Legs (20 page)

"I'm talkin' to a dead man," Jimmy said.

"Dead men pay no debts, Jimmy."

"Keep lookin' for me," Jimmy said.

"Watch yourself crossing the street," Jack
said.

These were atrocious melodramatics, and I would not
give them the time of day, despite my trust in Fogarty, except that
when Jimmy and his friends left the Monticello and walked down West
Sixty-fourth Street, a car came in their direction at low speed and
two shotgun blasts from a back window blew apart two of Jimmy's
shooters. Jimmy and the other two escaped with only a certain loss of
dignity.

Count Duschene later
remembered Jack's reaction when he heard the news: "Mustache
cocksuckers. Fast as you knock 'em off they bring in another
boatload." The rest of the news came out in the morning paper:
Murray, with six bullets in him, was not yet dead.

* * *

Kiki said that the positively worst time of her life
was when she was hiding at Madge's apartment and the knock came on
the door and Madge turned to her and said, "Get in the bedroom
and hide." So she went first behind Madge's big Morris chair,
but then she said to herself, Gee, they'd look here right away, and
so she started to roll under Madge's canopy bed with the beaded
curtain, but then she said to herself, 'Won't they look under here,
too'? And so she stood in the closet behind Madge's summer and winter
dresses and coats until she realized that anybody opening the door
would look right through the hangers into her great big beautiful
brown eyes, and so she took Madge's dyed muskrat everybody thought
was mink off the wooden hanger and covered herself with it and rolled
into the smallest ball she could make out of herself and faced the
wall with her rounded back to the door so they would think the coat
had fallen off the hanger on top of a pile of shoes and little boxes
and galoshes. And then they'd go away. Yes. Go away. Let me alone.

Right then, Kiki would have said if anyone had asked
her, she ordinarily didn't like to be alone. But now it was quite
necessary, for she had to figure out what she was going to do with
her life. She never had to hide in a closet before, ever. Jack's
fault. Her fault too for staying with him, waiting for him. She had
decided to leave him for good, truly leave this time and not just go
back into show business or take a train home to Boston with her mad
money. No. This was the end. Nothing on earth could make her stay
with Jack Diamond for another day because he truly did kill people.

She had read all the news stories when he was in
Europe, but she didn't read past the parts where they began to say
things about him. She'd just throw the papers in the bottom of her
closet for Jack because she knew how he loved to save clippings about
himself. And what a big stack it got to be! She didn't even read any
of the long series of articles they wrote about him because the first
one began by calling him Eggs Diamond. Because eggs are yellow. And
though she knew Jack wasn't yellow, she didn't really know what color
he was. She didn't know anything really deep about him except what he
said and what she wanted him to say and what he said was "You're
gorgeous in my life" and "You're the most beautiful thing
in the world. I deserve you." And she said to that, "And I
deserve you, too." And they went into their silk cocoon then.
Her warm bed with the pink silk sheets and her white silk nightgown
and Jack in his yellow silk pajamas with the green dragon on them,
and slowly they took the silk off one another and just smothered
themselves in the cocoon and fucked and fucked and fucked. And when
they were all through they went to sleep and woke up, and then they
fucked and fucked some more and took a shower and went to see Jolson
again in Mummy, and had dinner and came back to the cocoon, and
didn't they fuck even more? They certainly did. Oh, wasn't that the
cat's knickers? Vo-de-oh-do! There was never anything like that in
her life before Jack, though she knew about fucking all right, all
right. But fucking is one thing and fucking with Jack was another
thing altogether. It was not the glitter. Sometimes when you fucked
it was just to get something or because you thought you ought to or
because you liked his looks and he was nice to you and it was
expected of you and you wanted to do what was expected. It was your
role to fuck men who were nice because you're only young once, isn't
that so? Isn't that why you wanted to be in the glitter dream? To
glitter by yourself? And what better way to glitter than to fuck
whenever you felt like it? Fuck the best people, the most beautiful
people. Do you like to fuck? Oh, I love it, don't you?

But then she met Jack and she didn't want anybody but
him. Now it wasn't just liking to fuck. It was liking to fuck Jack.
And it was feeling wanted and taken and also taking and also wanting,
which was the key to the thing that changed in her. She wanted in a
new way. Jack taught her that. She wanted not just for the moment or
the hour or the day, but she wanted permanently.

"We'll always live in the cocoon, won't we?"

"Sure, kid."

"We'll make love even when you're seventy-five,
won't we?"

"No, kid. I'm not going to live to be
seventy-five. I didn't expect to make it to thirty-three."

And that changed her again. She wanted him and wanted
what he gave her forever and ever, but now she had to think about
outliving him, of this maybe being that last time she would ever put
her arms around him and bite his ear and play with his candy cane
because then he might get up and get dressed and go out and die.
Well, then she wanted him more than ever. She didn't know why. She
just called it love because that's what everybody else called it. But
it wasn't only that, because now she wanted not just Jack himself but
Jack who was going to die. She wanted to kiss and fuck somebody who
was going to die. Because when he died, then you had something nobody
else could ever get again.

And then Jimmy Biondo came and talked to her and she
said she didn't believe what he said about Jack being so awful. But
she went and read all the papers she was saving in the closet and oh,
the things they said that Jack did all his life, and she couldn't
believe her eyes because they were so awful, so many killings and
torturing people and burning prostitutes with cigarettes. Oh, oh, oh!
And so she knew then she would leave him. She knew it and she knew it
and she knew it all Saturday night even after he came to her room and
they went into the cocoon killing the bad things. She forgot while
that was happening that she was going to leave him, for how can you
leave a person when they're making you forget the bad things? But
when it was over she remembered and when she went to sleep alongside
him she thought of it and she was still thinking about it when she
woke up and saw him drinking the orange juice he'd ordered for them
both, with toast and eggs and coffee and a steak for him, and she
thought of it while he ate the steak in his blue pajamas with the red
racehorses on them. I am seeing you eat your last piece of steak. I
am seeing you wear your last pajamas. She would kill him in her mind
and that would be the end of Jack Diamond for Marion Roberts. So
long, Jackie boy. I loved your candy. Gee it was swell. But you're
dead now for me. You're mine forever. Marion Roberts is not going to
go on living her life as a gangster's doll, a gangster's moll. Marion
Roberts is her own woman and she is not going to live for fucking.
She is not going to live for any one man. She is not going to live
for killing because she knows better. She knows how good life is and
how hard it is to make life good. She's going to move on to something
else. She can go on dancing. She will find a way to live out her life
without gangster Jackie.

But then she wondered: What is it about a gangster
like him'? Why did I take up with him? Why didn't I believe what
everybody said about him, that I might wind up in the river, that I
might get shot in bed with him, that he might ruin my face if he ever
caught me cheating? Because gangsters are evil and don't care about
anybody but themselves. Why didn't she believe those things? Because
she wanted it all out of life, all all all there was to get. The top,
the tip, the end, the reach, the most, the greatest, the flashiest,
the best, the biggest, the wildest, the craziest, the worst.

Why did Kiki want the worst? Because she was a
criminal too? A criminal of love? Birds of a feather, Marion. You
knew even as you were saying that you were leaving him that you
wouldn't leave. You knew as you read about the torture he did and the
killing he did that you wouldn't give him up because you knew about
the other side of that glorious man, with his candy up in your sweet
place and his mouth on yours. You wouldn't give that up. Even when
those men came to the hotel this morning and Jack went to meet them
and said to them while you were lying there in the half-empty cocoon,
even when he said: "Hello, boys, how are you? Be right with
you," and said to you that he'd only be a few minutes, and that
he had some business to finish up, and went out in the hallway still
in his blue pajamas with the red racehorses and the darker blue robe
with the white sash and the white diamond embroidered on the breast
pocket, even then you knew.

You got up and went into
the shower and you let it smother you like you smothered him and you
were standing in that sweet heat after love in the morning when you
heard the shots: two, four, six, then none, then three more and
another and another and another. And you froze in all that
heat because you said to yourself (Oh, God forgive
you for saying it), you said: That murdering bastard, he's killed
somebody else.

* * *

Later, when she started to dance, she remembered
looking at her feet and said to herself: These are going to be the
most famous legs on Broadway. And she danced on that for live minutes
to the piano man's rippling repetition of a tune of four-four tempo
whose name she couldn't remember any more than she could remember the
piano man's name or the director's name or the name of the musical
itself. Black mesh stockings enveloped her most famous legs. White
trunks covered her most famous hips. A white blouse tied at the
midriff covered her most famous breasts. And black patent leather tap
shoes covered her most famous toes, which nobody realized yet were
famous. She thought of how people would behave when they found out
how famous they were and tried to let that thought crowd out the
rest. But she couldn't. Because her mind went back to what it was
that was going to make her toes so famous and she stopped dancing,
seeing it all again, seeing herself see it this time and knowing she
was webbed in something that wasn't even going to be possible to get
out of. So she looked at the piano man and then at the director, and
while the other girls went on dancing, she decided to fall down.

The next thing she knew she was sitting at her mirror
with all her theatrical makeup on the table in front of her, and the
calico kitten Jack had won for her at the Coney Island shooting
gallery, all cuddly and sleepy in the middle of the table. In the
mirror she saw Madge Conroy sitting on a chair beside her, and
Bubble, the chorus boy who had helped Madge pick her off the floor.
They both stared at her.

"She finally blinked," Bubble said.

"You all right?" Madge asked.

"Close your eyes, for heaven's sake,"
Bubble said, "before they explode all over us."

The mirror was outlined by a dozen bare bulbs, all
illuminating her face, so famous to be, so unknown to even its own
exploding eyes. Why aren't you running away, pretty lady in the
brilliant mirror? What brought you to the theater? Is it that you
don't know what to be afraid of yet? Do you think the theater will
protect you? Do you think the mirror will?

Bubble said, "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's
got the Kikiest eyes of all?"

"Shut up," Madge said, "and get her a
drink someplace. " Madge rubbed Kiki's wrists as Bubble went
away.

"Oh, Madge, I just got to talk to somebody."

"I had a hunch you did. I kept watching you
dancing out there. You looked like somebody kidnapped your brain.
Like a zombie. "

"Honest to God, Madge, it's something awful.
It's so awful."

Bubble came back with an unlabeled half-pint. Madge
grabbed it and looked at it, smelled it and poured Kiki a drink. She
capped the bottle, set it on Kiki's table, and told Bubble, "Will
you please, please, please get lost?"

"What's the matter with her?"

"I'll find out if you let us be."

"Yes, nursie."

"You oughta be rehearsing out there," Kiki
said to Madge.

"They can do without me. I know the routine."

"It was so awful. Honest to God, this is the
worst thing that ever happened to me."

"What? What the hell happened?"

"I can't tell you here. Can we go someplace? I
don't know what to do, Madge. Honest to God I don't."

"We can go over to my apartment. Change your
clothes."

But it took so much effort for Kiki to take off her
trunks that she left on the rest, her mesh stockings and the
rehearsal blouse and only put on her skirt and street shoes. She
threw her other street clothes and the trunks and tap shoes into her
red patent-leather hatbox and saw, as she did, her street makeup and
her purse, the only things she took when she ran out of the hotel.