“Don’t mind the ladies, they’re part of the floor show,” he said and made perfunctory introductions.
“What a beautiful name.” Charmaine slurred her words, having earlier ignored Dodie’s admonition that Tuinals did nothing for one’s charm. “Are you French?”
Tildy poked at one of the floating roses. “Not yet.”
“I was in France once,” Charmaine said quietly, unable to remember if this was a true anecdote or one she’d invented. “We flew over for a pâté festival.”
Up on stage the drummer broke into a solo. He was a scrawny kid with a pencil mustache, a propeller beanie atop patent-leather hair and a head full of boogie shuffle licks as plain as a dental chart. The audience whooped him on; it was like a pep rally. Even leaning across the table Pierce had to shout to be heard.
“Miss Florida is lovely, a bloody vision. I’m forced to say she looks too good for you.”
“Kiss mine.”
“Think about it, think about some of the women you were running with in the past. They had the shakes. And black circles around their eyes.”
“Well, dig it, the past has passed. Mister Christo will be running on the fast track from now on.”
The drummer was into his windup now. Coming out of a tomtom onslaught, he popped off the stool, keeping the pulse alive on bass and hi-hat, bobbing his head and twirling his sticks. Real gone. He hit a brief mambo rattle on the cowbell and slung the sticks to one side. Only half turned, barely looking up, Tildy speared them both in one hand with two perfectly timed rotations of her wrist.
She faced Dodie and Charmaine with an ingratiating smile, offered them on an open palm like breadsticks. “Souvenirs?”
“Zowie.” Dodie clapped both hands to her head. “That was fantastic what you did.”
“I was alone a lot as a kid,” Tildy said. “Learned to catch insects on the wing.”
Charmaine looked on adoringly but turned shyly away when Tildy met her eyes, to stare down her own cleavage, plucking at the rounded collar of her black silk pyjamas right out of a Terry & The Pirates panel.
The band returned for a couple of rideout choruses to heavy applause.
“Yeah, thank you. Copacetic.” The alto player brought his palms together as he bowed. “We gonna cool off right now, but we’ll be back later to sock you and knock you nonstop.”
“Hey, black shoes, you oughta hock those instruments.” This from a deep voice at the bar.
A lot of dead air among the Milbank party. Pierce stared hard at the dollies, but they held their ground through this obvious exit cue.
“I gather you ladies aren’t going to give up without at least one glass of champagne,” he said. “Right, then. Champagne for everyone. I feel loose tonight.”
He pressed one of the illuminated buttons on a small console under the table and within seconds the sommelier arrived. He was dressed like the best man at a London wedding and wore around his neck a large plastic skeleton key treated with phosphorescent paint.
“Julio, a magnum of the Henzlicht-LaFosse. From Admiral Nimitz’ private reserves, and très sec, if you please.”
“On its way, Mr. Milbank.”
Julio wafted off to call the “cellar” on the intercom. There, two craftsmen were kept busy decanting California wine into bottles bearing counterfeit labels. The bottles were then rolled in a trough of wood ashes and finished off with mylar cobwebs sprayed from a device originally contrived by a producer of television commercials.
Slipping off her pumps, Dodie extended one stockinged foot under the table in search of Pierce. “You seem to have a lot of pull. How come we haven’t seen you around here before?”
“I was probably playing Scrabble in the back room.”
“Do you know Steve personally?” Working her way across Pierce’s instep, Dodie turned to fill in the newcomers. “Steve is the spirit behind the Canteen. He’s like an independent compass for environmental design.”
“Steve is a very beautiful and creative man.” Charmaine sighed dreamily. “When he made love to me it felt like I was being sculpted.”
“How about that.” Christo leaned back in his chair. “Well, I once fucked Johnny Carson all night.”
“And what do you think about that?” Dodie said challengingly.
“I think I have a nicer asshole,” Tildy snapped.
And then, before things could get really ugly, the champagne arrived.
Pierce filled their tulip glasses and proposed a toast to “Our visitor from Dixieland.” Tildy permitted him to kiss her hand.
“I’m a great student of accents,” Charmaine said. “I’ll bet you’re from Alabama.”
“Nope. I come from Louisiana.” Tildy brushed foam off her lip. “With a banjo on my knee.”
“I was in New Orleans once,” Charmaine offered. This one was for real, a memory all too vivid.
She’d flown down for the weekend with a bartender who was in on a lead-pipe scheme to doctor the ninth race trifecta at Evangeline Downs. Except this kid trainer was wired for sound, and when the payoff man whipped out his envelope, Pinkerton agents were all over him like a blanket. Charmaine spent most of Saturday night tied to the bed with extension cords and woke up in the hallway Sunday morning locked out of the room with nothing but a ripped T-shirt, a black eye and a pair of paper shower slippers. Rule #1: Don’t come on to the bartender.
The bandstand receded on worm-geared tracks, was replaced by a back-alley stage set complete with knothole fence, cardboard lamppost and suspended crescent moon. Half a dozen showgirls pranced out to a vamping piano. They wore pink tights with marabou tails appended and pointy ears on their pink berets. They had whiskers grease-penciled on their upper lips; in nasal thirds reminiscent of the Boswell Sisters, they sang,
“We’re fuzzy little alley cats
In a special kind of heat,
We’re all stoked up on catnip
And we love that boogie beat.
“Prowl girls, howl girls
And wag your silky tails …”
The piano rumbled and they rendered some rudimentary and not quite synchronized dance steps.
“Put me up there.” Dodie gestured awkwardly with her empty glass. “Put me up there and I’d show you some moves’d stiffen the neckties in this dump.”
“Dammit.” When Pierce’s fist hit the table, it rattled the lampshade. “What is it? You crib all your dialogue from comic books or what? Why don’t you just cool your jets for ten minutes and be ornamental.”
The pink kittens gurgled.
“Fish may be our favorite dish
But meat is also yummy …”
Tildy felt dizzy and hot. She unknotted her scarf and held it over her mouth. Christo asked if she was doing okay.
“I’m going to go wash my face,” she said.
All eyes at the table turned to watch her go.
“Nice bounce,” Pierce commented.
Charmaine, paralyzed with adoration, listened to her own sedated breathing and wished she were a boy.
Tildy sat in front of a large spotlighted mirror and examined the flanks of her nose for blackheads. Didn’t have the billboard looks of those two back at the table, but there was something solid there, something durable. Lucien used to tell her she’d make her way in the world because there was upright character showing in her face. Thanks, Dad. You should see me with makeup.
She gathered a ridge of skin between index fingers and squeezed until a translucent plug of sebum wormed up out of a blocked pore.
“No, never do that. It leaves pits.” Charmaine swayed in the doorway, twisting the orange scarf in her fingers. “I ought to know. My sophomore year in high school, I had the worst acne in my homeroom.”