Devil’s garden

3

Maude Delmont screamed for everyone to back the hell up and let the poor girl breathe. Roscoe just snorted at her, looking down at both of them huddled on the single bed like they were some kind of pathetic pair. And then the fat man had the nerve to walk right past the hotel dick and into the bathroom to refill his Scotch glass. Maude cradled the girl’s head in her lap and felt her forehead and told the dick to run find a doctor, rocking Virginia like you would a small child and breathing her drunk breath into her ear, “There, there, it will all be all right.” Virginia looked truly terrible, her green dress wringing wet, skin clammy, and eyes half closed.

“What s’matter with her?” the hotel dick asked.

“It’s a complex medical situation, sport,” Lowell Sherman said. “She’s plastered.”

“I better call the doc.”

“You want a drink first?” Lowell asked. Sherman already wearing a fresh pin-striped suit, hair pressed and neat, after Maude had let him have his way in the bathroom in room 1221.

The dick looked down at the sweating and moaning girl and shrugged. “Maybe she’ll sober up.”

Zey Prevon popped into the room and then came the other bobbed tart, her better-looking twin, that dark-eyed showgirl, Alice Blake. Alice said that her rehearsal at Tait’s Café had been canceled, but it didn’t matter because she could sing and dance the number in her sleep and didn’t care that much for the song anyway. “That’s why I try to mix it up a little bit in my mind. No one likes to hear a song when they know where the notes hit.”

“I like the standards,” Roscoe said, coming from the bath with a tall Scotch, Virginia’s little straw hat with long ribbon still cocked on his head. “I used to sing them for seventeen bucks a week at the Portola Theater. ‘By the light of the silvery moon.’ ”

“ ‘By the light. By the light.’ ” Alice perked up and copied his soft-shoe move, tap for tap.

Maude held Virginia, feeling her shaking body, and thinking how Virginia sure was a good egg. And she whispered to her, so light, like a child praying, “You’re doing great, sister.” She let go of Virginia’s head and tried to stand up, all those Scotches belting the hell out of her brain. But Maude found her feet, knowing she was in control the moment she felt her toes in the carpet and stood, using the nightstand that separated the two beds.

She wobbled over to Roscoe, parting the two showgirls and brushing by Al Semnacher with a sloppy wink, and shook her paw up at Roscoe, saying, “What did you do to her, you fat ape?”

“Nothing.”

“She’s not right. Can’t you see? Can’t you see?”

“I can see you’re a crazy nut who wasn’t invited. Either you get her out of my room or I’ll throw both of you out the window.”

Sherman stood in the doorway. He looked at Virginia and then back at Maude and dismissed it all with the flick of a wrist. “Let’s crank up the Victrola.”

Virginia started to mumble and then she shot up from the bed, screaming and yelling, eyes wide-open. Roscoe tossed the little hat from his head and threw open the hotel window and leaned outside for a fresh breath of air and then back in. “Would someone shut her up?”

The three girls ringed Virginia, and soon she stopped screaming and began to sob, dropping back prone to the bed and thrashing, tearing at her clothes, ripping away her dress and pleading for God to please help her. The girls held the torn shreds of her clothing, leaving Virginia in a cream-colored slip, and she calmed for a moment before thrashing again and tearing the silk away from her body.

“For Christsake,” Roscoe said.

In the other room, Luke started to howl. Roscoe put his hands over his ears.

Maude held Virginia down, pulling the tattered slip from her body and handing it to Alice, who threw it in the trash. Roscoe’s face flushed at the sight of the white skin and black patch of hair between her thighs, digging his heel into the carpet and turning away.

“Who invited any of you?” Roscoe asked. “Who invited you?”

Maude pulled the bobbed hair away from Virginia’s red mouth. The naked girl, really giving it her all, pretended like she was trying to breathe. But it all only came out in wet gasps, her skin feeling cooked and sticky. Maude could smell the warm, putrid scent of urine mixed with the sweet perfume and gin breath and heard the showgirls starting a bath. And when no one was looking, she pinched Virginia’s pink little nipple. “Listen. Listen to me.”

But Virginia just lay there. Maude pinched the nipple again.

“Wake up.”

Al watched it all and smiled, proud of his little actress, but his goofball haircut and those insanely thick glasses just made him look like a twit. Maude nodded over to the trash can, where Al reached inside for the silky torn slip and bloomers and tucked them into his pocket. He winked back at her.

Alice and Zey came back in the room, all bright smiles, and saying everything was going to be A-OK.

“Is she really in the pictures?” Alice asked.

Zey elbowed her like she was some kind of rube for asking.

“So?” Alice asked.

“Grab her feet,” Maude said, stumbling up, feeling sick herself, the world tilting a bit. Freddie Fishback was back in the room, the dark boy with a cigarette dangling from his lips, and he held Virginia’s arms while the showgirls held a leg each, Virginia, nude and suspended in space, wriggling like an alligator, as they carried her to the bathtub and plopped her in cold water, where she thrashed and cried and then slowly closed her eyes and nearly sunk beneath the lip of the tub.

She was awake then and moaning and sobbing, blood between her legs swirling in the water like a cloud.

When Maude walked back into the bedroom, Al Semnacher was gone. She ran from the room and down the long hallway to the elevators just in time to see the golden doors about to snap shut, a shit-eating grin on Al’s face, Virginia’s torn slip and bloomers in the breast pocket of his coat.

“Goddamnit,” Maude said.

“SO THEN WHAT HAPPENED?” Lowell Sherman asked.

“You were there. Or were you too drunk to recall?”

“Too drunk to call,” Lowell said. “That was yesterday.”

“Just why are you my friend again?”

“Because I bring a certain sophistication to the party.”

“That’s rich,” Roscoe said. “Thanks for reminding me.”

They watched the sun set over the hills of San Francisco, as the ferry made its way from the pier with a steady, slow wake, hugging the peninsula to the Pacific and then back south. Roscoe rolled a cigarette and leaned onto the ferry railing in the soft, perfect golden light. He removed the pair of leather gloves he’d donned while driving the Pierce-Arrow up the ramp and into storage below.

“I recall you and Freddie hoisting that poor girl up like a side of meat and taking her down the hall to another room.”

“I wanted her gone,” Roscoe said. “I was sick of all the foolishness, so I paid for another room.”

“She was pretty foolish,” Lowell said. “And silly, too. All that thrashing and moaning. No wonder she never had a part of distinction. Who brought her to Sennett’s?”

“Pathé.”

“Lehrman? What a gas.”

“Do you remember anything else?”

“I remember her lying on that bed completely nude and writhing around while those two drunk girls took turns trying to revive her. They were a hoot.”

“What else?”

“I remember the ice.”

Roscoe looked away and at the narrow little pass from the bay to the Pacific. “You know they’re planning to build a bridge right over the Golden Gate,” Roscoe said.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Lowell said. “You don’t want me to talk about the ice?”

“I was trying to snap her out of it.”

“With the ice?”

“Sure,” Roscoe said. “A physician told me that once.”

“Hell of a place to put a piece of ice.”

“What does it matter? It didn’t work anyway.”

The ferry chugged out past Alcatraz and down around the Presidio, heading toward the Gate and the fading western light. The men smoked some more and tossed their cigarette butts into the churning wake behind them. The sun looked like a golden skillet.

“I didn’t do a thing to that girl,” Roscoe said. “I swear to it.”

“You don’t need to.”

“Where is she?”

“Some hospital. What does it matter? It’s over now. And there’s always the Fairmont.”

“She called me a beast.”

“Who’s that?”

Roscoe flicked his last cigarette over the railing as the Harvard found the narrow pass, feeling safe and warm and moist, but cold as they hit the ocean.

“The Delmont woman. You know her?”

“She took advantage of me in the bathroom before all hell broke loose.”

Roscoe laughed, the ferry humming along under him, taking in a big breath of sea air and watching as a seagull kept up with them above. He squinted up at the bird looping and flying above the ferry and smiled. “If he makes it to L.A., I’ll take him home with me. Buy him a big fish dinner.”

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Go down and rest.”

“I don’t like boats.”

“You’d rather we drive back?”

“All that booze. I’ll never touch the stuff again.”

“You betcha,” Roscoe said, winking at him. “Me neither.”

Roscoe crooked his head, popping the collar on his Norfolk jacket, just like those the pilots wore in the war only double-sized. He scanned the horizon for the seagull, catching sight of him by the bow before he tilted off, slowing his wings and riding the wind back to the city.

“Do you think I’m better than Chaplin?”

“Of course, old boy,” Lowell said. “That prissy little Englishman stole half of what he knows from you.”

“You see the papers? They tore the clothes off him in London. Women faint when he passes by. I remember when he had to borrow my wardrobe at Sennett’s and I’d have to coach him through every gesture. The big shoes, the bowler? He borrowed those.”

“You’re better.”

“You seen Gasoline Gus?”

“No.”

“Don’t bother.”

“Don’t fret about the girl, sport. It’s all over.”

The gull overhead had gone, breaking away in the fading soft light for the coast, the wake of the Harvard churning south.

SAM STAYED IN BED all week, but he suddenly woke up long before day-break Saturday and turned to his pregnant wife, saying he was feeling much better now.

“And your skull?” Jose asked.

“Still soft.”

Jose pulled the covers up to her chin and turned on a bare shoulder, light spilling in from the streetlamps off Eddy. “Back to normal.”

Sam found his feet and the bathroom, his clothes and then his cap and laced boots, and he was walking toward Union Square, feeling good walking again, with his hands in his pockets, in and out of the foggy mist, and toward Powell at two a.m., loving the feeling of being in a city and the action and movement even in the middle of the night. Back in Maryland, people ate dinner, said their prayers, and went to bed at eight o’clock.

There was an all-night drugstore called the Owl on the ground floor of the Flood Building right below the Pinkerton offices on Market Street. At the counter, he ordered a cup of coffee and dry toast and smoked four Fatima cigarettes, feeling like a solid citizen again.

“You still working on that book?” Sam asked the girl refilling his cup of coffee. He couldn’t remember her name for the life of him. But he knew it was a double name, like a farmer would give a daughter.

“You know it,” she said. “And every college professor in America is going to read it.”

“That a fact?”

“You betcha,” she said. “Do you know how many times I’ve sat here at this counter and asked myself the question, Are human beings human?”

“Well, are they?”

“They’s gonna be a chapter on Fresh Guys, too. Being a Fresh Guy is sort of a habit, wouldn’t you agree? I guess I don’t know whether it’s got a cure or not, but I sure know how to diagnose one. Then they’s gonna be a chapter about Finicky Birds. They was born suspicious of food. They stand around weighing the merits of the crab salad against Irish stew until you want to call the Disarmament Conference in to decide the question. They usually finishes by ordering a glass of milk and a yeast cake.”

Sam listened and drank his coffee. He liked people-common people-the way they talked and reasoned with things. He smiled at the girl. Not because she was pretty, because she surely wasn’t, with big lips and eyes and teeth like a rake.

“You sure you don’t want no eggs?”

He shook his head.

“You should eat some eggs or hash or something. You’re the thinnest man I’ve ever seen.”

Sam’s stomach grumbled, one of his last quarters by the saltshaker.

“You been around, hadn’t you?” she asked.

“Some.”

“Some? Some, I bet. You look like you been around plenty. You’re not from around here. I can tell. You got the look like you’re passing through. Where’d you come from?”

“Tacoma.”

“Before that?”

“Seattle.”

“Before that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Baltimore. Spent some time in Montana.”

“Yeah, what’d you do in Tacoma?”

“Lay around a Vet hospital.”

“You in the war?”

“I was gonna drive an ambulance but came down with the Spanish.”

“What you do now?”

“I’m a fortune-teller.”

“Get outta town.”

Sam nodded. The waitress with the double name smiled with her eyes and tucked a pencil behind her ear. She pressed her butt against the counter and crossed her arms over her little chest.

“Hey, I ain’t even told you about my chapter on Economical Janes yet, but it’s going to be a rich one. You want to hear about it?”

Sam looked around. There was an old guy in a corner booth watching a conductor turn the cable car around on Powell. It took three men to turn a cable car on its big swivel, but the mass of it all finally made it and locked, and then the men wiped their hands on their pants from grime and work. The diner was bare except for the short-order cook, who’d fallen asleep on a barstool, a cigarette burning between his fingers.

The wall clock read two o’clock.

“Hey, you make much money telling fortunes?”

“Depends on the fortune. If I tell a fat woman she’s about to meet a prince, I get a nice chunk of change. If I see that a rich fella is about to be down on his luck, I might get a nickel.”

“So why don’t you just lie?”

“Professionalism.”

“Get outta town.”

Sam shrugged.

A newsboy came in off the street, not more than twelve, in knickers and vest and small newsboy cap and all smiles and young muscle, hefting a thick stack of the Examiner tied tight with string. He wiped his brow with his forearm and called the waitress over with a “Hey, sister” and sat there at the counter and drank coffee with his two little hands around the mug, warming himself before cutting his eyes over at Sam.

“What’s the news?” Sam asked.

“Give me a nickel and I’ll tell you.”

Sam reached into his vest pocket and popped a nickel off his thumb. The boy caught it in midair and tucked it into his apron. “Ole Fatty Arbuckle has gotten himself in a pinch.”

“The actor?”

“The fat bastard who falls down and gets shot in the ass. He was giving some broad the high hard one at the St. Francis and the damn girl got crushed from the weight. Doesn’t that beat all? The cops arrested him at midnight and have him behind bars at the Hall of Justice.”

The boy cut open the stack of papers and proudly popped open a fresh edition announcing s.F. BOOZE PARTY KILLS YOUNG ACTRESS.

The boy walked over and laid down the paper, and Sam read through the first few paragraphs, getting the gist, as the boy slurped down his coffee and adjusted the cap on his head. He winked at the waitress, pushing out of the door with the papers. The bell overhead jingled as he left.

“Yes, sir. It’s going to be a banner day.”

THE WORD OF THE ARBUCKLE ARREST was passed from cop reporter to editor to managing editor until the news reached The Chief himself in a whisper from his personal valet, George. George leaned into the ear of William Randolph Hearst just as the wine had been poured at the center of a big round soundstage at Paramount. Mr. Hearst had asked for the set to be cleared for the night and now he was finally alone at the table, a big, solid affair, the kind of table that would befit King Henry VIII himself, with his big turkey legs and goblets and wine and lusty wenches by his side.

The picture was to be called When Knighthood Was in Flower.

Mr. Hearst liked big, sprawling historical numbers. On the set, he was sure that every penny had gone into making sure that the era was re-created just so. Even the food on the table was real, but he’d yet to eat, still waiting for the picture’s star, Miss Davies, to join him. But the news had stopped the service of the meal, Miss Davies still getting out of her makeup, and he told George to please wait for him outside.

“I have something to cable San Francisco.”

Mr. Hearst pushed the big wooden chair back and stood, wiping the wine from his mouth, and walked from one end of the table to the other, and then over to the second set, the bedroom, where that fat actor, Lyn Harding, would play out his scenes with Miss Davies as Mary Tudor.

This was the third adaptation of the book. The first two pictures never got the feel of the story. The bigness of it all. The other productions looked like a school play, not life.

“W.R.?”

He turned to see Marion Davies, in a silk robe and no shoes, shuffle out onto the soundstage, bare of makeup, with a big, broad smile on her face. She turned to the spread on the table. “C-can we really eat there? Real f-food and all?”

She was playing a Brit, but her accent was all Brooklyn between the stutters. Good thing you couldn’t hear people talk in pictures.

“We can do whatever we want. Isn’t it marvelous? Look at this place. It’s another world.”

Miss Davies screwed up her face and looked at Mr. Hearst as if he’d gone nuts.

“The set, I mean. It’s another world. Can’t you just feel the castle and the giant hall. I mean, we’re really here.”

“We’re in Hollywood, W.R.”

“Close your eyes,” he said.

She stood in that little silk robe that barely covered her knees and closed her eyes just as Mr. Hearst had said.

“And concentrate on the olden times.”

“When knighthood was a f-flower.”

“When knighthood was in flower.”

“Of c-course.”

“We must go to Europe,” Mr. Hearst said. “You can put your hands on the old stones and feel the music resonate.”

“W.R.?”

“Yes, dear.”

“I s-sure am hungry. C-can we eat?”

“Sure thing.”

Miss Davies sat alone at the end of that big table and pulled off the leg of the turkey and wrapped her other hand around a jeweled goblet of wine.

Mr. Hearst paced.

His feet made cavernous clicking noises, and he moved back and forth and back and forth, and then forward, toward the big set for tomorrow’s scene at the Tower of London. He leaned into the fake brick wall-just plaster-and felt for the shackles that hung there, thinking of what George had told him, and he whistled for George, and George, knowing what a whistle meant, came running with a writing tablet in hand, ready to cable the Examiner offices. The story would be fed to the Hearst wires, cabling from coast to coast and around the globe.

“A virgin. A star of tomorrow. A waif.”

George wrote down the words.

“And Arbuckle. A bloated beast. Three hundred and fifty pounds and lecherous and thirsty. An absolute animal.”

“The girl?”

“A simple insect drawn into the spider’s web.”

“Do you want a drawing of that, sir?”

“George, you are a smart one,” Mr. Hearst said. “You should be the one running the newspapers.”

“I do my best.”

“Make sure the spider has the bloated face of the man and that they have plenty of booze bottles in the web.”

“Yes, sir.”

The air was thin and cold, and the only sound came from electric fans blowing away the heat from the stage lights. But there was a feel to the set, the props became real in shadow, and, in the camera’s eye, everything came into focus.