by Todd Grimson
And, as that seemed indeed to be his last word on the subject, Harlow tried to go to sleep. But although she was weary, her eyes wouldn’t stay stuck shut.
Her bladder was full. She asked the musician where to go: he told her to use the bucket over there by the wall. She crouched over the metal bucket and let loose with a clatter, a warm hiss, getting some of the pee on the floor and on her thigh. She thought about telling him who she was, but knew he’d never believe it. In fact, it was possible he wouldn’t even recognize her name.
It wasn’t her real name, anyway. She had been born Harlean Carpenter. Her mother just called her “Baby.”
He woke her before it was light. It was time for her to leave, he said, and told her where she could find a trolley-car. Very seriously, he asked her if she needed any money. He said he could give her 50 cents. She said no thanks. He told her to be quiet going down the stairs.
She still felt high or something, hungover, she didn’t know… The air outside was misty and cool. She shivered for awhile before the walking warmed her up. Going past some broken glass, garbage cans, a slinking, ugly gray cat, and then some Chinese men in a hurry, their hands in their pockets…They scared her, she thought of white slavery and was glad she had on the wig, her usual extreme blondeness would have made her seem more of a prize. As it was, they scarcely looked at her, having their own business to conduct between themselves, talking together at sing-song high speed.
It was light. She got on a trolley-car. Counting the money in her purse, she had the ungracious suspicion that the cornet-player might have robbed her while she slept. It seemed like she was missing thirty or forty dollars from her wad. Funny then that he should have asked her if she needed 50 cents.
Jean Harlow walked through a green park with dew on the grass located a few blocks from her hotel. Some kids dressed in identical uniforms were exercising under the supervision of a tall man who looked sort of like a less-handsome Gary Cooper. He blew a whistle and they all ran off, in orderly lines, over the knoll and down the hill.
“Hi,” said Jean, friendly and ingenuous. “What’s going on?”
“Technocracy,” he said. He avoided looking at her directly, glancing at her and then gazing down the hill after the boys.
“What’s that? I thought you were Boy Scouts.”
“No… This is a Technocracy Youth Brigade. The world’s being taken over by machines, you know; we’re trying to get ready for it.”
“Are you sure? I mean, about the machines.”
“It’s been scientifically proven. The machine is making human labor obsolete. Pretty soon all anyone will have to know is how to push the right buttons. Salaries will be based on how many ergs of energy each worker can produce; everything will be fair because everything will be counted out and measured, no more trickery or exploitation.”
“You’re a Communist?
“Oh no,” he exclaimed, dismayed to be so misunderstood. He was wearing a gray jacket, gray shirt, darker gray tie, gray hat with charcoal band, black shoes… He started to explain some more, using numbers, but Harlow broke his concentration by reaching down and picking up something from the half-wet grass.
“Zap!” she exclaimed, laughing, pointing it at him. “What’s this?”
“I don’t know,” he said reluctantly. “It’s not mine, and I know it can’t belong to anyone in the Youth Brigade.”
“It’s a Buck Rogers Disintegrator Ray Gun,” said Jean. “If it’s not yours then I guess it’s mine. Finders keepers.”
“Wait. It might be…”
“So long. Zzzzap!”
She walked away, swinging her hips, highly pleased with her new toy. It was becoming morning in the city. Birds were calling, dogs were barking far away, some cars were honking their horns.
In Red Dust there’d been a scene in which she had taken a bath in a rain-barrel, covering up her breasts with her hands. She had been offered the use of a flesh-covered bathing suit, but she hadn’t liked it, it got too tight when it was wet. Paul Bern had not yet gotten around to dying: he was, in the meantime, in the absence of real sexual exploits over which to be jealous, taking things out on her in other ways, such as criticizing her in public (her clothes or choice of jewelry, correcting her diction or her manners, treating her as if she was stupid, etc.); and, naturally, when he found out that she was going into the rain-barrel for retake after retake, totally nude, he was furious, it drove him wild. He threatened (absurdly) to come down to the studio and sock Gable in the mouth: Jean dared him to, knowing full well he’d be scared to death to come anywhere near that set.
Taking a hot, luxurious bath in the hotel, she spilled some water onto the floor. She made her breasts slick with her new soap. Her nipples stood erect. For some reason she got the feeling someone was watching her, spying on her in the bath. She looked around meticulously, more out of form than out of a real hope of finding anything out. On the sets, it wasn’t unusual to discover that peepholes had been drilled in the walls of her dressing room, until the place was like swiss cheese. She didn’t ever feel safe in the bathroom, for instance, but she’d got kind of to the point where she figured there was nothing she could do, they all wanted to see everything she had.
Languorous in her robe, wig back in place (although she was getting tired of it), she called Room Service. She wanted a ham sandwich, a piece of apple pie, and a cold glass of milk. She was really hungry.
The bellboy knocked on the door, then came in with her lunch. He was a teenaged Latin lover, his hair slicked down like they’d all been doing ever since Rudy Valentino…not bad-looking, but with an attempt at a mustache that just didn’t have enough individual hairs.
She gave him his tip, and he smiled as if he knew more than he should, saying, “Thank you very much, Miss Jones.”
“It’s Johnson, not Jones.”
“Oh, excuse me. I thought it was Jones.”
“Well, it isn’t.”
He was openly leering. “Not much difference, though, is there? Hey, it might as well be Smith. I know what you’re up to.”
“Oh you do, do you?”
“I saw you when you came in this morning, and my friend told me about what went on last night.”
“Why don’t you mind your own business, kid, and just get out of here?”
“I don’t think I want to.”
“I’ll call the manager.”
“I don’t think you really want to be doing that,” he said, shaking his head in mock-gravity, playing out the part of ‘knowing the score.’ “There’s no reason for you to get sore at me. We could be good friends, help each other out. You’re on the loose here, you don’t know anybody — it’s dangerous trying to go solo in a town like this. You need protection. You need some friends who could get you out of a jam.”
So he thought she was really a professional. Jean found this amusing. He was so smalltime it was unbelievable.
“I got a bottle of good gin stashed in the linen closet down the hall,” he said, and underneath the patter he was uncertain, ready to break into a sweat. “Why don’t I go get it, come back, and we’ll have a nice discussion, figure things out. Oh, my name’s Rodrigo.” And he almost gave her a genuine smile. He went to get the booze.
Jean thought: Why not? Maybe there was something, after all, about these Latins. She was eating the ham sandwich when he came back.
Her robe fell open as she reached for a cigarette, and Rodrigo said, “You got nice boobs,” like he was some kind of a connoisseur. She kept wanting to laugh at him. She zapped him with the Ray Gun as he took off his jacket. He kissed her clumsily, his hands going after the tenderness of her body like jaguars in the jungle after meat.
“I bruise very easily,” she told him. “Don’t be so rough.”
The ceiling was ordinary and old. Rodrigo sucked in big gasps of air, as if he was drowning while he swam. There was friction, friction and squeezing… something was almost on the way.
The bed rocked like it might go through the
floor. Jean had finally shut her eyes, preferring the darkness there to the ceiling or the progress of a daddy longlegs spider on the wall. It was starting to feel real good: the motion was starting to drive her crazy—and then, too soon, Rodrigo went rigid and shot his wad in hot feeble jets, groaning like he’d been stabbed in his sleep.
“Get off me,” she said, when he continued to lie there, as if on the shore of a desert island, a castaway. She had to push him with her hands.
He finally roused himself from his trance, getting out of bed while pulling up his pants.
“You’re pretty hot. I’ll call up my friend Diego to come check you out. He’s very big around here, he got connections to some of the big houses – he does some jobs for Johnny Cade.”
“Forget it. I’m not putting out for your friends.”
“Listen, sister…”
“Get out of here. I need to take a nap. You had your chance.”
“I buy and sell whores like you all the time, dime a dozen, so don’t give me any lip. I’ll pop you one.”
“Where’d you get that dialogue? Public Enemy or Little Caesar? You can kiss my ass.”
“Either you start minding, or I’ll show you how to mind.”
“Go fuck yourself, greaseball. Don’t make faces at me, just blow. Get out of here, I mean it.”
She was using the voice she used in fights with Marino Bello and which she had used a few times on Paul Bern. Pure young bitch. She stood up, seeking to hide fear that Rodrigo would try to hit her. He didn’t seem to know quite what to do, visibly searching through his mind for the proper pose, wandering despite himself towards the door — when suddenly he had a change of heart and turned back, taking off his brown leather belt.
“I’m going to teach you who’s boss.”
“Stay away from me,” she said, very loudly. “Stay away from me with that. I swear, if you make one mark on me I’ll kill you! I’ll get some guys I know to help me cut off your balls and shove ‘em down your throat. Stay away from me!”
Her naked fear gave Rodrigo an illusion of power like he had when he shot up some hop. He enjoyed it when he snapped the belt at her, he liked hearing her little cries and the way she jerked away. This was better.
“You’re going to kiss my ass,” he said, “and like doing it. You got to learn who’s boss. Little sluts should be seen and not heard.”
Harlow was right by the bottle of gin. She picked it up by the neck. Rodrigo made the mistake of lunging at it too, arriving too late, his head suddenly in range. She hit him on the temple, but the bottle didn’t break; she hit him again, harder, and the glass shattered as he fell to the floor in a mess of broken glass and blood and cheap booze. He started to rise up on his hands and knees, cursing her in Spanish, and she hit him again, taking her time, with a brass-based lamp. Then Rodrigo was quiet as a mouse. Not even a squeak.
Harlow got dressed, quickly packed her bag, went downstairs to pay her bill and checked out, leaving the Biltmore Hotel in Seattle as her forwarding address. She’d heard of it sometime. She took a cab to the train station, then walked a few blocks and took the trolley-car someplace else.
By now she was calming down some, gathering her wits. She checked into the Hampstead Arms on Geary Street under the name of Rosemary Carpenter. For dinner she had chops and a baked potato, sliced tomatoes, and two cups of pretty good coffee with cream and two spoonfuls of sugar. She didn’t feel like having dessert. She didn’t want to get fat like Mama Jean.
Wearing a robin’s egg blue print dress and beige high heels, blue hat with a pink carnation, seamed stockings, fur coat, pearls, a new application of makeup, she went out for the evening, asking the taxi driver to take her someplace where she could play blackjack and get something to drink.
“Honey, nothing comes easy in this world, you must know that by now.”
“Here you go,” she said, holding out a five dollar bill folded lengthwise, much more than she needed to pay.
The narrow streets were lined with parked cars and signs that said NO PARKING AT ANY TIME. The taxi driver passed a street-car out on the left, giving Jean an exhilarating but not exactly pleasant feeling that gravity itself might be defied—and then the cab bounced, ending the illusion, continuing its way down the hill at top speed.
“I seem to remember a place where you can lose all the money you want,” he said, unlit cigar clenched between yellow teeth. “But a woman like you going in by yourself, you know what they might think. They don’t like stray cats pawing their guests.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“Sure you can. No skin off my bones. Don’t blame me though if the next thing you know you’re on a slow boat to China, getting advanced lessons on how to play the flute.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothin’. Same as everything else.”
“You taking me to Chinatown?”
“Nope.”
“Then let’s go.”
“Sure, honey. You can take care of yourself.”
The doorman let her in for another fiver. Remembering what she had heard about San Francisco, she figured the fix must be in with the local police.
Everything inside was done up in shiny, glossy white and polished gold. Pillars and high ceilings and a Negro hot jazz band all dressed in white. What a good clarinet-player, she thought idly, while heading to the gaming tables. When she got into a game of blackjack she lost a hundred bucks in the first fifteen minutes.
“Hit me,” she said, and got the Ace of Spades. She won. She got the Queen of Hearts. She won again. A handsome guy across the table was losing, at the same time giving her the eye. He looked like a high class gangster, if there was such a thing – or no, more like a sharpie, a mouthpiece for some syndicate. He wasn’t muscle, he was brains. He had on a very nice pearl gray suit with a pale blue shirt and navy tie with diagonal red stripes. He was tall, with dark brown hair and a closely trimmed mustache. A cleft in his chin. Shrugging after another loss, he gave up his place at the table and left Jean’s range of sight.
In about half an hour she was tired of playing. It was wearing her out. She left the table and cashed in her chips, coming out slightly ahead. She saw the man sitting at a table next to an over-grown fern. He was staring at her so unequivocally that she didn’t think it was out of place for her to walk over and say Hi. He got up to hold a chair for her and the waiter instantly materialized with a brand new drink.
The gambler said his name was Kit McPherson. Jean said she was Susan Rose. Kit was the most magnetic of any of the men she’d met in San Francisco thus far. She felt like she could fall in love.
“Well, Susan, as I was saying… What brings you to a place like this? Studying the natives in their natural habitat? Looking for hepcats?”
“Actually,” said Jean, “I thought this was the Bamboo Room. I’m here by mistake.”
Kit laughed. “Call it fate.”
“You call it fate.”
“Okay, I’ll call it fate. Why don’t we let fate guide us out of this dump and over to a place with a little more life? I’m supposed to meet a cousin of mine at The Lotus Club. What about it? Does that sound like it might swing?”
Jean shrugged, gesturing indifferently with a cigarette in her hand, but she meant Yes and Kit knew it. Somehow it seemed like he just snapped his fingers and they were in a cab, he immediately started kissing her, sticking his tongue into her hot pliant mouth and his right hand up her dress between her legs. She didn’t fight it. Why should she? She liked it. She was ready for the works right there in the back of the cab.
But Kit had more class. He put one knowing finger inside her, then stopped short of any further move. She was panting. The cab stopped in Chinatown and he said he’d be right back, he had to run into this restaurant and pick up a package from some Chink. The cabdriver stared cynically at Harlow in the rear-view mirror. In less than a minute, Kit was back — the cab then roared off.
Kit now seemed elated. He laughed aloud,
but when she asked him why he shook his head and changed the subject. They arrived at their destination. It was a confusing place to get into, two stories underground. They had to give passwords at three different ominous metal doors. Jean had no idea such places existed. Her eyes grew wide; she was wondering what was going to happen to her.
The smell of exotic incense, sandalwood and musk, mingled with reefer and sweat and perfume, as well as the smoke of burning opium and hashish. Some of the beautiful girls waiting on the tables seemed actually to be transvestites, delicate and cute, some even possessing breasts. Where did such hermaphrodites come from? The scenery was slurred blue pink and gold.
“What do you think?” asked Kit, and Jean didn’t know what to say, all she could do was look around and marvel at what she saw. He led her to a table where they joined a muscular, brown-haired guy named Dirk, who had a slight German accent, and his date, Fawn, a redhaired, plumpish, pretty girl with freckles, who was wearing a thin, lemon-yellow silk dress which showed off her lovely, slightly sagging fleshy breasts.
There were girls dancing in a line, all platinum blondes like Jean Harlow in Hell’s Angels. Again, it seemed that some of them were not really girls.
Blue sequins and flashing sparkles of jewels made out of glass. Fawn passed “Susan” a sweet-smelling, perfumed cigarette. Jean smoked a little bit and got terrifically high. The platinum blondes made her giggle almost uncontrollably. Everyone in America was bleaching their hair to be like her; and here she was, wearing a brunette wig, trying to escape (even if not forever, even if only as a dangerous experiment). She thought of all the dirty pictures people sent her. She felt like a child. If MGM was sending detectives to find her they’d have a hell of a time following her down here.
It was infernally hot down here. Reddish pink lights and spots cut through plumes of smoke. A Chinese dragon danced, all gold, to the accompaniment of cymbals and wailing flutes and clarinets.
“Let’s go,” said Dirk, to Kit. “Let’s go someplace… where we can…” He raised his eyebrows and shrugged.
In the backseat of Dirk’s car Kit started feeling Jean up again, exciting her, she was still telepathically receptive to his touch. He knew how to find the right spot. God. She moaned, shamelessly, knowing the others could hear and knew exactly what was going on. But this was who she was supposed to be!
