The blonde oozed adoration. She looked parodistic/he talked parodistic. Joan caught “Comrade Stalin” and “noble Red Army.”
Claire beelined up. Party fools swelled and crushed against her. She pointed to the doctor’s bag. Lesnick nodded. Lesnick went There, there.
Joan hovered. Claire fidgeted. A Chinese man pushed his way over. He plopped on the couch. The blonde went eeek and spilled half her cocktail.
She blotted her skirt. Lesnick patted her knee. He copped a leg feel and went Oy vey. The Chinaman gasbagged.
Joan heard “Hitler”/“Waffen-SS”/“racial science.” Words devolved to jabber. Lesnick said, “Slow down, Lin. I know some French, but I don’t know Chinese.”
Lin laughed. “Two-Gun Davis speak Chinese. Not you. Chinese new master race. They fix your Jew wagon.”
Lesnick laughed. The Davis crack ditzed Joan. The whole exchange warped in weird. Someone told her something pertinent. Some Lyman’s barfly. The exact source eluded her.
Claire leaned in and whispered to Lesnick. Chinaman Lin jabbered on. Joan caught movement, stage right.
Kay Lake hovered. She stood within voyeur range and eyed Lesnick and Claire. Guest swarms covered Joan. Lin’s blather drowned out Lesnick and Claire.
Kay drifted off. Lesnick and Claire stood up. The blonde pouted — Don’t leave me, lover. Lesnick mollified her. He laid out There, there’s.
Joan voyeurized. Pops bid deference. Moses parts the Red Sea. Guests step aside and hosanna. Lesnick hooks Claire’s arm and leads her off.
Joan followed them. They walked outside. Pole-fixed lanterns lit the backyard. Guests mingled by a barbecue pit. Negro chefs in Red Army tunics dished out spareribs and slaw.
A guesthouse stood by the back fence. Lesnick led Claire over and in. Joan caught up and peeped a side window. She caught an eye track inside and saw this:
Lesnick opens his bag. He pulls out a hypo and jabs a vial of morphine sulfate. Claire rolls up her left sleeve. Lesnick ties a silk-sash tourniquet. Claire shuts her eyes. Lesnick dips a cotton swab in rubbing alcohol. Claire trembles. Lesnick swabs her arm and injects her.
Joan walked off. She got the Sad-as-Shit Blues and traipsed back to the house. The triad concept ditzed her. It applied to chemistry. She applied it right here and right now.
Kay Lake/Dudley Smith/Claire De Haven. Unknown quotients abound. Smith/Parker/Conville. The same applies. Claire thinks Kay knifed Dudley. I’m a Wisconsin farm girl. What am I doing here?
Bombs away:
She caught more war talk. More guests talked it. More guests shouted it. More guests shouted over other guests and poked at their chests.
More spilled drinks. More cigarette-burned furniture and dumped ashtrays. No more sit-down space. More guests tripping and sprawling flat on their ass.
Joan detoured. She traipsed up a back stairway and hit the second floor. She heard a piano. Somebody played soft Chopin or Liszt.
She walked toward it. She stopped short at a doorway. She tucked herself out of sight and peeped.
Kay Lake and the Maestro played four-handed. Kay played the easy parts, the Maestro carried the weight. They sat close together. They wore symphony black. Kay was half the Maestro’s size. He had that half-frozen face.
They played to a crescendo. Klemperer’s hands trembled. Kay improvised one-handed chords and steadied them.
The piece built to an off-key finish. Klemperer laughed. Kay said, “Please tell me I’m not all that bad.”
Klemperer half-slurred. He pushed words and made himself understood.
“Your formal sense exceeds that of most amateurs. You learn very quickly. You interpret passionately, and you will give a successful recital before the end of this decade.”
Kay said, “I’m honored.” Klemperer banged chords. Boom, boom, boom. They were ominous and bluntly repetitive.
“German tanks descend upon Leningrad. Dimitri errs on the side of the descriptive and polemical here. He hates Hitler and Stalin equally, you know.”
“You should conduct the American premiere. I’m sure Maestro Toscanini would disagree, but you—”
“But I shall preempt him, dear Katherine. The finished score will reach me in advance. Smuggling plans now proceed. I will put together a vast assembly of film-studio musicians. Exorbitant ticket prices will assure vast sums for European war relief.”
Kay said, “Don’t price out my Police Department friends.”
Klemperer laughed. His whole face contorted.
“I will give your suitor Lee Blanchard a free ticket. That is because I saw him beat the piss out of Irish Eddie Gilroy in 1935. Did you know that I enjoy boxing? I will give your Lee a free ticket, because I fear him.”
Kay said, “The fight was fixed, Liebchen.”
“Then I hereby retract the offer.”
Joan waltzed. She felt overmatched. The Sad-as-Shit Blues reappeared. She traipsed back to the yard. A standing bar was set up. She ordered a double scotch mist.
Orson Welles whizzed by and vamped her on the fly. He tapped his wristwatch and mimed We’ll talk later.
Joan blinked. The Welles vignette consumed.5 seconds. She pulled up a lawn chair. A young woman materialized.
Frizzy-haired. Saul Lesnick’s distaff double. Her white gown trailed the ground. The hemline had been trampled. Joan saw footprints.
“I saw you watching my father. He was talking to that Nazi Chink.”
“It’s Miss Lesnick, is it?”
“It’s Andrea, or 19832040. That was my booking number at Tehachapi. I married a butch while I was inside, so that would have made me Mrs. Cahill. It wasn’t a real marriage, but it kept the really bad girls off of me.”
The Sad-as-Shit Blues, redefined and—
“I was in for vehicular manslaughter, but my daddy turned FBI snitch, and got me sprung as part of the deal.”
Too-real reprised.
“Do you always unburden yourself to total strangers at parties?”
Andrea said, “Yes. That’s what parties are for. I always come with my daddy. I keep him company while he writes dubious prescriptions for his numerous hophead patients — especially the ones he has qualms about finking off to the Feds.”
“Does your daddy supply his patients with liquid morphine?”
Andrea nicked a cigarette. Joan slid the pack over. Andrea dropped it in her purse.
“He supplies a Communist lady named Claire. She throws the best parties, because she’s really rich, and a faux Communist. He tattles her to the Feds, and shares it with me. He showed me a naughty film she was in. She had a scene with an actor named ‘Captain Hook.’ He had this big you know what, shaped like a dousing rod.”
Kay walked by. She bypassed Andrea’s floor show. Andrea glared at her and made claws.
“I met that girl at Claire’s house. Claire hates her. My daddy says she’s a police snitch. I always say it takes one to know one.”
Joan killed her drink. “Who was that blond girl sitting with your daddy?”
“That’s a whore he’s fucking. He fucks her and tattles his patients to her. He showed me a lock of her snatch hair.”
The Sad-as-Shit Blues. Revised and regurgitated—
Joan waltzed.
She ducked back inside. She snagged a Pernod and absinthe and downed it. She saw Doc Lesnick write scripts for Orson Welles and the Maestro. She saw the Chinese quack hobknob with a famous clinician. She made him. It was Terry Lux — “Plastic Surgeon to the Stars.” Sid Hudgens called him “Herr Eugenics.”