by Alan Parker
Jackson struggled with the wheel, but it was all over for the Dandy Dan gang. They ploughed through a fence and plummeted over the top of the hill – to land in a lake. The once snazzy tan sedan hit soft mud with a dull thud – and the hoods were catapulted forwards into the cold muddy water. Dandy Dan stood, waist deep, in the lake. He glimpsed the heavy splurge guns as they sank to the bottom. His soaking gang watched motionless as he threw his crumpled homburg into the water, and combed back his dishevelled hair with his open fingers. He needn’t have bothered, because his hair stood on end, leaving a muddy black impression of his hand on his forehead. For a moment – for the first time in his life – he looked a mess. Not so Dandy Dan. And he didn’t like it.
Bugsy and Fat Sam were jumping around in their car with joy at Dan’s watery mishap. Sam hugged Bugsy so hard he almost cracked his ribs. He also threw out the last of the chickens, which had fallen asleep under his seat.
“Get out of here, you dumb cluck. Go cock-a-doodle-doo somewhere else.”
He took a wad of money from his side pocket and began peeling off crisp, green, hundred dollar bills. Bugsy watched, mouth open.
“You did very well, Bugsy. I’m very pleased with you. You drove like a madman, you hear me? That makes me very pleased. Here’s two hundred dollars for your trouble.”
Bugsy took it. He hadn’t seen to much money since that twenty to one winner at the racetrack three seasons back.
“Why, thank you, Mr Stacetto. That’s really nice of you. Two hundred dollars. Wow.”
Sam patted him affectionately on the shoulder. Chicken feathers floated up into the air.
“Treat yourself to a new suit. Get rid of that laundry sack you’re wearing. Oh, here’s the name of my tailor.” He handed Bugsy a visiting card from his front vest pocket. “Do yourself a favour. Go see him. Get yourself fitted up real fine – real snazzy. Your friends won’t know you. And what’s more, you don’t have to pay for six months.”
“Thank you very much, Mr Stacetto.”
“My pleasure, my boy. Think nothing of it. OK. Let’s get out of here.”
Bugsy let off the brake and the sedan lurched forward once more. Fat Sam eased himself comfortably into the back seat. He brushed a few loose chicken feathers from his face and revealed a huge smile that totally engulfed his features. There was no hiding that he was pleased with himself. He was on top again – for a while, at least.
THE SIGN HAD been put up a long time ago. In big, bold letters it read, ‘No Rough Stuff, Fighting, or Spitting in this Dressing Room. By Order of the Management’. The red ink letters shouted loud – and would have made a lumberjack think twice about breaking a chair over someone’s back. Not that a lumberjack would have got past the door of the girls’ dressing room, above which the ominous sign hung.
Bangles looked at herself in the large stand-up mirror that had as many costumes draped over it as there were brown stains on its silver surface. She pulled faces at herself to make her dumpy, round face look passably attractive. She twisted and contorted her nose in the air and stretched her neck to try and unfold her tubby double chins. She was jostled by the rest of the girls as she studied her new purple dress.
Obviously, they hadn’t noticed. She was sure she looked stunning in it. Well, nearly sure. She had blown two weeks’ wages on it and was determined that she looked terrific, no matter what. She coughed loudly to gain the other girls’ attention. They were more interested in themselves, as they pampered their porcelain faces and buffed up their glossy red nails. Bangles twisted around once more and the purple chiffon frills fluttered around her.
“What do you think? Don’t you think I look cute?”
Tillie interrupted her nail-painting to look at Bangles’ puce nightmare of a dress. In all honesty, it was the kind of dress that was left in the store window even when it had been offered at a ridiculously knocked-down price. But Bangles, being Bangles, had gone and bought it. Tillie managed to keep her comments polite.
“I don’t know, Bangles. Maybe... well...”
Bangles wasn’t taking a chance on her not liking it and she abruptly turned to Dotty for praise. Dotty was busy making the most of the freckles on her nose. As she spoke, she hardly looked up from her mother-of-pearl hand mirror. “Er... I don’t know, Bangles. Perhaps the colour’s wrong.”
“What are you talking about?” Bangles snapped. “Purple’s my colour. I always wear purple. Don’t I always wear purple?”
“It matches your nose,” Loretta butted in, and Bangles stuck her tongue out in reply. Dotty tried to save the situation from slipping into an all-out, hair-pulling, girls’ brawl.
“Maybe it’s the length.”
“It’s the latest length. I read it in the magazine. Here, look.” Bangles snatched at the film magazine Loretta was reading. She didn’t bother to ask her if she could borrow it. Bangles and Loretta rarely spoke to one another – apart from their battles of wits and insults. Bangles flicked quickly through the magazine and stabbed at a picture of Lena Marrelli, the fickle star.
Tillie broke in to try and calm the conversation down. “Maybe it’s the frills – they stick out too much, Bangles.”
“It matches her ears!” Loretta added.
Bangles pulled an ugly face at her. “Frills are in. Look at this picture of Lena Marrelli.”
“Lena Marrelli’s not Bangles Dobell,” offered Dotty.
“So what’s wrong with Bangles Dobell? You think it’d look any better on you?”
“It’d look better on a horse.” Loretta chirped. By now Bangles had had enough of them. She threw the magazine at Loretta and turned her back on them, trying to be tough, but more than a little hurt inside. She patted her hair as she looked at her face in the mirror, chewing energetically on her gum.
“Can I help it if my looks are ahead of their time?”
“They’re what?” the girls replied in unison.
“Full of character, kind of earthy.”
“Yeah. Like a bucket of mud.” Loretta got in the last insult and smiled rather smugly because it was probably her best.
“You creeps, get lost,” retorted Bangles.
At the other end of the dressing room, Blousey sat staring out of the window. She hadn’t heard the argument. She had been too far away in thoughts of her own. The misty glass was in need of a clean and it made the view of the dirty alley at the back of the speakeasy look hazy, almost dreamy. Blousey had been sitting staring for a good twenty minutes. She had been powdering her face with a fluffy red powder puff before thoughts of Hollywood and stardom had taken her by the hand and enticed her into dreamland. Her reverie was interrupted by Bangles, who had stomped across to slump against the wall by the window. She blew a ridiculously large, perfectly formed bubble with her gum. As she gathered it in with her tongue after the bubble had exploded she turned to Blousey.
“What do you think, Blousey? Do you think I look terrible?”
Bangles was working on Blousey’s polite nature. Since Blousey had joined the show she had set a sort of record by not shouting at anybody or getting involved in arguments. She had miraculously managed to dodge the insults that rattled around the girls’ room. Blousey looked up.
“You tell me, Blousey. Do I look cute, or do I look terrible?”
Blousey looked at Bangles’ unfortunate purple dress. There was no way she could have said it looked cute. If the dress had been anything less than a monstrosity she could have got away with, “It’s OK”, or maybe even “Not bad”, but this was no passable mistake. This was a full-scale chiffon disaster and Blousey had difficulty in lying.
“Honestly?”
It was only one word, but it said it all. Bangles’ dumpy face dropped, and her double chins folded over one another in a position they were much more at home in. She spoke miserably and honestly to herself. “Bangles Dobell, you look terrible.” She punctuated her sentence by blowing another large bubble that burst and splattered in a sticky mess across her glossy red lips. She looked bac
k at Blousey, who had gone back to staring out of the window. “What are you looking at, anyway?”
“Nothing.”
Blousey didn’t look up. Nothing is what she was gazing at, but nothing was certainly not what she saw. The dirty window panes turned the alley into a misty, magic stage that Blousey’s mind wandered across. The trash cans were overflowing, filled with garbage that had been carefully given the once-over by the ginger alley cat. Blousey’s eyes sparkled as her mind and her hopes conjured up a pretty ballerina, who magically appeared in the alleyway. She danced through the old newspapers and broken grocery boxes as if they weren’t there. The light caught the white layers of her ballet dress. The hard sidewalk out front from Mama Lugini’s restaurant must have been hard on the ballerina’s soft silver ballet shoes as she danced and floated to the gentle music that was nowhere but in Blousey’s head. But dreams don’t allow such worries.
Flash bulbs burst, and their reflections seemed to sparkled in Blousey’s eyes as she thought of Lena Marrelli. That was the kind of star Blousey wanted to be. She thought of the words she had shouted at Bugsy in the Bijoux Theatre. “I’ve been walking the streets of New York for six months now and the only fancy steps I’ve done so far are to avoid the man who collects the rent.” They echoed in her head as she thought of how things might have been. Velma’s voice brought her thudding back to reality.
“Blousey, you’re wanted on the phone. It’s Bugsy.”
Blousey shook the daydreams out of her mind. She made a point of ignoring Tallulah on her way to the phone, but Tallulah managed to get a sly jab in as she went through the door.
“Give him my love.”
Blousey picked up the telephone earpiece.
“Hello.”
Bugsy was talking from a pay booth that had been conveniently situated directly under the elevated railway. He raised his voice as a train clanked, squeaked and thundered past.
“Hello, Blousey. It’s Bugsy.”
“Where are you?”
“Oh, around. Listen. I can’t talk to you now, but I’ve just made two hundred bucks.”
Blousey wasn’t really in the mood to be impressed – she’d had her fill of fast talk. “You mean you printed it yourself ?”
“No, I earned it,” he protested.
“Doing what?”
“Oh, this and that.” He wasn’t giving anything away. Another train pulled away from the station and the lighted coaches threw flickering patterns across his face.
“Who for?” Blousey persisted.
“Fat Sam.”
If Blousey made a good job of hiding the fact that she was impressed, she certainly couldn’t keep the surprise out of her voice.
“Fat Sam gave you two hundred dollars?”
“And the loan of his bike sedan for the afternoon.”
“I don’t believe you. You’re putting me on.”
But she should have believed him, because it was true.
BLOUSEY BEAMED ALL over her face as Bugsy wrestled with the steering wheel and Sam’s shiny black bike sedan bumped its way along the dusty country roads. Blousey held on to her flapping hat as Bugsy’s feet flashed away at the pedals and the vehicle gathered speed.
He drove for as long as it took to escape New York. Streets and buildings of stone and brick gave way to scenery that was a little less man-made. A little more inviting.
At the side of a lake Bugsy discovered a boat, nestling amongst the creepers growing along the bank. With much persistence, he managed to persuade Blousey to join him in the ramshackle, rickety vessel. His attempts at rowing would have won him no medals at the Olympic Games – and soon he was worn out trying. He lay back in the sun, a makeshift fishing line tied around his big toe. Blousey unpinned her hat and closed her eyes to enjoy the warm breeze on her face. Bugsy needn’t have bothered to keep an eye on his bobbing cork float because all afternoon he didn’t catch a thing. Except, that is, the nice warm smiles that Blousey threw in his direction.
Evening came very quickly – and found them back in town outside Farara’s drugstore. Blousey patched up her make-up in the sedan while Bugsy joined the queue for hot dogs. She twirled her hair around her fingers to put back the waves and curls the afternoon wind had blown away.
Bugsy walked back to the sedan with two hot dogs that burned his fingers even though they were wrapped in paper napkins.
“Mustard with onions? Or ketchup without?”
“Ketchup without. What’s this?”
Bugsy had placed a brown parcel in her lap. Almost as big as a shoe box, it was wrapped in pink paper and tied with a big bow.
“Who knows? Open it.”
“What is it – a finger bowl?”
“No, wisie, a present.”
Blousey tore at the pink wrapping paper to find a cardboard box. Inside was a small, tortoiseshell nickelodeon viewer. It gleamed under the street lights as she took it out.
“Oh, Bugsy, it’s fantastic. Beautiful – really beautiful.”
“Nice?”
“What is it?”
“What is it? It’s a viewer, dummy. Look, you turn the handle. All the Hollywood stars.”
Blousey’s face lit up as the pictures flicked through. Then her face changed as she put the viewer down again.
“Oh, if only I could get to Hollywood.”
“You can.”
“Sure, I know, wise guy. In the front row of the Roxy Theatre on East 38th Street.”
“No, really get to Hollywood.”
“Keep talking.”
Bugsy pushed his hat to the back of his head and counted out aloud on his fingers. “One eighty for the viewer. Right? Ten cents for the hot dogs. Leaves a hundred and ninety-eight dollars and ten red cents for...”
“Surprise me.”
“Two tickets.”
Blousey was still acting wary. “Two tickets?”
“How many tickets do you need?”
“Two tickets to where? The ball game?”
“Two tickets to Hollywood, dummy!”
Blousey, at last, dropped her cool, and her face lit up. Her stay in New York hadn’t exactly been a successful one. She had been fed up for so long that even when she heard good news it took a long time to sink in. But when the good news hit her, it hit her zonk between the eyes – and she threw her arms around Bugsy.
“Oh, Bugsy! That’s fantastic, that really is.”
As she grabbed him, his hat tipped up and covered his eyes. He smiled as he tried to pull away from her.
“Knock it off, will you.”
“You’re putting me on.”
“It’s the honest truth, I tell you.” He crossed his heart and kissed his finger and touched her on the nose. “But right now I’d better take you home and get Fat Sam’s car back, else we won’t be going anywhere.”
He stuck his hot dog between his teeth like an extra in a pirate movie and let off the hand brake. The bike sedan lurched forward and Blousey was nearly thrown off her seat. Not that she noticed. She had gone back to her viewer. It had only cost a dollar eighty, but to her it was a dreamland you couldn’t put a price to.
BUGSY DROPPED BLOUSEY at her door and stepped on the pedals extra hard to get the bike sedan to Fat Sam’s place. It had rained a little, and the shower had left the road slippery so that he had a job keeping the sedan steady as he took the corners at speed. He’d promised Sam he would leave the car in the alleyway at the side of the Stacetto Brothers’ bookstore – the front for Fat Sam’s place.
The red tail lights glowed as Bugsy stood on the foot brake and the tyres squealed to a halt on the wet road. At the blind end of the alley was a door with a letter box in the centre. Bugsy strolled towards it. The door was the rear entrance to the speakeasy. Bugsy popped the car keys through the letter box and turned to walk back to the main street. He whistled to himself, more for company than entertainment, because the alleyway was dark and narrow and not the cosiest place to be late at night.
As he turned from the door, he heard
a strange sound. He furrowed his brow and cocked his head to one side to listen. There it was again. A sort of low moan. It seemed to come from amongst the garbage and trash cans that adorned the end of the alley. He walked towards the sound, and the moan got louder.
“Is anybody there? Is anybody in there?”
He walked closer, very slowly, and could just make out a dirty-faced figure lying amongst the garbage. He moved in for a better look. Lying there, face down, was a ragged old down-and-out. He was slumped in a desperate position, his arms and legs crumpled underneath him like twisted pipe cleaners. Bugsy played the good Samaritan and tried to pick him up. It was a mistake.
No sooner had he leaned down to help the fellow when he felt a sharp pain – as two heavy hob-nailed boots planted themselves in the middle of his back. Bugsy fell to his knees and the drowsy down-and-out recovered quicker than if he’d taken a dose of Colonel Jacob’s patented Milwaukee Pick-Me-Up. Bugsy, dazed, but still with his wits about him, struggled desperately with the two hobos.
If things had stayed that way, he might well have held his own, saved his money and even got a pat on the back from the local precinct police. But things turned out differently, because the two down-and-outs were soon joined by three more, then by six others – until a dozen, dirty-faced, shabbily-dressed hobos were belting into our unfortunate hero.
One of the hobos reached into Bugsy’s vest pocket and snatched his earnings from Fat Sam. Bugsy winced from another punch and didn’t even feel the precious greenbacks vanish. In fact, things were going so badly for Bugsy that he might have ended up as another piece of garbage on the pile, if it had not been for a large black lad who at that moment was strolling past the alley. He was whistling to himself and pondering what he would be doing for supper with ten cents in his pocket. He’d ruled out the Waldorf Grill – and then he did a double take, as he noticed the fighting amongst the trash cans.