a fashion trend,” Jim told her.

  They talked about her shoes and her purse and even whether her hanky ought to have lace or not—they decided lace.

  “You know, you’re dead in the water if you say Reide was queer, don’t you?” Jim told her. “You hear me? The man’s a fallen idol. You say he’s queer, and they’ll tear you apart. Remember, fallen idol.”

  May Anna nodded.

  “But watch the tough act. You want to generate a little sympathy for yourself, too,” Eddie added. “It means scratch, kiddo. The Lux endorsement is riding on this. You tie yourself in too close to Buster, and you’ll lose it.”

  “Buster saved her life,” I said. I knew they didn’t want me to interrupt, but I had to. They were talking about the wrong things.

  “What the hell does that have to do with anything?” Eddie said. “We are talking about saving a major screen talent here.”

  “And you’re not talking about saving Buster,” I said.

  “Your friend is already dead. Nothing’ll save his career. You want Marion here to go down right along with him? You’re nuts.”

  I looked at May Anna, but she was lighting another cigarette. Nobody said anything. Finally May Anna looked up and met my eyes and shrugged. “I’m so tired, Effa Commander,” she said. “That’s why I wanted you to come. I need a friend.”

  “It looks like Buster needs a friend, too.”

  “I’m trying to be one, but I don’t know what else I can do.”

  I tried, but just then I didn’t feel as sorry for her as I did for Buster. After all, Buster saved May Anna’s life. It didn’t look like May Anna was going to return the favor. “What you have to do,” I said while the two men glared at me, “what you have to do is tell the truth.”

  “Oh, truth,” said Jim after he gave a silly little laugh. “What’s truth? There’s truth and there’s truth. The truth is your friend Buster did the world a favor by rubbing out that scum John Reide, who was a queer and a drunk and a cocaine head. I’m sorry Buster’s in the soup for croaking him. Nice guy, too. But the truth is, Marion Street will never star in another picture if she squawks because she’ll be tarred with the same brush. Ever heard of Fatty Arbuckle? You want to put the kibosh on your chum’s career?”

  “The way I see it, I got two chums. I’m trying to keep one of them out of jail. What you’re saying is a God-damned bunch of hooey.”

  “Says who? Are you a big lawyer who knows all about defending a murderer?” Jim sneered. I wished in the worst way that Whippy Bird was there. She’d know what to say.

  “Now why don’t you write some picture postcards or go bowling?” Jim said. “You want to go on a tour of the studio? We can arrange it.”

  “I don’t want to do anything but stay with May Anna,” I told him.

  I looked at May Anna. Her face was so sad. Then I noticed the bottle of gin and the empty glass beside it on the table. May Anna filled it and swallowed the gin in two gulps then filled up the glass again. I remembered once Whippy Bird said Hollywood was a lush place and so were the people, and I wondered if May Anna was one of them now. “Please, Effa Commander,” May Anna said.

  I didn’t know what she was saying please about, but it seemed to me they weren’t listening to anything I said, and I was making May Anna more upset. Besides, Buster had a lawyer. He surely knew what to do without my help, so I backed off. “I think I’ll walk down to the drugstore and get a soda.”

  “Take the limo. You can’t walk,” May Anna said. So Thomas took me all the way over to the drugstore where Lana Turner was discovered. I treated him to a Barney Google, which you make with marsh-mallow syrup poured over a coke. I had a black-and-white, which is a chocolate soda with vanilla ice cream. I figured since he’d been driving me around, I could pay, and he said thanks to you, Effa Commander.

  I didn’t say anything more to May Anna about her testimony. What good would it do anyway? Instead, I tried to calm her down by acting like we were kids again. At night we pretended it was a regular slumber party like me and Whippy Bird and May Anna had in Butte, only this time we didn’t sleep three in a bed. I put on my nightgown and May Anna got into her silk pajamas. Then I brushed her hair, and she set mine in pincurls. After that, we put on nail polish, only it wasn’t Cutex but some expensive kind that was made up in a special color just for May Anna. And all the time we drank bourbon and ate chocolate popcorn that I made.

  I didn’t spend all my time with May Anna. Half my reason for being there was to help Buster, so I took the limo down to the jail once to see him. The guard said he couldn’t have any more visitors. I said Buster was family, but the policeman said that’s what they all say. So I didn’t see Buster until the trial. I sat right in front of him. He didn’t know I was staying at May Anna’s, and when he spotted me, he broke into the biggest grin you ever saw. I was glad I was there because it looked to me like I was Buster’s only friend.

  The trial just went on and on and was the most boring thing I ever went to even though I tried hard to follow it so I could write it up every night for Whippy Bird. The highlight was May Anna’s testimony. The day she took the stand was the only time she came to court because the studio made her stay away. Besides, there were crowds that gathered around her when she went out in public, and she couldn’t stand that. I was with her in the limo on the trip to the courthouse that day. May Anna was as nervous as she was when she went to the charity tea party on West Broadway. The minute we got out of the car, flashbulbs popped in our faces just like at a movie premiere. Whippy Bird saved me a picture from the Montana Standard that showed May Anna with me behind her, only it didn’t give my name or say I was from Butte.

  May Anna did just what she said she would. She cried little dainty tears and dabbed at her eyes with the lace hanky. She told t
he jury John Reide beat her up so she ran to her bedroom to get her gun. Then Buster came in and fought with Mr. Reide, and the gun went off. But she didn’t say Mr. Reide was a queer and a drug user. Of course, it wasn’t May Anna’s fault because the studio ordered her not to.

  The prosecutor called May Anna a liar who was trying to protect Buster because she was afraid of him. Then he called Buster a jealous maniac and a drunk who gunned down a true English war hero on purpose.

  The jury was out for a day. When they came back, they said Buster was guilty of involuntary manslaughter. Later one of the reporters interviewed a juror who said Buster hurt his case by not testifying. He said if May Anna was telling the truth, why wasn’t she there every day, backing up her man?

  Of course, Buster took it like the champ he always was. He didn’t complain. Buster never in his life said he’d been robbed in a fight, and he didn’t say he’d been robbed in a court of law. Before they took him away, he hugged me and said not to worry. I told him May Anna should have been there, but he said it didn’t matter. “I did the right thing. I know I did the right thing.” He hugged me again even though the policeman was pulling at him. “You and Whippy Bird are the best friends May Anna ever had. She needs you now that I can’t be here. She’s got to have somebody watch out over her. Don’t blame her. She did the best she could.” I told Whippy Bird he worried more about May Anna than he did about going off to prison. Whippy Bird said it wasn’t the first time in his life Buster was a sap about May Anna.

  After they hauled Buster off I got in the limo and went right to May Anna’s to tell her Buster was found guilty, but she already knew. In fact, she was in the middle of a press conference in her living room. She was wearing white again, and I heard her say that Buster was her dear friend who was only defending her virtue, whatever that was. She also said John Reide was a poor misguided man, and she would miss him. I didn’t want to hear any more of that, so I went upstairs to May Anna’s bedroom and called Whippy Bird. Not collect. I figured May Anna could pay for it now.

  “How do you feel about May Anna?” Whippy Bird asked after I told her the whole story.

  “I don’t know. She testified in Buster’s favor, but she could have done more. A lot more. But Buster says she needs us.”

  Whippy Bird thought that over and said, “Buster’s right. You know, Effa Commander, we’re May Anna’s best friends. That means we have to stick by her even when she does something that stinks. She’s not as strong as us. She could crack. If Buster doesn’t blame her, then it’s not our business to blame her either.”

  I felt like somebody was on either side of me, pulling, like I was going to be split down the middle. It hurt to think that May Anna had not been a true friend to Buster like he always was to her. Then I thought maybe she did the best she could. I decided Whippy Bird was right, like she always is. This was between Buster and May Anna. Our job was to be May Anna’s friend. Being a friend meant helping the other person even when she was wrong. That’s why I told May Anna her testimony kept Buster from being found guilty of a worse charge, like voluntary manslaughter. Or first degree.

  I could see that May Anna thought over what I said but I don’t know if she believed it.

  Buster got two years. The newspapers printed headlines about him for a few days. I remember one in particular that said: MIDNIGHT FOR BUTTE BOXER BUSTER. Then everybody forgot about him.

  I wrote Buster every week when he was in prison, and though he never wrote back, I knew he got the letters. Toney, who’d been writing Whippy Bird since the day he joined the navy, said my letters cheered up Buster more than anything. May Anna wrote him, too. She said she’d wait for him. She wanted to pay for the lawyer, but Buster said no. He also told her not to write him anymore. He explained that when he got out, he wouldn’t be seeing her again. They ought to forget each other. Being together wouldn’t be any good for either of their careers. Whippy Bird said what career did Buster have left anymore, anyway.

  The trial was the beginning of what they called May Anna’s mature career and of the series of movies that made her rank as one of the Ten Best Motion Picture Actresses of All Time. The reviewers said May Anna had an air of tragedy about her. “Baptism by fire,” one of them wrote. Of course, you know May Anna won the Academy Award for The Sin of Rachel Babcock. She was nominated twice after that. She never had to play a gangster moll again or anything else she didn’t want to. From then until the end of her life, May Anna wrote her own ticket in that town.

  Life changed after the trial for me and Whippy Bird, too. When the war ended, Toney came home minus one leg and with a purple heart. Three days later he and Whippy Bird got married.

  CHAPTER

  15

  Buster served his two years and was released not long after Whippy Bird and Toney got married. Then he hit the road. He wasn’t Buster Midnight anymore. He was too old and out of shape to defend his championship title even if he still retained it, which he didn’t. I don’t think he had the will to fight either. Every now and then we’d hear about him. He sent Toney a picture postcard from Australia saying he was fighting there under another name. Then there was a story in the paper about a television wrestler in New York called the Butte Bomber that the reporter claimed was really Buster Midnight. There weren’t any pictures, and we didn’t get TV in Butte then so we never saw those wrestling matches. We knew it was the real Butte Bomber, though, because about that time Toney got a postcard from Buster saying he was in charge of a crew of Mexicans picking oranges in Florida. Later on, I got a crate of oranges in the mail. There wasn’t any card with it, but I knew they were from Buster. I shared them with Whippy Bird and Toney and with Moon, who sometimes stopped by my house after school even though he was in the fifth grade and had his own friends.

  A couple of months later, I got a sterling silver teaspoon with oranges on the handle from Florida, and I knew that came from Buster, too.

  Of course, I moved out when Whippy Bird and Toney got married. Toney insisted he’d given the house to both of us and that he wanted to buy my share. I told him what he’d done was given me a place to live free throughout the war. I surely was grateful for that, but I always thought of it as Whippy Bird’s house, not mine. Besides, I was sure Toney had gone through his money, and what was he going to use to buy my half? So I gave Whippy Bird and Toney my part of the house as a wedding gift. They lived there until Toney bought a house off South Main by where the Pay and Takit Market used to be.

  It was a happy wedding, but it was different from when Whippy Bird and Chick were married. They were older, and Toney was a disabled war veteran, so we celebrated with champagne and a cake I made, instead of getting drunk on Shawn O’s like we did the first time she got married. I knew from the day Whippy Bird got the first letter from Toney, which was addressed exclusively to her and not to me and her, that if Toney survived the war, he would come home to Whippy Bird. Toney always was sweet on her though she didn’t care about him when she was young because she was crazy about Chick. But in his letters, Whippy Bird saw a new Toney. “Chick will always be in my heart, just like Pink for you,” she told me. “You don’t live on memories, though, and it’s time Moon had a father.” She was surely right.

  Me and Whippy Bird always acted like Moon was the man of the house, and she worried that he wouldn’t like Toney taking over. That’s because sometimes Toney treated Moon like a little kid. Whippy Bird loved Toney, but Moon was her son. But they both loved Whippy Bird, so they made it work. Right after the wedding, Toney held out his hand to Moon and said, “Hi, soldier.”

  Moon took that hand and said, “Hi, Dad.” And that’s the way it always was with those two. They shared Whippy Bird.

  When he was grown up, I asked Moon what he thought about Toney taking Chick’s place. “I never minded because Toney and Buster were my heroes. Remember how Toney treated me like a mascot at Buster’s training camp?” Moon replied. “Besides, Toney didn’t take my dad’s place. He took yours. That’s what I resented.
But it turned out you were always around our place anyway so I didn’t mind after a while. What really happened was I ended up with three parents.”

  Whippy Bird worried about me, also. “You know, Effa Commander, I’m never going to have as much fun with a husband as I did with you. I’m going to have to learn to cook, too, because Toney’s used to eating in fancy places. And you’re going to be a lady of leisure with nobody to look after but yourself.” That meant she was afraid I’d be lonely.

  “Don’t you worry about me, Whippy Bird. I’m going to sleep till noon and eat chocolates without worrying about Moon seeing me and not even make my bed if I don’t want to.”

  “You’re always welcome at our house. Always,” she said.

  “I know that,” I told her. “I also know things are different now. Me and you’ve been running in neutral for a long time, but it’s time to shift and get in gear. You’ve already done it. Now I’ve got to get myself up the pass.” That was surely true. When I said that, I realized I’d been using Whippy Bird and Moon as a reason not to get on with my life. I knew with Whippy Bird and Toney married, they didn’t want me hanging around all the time. Whippy Bird had her work cut out for her because Toney was used to the big time, and there wasn’t going to be the big time for him anymore. What’s more, except for the navy, he’d never held a real job.

  When I moved, I didn’t just move out of the house. I left Centerville and rented a place over on West Quartz. Me and Whippy Bird still got together for lunch, and Moon developed the habit of stopping by after school when I wasn’t working. I went to Centerville for dinner every week, and sometimes me and Whippy Bird and Toney went out on the town. For the first time in my life, though, I was on my own.

  You know what? I liked it. I was just kidding when I told Whippy Bird I’d sleep till noon because I never did that in my life. Sometimes, though, I lay in bed and read Reader’s Digest. Or I spread the Sunday paper all over the living room and let it stay there for three or four days until I was good and ready to throw it out.