The Age of Cities (17 page)

“Here, this nectar will cure what ails you.” Johnny handed the tall glass to Winston.
Love bloomed like a flower, and then the petals fell,
sang Miss Washington.

They clinked glasses. “Salut,” Johnny said.

“To your health,” Winston said, and took a trial sip. The cocktail was tangy yet sweet, just as Johnny had promised, and yet had no kick.

The Earl offered to take the Black Prince on a tour of the kingdom, to study the lay of the land and meet the little people.

Winston in tow, he started toward the balcony. “We'll take a gander at the highlights as well as the lowlights,” he said.

 

 

Parked in a corner near the balcony, a hairy man wore a belted bathing suit and nothing else. He had apparently brought his own nylon strap lawn chair from which to view the room. Straining its aluminum frame, cocktail resting on his abdomen, he was none other than a tubby Hogarth grotesque or a figure of horror in a wax museum. But animated, an automaton. Winston did not have to guess; he'd just seen the photo on the door. The man's pale eraser nipples leapt out from an inky mat of hair. Winston's eyes were captivated and appalled by the man's companion, who, he knew, might instigate a stampede in the light of day. Deplorable. Here, the infamous protégé was dressed in a short indigo blue kimono kept loosely tied to reveal a bikini, navy blue with yellow polka dots; a fine line of downy hair ran along the soft thin torso. The bikini top was not stuffed and the bottom bulged. The combination was obscene, Winston thought, indecent. As brazen and unnatural as Nero, the fat man rested his hand on his date's hairy and sinewy thigh. Swallowing a titter, Winston chided himself for his lack of sophistication: clearly, no one else saw the scene as untoward.

“Miss Aadland here finds our bustling city by the sea something of a bore,” Johnny said to Winston.

“Well, it's no Beverly Hills, I suppose,” Winston nodded, sipping eagerly from his cocktail. He was examining the bright yellow strands of wool she wore as hair, and the garish makeup: its over-emphatic colours—pink pearl lips, a rouge orb on each cheek, a dark flock of summertime freckles—were a cartoon of a teenaged girl.

The couple had been speaking to a man with a camera hanging from his neck. He'd turned to Essex and the Black Prince as they came close and blinded them for an instant with the bulb's white flash. “Greetings, gentlemen, Bill McBride, Ace Detective Agency,” he'd said, holding out his hand. “The alarmed parents of a certain young lady have hired me to keep an eye out….”

 

 

“You know, honey, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.”

Bette Davis, in a hoop skirt, pouting and spoiled as she had played it in
Jezebel
, was explaining why she'd bothered to make an appearance. A moment before, Winston, feeling looser now that he was nearly finished his second Judy Canova Collins, had mentioned that Errol Flynn did not actually star with her in that movie. He had thought to say she didn't look like Miss Bette, either, but changed his mind. It was rude; and he was certainly no double for Errol Flynn. Still, her makeup was pallid and thick. Pie dough. No hint of Dickie's talent in evidence. Winston had first tried to place her as a nun or a Puritan—all drawn unsmiling features and severely restrained hair—but could recall none from the Flynn repertoire.

Bette held a cigarette between her scarlet-tipped fingers and leaned heavily against the kitchen counter. She radiated gardenia. Turning to her girlfriend Peggy La Rue Satterlee, she exclaimed, “Sister, what sad times we live in. Don't anyone know that a gentleman ought to offer to light a lady's cigarette?”

“Well, you're looking as lovely and sprightly as ever, Bette, but you ain't no lady,” Essex said. He held out a lighter and expertly flipped it open.

“Ignore him, Bette. As you well know, he's no gentleman. I wouldn't spend one minute alone with him if I were you. Buyer beware, I say.” Miss Satterlee drank from her glass as though it held a nerve-calming tonic.

“Slatternly.…” Johnny acknowledged her with audible growl in his voice.

Miss Satterlee thrust out a hand as though she were trying to stop traffic. “Don't you come too close to me, Mr. Leslie Thomas Flynn, or I'll give you something to be sorry for. Again.” Winston smiled, astounded to be in the midst of such an unlikely quarrel. “'Sides, I've made a few good friends with fat wallets down at a magazine you're quite familiar with. They're always interested in hearing what fresh news I can dig up for them.”

Satterlee grabbed Winston by the arm. “That man, he gets my dander way up. You watch your back.”

“We should get a move on, sport,” Johnny said, close to Winston's ear.

Directing Winston toward the table of bottles, he added in a loud voice, “Ya gotta wonder if that dame is knitting with both needles.”

 

 

“They dropped dead, like flies upon the autumn's first frost. It was a divine message, but we could not fathom the true nature of our mortal sin.” While Essex tended to fortifying their drinks, the Black Prince was explaining the rigors of daily life under the pall of the Black Death to a man who had been introduced as “the notorious studio hack, Mr. Michael Curtiz.”

During the few moments that he actually spoke, the man spat out words with a German accent. He wore a shimmering red ascot and used a monocle with expert flair. His hair was combed straight back and glistened with grooming oil. Winston continued, spurred on by the director's intent nods: “Elders of our holy church implored us to fast and pray. They dictated that mortification would be our salvation. But still the suckling babes and ancient relics, monstrous sinners and living saints alike, fell into fevers and died twisted in agony.” He clutched the man's shoulder. “We burned them all, denying their souls proper burial in hallowed ground.” He was tickled with the picture of devastation he was painting—like something from a Bosch canvas—even though he was no longer sure about the details he kept throwing on.

Curtiz removed the monocle and gripped it in his hand. He exclaimed, “
Éclaircissement
, as za French vould zay! I haf read of zis
Seuche
, but haf never imagined vot a visual spek-tac-le it vould be. Vot a picture it vould make! Epic! Tragic! Ja, I vill haf to talk mit Herr Varner about dis.”

“Gentlemen. I come bearing gifts.” Essex was carrying a small metal tray loaded up with their particular mixes of vodka. “Cheers,” he exclaimed as the Black Prince and Herr Curtiz reached for their glasses.

“Bevare of creeps bearing gifts, no?” the director said to Winston with a wink.

 

 

“Hell of a good party, Essex. Very good. Nice.” Ed was dressed in khaki trousers and a rumpled white linen shirt. His hair was parted differently. Winston could see that he'd shed some weight.

“Pleased to meet you. Jake Barnes.” He shook Winston's hand. “Edward of Woodstock, eldest of the children of Edward III and Phillipa of Hainault. Keeper of the realm. Sworn enemy of Philip of Valois and all his kin.” Winston knew he was drunk and going on, but could see it was funny. He knelt for a moment in mock deference.

“This here's my girl, Georgette. Georgette Hobin. She's French. She's a dancer, damn splendid one. A man would be a fool not to marry her. It's rotten that she's already married.”

“Milady,” Winston bowed his head.

“Cheers,” Georgette said, and tapped her glass to Winston's.

 

 

The balcony had become the location for a gathering of historical importance no oracle would have foreseen. Winston was watching General Custer and his wife as they listened to an animated Elizabeth Tudor—the gesticulations of her hands reminded him of an Italian merchant, not an English monarch—and her consort, another Essex. The tableau would prove a challenge for Alberta to capture in her next pillow cover, he thought with a start. He'd have to suggest it, even though she'd surprised him by not being terribly enthusiastic about the antics of the gang that he had relayed so far.

“…and, let me tell you, we had to put a few of the royal jewels in hock after that,” Elizabeth was explaining to Custer as Winston approached the balcony. The group erupted with laughter. Staring to the east, he saw the Shell Oil clock and its otherworldly neon glow. The General asked his lady if she would care to dance, and the pair passed by.

He smiled at Elizabeth, but she said nothing and looked at her suitor. Essex nodded curtly and led the regal consort inside by her raised hand.

Winston turned and watched Johnny nod and say, “Ladies,” as he wound his way toward the balcony. Standing next to him, Johnny offered an explanation: “Bull dykes. They tend to keep to themselves. We think they don't really like us men at all. Who can blame them?” Johnny sighed, leaning heavily on the ledge.

Winston watched the women, now amidst the clutch of dancing couples in the living room. They may as well be Martians for all the insight he has about them, he thought. Below the calm—that thinnest of surfaces—stood another person. The Rosenbergs. Lesbians. The murderous lover, Leo Mantha, his mother's former cause. He wondered what he'd learn if he could delve into the mind of Dickie or the skinny fellow wearing the bikini. Even Delilah Pierce and himself. Layer after layer of the same translucency like an onion? Or, as in a jawbreaker, one colour melting away to reveal another?

“What a night, hey,” Johnny said. He bumped his hip into Winston's and remained close.

Johnny surveyed the rooftops and contours of distant buildings wrapped by tendrils of fog. Winston remembered Alberta's vision of the prehistoric Valley and had no difficulty seeing murky reptilian heads cutting swaths through the fog. He smiled woozily and leaned against the balcony door. The muscles in his legs felt too feeble to bear his weight.

“My good fellow, you're pie-eyed. And I've barely had a chance to ply you with Judy Canova Collins.” He placed a hand on Winston's shoulder. Winston resisted the urge to slide toward the floor.

“Excuse me for a moment, good sir.” Winston's belly warned him that if he didn't keep moving he was sure to retch. He was mortified at the thought of it. An inebriated vomiting in plain sight was not a way he had ever imagined humiliating himself. Planted in a corner like a wallflower was his usual role. Whenever Winston turned down her occasional offers of a nightcap, Alberta told him he would have made a good Puritan. And here he was, drunk as a schoolboy. He breathed deeply, measuring the intake to steady his stance.

Errol and Beverly were dancing inside, slowly circling in the living room and interlaced with other lively reincarnations of the recently deceased movie star. Standing at the edge of the crowd, Winston thought that with his bulk and all the hair on his back, the man actually looked like a dancing bear; his bathing trunks were incongruous, like the tiny peaked hat on an organ grinder's monkey. For the scrawny and pale girlish dance partner he could still find no words and resisted an insistent urge to guffaw. Miss Washington tightly held her monopoly on the bittersweet blues, now telling her disappointing lover
you don't know what love is.

Folds of smoke hung in the air as though fog had crept in from the night. Through the haze, Winston watched the hands of Peggy La Rue Satterlee squeezing an orange at the cocktails table. The revelry—warm perfumed bodies, blustery conversations, and shrieks of laughter—felt overwhelmingly close. Winston was propelled by the sudden belief that he required solitude to restore his calm. If he could locate his coat, he'd slip out like the proverbial thief in the night. It would take just a moment to change his clothes.

He waited in the shadowy hall outside of the bathroom after rattling the doorknob on the closed door. The jack-o'-lantern sitting on the floor gave off a meager light; he did not remember it and wondered if earlier he had been too nervous to pay attention. Feeling slack, he slumped against the wall for support.

Georgette opened the door opposite. Winston gazed past her to see Frankie sitting in profile at the end of the bed, his trousers bunched at his ankles. His shirt was open and Winston's eyes traced the line of hair from his chest downward. Frankie nodded at Winston and a smile spread across his face, evaporating as quickly. He ran his left hand along his taut belly before letting it settle between his legs. Georgette closed the door and hurried toward the party. The door remained shut.

Winston rubbed his eyes with the palm of his hand. Over the music, he heard the bathroom door scrape along the tile floor.

“Have you seen my girl, you know, Georgette?” Ed asked.

“Just walked toward the kitchen, I think.” Winston could not open his eyes when he answered.

“Are you feeling alright?”

“I'm fine. Dizzy. Need a minute or two for myself, that's all.”

“Just holler if you need anything, my friend.”

“Thank you, Ed, I will.”

Inside the bathroom—the door shut and locked—he walked to the sink. He was relieved that the mirror reflected nothing unseemly; the bandeau was intact and his drawn-on beard had not streaked. His lips were stained bright from drink.

At the toilet, he struggled with the costume, lifting and holding up the jupon while trying to roll down the leggings and underpants. Leaning with one palm flat against the wall behind the toilet tank and legs spread to keep the leggings secure, he watched the colourless stream jet into the toilet bowl. He chortled at the ridiculous picture he'd make. In real life, Falstaff would be unsightly and pathetic, a boorish guest who'd overstayed his welcome.

Bowel and bladder movements on the battlefield, Winston thought. Now there was another example of the kind of mystery left unsolved by history books. Wishing not to make a mess, he held his member—the
membrum virile
as he had learned to call it in his high school days—and aimed for dead centre. The technique was noisy; it was his habit to strive for silence by directing the stream to the side of the bowl. He could change his ways, though, if it would be a benefit. Splashing over the floor would be almost as bad as vomiting. His manhood felt warm in his hand—flushed, expansive. Another attribute of firewater, he concluded. It was no wonder the stuff caused such havoc when settlers gave it to Indians.