Dodging and Burning

by John Copenhaver

  It never happened. As Teddie took his bows, the applause was respectful but far from enthusiastic. A couple of sailors even booed him.

  Tim said, “So you’ve seen him. What do you think?”

  “I’m beyond words.”

  “He’s atrocious.”

  I nodded, and he shook his head.

  “Hen will escort you backstage if you want to talk to him. Won’t you, Hen?”

  “Teddie loves to receive admirers,” Henrita said. “But you had better think of something nice to say about his Dietrich, or he’ll scratch your eyes out.”

  “Good luck, darling.” Tim held up his glass in a mock salutation as I rose from my seat. “I’m staying here. I’m only three or four drinks from that lovely little vacation spot on the shore of Lake Oblivion.”

  I followed Henrita down a dim hallway, lined with lewd graffiti scratched into the plaster walls: men coupling with men, disembodied genitalia, raunchy words and phrases childishly scrawled at angles. I wanted to pass judgment on this strange, underground world. These people assaulted my refined, good-girl sensibilities. They mocked the very values my parents, my school, my church, and the culture of my town had ingrained in me. But what was worse, they had made me laugh. I shouldn’t like them, and I certainly shouldn’t laugh with them. It didn’t fit. I blamed the giddiness of a few moments ago on that tried-and-true scapegoat—alcohol.

  The damp, sweaty smell in the hall gave way to a rich, metallic perfume as Hen and I approached Teddie’s dressing room and knocked.

  “What is it?” a rough male voice barked from inside.

  “It’s Henrita. I have an admirer who wants to meet you.”

  “Go away.”

  “She wants to talk to you.”

  “‘Go away,’ I said.”

  “My name is Bunny Prescott,” I said to the closed door. “Do you know someone by the name of Lily Vellum or … Jay Greenwood? If you do, I need to talk to you. It’s very important.”

  There was a long silence; then the dressing room door swung wide. Perfume and pink light spilled into the hall. Teddie had removed the Dietrich wig and the dress but had yet to wipe off the makeup. He was shirtless. His skin was pasty, mole-speckled, and marked with red indentations from a bra and girdle, which now lay behind him on the dressing table. He still wore elastic, form-shaping panties and hose.

  “What do you want?” he said, returning to his dressing table. I followed him in, and Hen left the room. I heard the click of the door behind me. Teddie began removing his makeup. The dressing room was no more than a twelve-by-twelve-foot cell, painted bright pink and cluttered with a sloppy costume rack and a table full of head forms, some bearing wigs, others bald. On the opposite wall was the sliver of a ground-level window.

  I felt trapped, claustrophobic. Teddie was an androgynous witch whose cave I had to brave to receive the answer to my riddle. His cold cream jar was his cauldron, and his hairbrush was his broom.

  “Did you know Lily Vellum?” I said.

  “Perhaps … What do you want with her?”

  “I just want to find someone who knew her, who could tell me about her.”

  “You mentioned another name.”

  “Jay Greenwood.”

  “I know him. He and Lily are pals.”

  “Can you tell me about them?”

  “They were here a lot in the spring. I haven’t seen them much since—” He caught my eyes in his mirror and spun around. “Has anyone told you that you look exactly like, um …”

  “Gene Tierney.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Has anyone told you that you look exactly like Marlene Dietrich?”

  “No,” he said and laughed out loud. “We’re just a couple glamorous movie stars, aren’t we?”

  “About Lily and Jay.”

  “They were here off and on—the life of the party, very popular sorts, both of them—oh, and this other woman, Georgiana or Georgina, or something. She was definitely on the prowl. She really vamped it up at first, but when I saw her with Lily, she had toned it down a bit. She seemed to have eyes for Lily. I saw them holding hands across a table and giving each other the look. That’s not typical for this place, if you know what I mean.”

  “Did Lily ever refer to her as George?”

  “I never heard that. But I really didn’t know her too well. She was friendly with Jay, though. They were always chatting it up. If I remember right, he had a bum leg, a war hero and all of that. He was a handsome fellow too. He didn’t like me. I don’t think he thought much of fairies in dresses. But he certainly liked the pretty soldier boys. Don’t get me wrong—I understand why he wanted those boys on his dance card, but he could’ve given me a chance. I don’t wear this getup around town … and I clean up nice.”

  When he said this, I realized I had mentioned Lily’s name repeatedly since I had come to DC, but I hadn’t uttered Jay’s name once until a few minutes ago, outside of the dressing room. The alcohol had loosened my tongue, it seemed, and I was starting to ask questions I didn’t want to know the answers to.

  “You look pale,” he said. “Do you need a drink?”

  “I’ve had enough.”

  He shrugged, searched his dressing table, uncovered a silver flask, and took a swig. He fished out a pack of cigarettes from a makeup bag, placed one in a holder, and lit it. He cocked his head back and exhaled a long, feathery stream of smoke.

  “I should go,” I said, turning to the door.

  “You’re in love with him, and you didn’t know he was queer.”

  I stopped, my hand on the doorknob.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I feel ridiculous.” I let go of the doorknob and faced him.

  “You can’t help who you love.” His voice was gentle. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this life, it’s that.”

  “I don’t understand it.”

  “None of us do.”

  He offered me the flask again, and I took a drink. The alcohol burned in my chest and warmed my head, melting the tears as they gathered in my eyes.

  When I returned the flask to him, he said, “I remember another thing about Lily. It was just a rumor, but I heard she was pregnant, and she was looking for a way out, if you know what I mean.”

  “It’s in a letter she wrote to Jay. That’s how I found out about it. Jay led me to believe he’d only met her once, but he knew her well. They were friends. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Why haven’t you talked to Lily?”

  “That’s what started this. She was murdered.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “Jay told us he met her on the train to Royal Oak and she asked him to take photos of her for a modeling application. Jay was a war photographer, you see. He told us when he went to rendezvous with her for the shoot, he found her dead. Ceola and I—”

  “Wait, who’s Ceola?”

  “The kid sister of Jay’s best friend, Robbie. He died in the Pacific.”

  “A pretty soldier boy, I assume.”

  “I suppose. Anyway, we followed Jay to the scene of the crime in the woods, but Lily’s body was gone. Ceola hunted for clues and discovered her bloodstained shoes. Then we went to Jitters Gap to watch the Vellum family’s home and spy on her father and her boyfriend, Billy, who we learned about from a newspaper article about her disappearance. A day or two later, Jay produced the second half of a letter, which he claimed he’d found in the Vellums’ garbage. The letter implied a motive—the baby—but didn’t reveal the addressee. I found the first page of the letter on my own and that led me here, to you.”

  “May I see it?”

  I pulled the letter out of my purse and unfolded it. The photo of Jay and the newspaper clipping about Lily I’d placed there earlier fell to the floor.

  Teddie bent down and picked them up. “That’s him,” he said, holding the photo out for me to take and exhaling a cone of smoke. He took a moment to read the article on Lily and then said, “Poor girl. A shame.
” Once he had Lily’s letter in his hands, he held it away from his face, so he wouldn’t damage it with his cigarette. He growled with displeasure and tossed it at me. “That bitch called me ‘a mess’!”

  “Do you see why I’m confused?”

  “Nothing that you’ve told me has made an iota of sense. Why would he pretend he hardly knew her? And do you think he was really meeting her in the woods to take photos? You better stay away from him. How do you know he wasn’t the one who killed her?”

  We heard muffled shouting out in the hall. Teddie stood up, wide-eyed and alert. The voices became clearer, louder: “Raid! Get out! It’s a fucking raid!”

  “Damn,” Teddie said, and snubbed out his cigarette. He grabbed a floral patterned robe and wrapped himself in it. “Damn,” he said again, and looked at me. “We have to get out of here. I know a back way.”

  As soon as we opened the dressing room door, several men ran past us. “Follow them!” Teddie said, clutching his robe tightly around him. The door at the far end of the hall—the door to the bar room—flung open, slamming into the damp cracked plaster. Behind it was a large, beefy, flat-faced man in sloppy army fatigues. His powerful forearms bulged at his rolled sleeves. He held a baseball bat in his right hand. His left hand was curled into a fist, and a flush of fervid malice pulsed in his eyes and his cheeks.

  Teddie gasped and grabbed my arm, and we hurried down the hall, up a flight of steps, and out into the evening air. We were in an unfamiliar alley, dark at either end, cluttered with trash, lit only by a rusty fixture over the door. Teddie’s fake fingernails bit into my forearm as he pulled me to the left. I resisted, stunned by all the commotion. Then the door banged open and three or four men ran past us. One man’s mouth and chin were streaked with blood; another held his ear with a badly damaged hand.

  “It’s not the police,” Teddie said. “It’s much worse. Drunk soldiers, fag haters. They bust the place up from time to time. It’s our lucky night. Come on!”

  We rounded the side of the building, and two men, hurling out of the darkness, slammed Teddie against the brick wall. Another man knocked me back against the same wall. The tall gangly one pinned Teddie to the side of the building, forearm to his neck, choking him. The fat one, in a rumpled Navy uniform, pulled a military-issue knife on me and nervously waved its point in my face.

  The shortest one, whose crumpled engineer’s cap was low over his forehead, wore a thin white T-shirt, showing off his muscular bulk. He approached Teddie and hissed, “You fucking hermaphrodite,” and ripped Teddie’s robe off him.

  I couldn’t make out any of the men’s features, not even hair color. The only light in the alley came from the building behind the thugs, falling on Teddie’s distorted face, the twin arches of his Dietrich eyebrows smudged across his forehead as if by the hand of a frustrated artist fed up with his work. His chest was heaving, and his legs were positioned at an oddly sensual angle, spread apart, lithe and smooth against the dark brick.

  “This one’s almost fucking real!” the short one said. “Is there a dick down there? You have a pecker, Nancy-boy? Tell me. I bet it’s all shriveled up. That’s what happens to faggots.”

  Teddie struggled to free himself, but he couldn’t. The tall man had his right arm and the short man his left.

  “Let’s see if you still have one, eh?” The short man cocked his arm back and punched Teddie in his crotch. He howled, and the men let him fall to the ground in a heap.

  “He does have one! What do ya know, Jerry?” the short man said to the tall man, and then he turned to me and said, “What do we have here?” He took the knife from the fat one’s hand and brought it to my neck. He pressed the cool tip of the blade against my collarbone. I held my breath. The fat one backed away. “My God, this one is as real as I’ve seen ’em. Jesus Christ, Jerry, I could fuck this one. Ha!”

  As he came closer, I could make out the features of his face below the shadow of his cap. Something about the shape of his mouth and the edge of his jaw were familiar, but I couldn’t place him. He reeked of hard liquor, sweat, and cigarette ash, and his breathing was labored.

  “He looks like Gene Autry,” Jerry said.

  “Tierney. Autry’s the fuckin’ singing cowboy.”

  “Yeah.”

  He pressed the point of the blade deeper into my skin, nicking the surface. I cried out.

  “Fuck, he even sounds like a woman,” he said, grabbing my left breast and pulling on it as if he expected it to come off in his grip. I screamed, and I heard my dress rip. He pushed me against the wall and, with his free hand, tore my dress open, buttons popping and clattering on the pavement. He cupped my breast roughly and exhaled into my face.

  I began begging: “Please, leave me alone. Please, oh, please.”

  His face was only inches from mine; so close, all I could see were his dark, bloodshot eyes and all I could smell was his stale body odor. Then he let go of me and stood back a few steps. He seemed discouraged. “She is fucking real,” he said. “A goddamn dyke. Another fuckin’ dyke. Just what I need.” He took off his hat and wiped his forehead with his arm. The light caught his features, and I knew who he was.

  I said his name as it entered my mind: “Billy Witherspoon.”

  He blanched with surprise.

  We both heard a thud and a moan. Jerry stumbled forward with an empty expression on his face, falling into me, clutching at me, at my dress, my arms, and sank to the ground, tearing the fabric more. I glanced at the top of his head and saw blood flowing out the back of his skull. I pushed him away from me. Then another thud, wood against bone, and Billy stumbled sideways, buckling like a puppet whose strings had been snipped, landing on hands and knees in the middle of the alley. That’s when I saw him.

  The purple monster brought down the baseball bat, making contact with Billy’s back. Billy tried to brace himself as he fell forward, but the gesture was futile; he hit the pavement with his face. Henrita, whose own face was smeared with makeup and blood, heaved the baseball bat over his head again and slammed it into Billy’s back. I found myself screaming, begging him to stop. But he hit Billy again and again before his rage was spent.

  Henrita now looked more like a Henry. His wig lay in a puddle, and his eyeliner stained his face like soot. His dress was torn and drooped from his left shoulder like a shabby imperial toga. He held the baseball bat limply, and his chest was rising and falling with deep breaths. A cut above his left eye was streaming blood. I backed away from him. He took a sharp step toward me, holding the bat in front of him, and I let out a high-pitched yelp. He stopped and lowered it. For a moment, I realized he must’ve taken the bat from the brute who had chased us down the hall. That frightened me even more. I heard a muffled moan come from Jerry, and Henry tensed, gripping the bat with both hands. I continued backing away, noticing that both Teddie and the third thug had fled. Jerry uttered something unintelligible, and Henry advanced and kicked him in the side. The wounded man groaned and curled into a ball.

  “Stop!” I said. “Stop hitting him.”

  Henry looked at me and in a clear, deep voice, very sober, said, “They broke Tim’s nose. They broke his arm.”

  I was going to say something to him—a condolence or an admonishment, I’m not sure which—but before I could speak, we heard sirens.

  “We need to go,” he said, and we both ran down the alley, choosing to go opposite directions once we came to the street. I wrapped my ripped dress around me the best I could and headed through the darkness toward the hotel.

  The journey back to the Howard was a blur. Once I was in my room, with the door safely locked and chained, I fell on the bed. My body quaked with anxiety—and anger burned deep inside of me, but it wasn’t righteous anger. I wasn’t suddenly transformed by what I’d witnessed. That would take years of reflection. No, I was angry at the entire experience: Tim’s nonchalance, Teddie’s ridiculous impersonation of Dietrich, the thugs for their stupidity, Henry’s pathetic rage, Ceola for her worship of Jay,
and Jay—most of all, Jay—for being the boy Siren, beckoning to me and bashing my illusions on the rocks.

  I lay there for about thirty minutes, fuming, before I decided to take a shower. The warm water soothed my anger, and as my muscles loosened, I let myself cry. Afterward, wrapped in my towel and with hair still damp, I fell asleep, curled on top of the coverlet. I dreamed it was Jay who was in the alley, whose face appeared underneath the engineer’s cap. When he grabbed my breast and ripped my dress, I wanted him to keep doing it. I wanted him to push me against that wall and bite me on the neck and do what I knew Billy was about to do. But he stopped and stood back and smiled. I became furious, picked up the baseball bat, and hit him with it. It bounced off him as if he were made of hard rubber. He was still smiling. I hit him again, and he began laughing out loud. I hit him again and again until, surfacing from the dream, I realized my belligerence was in sequence with a knocking at my door.

  I got up, groggy and disoriented. Since my dress was in tatters, I put on the coat I bought at Woodies and cinched the waist with the belt to keep it closed. I smoothed my hair and called out, “Who is it?”

  A woman’s voice responded, “Miss Prescott?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is the concierge from downstairs.”

  “Yes.” I recognized her voice.

  “I have someone here who wants to speak with you.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Maybe you should open the door.”

  “No. Tell me who it is.”

  There was a brief silence, and then a lighter and vaguely Appalachian voice said, “Please let me in. I need to talk to you.”

  I cracked the door without removing the chain. The concierge stood a few feet away, still poised and bright-eyed for this late hour. She had on a dark green velveteen dress, black silk gloves, rhinestone earrings, and lipstick. She was a performer. Beside her, looking a bit anemic, was a pretty, slender woman, wearing pearls, a hat, and a dark dress. After fiddling with the chain, I let them in. The concierge held out her hand and said, “I’m Georgiana Gardner. Most people call me George. And this is Lily. We need to talk.”