Buster Midnight's Cafe (9 page)

“Well,” Vic said. “I, ah, wanted to thank you for helping us out back there and ask if there’s some place besides the Finlen where a man can get coffee and invite you to join me. As a way of saying thanks. Or maybe you’d like lunch?”

“Coffee would be fine,” and May Anna gave him her hand-over-the-mouth smile. One thing you had to say for May Anna was she wasn’t a gold digger. Too smart, Whippy Bird says, and maybe that’s so. Too smart to try to take old Vic for lunch when she was going for something bigger. Still, May Anna never tried to get anything from me and Whippy Bird when we were kids. Or Buster either. She never had Buster buy her jewelry and sweaters and perfume, and she could have. He’d have bought her anything she wanted.

May Anna brought Vic down to Gamer’s, where I was working, and she sat right down at my booth, giving me a kind of warning look so I wouldn’t say anything. I’d gotten used to May Anna bringing in johns. I knew better than to give her away. “Good afternoon,” I said to her. 1 sounded like a Butte girl putting on airs instead of fancy like May Anna, so I cut out the high-toned talk and turned to Vic and said, “Hiya.” He sat next to May Anna on the seat even though most people sit across from each other. He was a big man, so May Anna was pushed into the corner.

Vic ordered two coffees, but May Anna asked if I would be so good as to bring her tea instead. “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Coming right up.”

Before I left she held out her little hand to Vic and introduced herself. “My name is Marion Street,” which was another high sign to me that she was on the job and not to give her away. When she wasn’t working, she was still May Anna Kovaks.

Vic shook her hand like it was a piece of ice and said, “Pleased to meet ya, Marion. You live in this burg? You seem too fancy to hang out in a dump like this.”

May Anna knew I would jump in at something like that since me and Whippy Bird have always been proud of Butte. “Lemon, if you please,” May Anna said to me, giving me the scoot sign with her hand.

So I scooted, and when I came back with their order, May Anna was telling him about the history of Butte and all the society families, just like she was from a mansion over on West Broadway instead of a Centerville fourplex.

“So what do you do besides walk down streets?” Vic asked her.

“Oh, this and that.” May Anna was not going to tell him that “this” was hookering, and so was “that.”

“And you don’t want to be in the movies?”

“I just was.”

“Oh, that. That’s just a newsreel. It’ll end up on the cutting room floor.”

May Anna pouted.

“I guess I could look into it. Sometimes these things can be arranged. After all, I’m in charge here, see.”

May Anna brightened.

“So, you don’t want to be in the movies?” Vic said again, like a stuck seventy-eight rpm record.

“It would be fun, of course …”

“Aha. I knew it.”

“But you hear such awful things about actresses.”

“Like what?” Vic was starting to leer.

“Like loose morals.”

“Nooo,” he drew out the word like he was shocked.

“I’m not a prude, but …” May Anna waved her hand. She squeezed the lemon in her tea, but it squirted in Vic’s eye, so she pulled out a lace handkerchief and told him to look up while she wiped his eye. He looked down inside her blouse instead. May Anna saw him do that, and she decided it was time to move in. “How does one become an actress?”

I wondered how Vic could believe anybody was that dumb, but he was hooked. I moved all my checks to the counter across from May Anna and pretended to add them up so I could listen, but I could have stared flat out for all the attention he paid me. Even from there, staring across the stand of fudge brownies with lemon icing all piled up, I could see his eyes glisten.

He licked his lips and put his hand over May Anna’s. “I could try you out. You know, give you a screen test, see.”

“But I just had one.”

“Where?” He sounded suspicious.

“Right out there on the street.”

“Oh, that.” He’d moved his hand up her arm. By then poor May Anna was sitting in about six inches of space. “Why, honey, we have to see if you can read lines. Then we got to photograph your face and your body.” He leered at May Anna’s chest and reached up to unbutton her blouse. That is not proper behavior in Gamer’s Confectionery, and I was ashamed for May Anna.

May Anna could take care of herself, though. She put her little white hand up to her blouse and gave old Vic such a nasty look that he backed off. He slid back so far on the seat, he almost fell on the floor. I had to hold my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing, it was that funny. I was afraid I’d mess things up for May Anna, but nothing could keep me from hearing the end of this.

“Sorry, honey,” he said.

May Anna gave him her little smile, and he cheered up. “I’m not trying to offend you or anything,” Vic said. “The thing is, you’re a pretty girl, and we like to photograph pretty girls in low-cut dresses. You know how it is.”

May Anna was still smiling, and Vic kept on going. “Maybe it would be better if we was to find a place in private. You know, this joint ain’t the sort of place to talk over business. I could explain to you what we need and maybe take some pictures. You might have a real future in the movies.”

She thought that over for a minute then nodded. “Where?” she asked.

“You got a place? Or maybe you live with your folks. We could go to the hotel. Yeah, that’s a good place. I got a room there. Real private. We could talk, ya know. You don’t mind taking off your blouse, do you? So I can see how you’d look in a bathing suit.”

For a long time, May Anna just looked at Vic until he flushed and these little drops of sweat popped out on his forehead and the top of his head, where it was bald. Finally, May Anna gave him her best come-on look and tilted her head. “Of course not, the price is the same.”

“Huh?” Vic said. “We don’t pay for screen tests.”

“Same price,” May Anna repeated. “Ten dollars. Your hotel room or my place—Nell Nolan’s in Venus Alley.”

I thought Vic would drop his teeth, which May Anna said he might have done because they weren’t his. Then he started laughing and pounding on the table. “A hooker!” He was so loud that I was glad for May Anna’s sake the place was almost empty. “You sure fooled me, honey.”

“In advance,” May Anna said.

Vic got up, still laughing, and May Anna put out her hand, just like a lady, so he could help her up. “Here I thought you were after a screen test,” Vic said.

“I am,” May Anna said. “I just proved to you I can act.”

Vic slapped her on the backside and shook his head. “You sure can do that, toots.”

They were almost out the door before I realized he hadn’t paid the check. “Sir,” I called. “You forgot this.” They stopped, and I handed him the bill. It was twenty cents. When he reached in his pocket, May Anna whispered to him. I don’t know what she said, but he handed me a ten-dollar bill and told me to keep the change.

May Anna never told me and Whippy Bird much about what went on in that hotel room, but we didn’t have to be too smart to figure it out. The next morning, when she came up for air, she told us that Vic was just like a Shawn O’Farrell: every time he had the main event, he wanted a chaser. Me and Whippy Bird and May Anna had a big laugh over that. Even though Vic turned out to be Victor Moskovy, the famous director who you’ve heard of, we always called him Shawn.

When May Anna got back to Venus Alley, Nell Nolan was sore that she’d skipped out on the night’s business, leaving Mrs. Nolan shorthanded or whatever you call it, with all those important people in town. She threatened to fire May Anna, but it was too late. May Anna had come back to get her things. She told Nell Nolan that Vic was taking her to Hollywood on the North Coast Limited.

Nell Nolan tried to talk her out of it. “He’s just using you,” she said. “You’ll never be a movie star, Mrs. Midnight. He’ll throw you aside for somebody else, and you’ll be a marked woman.”

“So what’s different from Butte?” May Anna asked, and Nell Nolan had to admit she was right.

May Anna came to tell us first thing. Old Shawn was busy that night so she treated me and Whippy Bird to a farewell dinner at the Pekin Noodle Parlor, which was one of our favorites because it had little private rooms with shower curtains in the door so we could giggle and talk without anybody listening. Me and Whippy Bird still go there for the sweet-and-sour shrimp, shrimp chow mein, and shrimp fried rice, which is a number eight and costs $6.75, including tea and soup.

May Anna was excited, and so were me and Whippy Bird, but we were sad, too.

“Here’s to the Unholy Three,” Whippy Bird said, holding up her cup of green tea, which we had mixed with gin from a bottle May Anna brought. We all carried big purses back then when we went out.

“Holy, holy, holy,” May Anna said, drinking up. “Jesus, I hate tea.”

“The end of the Unholy Three, you mean,” I said.

“The hell with that,” May Anna said. “There’ll never be an end to the Unholy Three. Till death do us part.” She took another drink.

Whippy Bird stuck her head outside the shower curtain and called the waiter. “Would you be so kind as to bring more tea?” We all giggled.

“Have you told Buster?” I asked.

May Anna stopped talking and looked into her cup. It was one of those round ones without a handle. Today, the Pekin serves tea in coffee cups and gives you stainless-steel knives and forks so you don’t have to use chopsticks and spill food down the front of your dress. You get saltines in cellophane packages with your soup, too. Back then, though, we had real teacups from China. Back then, also, you had your Chinamen working in the noodle parlors instead of divorced mothers with kids to support.

“No,” she said at last, and I had to ask, “No, what?” because she took so long I’d forgotten I’d asked her a question. “No. I haven’t told Buster. How could I? Buster and Toney are in Great Falls all week. They won’t be back till Sunday.”

Me and Whippy Bird didn’t say anything. After all, that was May Anna’s business. “It’s got nothing to do with Buster anyway. I can do what I want. I don’t have to ask Buster.”

“That’s surely true,” I said.

“He’d try to talk me out of it, and it’s none of his business.”

“That’s not what this is about,” Whippy Bird said. “It’s about your saying good-bye to Buster.”

May Anna was eating pork fried rice, trying to pick out the pieces of pork from the rice with her chopsticks. “I know, damn it. I can’t face Buster. I’d rather sneak out of town than face Buster.”

“Buster loves you,” I said.

May Anna put down her chopsticks. “I know he does. I love Buster, too. I don’t love him as much as he loves me, though, and I’ll never love him enough to stay here in Butte. I’ll never love anybody that much. Now’s my chance, and I’m not going to let Buster stop me.”

“He wouldn’t stop you,” Whippy Bird said. “Buster would let you do anything you wanted. Buster McKnight would die for you.”

“You ought to tell him. Even if you write him a letter,” I said.

“I know. But what would I say?” Me and Whippy Bird shrugged. “You write it. You’d know what to say. Please.”

“Buster would know we wrote it,” Whippy Bird told her.

“No he wouldn’t. Please. I don’t want Buster to be hurt.” She had tears in her eyes. We knew they weren’t real, but if she cared enough to try to fool us, how could we say no?

So that is how come me and Whippy Bird wrote that letter to Buster the next day. We worked on it a long time. It wasn’t very good, but it was better than not getting a letter at all. This is what it said:

Buster, darling, I have an opportunity to go to Hollywood. Don’t

follow me. We’ll be together someday. Wish me luck. I love you.

Love

May Anna

P.S. I hope you win the Great Falls fight.

We didn’t want to let May Anna go, but she said she had to meet Shawn at the hotel. The Chinaman brought our bill and three fortune cookies, and we took turns reading them. Whippy Bird’s said:
FORTUNE IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER.
Ha! Whippy Bird never did get a fortune. Mine said:
TONIGHT IS FOR LOVE,
which wasn’t true either, since I went home by myself and didn’t see Pink for almost a week.

Then May Anna broke open her cookie:
COMES PLEASURE, FOLLOWS PAIN.
May Anna laughed and handed her fortune to me. “You keep it, Effa Commander. I’m not going to pay any attention to a fortune like that.” I kept it as a memento of May Anna. It’s in my memory box.

Me and Whippy Bird walked her over to the hotel and left her. That’s when it sunk in that May Anna was going away, maybe for good. We never thought about the Unholy Three being separated before. We were going to miss our best friend. Along with that, we were feeling bad about telling Buster May Anna was gone. Me and Whippy Bird decided we couldn’t let him find out from just anybody. He was our friend, and we owed it to him to tell him first ourselves. So we hung around outside by Buster’s house all day Sunday, waiting for him to come home from Great Falls, listening to the train whistles and thinking about May Anna going farther and farther away. When their car came down the street late that afternoon, Buster saw us right off and gave us the victory sign from the open window. “Hey, I won! Let’s go celebrate!”

Me and Whippy Bird jumped up on the running board before he even got the door open and hugged him. Then Toney got out of the car, and we hugged him, too.

“We’ll pick up May Anna and go over to the Rocky Mountain. She don’t work Sunday.”

“This dope made me drive seventy miles an hour to get here. We could of got ourselves killed.” Toney stopped when he saw we were not smiling. “What’s up, kiddos?”

Me and Whippy Bird each hoped the other would tell, but the quiet was deafening. “May Anna’s gone,” we finally blurted out together.

“She take a little vacation?” Toney asked. Buster just stared.

“She went to Hollywood,” Whippy Bird said. “She’s going to have a screen test.”

“Oh, hell…” That’s all Toney could get out of his mouth before Buster turned and stomped into the house.