“I knew I liked that guy.”
“You’ll take me for a ride?”
“I’ll let you drive.”
Up on the hearth, Maude tossed her sweaty black hair from side to side and swung around, doing high kicks with that Semnacher fella until she couldn’t breathe, and then she told everyone to step back and they did. And the dark girl with the nice build removed the pajama top and showed off her fine, sweating breasts.
Roscoe licked his lips and stood and shuffled over to her, moving Semnacher away and trying to dance with this girl Maude, tugging at the pajama bottoms she had tied into a knot.
And Maude pushed him away and played like she was going to slap his face. One of the new girls-the showgirls-joined her up on the hearth stage, removing her top, saying her figure was much better, Maude saying she didn’t stand a chance.
Maude tried to bump the girl from the hearth with her hips and butt.
The girl got down to her brassiere, the jazz and the room so damn hot. Everyone dancing and carrying on, and there was knock at the door from the hotel dick and Lowell sent him away with a twenty-dollar bill before he could peep into the room.
Roscoe joined the showgirls-Alice and Zey, that was their names-and they took to singing every other chorus of a new record called “I Found a Rose in the Devil’s Garden.” And that ugly Zey girl could really sing now, Roscoe telling her that after they’d sung the record five times, him nearly tripping over a couple rolling around the floor in an impromptu petting party.
Maude tore at the brassiere of the showgirl and ripped it from her chest and the girl gave a pleasant little shriek, modestly covering her breasts, but then breaking away and opening her arms wide in display. The girl so proud that her breasts were twice the size of Maude’s. Her nipples so long and rubbery that Roscoe licked his lips again.
They shook and shimmied together, both showing off in fine form. Roscoe changed records and danced with Alice Blake. He kept dancing with her, her nude back hot and wet and wonderful, and then stumbled toward the bathroom.
“Aren’t we going for a ride?” asked Mae.
“Freddie’s got the car,” he said. “He’s taking Miss Whosit to Tait’s. I need to freshen up, my daisy. Get dressed.”
“You promised,” she said. “Who is that girl?”
Roscoe winked back at her.
When he walked back into the adjoining room, room 1219, he found Virginia splayed out on his bed, eyes glassy and face as white as a boiled shirt. Roscoe looked at the girl and tilted his head. He got to his knee and smoothed back the bobbed hair from her big black eyes and she turned a big look up at him.
The stare startled him.
“Hello there, snuggle pup,” she said.
Roscoe walked back to the door and closed it with a light click. The music was muffled and the laughter coming from a million miles away.
He wet his lips, hearing the girls still singing and men egging them on.
Sometime later, Roscoe would be jostled awake, hearing hard banging on the door and that girl Maude screaming for him to open the door. More pounding and that Maude woman yelling, wanting to know why the girl had screamed.
“Is someone hurt?”
Roscoe got to his feet and ran his hand over his sweaty face. He opened and shut his eyes, adjusting to the thin light coming through the breaking white curtains. His pajamas were soaked.
Another voice yelled, a man’s voice, after the pounding, this time announcing it was the hotel detective and to open the goddamn door.
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.”