Mr Starlight

by Laurie Graham

‘I couldn’t do that,’ he said. ‘What if somebody saw me?’

  He looked so pathetic.

  I said, ‘I don’t know how you’re going to feel about this, but Hazel’s asked Thelma’s medico to come and see you. I told her she should have asked you first, but you know what they’re like when they get a bee in their bonnet. Hazel can be very strong-willed and Dilys encouraged her. But if you want it called off just say the word and I’ll tell her, straight.’

  He didn’t say anything. He just sat there and let the tears roll down his cheeks.

  I said, ‘Is that a yes or a no?’

  He nodded.

  I said, ‘Is that a yes, you want the doctor or a yes you want the doctor cancelled?’

  ‘Stay with me,’ he said. ‘When he comes, stay with me.’

  I said, ‘What about Mam?’ Mam always expected to be in on anything involving His Numps.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Just you.’

  And as a matter of fact, Mam had Randolph drive her to the Tumbleweed for an hour. It wasn’t her usual time for playing the slots, but she wouldn’t stay around to see Hazel win the day.

  Dr Rosen said Sel had a fungal infection. ‘Easy to fix,’ he said. ‘But you’re run down. I recommend you come in for a complete physical. A guy your age should do it anyway.’

  Sel said he’d think about it.

  I said, ‘I think the doctor’s right, our kid. You should look into things. Like why you’re needing oxygen between sets.’

  The doc said, ‘What oxygen?’

  Sel said, ‘Thanks, Cled.’

  Dr Rosen said good health was the best investment a person could make.

  Sel said, ‘Yeah? I’ve done pretty well with real estate myself.’

  They laughed.

  The doc said, ‘These marks on your legs? Had them long?’ They were like patches of corned beef. Sel said he hadn’t noticed them.

  Dr Rosen said, ‘I hear the new show’s great. I didn’t catch it yet but everyone’s talking about it.’

  ‘Hottest ticket in town,’ Sel said.

  The doc said, ‘Well, we can’t allow Mr Starlight to lose his shine so we should set up this physical as soon as possible. When is good for you?’

  Sel said, ‘After Gladys Knight takes over. Next month.’

  Dr Rosen said, ‘Later today would work for me.’

  There was nothing said for a few minutes.

  Sel was just ruminating, gazing down at the blotches on his legs, his mouth all sunken without his dentures. ‘Cled,’ he said eventually. ‘I’ll need you to take care of a few things.’

  Are we to part like this, dear?

  Are we to part this way?

  Who’s it to be, ’er or me?

  Don’t be afraid to say.

  CASTLING & COLLINS

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Brett drove Sel to the Lakeshore Clinic in the runabout and a youngster called Evie Paul stepped in at the Flamingo Show Room. ‘Tell her not to make herself too comfortable,’ he said. ‘Tell her it’s only for two nights.’

  I said to Hazel, ‘As long as there’s a show most of the punters couldn’t care less who they see. Ask them the next morning and half of them won’t even remember.’

  ‘I don’t think anybody forgets seeing Sel,’ she said.

  He was very worried about publicity.

  ‘We’ll tell the truth,’ Mam said. ‘You’re suffering from exhaustion. The truth is always the easiest.’

  He said, ‘No, not exhaustion. That makes me sound clapped out. It’d be better to say I caught something. Something you get over fast. Chickenpox. That’s what I’ll have.’

  He was booked into Lakeshore as Amos Roberts, to ensure privacy. It was very nice: private rooms, choice of menu. Mam referred to it as ‘Sel’s little holiday’. Evie Paul described it as her lucky break. And Liquorish put out a statement that Mr Starlight had been forced to pull out of his show, the first time he’d done so in thirty-five years, due to influenza.

  Pearl took the opportunity to springclean his rooms. ‘He’ll be home any minute,’ she kept saying. ‘Everything better be perfect.’

  But Sel developed an infection on his chest, so he was kept where he was until he responded to the medication.

  I visited him every afternoon before I went to the Old Bull, took him a few Agatha Christies and a pack of cards in case he wanted to play Patience.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he said. ‘I can get eighty channels on this TV. I’ve found a few old Starlight shows. Remember that one we did with Doris Day?’ They’d cleared up his fungus. He looked a lot better with his teeth in. He said, ‘As long as I’m here, I think I might have my eyelids done. You interested in anything? Get those jowls lifted?’

  I said, ‘No, thank you. Women love me just the way I am.’

  He said, ‘What about the girls? Do you think Dilys’d like a facelift? I’ll pay.’

  Hazel said, ‘Ask him if they can do anything for your mam. Personality transplant.’

  I hadn’t actually met Hallerton Liquorish, but I guessed who he was, sitting on the edge of Sel’s bed, talking on the telephone. Hazel was with me that afternoon.

  Sel said, ‘Hallerton’s getting me a second opinion.’

  Liquorish didn’t give us a glance. ‘OK, done deal,’ he said to Sel. ‘I’m flying Alpert in from LA first thing tomorrow.’

  I said, ‘Who’s Alpert?’

  ‘The best,’ Liquorish said. ‘The very best.’

  Hazel said, ‘Is that what you want, Sel?’

  He just shrugged his shoulders.

  Hazel said, ‘Does Dr Rosen know?’

  Liquorish ignored her. He said, ‘See, Sel, this is where California is ahead of the game. Lakeshore may be fine for aesthetic procedures but they’re not up to speed when it comes to medical conditions. Folk are so goddamned healthy in Vegas. They just drop dead on the golf course. But LA doctors are the tops. They’ve seen everything.’

  Dr Rosen said he never objected to patients calling in another opinion. ‘I know Sel’s anxious to get back to work,’ he said. ‘We’re giving him pentamine. Normally I’d expect his chest to be clear by now. I don’t know what to say.’

  I called Jennifer Jane. I said, ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I can’t know everything. Tell him I love him.’

  Mam said, ‘He always had a weak chest, ever since he had the whooping cough.’

  ‘Measles,’ Dilys said. ‘It was measles.’

  ‘Whooping cough,’ Mam said. ‘Your memory’s going.’

  Dr Alpert said he knew of quite a number of cases like Sel’s. He said, ‘This kind of chest infection is on the increase and it doesn’t respond. The purple lesions, they were something you only saw in old guys. Now we’re finding them in young men. Sel’s not young, of course, but he’s the first case where I’ve seen both these things together. Plus he’s losing weight. I believe he has something we’re calling the Gay Syndrome.’

  I said, ‘Gay as in …?’

  ‘Correct,’ he said.

  I said, ‘He’s not going to like that. He doesn’t like that word.’

  ‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘Well, I guess we can call it something else. We can call it Compromised Immunity, but that doesn’t change the facts. Sel is a sick man. Does he have a partner?’

  I said, ‘Dusty Hayes plays for him in Vegas. Is it catching?’

  Hazel said, ‘Not that kind of partner, Cled. Partner. Like I’m your partner.’

  That was a new one on me.

  She said, ‘There’s Brett. I suppose he’s what you’d call a partner.’

  Dr Alpert said Brett should drop by, get a check-up.

  I said, ‘It’s not cancer, then?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘But it’s carrying off guys younger and fitter than your brother.’ He said it wasn’t so much a disease as a phenomenon and he couldn’t be one hundred per cent sure Sel had got it, but it looked very much that way.

  I said, ‘How will we kno
w?’

  ‘If he doesn’t start getting better,’ he said.

  I said, ‘And who’s going to tell him?’

  ‘I already did,’ Liquorish said.

  Hazel said, ‘I don’t think you should have done that. I think that was a job for the doctor, or family.’

  Liquorish laughed. He said, ‘He was fine. Full of fighting talk. You know Sel. We sketched out a press release. I’d like to get Bambi Allen on side with this. Offer her an exclusive. I’d like her to have a fabulous quote from Sel. Something humorous yet dignified. He’s thinking about it.’

  Hazel said, ‘I expect you want to go in to him now, don’t you, Cled? You wouldn’t want him lying there on his own, would you, Cled? And before Bimbo Allen gets her exclusive, whatever that is, I think we feel Sel’s family and friends should be told, don’t we, Cled?’

  Liquorish said, ‘You’re the sister, right?’

  ‘Sister-in-law,’ she said.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Sel’s a professional, like me. He knows the importance of information management. He leaves me to do what I do best, so he’s free to do what he does best. And I suggest you do the same. Go comfort his mother, buy him some grapes, plump up his pillows. Leave me to take care of the Mr Starlight story.’

  She said, ‘You’d better do the right thing by him. I’ll be watching you. We all will.’

  He snapped his fingers at me. He said, ‘What about Action Man? He likely to be at home? Get him here. I’ll tell Rosen to keep him under observation. We don’t want him talking. Any talking to be done, I do it. I’ll be back. Tomorrow. Friday. Shit, I have to fly.’

  I said, ‘You shouldn’t have said that to him, Hazel. That side of things is none of our business. Now you’ve put his back up.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Now go in to Sel. Go and talk to him.’

  I said, ‘You go in.’ I didn’t know what to say to him. I said, ‘Women are better at this kind of thing.’

  ‘Then fetch Dilys,’ she said. ‘Only don’t just sit there, Cled. If keeping tabs on Mr Liquorish is going to be my job you’re going to have to make yourself useful in other ways. Your mother. Go and talk to your mother.’

  I said, ‘Brett. I’ll go and find him.’ One thing at a time, I always say.

  Brett had been going out a good deal while Sel was in the clinic and not needing a driver. He liked to go fishing for bass on Lake Mead or drinking beer with his young pals from Caesar’s Palace.

  I tried the Four Queens and O’Lucky’s and the Magnet. I tracked him down in Big Jim’s eating a steak breakfast. I said, ‘The boss needs to see you.’

  ‘Yeah?’ he said. ‘He ready to come home?’

  He seemed so happy, chattering away, I didn’t like to tell him the outlook wasn’t good. Poor bugger. It was like taking a dog to be put down and it keeps wagging its tail at you.

  He said, ‘He’ll likely want to go to Malibu for a while. Rest up some more. Malibu’s great.’

  I said, ‘I don’t think he’s well enough.’

  ‘Sea air,’ he said. ‘That’s all he needs.’

  Brett was from a town called Enid, Oklahoma. ‘Ran away when I was fourteen,’ he said. ‘Had enough of getting the strap from my old man. Sel’s my family now.’

  He was waiting in his room in a wheelchair. Everybody left Lakeshore in a wheelchair, even if all they’d had was their moles burned off.

  Brett said, ‘Are we going to Malibu?’

  ‘Baby,’ Sel said, ‘I want you to do something for me. I want you to let Dr Rosen check you over. This thing I’ve got, you never know.’

  Brett said, ‘Is it clap?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘it isn’t. But I don’t want you getting any kind of sick. I need you fit and well while I’m recuperating.’

  Brett said, ‘I ain’t sick.’

  Sel said, ‘But do it for me anyway, baby. We did share an ice cream spoon.’

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Mam declined to believe Sel had a disease or even a phenomenon, which is what Sel preferred to call it. ‘The phenomenon is suffering from a phenomenon,’ he said.

  ‘Vitamins,’ Mam said. ‘That’s what he needs. Cod liver oil and malt.’

  He said, ‘She could be right. Get on the phone to Jennifer Jane. Tell her we want to know the minute she discovers vitamin F. And G and H. Tell her I’ll take the lot.’

  Dilys wanted a good British doctor to see him. ‘Harley Street,’ she said. ‘He can afford it. We don’t have to believe everything this Alpert doctor says.’

  But Sel wasn’t well enough to go to London. It was as much as he could do to walk outside and smell his roses. ‘Tomorrow,’ he kept saying. ‘Tomorrow I’ll probably feel like running through a few songs. Gotta start thinking about my cornbelt ladies.’

  There had been a Midwest tour planned for the autumn, but Liquorish had cancelled it. ‘Rescheduled,’ he said.

  Hazel said, ‘When for?’

  ‘To be decided,’ he said.

  Sel would just sit out by the pool for hours, gazing into space. He liked to have company but that was hard for Brett. A youngster like that, full of beans. He had been given a clean bill of health. ‘Come back in a year,’ they said.

  So Brett kept busy, walking the dogs, going to the supermarket, lifting Sel into bed at night and the rest of us took turns to sit with Sel. Pearl would bring her vegetables out. She’d sit peeling potatoes and talking to herself.

  And Mam always came for a word before she went off to play her slots. ‘You’re looking much better today, Selwyn,’ she’d say. ‘I see a marked improvement.’

  I was sitting with him one morning. Dilys and Hazel were doing aquarobics with Lupe Leon. Keep fit in water, supposed to be ideal for the older lady. I think Lupe only did it to try and get my attention. Prancing around in her bikini. Squealing and laughing and sticking her backside up in the air.

  ‘Our kid,’ he said, ‘I think I’m finished.’

  I said, ‘Come on! That’s no way to talk.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve got this feeling. Funny, really. I’m the bab of the family. I should see the lot of you out.’

  I said, ‘Cures get invented every day. That’s what Jennifer says. There’s investigations going on we don’t even know about. Chemicals bubbling over a bunsen burner. Atoms getting split. It’s just a matter of time.’

  ‘Everything is, Cled,’ he said. ‘Everything is. I just want to make sure everything’s done right. I can’t just sit here. Leave my fans wondering. I should announce my retirement and do a farewell show.’

  I said, ‘How can you? You can’t even stand.’

  He said, ‘I could do it sitting down. Soft focus. Slow songs.’

  I said, ‘Forget it. You’re looking too gaunt.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I thought about that. I’ll get Celeste to make me some jewelled kaftans. Put a bit of padding underneath. You look any size you want in a kaftan. I could look like Demis Roussos.’

  ‘What do you think?’ Brett’d say every day. ‘Is he gonna make it?’

  Hazel said, ‘What we have to do, Brett, is hope for the best but prepare for the worst.’

  I said, ‘And if it should come to it … well, we’ll see you all right. A good driver can always find work, same as a pianist.’

  ‘Oh, I ain’t worried about that,’ he said. ‘Anything happens to Sel, this place is made over to me. But I’d kinda miss him.’

  I said to Hazel, ‘Where does that leave us? I’ll have to have it out with Sel.’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ she said.

  I said, ‘What about the Old Bull? What if he’s left him everything? That’s my livelihood. And what about Mam? Where’s she going to live? In Great Barr with Dilys?’

  That made her stop and think. But I didn’t bring it up with Sel. He was going through a bad patch.

  Hallerton Liquorish telephoned every day. ‘I’ll be flying down,’ he’d say. ‘Maybe Monday. I have stuff Sel needs to sign. Next week,’ he’d s
ay. ‘Things have been crazy, but next week for sure.’

  I said, ‘Did you know Sel left Desert Star to Brett?’

  ‘Say what?’ he said.

  I said, ‘He reckons Sel sort of adopted him.’

  ‘Not sort of,’ a voice said. ‘Did it. It’s in the will. I get everything.’ It was Brett. He’d been listening in.

  Liquorish said, ‘Holy fucking shit. I’ll be there tomorrow.’ And he was, on the first flight.

  Brett said, ‘Sel, from now on, when folk want to talk to you, I should be there. You’re in no state. I’m your son now, remember?’

  Sel said, ‘Hey, we’re all on the same team. You, me, Hallerton. Cled too. Keeping Mr Starlight shining bright.’

  Liquorish said, ‘And I don’t usually talk business in front of the kids.’

  Brett said, ‘I just don’t want folks bamboozling you.’

  Sel said, ‘OK, OK. Just sit nice and quiet. That all right with you, Hallerton?’

  Liquorish said, ‘Whatever Mr Starlight wants, Mr Starlight gets. You’re looking terrific, Sel! This is great. I see a difference in you.’

  Sel said, ‘You know me. The Come-Back Kid. I’m taking my vitamins and I’m saying my prayers.’

  Liquorish said, ‘And you are so in demand, I can’t tell you. Kennett Shaffner wants to interview you on Face to Face. Bambi is preparing an in-depth. And Mimi Warren at Hot! has a great idea for a photo feature. Then there’s a fabulous new thing called “Celebrity Hugs”. Some of Hollywood’s biggest names are getting involved: Shirley Maclaine, Elizabeth Taylor.’

  Sel said, ‘You want me to hug Liz Taylor?’

  ‘Always the comedian,’ Liquorish said. ‘No, but she’d sure like to hug you. It’s to help allay public fears. People hear about this “Gay Plague” and they start worrying about contagion. But if they see their screen idols getting close up and personal, it’ll make them realise there’s nothing to fear.’

  Sel said, ‘Who saying that’s what I’ve got?’

  Liquorish said, ‘Well, obviously some people are saying that.’

  Brett said, ‘Then you better put them straight. You better get out there and tell them. Sel has low blood. Ain’t that right?’