All the Beautiful Girls

by Elizabeth J. Church

  * * *

  —

  “HOW WAS IT?” Vivid began the inquisition, but the others quickly joined in.

  “Out of sight? Out of this world?” Rose asked.

  “Far out?” Vivid grinned.

  “What?” Dee asked. “What are you guys talking about?”

  “You must be the only person on the face of the planet who doesn’t know,” Ruby said.

  “Know what?” Dee asked again.

  “Only person in the solar system,” Rose said.

  “Only one in the universe.” Vivid trumped Rose.

  “Enough with the space jokes,” Ruby said, feigning frustration.

  “Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?” Dee nearly shouted.

  “Ruby slept with Chip Casperson.”

  “No!” Dee looked to Ruby for confirmation. “The astronaut?”

  Ruby nodded, smiling.

  “So, to begin where we started,” Vivid said, grabbing Ruby’s shoulders from behind and shaking her. “HOW WAS IT?”

  “Earth shattering.” Ruby grinned.

  “Gawd!” Dee said. “When did all this happen?” The others dissolved into helpless laughter. “No one tells me anything,” she said, pretending to pout and then grabbing a cushion from Rose’s couch and pelting Ruby. “I need details!” she shouted, hitting Ruby while the others grabbed cushions and joined her.

  “Yeah,” Vivid said. “It’s the least you can do for those of us who have not had intergalactic sex.”

  Ruby folded her hands as if she were a peaceful Buddha and began. “Okay. First of all, let me just say that he is extremely well endowed. I believe you mere earthlings would say his dimensions are astronomical.”

  * * *

  —

  OVER THE YEARS, gamblers bought her nearly a dozen furs. Yet, her all-time favorite was her first—an abundant, calf-length silver fox fur with an absolutely enormous collar she could stand up so that its softness caressed her cheeks. It was so supple that it rippled like water when she walked. The coat’s lining was a hot pink China silk, and the buyer was Kyle, the day before he left Vegas to return to his suburban Ohio home.

  Ruby leapt into the coat in the nude, and they drove the Karmann Ghia she’d bought herself into the desert outside the city, where the darkness was so complete she could barely see her hand held before her face. They parked in a desolate spot on a forlorn dirt road, lowered the car’s top, and watched as the stars faded and dawn arrived in pinks, intense peaches, and deep roses. Ruby listened to the coyotes howling and barking; she heard the whoosh of an owl’s wings as it swooped to grab an unwary desert rodent. Away from the bells and whistles of the Strip, its omnipresent clouds of cigarette smoke, she could smell desert sage and catch the eyes of jackrabbits in her headlights. She felt peace in the aching, lonesome stretch of desert sand. She felt at home in this inhospitable setting.

  And, Ruby felt gratitude for the solid, real presence of Kyle as they leaned against each other, warm, easy, wordless. She felt what she knew would be an enduring fondness for him—for his tenderness, as well as his commitments that kept her from becoming attached. Kyle was a dance partner who’d helped her to disentangle herself from a sizable, dark part of her past. He’d go back to his wife. And Ruby—she would go on to others.

  Kyle was the first, but not the last. Ruby was fondest of him by far, but their affair had lasted barely a week, and he had his squeaky-clean public image to maintain. After Kyle, if the man was handsome enough, charming enough, or if he made her laugh—then and only then would Ruby consider riding the elevator with him to his hotel suite. The nearly anonymous sex was, she thought, about the best thing ever invented. It let her experiment freely. The man—whoever he was—would be gone in a few hours or days, so why not? It let her demand. It helped her to drive out the demons Uncle Miles had bred inside her, to make them matter less and less as they were caught in the undertow of other experiences, other men. Ruby had her favorite times, her favorite men and sensations. She consciously let fade the lackluster performances, the times when she’d been wrong about the chemistry or when her partner for the night had been too drunk to perform.

  Sometimes, she could hear Aunt Tate’s voice shouting “Slut!,” and she knew that most of America would have called her that—probably even her parents, had they lived. But Vegas gave Ruby the freedom to experiment. And maybe things were changing.

  As 1967 eased toward 1968, Ruby got up, got dressed, and left men while they slept. She left them, always. She left them and left them and left them, and she knew it was the perfect life for her. Meaningless, recreational sex allowed her to convince herself that she was somehow protected. That her heart was immune.

  She sent the Aviator a jar of Tang—the astronauts’ drink!—along with a photo of the showgirl and the astronaut Chip Casperson. The Aviator responded by sending her a copy of This Side of Paradise. Inside the book’s cover, he wrote To the girl who’s been to outer space. He never threatened to visit and check up on her, never mentioned her aunt and uncle, but Mrs. Baumgarten repeatedly promised visits. Her husband’s busy surgery schedule always interfered, which was actually fine by Ruby. She had to admit a secret grudge against her well-meaning dance instructor, the one who hadn’t given Ruby particularly informed or good advice, who’d pretended to know more than she did about Vegas and the dance world in general. Big fish, little pond—it was a saying her father had used, and Ruby thought it most apt when it came to Lenore Baumgarten.

  On her days off, Ruby went to see other Vegas shows, sometimes with her friends but more often on the arm of one of the cigar-scented men who sought to charm her. At the Aladdin, she saw Tempest Storm, marveled at the woman’s artful striptease, the finesse with which the queen of burlesque removed her clothing. At the Sahara, Ruby rubbed shoulders with Joe DiMaggio and Paul Anka, and during one of Buddy Hackett’s shows in the Congo Room, she spotted Sonny and Cher in the audience, along with Michael Landon and his wife. Eat your heart out, Uncle Miles, she thought, knowing how much he’d have given to see Bonanza’s Little Joe in the flesh. On Chicago Johnny’s arm, she passed beneath the Riviera’s twirling neon star, through the nine-thousand-square-foot lobby, and in the casino’s Versailles Room she saw performances by Louis Armstrong, Ann-Margret, Sarah Vaughan, and Debbie Reynolds. Afraid of losing track, Ruby listed the shows and dates in the back pages of her cashbook.

  * * *

  —

  “WHAT ARE YOU up to?” Rose asked, entering Ruby’s apartment and finding her setting up a card table.

  “I bought a sewing machine.” Ruby struggled with the legs of the table and at last got them locked. She scooted the table beneath a living room window so she’d have plenty of natural light.

  “Why? I mean, you can afford to buy any clothes you want. Or have them bought for you.”

  Ruby had often wondered how Rose felt about showgirl perks—the clothes, the jewels, and in Vivid’s case, the cars and boats and probably one day even planes. Rose kept her clothes on, and so she was earning a comparatively mediocre salary, supplemented from time to time by drunken, elated-gambler largesse. Still, Ruby had never broached the subject openly—it seemed like a possible bruise for Rose, and she had no intention of pressing it.

  “I used to make almost all my clothes,” Ruby said, lifting the sewing machine from its box and setting it on the card table with a heavy thunk.

  “My point exactly. Used to.” Rose began sorting through Ruby’s pile of Hermès scarves with the purpose of borrowing one to wear on her date with a new man—a Caesars card dealer.

  “You’re wearing your linen sheath? The turquoise one?” Ruby asked, scrounging around in the cardboard box until she found the sewing machine’s instruction booklet and box of accessories, including a newfangled buttonholing device. The machine was far beyond Aunt Tate’s old, no-frills Singer. Ruby was excited, anticipatin
g all of the things she could make.

  “Yeah, the blue dress,” Rose said. “Good God, Ruby. How many of these do you have?”

  Ruby went to stand by Rose and sorted through the pile of silk until she found the scarf she thought would best complement Rose’s dress. She unfolded it and held it up so Rose could decide. It was a pattern of greens, blues, and purples with black accents that reminded Ruby of stained-glass windows.

  “Perfect,” Rose said, taking the scarf and carefully refolding it. “So explain the sewing machine, please.” She sat down in one of Ruby’s new wingback chairs. Ruby had had them custom upholstered in hot pinks and whites, bold geometric patterns. The Sunglow Apartments, with their broad-bladed venetian blinds and shadowy interiors, looked as though they had played a starring role in some Fred MacMurray noir film, and Ruby was determined to brighten things up.

  “I want to design clothes,” Ruby said, opening the refrigerator and pulling out a pitcher of iced tea. “Want some?”

  “You bet.”

  “Anyway”—Ruby pried up the lever on the ice tray and freed enough cubes for their glasses—“I have this new friend. Tawny. She’s one of the Tropicana’s backstage seamstresses, and just so talented. I mean, I’ve always used patterns, been careful to follow all the instructions to a T—but she can cut and sew free-form, just take a look at a garment and then replicate it, but with her own style. So, we got to talking—”

  “Did you talk salary?” Rose interrupted, accepting the iced tea. “Because I can guarantee it would be a ridiculously big pay cut.”

  Ruby, who was wearing hugely belled bell-bottom pants dyed in broad vertical stripes of white, red, yellow, and blue, plopped down sideways in the other wingback chair. She looked down at her thigh on the pink-and-white upholstery and thought about how jarring the materials were. They nearly screamed. “I can’t dance forever, you know.”

  “You’re nineteen! That’s hardly old.”

  “But the lifespan of a showgirl—you know,” she said, hinting at what they’d all seen in Vivid—prime fading toward the beginning of the end.

  “I’m just saying you’re not there yet. Not for years.”

  “Maybe not, but I’m thinking about my future. I’m thinking that maybe I could be a costume designer, here in Vegas. I want to learn—and Tawny can teach me some of the fundamentals. I’m already sketching,” she said, nodding toward a portfolio she’d left open on the loveseat. “Just ideas I have, designs I could start with.”

  “That’s all good,” Rose said, sipping at her tea, thoughtful.

  Lately, Ruby had been inspired by fashions from the twenties, from the F. Scott Fitzgerald novels the Aviator sent, and fleetingly she wished Rose had shown some curiosity about her design drawings. “What about you? What do you want to do after Caesars?”

  “I don’t know why I can’t do what a showgirl does, if and when I get tired of Caesars. Just move to a different casino, change the scenery.”

  Vivid was on her third casino since Ruby had met her. The showgirls easily moved from stage to stage, and it kept the productions fresh to have the dancers move about. It also let a showgirl quit for a few weeks, jet someplace with some man hot off a big win, and then come back to work.

  Ruby shook her head. “I mean your future future,” she said meaningfully. “I’m talking about long-term planning, Rose.”

  “I’m not like you. I’m more of a spur-of-the-moment gal. Besides,” she said, setting her empty glass on the floor beside her chair. “Isn’t that what a husband’s for?”

  “Oh, please.” Ruby rolled her eyes. “You can do better than that.”

  “Who says? And who says there’s anything wrong with that? It could be that Matt’s the one.”

  “Tonight’s Prince Charming?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay then,” Ruby said, not wanting to make her friend feel as if she were selling herself short. It had never once entered Ruby’s mind that marriage—or some man—would give her the kind of security she needed. As a matter of fact, life had taught her something entirely different.

  “But what about you? Don’t you want someone steady in your life? A true love interest?” Rose flipped her hair over her shoulder. “I mean—and I’m not judging here—it seems what you’re doing could get pretty lonely after a while.”

  “I’m not lonely.”

  “Fine. But don’t you want something more permanent? A man you could rely on?”

  “The way I see it is, if it’s meant to be, it will be. I think, literally, the man who’s right for me will just show up on my doorstep. I’m not into all this girly manipulation.”

  Rose smiled and aimed her gaze meaningfully toward Ruby’s record albums. Nancy Sinatra’s Nancy in London album was sitting front and center. “So,” Rose said, “you’re gonna go with wishin’ and a hopin’?”

  Ruby grinned. “I’m certainly not going to follow that song’s advice.”

  “You mean wearing your hair just for him, doing the things he likes to do?” Rose laughed.

  “Lord, no.” Ruby shook her head, thinking she might have to give Nancy Sinatra a rest for a while.

  “I’ll tell you what I really want,” Rose said, now deadly serious. “I want children. And stop it—don’t shake your head at me.”

  “I wasn’t. I wasn’t going to,” Ruby objected.

  “I want to build a home, create holiday traditions, teach my daughter to roll out sugar cookie dough. I want a man who will hold my interest and give me security.” Rose paused.

  “But what else?” Ruby asked. “You do want more than a Leave It to Beaver life, don’t you?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with wholesome.”

  “Says the woman who wears a teeny-tiny toga to work.”

  “Says the woman who has a good job, who has gotten out to see the world, and who now has a better frame of reference. I’ve tested my theories.”

  “Which are?”

  “What’s meaningful. What amounts to a life well lived.”

  “So Vegas is your contrast? The black to your white?”

  “Maybe. But you and I know it’s a place where a girl can come to have a life of her own, before she settles down. Look at Vivid. She has her independence, her freedom. But it can’t be all she wants.”

  “Who says?”

  “She’ll marry some tycoon.”

  “That’s not what she tells me,” Ruby said. “She told me she wants to be rich in her own right—not have some sugar daddy doling out gifts or making all the financial decisions. I mean, c’mon, Rose. If the man has all the money, he has all the power. Can you really see Vivid taking orders?”

  Rose laughed. “Point made. But don’t belittle my dream, all right? I’m entitled.”

  Rose’s dream life was essentially the life Ruby had supposed her sister Dawn would have had, had she lived. Marriage, children, sunny-day picnics and rainy-day baking. It’s what Rose had grown up knowing, what Dawn had known, and for that reason alone it made sense. But Ruby believed that the doors that led to such acceptability, such wholesomeness, as Rose said, were closed to her. And now, given her Vegas life, Ruby was far too tainted ever to kiss the pristine garments of wholesomeness.

  “And what about you?” Rose interrupted Ruby’s thoughts. “It’s pretty obvious that one thing you’re after is a big savings account. Right? I mean, how much have you got socked away?” Almost immediately, Rose apologized. “Shit. I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. It’s just that you don’t spend anything. Well, practically nothing,” she said, eyeing the new sewing machine.

  “It’s because you never know.” Ruby stood to get more iced tea. “You never know what life will throw at you.”

  Rose followed Ruby and held her glass out for a refill. “Sometimes you act like you’re forty.” She took a sip of tea. “What happened to you?
I mean, to make you so cautious? It had to be something big.”

  “I’m not cautious!”

  “You’re cautious with money.”

  “I’m careful.”

  “Whatever. You’re avoiding the question.”

  “I’m refining the question.” Ruby smiled.

  “Still avoiding,” Rose shot back.

  “Let’s just say I learned early on that the rug can get pulled out from under you. Like the Boy Scouts say, Be prepared.” Ruby set down her glass and put a foot up on the kitchen counter, stretched.

  “You’re not going to tell me,” Rose said.

  “No offense intended.” Ruby paused in her stretch and looked at Rose. “If I told anyone, it would be you, okay? I just don’t want to relive it.”

  “Okay,” Rose said, picking up the Hermès scarf.

  “If you like it, keep it.”

  “Sure you won’t miss it?” Rose teased, looking toward the tower of scarves.

  “We’re going to want a full report.” Ruby switched legs. “In the morning. Or whenever you decide to come home.”

  “Maybe,” Rose said on her way out the door, “but I can keep a secret too.”

  Ruby hadn’t told any of them of her family’s death. She didn’t want the breadth of her loss to define her, and she didn’t want to see anything different in the eyes of her friends. But what did her past matter, anyway? She was Ruby now, not Lily. When she’d last bought a new wallet, she carefully printed the Aviator’s contact information on the emergency identification card and tucked it behind the plastic window. He was her family—all she wanted of family.

  * * *

  —

  IN THE SPRING of 1968, Evan Brashear wooed Ruby from the Tropicana to the Stardust, where she became one of Brashear’s Lido Belles. Brashear was a really nice man in a city that wasn’t always particularly nice, and he had pomaded, curly hair, an omnipresent cigarette holstered in his right hand, and a pointed chin that turned up slightly, reminding Ruby of the curled toe of a Turkish slipper. He gave her a hefty raise and put her on the cover of the menu for the Cafe Continental, the lounge where the Lido de Paris show was performed. Ruby even won Vegas Showgirl of the Year, which was a huge honor, especially for someone who’d barely been dancing six months. “You stand out,” Brashear told her. “Even in a line of girls meant to look alike. You’re luminescent, Ruby Wilde. A phenomenon,” he’d said, chucking her under the chin.