Paris, Adrift

by Vanda Writer

  “You’re not kidding, it was. What if you’d succeeded? Hah, that’s success? You have any idea how I would’ve felt?”

  “I do now. It was thoughtless.”

  “And your God,” I whispered, “may not care a whole lot for homosexuality, but you can be damn sure he hates suicide. There’s no love in that.”

  “You’re right. But you don’t have to follow me around this ship all week. I’m not going to jump over the side.”

  “Why was it so bad you wanted to die?”

  “This is going to sound strange, but I didn’t want to die. I wanted to kill the pain. I went to this bar and ordered a drink because I was mad. Mad at me. Mad that I couldn’t stop wanting Max in that way. I wanted the alcohol to kill the pain, so I kept drinking and drinking. This guy, a cowboy type, propositioned me, and the anger and pain in me was so deep and the alcohol wasn’t killing it, so I went with him. We had sex. Please don’t tell Max.”

  “I think he figured that out.”

  “When it was over, I told the cowboy about Max. I went on talking and talking and maybe crying, and I guess I broke the empty scotch bottle we’d been drinking from and I think I tried to stab myself. But I know this for sure, that when I picked up that piece of broken glass and stuck it into me it wasn’t because I wanted to die. It was because I wanted to live. I’m okay now so you don’t have to worry. Standing out here breathing in this air makes me think that maybe there may be another way to look at things. And maybe God is bigger than I’ve been giving him credit for. That’s what my grandma says. So, go back to your stateroom and get warm. I’m fine.”

  “No, I think I’ll stay here on this chaise lounge breathing in the salt air, hoping Juliana shows up soon. Tonight is going to be a special night for us.”

  Chapter Three

  I fell asleep on the chaise lounge on deck and didn’t wake up until a pale blue haze rose in the sky. Zombie-like, I walked back to the stateroom and fell into bed. Juliana still wasn’t there; she didn’t arrive until the thin rays of sun peered through the portholes. She slept into the afternoon. I stood over her, watching her curled up into a ball on the couch covered with a blanket. A dull ache sat in my stomach. Oh well, tonight will be our night.

  I stretched out on one of the chaise lounges on the open-air deck to catch up on my reading. I had begun reading a detective novel that had been popular a few years ago. I’d missed breakfast, but I dressed for lunch and went back to the cabin to change again for the deck. I packed a couple pairs of trousers, foolishly thinking I’d be able to relax on deck in them since a deck is sort of a beach-like place. But no, trousers were not permitted anywhere in our floating palace. Scott, in his sweater-vest and tie, took off after lunch to explore the ship; he thought he might find a shuffle board game he could join. A woman dressed in a pink, orange, and green short-sleeved day dress sprawled out on the chaise lounge next to mine, taking a huge relaxing and loud deep breath. “Oh, isn’t this too delightful?” she said, stretching her arms wide. I thought she might be speaking to me, but I wasn’t sure. “Oh. Look!” She sprung into a sitting position, pointing excitedly, the loose fat on her large arms flapping. She pulled herself so close to my ear I could smell the crabmeat salad from lunch on her breath. “Do you know who that woman is?” she whispered. “Straight ahead at the railing.”

  “I can only see her back so . . .”

  “I saw her from the front at breakfast this morning. She’s the Duchess of Windsor.”

  “No kidding?”

  “The duke was with her this morning, so I suppose he’s around here somewhere. I’ve heard they make this trip often. I’m going to go stand by the railing and see if I can start up a conversation. Ooh! The Duchess of Windsor.” I watched her walk to the railing, curious to know how the duchess would react to this woman, but then Juliana showed up and I lost track of both of them.

  Having come from the shipboard beauty parlor, Juliana had her hair tucked up into a scarf, which she covered with a wide-brimmed hat. The air was cold despite the bright sun. Deck stewards wrapped our feet in fluffy towels to keep us warm.

  “So how was your evening with the commodore?” I asked.

  “Pleasant. He took me up to the bridge to see how they make the ship go without crashing into anything. He told me I was the only passenger besides the Duke of Windsor he allowed up there. I’m in pretty good company, heh? But, you know, I enjoyed talking to his wife more. She was a WAC during the war and Captain Black took her home from England on this very ship. A fascinating woman.”

  “Juliana, you didn’t . . . with his wife.”

  “Oh, stop.”

  “Well, you did come home pretty late.”

  “Are you keeping track of my movements?”

  “No. I’d never do that. Only . . .”

  “Oh. This is awful,” Juliana whispered to herself.

  “What is?”

  An open copy of Confidential Magazine lay on her lap. In the center of the magazine spread out over two large pages there was a picture of Marlene Dietrich in a beret, slacks, and overcoat. The title read, “The Untold Story of Marlene Dietrich.” On the opposite page, there was a picture of a woman in a tuxedo smoking a cigarette. “Now they’re calling us ‘Baritone Babes,’” she whispered. “What an ugly, humiliating name. They have pictures of Marlene’s girlfriends in here.”

  “That’s Hollywood,” I said. “Nobody cares what we do in New York.” I didn’t believe what I was saying. I thought of the book that had been left in my office. The one I hadn’t put there. The one that claimed, “female homosexuals” could be dangerous. The one where the author tells a story from an interview with Dr. Karl Menninger. Menninger was treating a “charming, tender girl” who was a lesbian. She’d been sent to prison because she’d beaten her husband to death with a hammer and left him in their apartment to die while she drove to a bridge party. Ah, yes, a charming girl. Despite that book and its thinly veiled threat by whoever left it on my desk, I had to pretend for Juliana’s sake that none of it applied to us.

  “I wonder why Paramount didn’t stop them from printing this? she asked. “That’s what all the studios do. Pay the bribe. Oh, that’s right. She hasn’t been working in film lately. She’s only been playing nightclubs and supper clubs where there’s no—protection.” She turned toward me. “You wouldn’t let them publish that I’m—”

  “Of course not.”

  “Of course not,” Juliana repeated, catching her breath. “Of course not.” She pointed at a picture in the magazine. “This is Jo Carstairs.”

  Jo Carstairs looked very much like a man in her boy haircut and tuxedo.

  “I met her in Paris before the war,” Juliana explained. “She was seeing Marlene off and on.”

  “Marlene? You call Marlene Dietrich Marlene?”

  “Well, we did entertain the troops together during the war. She’s a good person. I bet that’s why she keeps that husband she rarely sees hanging around. He makes her look ’normal.’”

  I wanted to say, like Richard, but I didn’t. “You never told me that when you entertained the troops it was with Marlene Dietrich.”

  “You never asked. Oh. Look at this page.”

  “We could’ve used that in your first PR campaign.”

  “They found out about the lesbian club she backs in Paris.” She read from the magazine, “Carroll’s—a favorite hangout for continental deviates.”

  I looked at the row of chaise lounges on either side of us. A few people in coats leaned on the railing looking out onto the sunlit water. I didn’t see the back of the Duchess there anymore; no one stood close enough to hear. “Juliana, did you—did you sleep with her?”

  “That’s not a polite question to ask a person.” She continued to stare down at the article on her lap.

  “You did. Dammit, you did.”

>   She turned to whisper, “Would you turn down Marlene Dietrich?”

  “Uh—okay, no. How was she?”

  “Al! That’s private. You know I don’t engage in that type of talk.” She turned the page of the magazine. “But she is a generous woman.” There was a wink in her voice.

  “More generous than me?”

  She smiled a smile I had no idea how to read and turned back to the magazine. “If—if anyone wrote this sort of thing about me,” she said, “I . . . I couldn’t take it, Al. When they said those things about me in the papers, about how bad I was in the play, I felt so ashamed. My mother. She would’ve been ashamed of me. I’ll never go back on a Broadway stage again. Never. But this—this is even worse.”

  “With the right property . . . A musical. You’d be—”

  “No. I can’t take the chance that reporters will come nosing around in my private life.”

  “But no one bothers theater people about this. Look at all the gay chorus boys and girls.”

  “And I suppose that’s why Gertrude Lawrence and Mary Martin are married to gay men. Because no one bothers theater people about this.”

  “Well, sure we can’t talk out in the open about who we love, but . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Okay. It’s not so good in New York, either, but you’d be great in the right musical.”

  “I got booed, Al. That has never happened to me before. Ever.”

  “That was only a couple of rowdy—”

  “And if this other came out too. I couldn’t take it.”

  “I know.” I wanted to hold her hand, to comfort her, to protect her from all the ignorant people who sought to destroy us. “It’s okay. You don’t have to.” I slid the magazine off her lap. “Stop reading this junk. Why don’t you close your eyes and get a few winks so you’re in top dancing form tonight?”

  She pushed the back of her chaise lounge down. “Yes. I’ll lie here and rest,” she sighed. “What are you reading?”

  “State Department Murders.”

  She lowered her hat over her eyes and yawned. “The homosexual did it with a little help from his friend, the lesbian. A wicked lot, those queers.”

  Chapter Four

  Our days were filled with lifeboat drills, shuffleboard, deck tennis, shipboard movies, writing postcards in the writing room, and changing our clothes. We must’ve changed our clothes seven or eight times a day. Each meal and each new activity required different attire, but you couldn’t wear what you wore the day before.

  Sometimes I had lunch with an ambassador or diplomat’s wife, sometimes Juliana joined us, sometimes she was having lunch with her own ambassador or diplomat’s wife, which I encouraged. I was working on building my connections for Juliana, Max, and myself. I had breakfast one morning with a blonde starlet who’d been forgettable in some Hollywood film whose title I couldn’t recall. She sat across the table from me in the dining room with her overeager, fifty-something agent who I suspected was her lover. Even though he didn’t smoke, Scott was in the smoking room with the musicians, talking over the routines.

  “Miss Huffman, I seen what you done for Juliana and Lili Donovan.” She fluttered her eyelashes at me. “And I’m a Lili Donovan look-a-like, doncha t’ink?” She turned her face this way and that, fluffing her jaw-length hair in my direction.

  “Don’t do that, dear,” her balding agent in a gray suit said, patting her on the shoulder. Ignoring him, she leaned her elbows on the table and shook her tits at me. She wore one of those V-neck sweaters that hugged her breasts. She obviously was wearing a bullet bra underneath, which made her breasts stick way out and taper into two sharp points. They were hard not to notice, especially since she kept swinging them in my direction.

  “I would do anyt’in’ to be a star like Lili,” she oozed. “Anyt’in’.” Was she intentionally flirting with me? Straight women had a way of flirting with other women without knowing it, but this one . . . I pushed my chair a few inches away from the table. Could she know about me? I think that was the hardest part of being . . . different. The not knowing, the reading into everything everyone said or did and never knowing for sure if they were sending you messages that they knew, or worse, they would use what they knew against you.

  “Take over my career, Miss Huffman,” she said. Her bright red lips pouted and sucked at the air. “I know you can make a star outta me.”

  “Talk to me in New York,” I said, knowing I shouldn’t be giving her a reason to hope, but I had never learned how to get myself out of those awkward spots. I pushed myself away from the table, thanked the two for a pleasant breakfast, and headed outside, hoping not to run into them for the rest of the trip.

  I had wrapped Mr. Schuyler’s script in a mimeographed shipboard newspaper. I found a chaise lounge in the open-air deck and spent the morning and part of the afternoon reading it. Mr. Schuyler had been right. It was a good script. One that would show off Juliana at her best. Now, all I had to do was convince Juliana.

  Every night we dressed up for another elegant dinner and later went dancing in the ballroom or sometimes on deck; other times we had cocktails in the cocktail lounge. I danced with the men and chatted over cocktails with the wives. I wish it could’ve been the reverse, but, oh well. Juliana danced for hours without resting. I loved sitting on the side watching the men buzz around her lining up for a dance. She was magnificent on the dance floor. Mambo, waltz, lindy, foxtrot, it didn’t matter; she could do them all with ease and even make an awkward partner look graceful. Watching her move like that, so in control of all those men, made me burn for her. Being aware that they wanted her but could never have her, while I could . . . I could, couldn’t I?

  Juliana was in constant demand by senators and congressmen, well-known actors and artists, a diamond merchant, and even a bishop all wanting to buy her drinks and walk around the deck with her, probably dreaming of doing lots of other things with or to her. She seemed to have no time to be alone with me.

  The second night, she collapsed into bed next to me in the early morning hours while I lay there awake, hoping she would put her arm around me and bring me close; she didn’t.

  On the third night, she slept on the couch in the sitting room explaining in the morning, “I didn’t want to disturb you; I came in so late.”

  On the fourth night, the day before we were to dock in Le Havre, France, we were getting ready for dinner. I stood near the bed in my bra and girdle, mindlessly pulling up my stockings watching her. She sat on a chair before the mirror inspecting her hair. She’d come from the beauty parlor and it was piled up on her head. “Not bad,” she said to herself, turning her face from side to side. She wore what looked like a man’s shirt, no underclothes and bare feet. I wanted to come up behind her and . . . “What’s that thing you’re wearing?” I asked.

  “Oh this?” she laughed. “It’s the top to Richard’s pajamas. Sometimes he wears the bottoms and I wear the top.”

  A cold chill ran through me. “Why?”

  “No reason. We just do.”

  “Are you saving on the laundry bill or is . . . is this some kind of game you two play? A sex game?”

  “Stop it, Al.”

  “What? I only asked a question.”

  “And you know I don’t talk about that. Now, get dressed.”

  “Sure.” I finished cinching my stockings. “It’s just . . . Dammit, Jule, I’ve gotta feel you between my legs soon or I’m gonna go mad.”

  She took out her compact and lipstick and laid them on the table in front of her.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “I did.”

  “Well?”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “Nothing.” I stepped into my violet gown and pulled it up over me. “Have . . . have I done something . . . something to make you
mad?”

  “I’m not mad.” She patted her cheeks with the powder puff.

  “Then why . . . why haven’t we . . .? I thought if we were sharing a stateroom we’d naturally make love, but . . .”

  “We don’t make love. We have sex.” She reached for the lipstick.

  “No, we don’t. We haven’t had sex in months, almost a year. I thought it was because it was impossible to get together, but we’ve been ‘together’ this whole trip and still we haven’t done whatever you want to call it. Why?”

  “We’ve both been busy.” She applied lipstick to her upper lip. “We’ve been meeting people. Isn’t that the purpose of this trip you put together? Didn’t you want me dancing with men, lunching with wives? Now, I’m supposed to do what else for you? I’m not your dancing bear.”

  “What? You wanted this too. Didn’t you? Is that what this is? You feel like I pushed you into this? Something you didn’t want?”

  “No. No, this is a good idea.” She blotted her lips. “I don’t know why I said that.”

  “Then what is it, hon?” I put my hands on her shoulders. I felt her body stiffen under my fingers.

  “I have to get ready.” She slipped out of my grasp and got up. “Don’t worry. There’ll be plenty of time in Paris.”

  She unbuttoned the pajama top and let it fall to the floor. I watched her glide naked over to the closet and pull out her underthings.

  “Are you trying to torture me on purpose?”

  She looked at me, surprised, “Torture? No. I’m getting dressed. Would you finish up too?”

  I slipped into my heels as she stepped into her white silk underpants and pulled them up. I watched as she reached around her back to hook her bra. She bent to pull up the garter belt and straightened to fix it around her waist. She put her foot up on the chair and slid a stocking over it, then slowly ran the stocking up the leg I hadn’t touched in oh so long and secured them to the fasteners of the garter. Was there anything sexier than watching a woman dress? Yes! Watching her undress.