ALSO BY FIONA DAVIS
The Dollhouse
The Address
The Masterpiece
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
Copyright © 2019 by Fiona Davis
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Names: Davis, Fiona, 1966– author.
Title: The Chelsea girls : a novel / Fiona Davis.
Description: First edition. | New York : Dutton, [2019]
Identifiers: LCCN 2019002424 (print) | LCCN 2019009375 (ebook) | ISBN 9781524744595 (ebook) | ISBN 9781524744588 (hardcover) Subjects: LCSH: Blacklisting of entertainers—Fiction. | Chelsea Hotel—Fiction. | United States—Politics and government—1945–1989—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Historical. | FICTION Mystery & Detective General. | FICTION Literary. | GSAFD: Historical fiction Classification: LCC PS3604.A95695 (ebook) | LCC PS3604.A95695 C48 2019 (print) | DDC 813.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019002424
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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For the artists whose dreams were lost
CONTENTS
Also by Fiona Davis
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Act One
Chapter One: Hazel
Chapter Two: Hazel
Chapter Three: Maxine
Chapter Four: Hazel
Act Two
Chapter Five: Hazel
Chapter Six: Hazel
Chapter Seven: Maxine
Chapter Eight: Hazel
Chapter Nine: Hazel
Chapter Ten: Maxine
Chapter Eleven: Hazel
Chapter Twelve: Hazel
Chapter Thirteen: Maxine
Chapter Fourteen: Hazel
Chapter Fifteen: Maxine
Chapter Sixteen: Hazel
Chapter Seventeen: Hazel
Chapter Eighteen: Maxine
Chapter Nineteen: Hazel
Chapter Twenty: Maxine
Chapter Twenty-one: Hazel
Chapter Twenty-two: Maxine
Chapter Twenty-three: Hazel
Act Three
Chapter Twenty-four: Hazel
Chapter Twenty-five: Hazel
Chapter Twenty-six: Hazel
Chapter Twenty-seven: Maxine
Chapter Twenty-eight: Hazel
Chapter Twenty-nine: Hazel
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
PROLOGUE
New York City, March 1967
In the dead of night, during the dreary month of March, the Chelsea Hotel is a quiet place. The only sound that cuts through the silence is the squeal of a police siren, and that fades fast. Thick walls keep out the everyday noises of one’s neighbors: the muffled swears after walking into a bedpost with a bare foot, or the generous moans of lovemaking. The ghosts of the Chelsea hide in the cement-filled brick walls during the day, and glide out during the violet hours to keep watch. Over time, their number has accumulated, from the refined gentlewoman who left behind four diamond rings, to the puffy Welsh poet sinking from alcoholic stupor to coma. The musicians chant quietly with vaporous breath as the former owner hovers mutely by, wringing his hands with worry.
One more to come, very soon. If the woman had more courage, she might jump from the roof. That would be the faster method, instead of this slow slide into oblivion, where every so often a futile panic makes her want to call out, cry for help. But no one would hear, not here. The ghosts jeer at her and point, but she knows they’ll eventually welcome her into the fold. And once she’s gone, she, too, will keep watch over the residents, including her one true friend, who will sigh into her pillow as the apparition leans in close for an invisible kiss.
ACT ONE
CHAPTER ONE
Hazel
Naples, Italy, April 1945
She hated Maxine Mead, and Italy, on first sight.
When Hazel had first auditioned for the USO tour, back in New York, she’d imagined arriving abroad and gingerly stepping off a plane to a cheering group of GIs. The stage would be a grand opera house or something similarly picturesque, like what she’d seen in the newsreels of Marlene Dietrich and Bob Hope entertaining the troops. Hazel would be sure to call them men, not boys, as the USO Actors’ Handbook advised. After all, many of them had been fighting for four years now. They deserved respect as well as some wholesome entertainment, a respite from the fighting.
Upon boarding the Air Corps plane at LaGuardia Airport, Hazel was informed that she’d be replacing a member of an all-female acting troupe who’d come down with jaundice. Not until the noisy tin can of a cargo plane was aloft was she told her destination: Naples, Italy.
After a bumpy landing, Hazel lugged her two suitcases off the plane and stood on the tarmac, exhausted and confused, waiting for someone to tell her where to go, what to do next. The stifling heat was made worse by the fact that she’d been given the winter uniform, including wool stockings and thick winter panties. Every inch of her from the waist down itched as though she had ants crawling up her sweaty legs. Her uniform—a greenish-gray skirt, white blouse, long black tie, and garrison cap that she’d admired in the mirror back in New York—was now a stinking, wrinkled mess.
Finally, a soldier pulled up in a Jeep and called out her name. He tossed her suitcases in the back before helping her into the passenger seat.
They lurched off over a road battered by potholes, passing demolished apartment buildings and churches. Several women picked through a pile of garbage by the side of the road, stopping to stare at Hazel with dead eyes before turning back to their work. A group of ragged, emaciated children, one of whom sucked on his dirty fingers, watched the scavengers. Yet across the street, a tidy line of schoolboys walked past the desolation as if nothing were wrong. The air smelled of rotting vegetables; dust kicked into Hazel’s nose and made her sneeze. Early in the war, the newspapers had published aerial photos of the city that showed almost all of it up in smoke, annihilated by relentless bombing. While many of the inhabitants sought safety deep underground in the ancient Roman aqueducts and tunnels, at least twenty thousand people had been killed.
She tried to envision what it would be like if New York had been similarly decimated, she and her mother out with their shopping bags, stepping over chunks of concrete, going about their day. She couldn’t imagine it. “This is terrible. There’s hardly anything left,” she said.
The driver shrugged. “Naples was the most bombed site in Italy.”
“The residents rose up and resisted the Germans, right?” She tried to remember what she’d read in the papers. “Looks like they paid dearly for it.”