About the time they’d finished eating, the mixing of gin blossoms in fine form now, the telephone rang, the telephone having rung nonstop since they’d all arrived, and Freddie said, “Come on up.”
“Who’s that?” Roscoe asked.
“You remember that big-eyed girl of Henry Lehrman’s? She was at Keystone a few years back.”
“Sure, sure. She comin’ up?”
“She’s here.”
“What’s her name?”
“Virginia Rappe.”
“A virgin what?”
By the time Virginia walked into the party, Roscoe was on his third blossom of the morning and greeted the woman with a slight bow. “I do know you.”
She winked at him.
She was indeed a big-eyed girl with a scandalous little bob and good arms and shoulders. She cocked her hip as she talked, a bit meatier in the bust and butt since he’d known her but still looking luscious and sensual. Dynamite smile. A sharp dresser, with clothes that looked straight out of a French fashion magazine. Smelled just like a plucked rose.
“I like your hat,” he said.
“Knew you would,” she said.
She smiled and stuck it on the fat man’s head-way too small-and Roscoe made a straight face, walking back to the bathroom for another gin blossom, in pajamas and robe and that ridiculous little hat.
“You mind if I invite a friend up?” Virginia Rappe asked.
“Send her up. Send them all up. All girls welcome. Didn’t you see our sign?”
He pressed a gin blossom in Virginia’s hand as she sat in a green chair, crossed her legs, and dialed the house phone. The Victrola played “Second Hand Rose,” one of Roscoe’s favorites, and he clutched old Freddie near and sang to him as if he were a fine ole gal under a paper moon.
PHIL HAULTAIN DROVE to Eddy Street and helped Sam up to the third floor and the one-bedroom apartment he shared with his new wife, Jose. She pronounced her name like Joe with an s on the end. Sam knew she’d be waiting up for him, probably walking the floor with worry, and that perhaps would be worse than the beating.
“What happened?” she asked, unlatching the door chain and helping Phil get Sam into the room and then to the bedroom, where they set Sam down.
“I tried to kiss a tiger,” Sam said.
“Who are you?” she asked Phil.
“The new Pinkerton man,” he said. “Your husband is training me.”
“Lesson four,” Sam said. “Remove head from oncoming bricks.”
“Someone hit him with a brick?” Jose asked. She had a rosary in her hand.
“He took a pretty beatin’ this morning, ma’am. But he didn’t want to go to no hospital, only wanted me to stop by a speak and then drop him here. I seen him cough up a pool of blood, though.”
Jose shook her head and told the young partner that was another matter. She tucked a pillow up under Sam’s head, now feeling the same way as he had up at Cushman’s sanitarium in Tacoma, and she went to the bath, returned with a cool towel, wiped his face, and made him turn his head. He felt those goose eggs right quick and let out a few choice words.
“Be still. I’m just trying to help.”
“Are you trying to play nurse again?” Sam said. “Phil, my wife’s crazy. She loves blood.”
“Apparently you do, too,” Jose said.
“I’ll be goin’, ma’am.”
“What your name?”
“Phil. Phil Haultain. I see you’re expecting, too. You mind me asking when?”
Out the good eye, Sam watched Jose smile at the big fella.
Jose was a woman of healthy proportions with bright blue eyes and brown hair and nice little sprinkling of freckles across her nose. She’d been so damn cute back at Cushman’s that he hadn’t been able to keep his hands off of her. And she didn’t seem to mind him being a lunger.
A few months after a long rainy day at a little hotel, he’d gotten a letter down in San Diego. Apparently, he’d left something with her.
He heard Phil and Jose talking in the main room of the apartment and then the door closing. She returned to the room and closed the drapes.
“I was worried.”
“I figured.”
“But I knew you’d be back.”
“Like a bad penny.”
“That’s my man.”
Sam winked at her.
It hurt to wink when only one eye worked.
THE SHOWGIRLS ARRIVED at the St. Francis a short time later. One was an absolute doll, with brown eyes and soft lips, and the other had bulging blue eyes and crooked teeth. But she had big tits, and nice legs, too, and Roscoe wasn’t in a picky mood, opening the door wide. Freddie took an instant liking to the pretty one, Alice, while the other one, calling herself Zey, wanted to sit on the love seat next to Roscoe and run down all the tunes she could sing. She had very cute knees.
But her singing wasn’t much better than her face, and Luke howled when she hit the high notes. How he loved that dog.
“Do you sing, Mr. Arbuckle?” she asked.
“Caruso once called me a beautiful songbird.”
“Who’s that?”
“He sings. Well, he sang. He just passed.”
Roscoe studied her to make sure she wasn’t joking and caught the eye of Virginia, who was now standing next to the window, the curtains flowing in the hot afternoon air, most of the folks in the room now sweating, and he smiled.
She smiled back, and he noticed the dark circles and the sad black eyes.
Roscoe went back into the bathroom, where they’d set up the bar, and found more ice in the sink and a fresh bottle of Scotch. The gin blossoms were starting to hurt his throat a little and he thought the Scotch would calm it all down.
He looked at himself in the mirror, adjusting the collar of his silk robe along his sizable neck. He plugged a cigar in the corner of his mouth, bit off the end, and winked back at his own reflection.
And then he thought more about it, straightened his pajama collar, and blew himself a kiss. His eyes were bloodshot, his skin a bright pink.
In room 1220, Virginia’s friend Maude was dancing on the fireplace hearth. She was wearing Roscoe’s pajamas, the striped material swallowing her body, this weird-looking fella who claimed he was in the movie biz egging her on as she went through a whole routine, sweating in the tent of clothes, her black hair matted to her face, not once losing a drop of the alcohol from her glass.
She was a fine little gal, too. And Roscoe was glad to add her to the collection.
He watched her, standing back from a small crowd, and as the song ended Maude took a polite bow. The big record needle caught on the sea of dead space and swam and swam, all eyes turning back to Roscoe. He narrowed his eyes at Maude, friend of that bit-part chippie from Los Angeles. His pajama top loose and raggedly buttoned on her, split nearly down to her navel.
That straight face slowly cracked into a grin and then into an all-out laugh, and everyone laughed with him, and the Victrola was reloaded and Roscoe guzzled down the Scotch, now thinking of Kentucky bourbon, and he rocked and danced, the space between the ice in the bathroom and the big chair where he held court seeming to stretch and spin and grow with life.
He wiped his face and took off his robe. The breath and laughter and people in the room had brought in so much heat, and Lowell came by and introduced a pretty green-eyed girl with a pert nose and Roscoe was thinking, This was the one. Yes, Daddy, this was the one. Her name was Mae, and he’d promised to take her for a ride in the Pierce. He remembered.
“Want to get married?” Roscoe asked.
Lowell laughed at his drunken leer and said the girl was already married and to keep his paws off, and, on top of it all, Roscoe would never guess in a million years who her father-in-law was.
“Kaiser Wilhelm.”
“Billy Sunday.”
Roscoe laughed and laughed.
“No, I’m serious.”
“What would Reverend Sunday say about this party?” Roscoe asked the girl.
“He’d say his little sweetie would like another drink,” she said.