by M. E. Kerr
“No one’s going to want to dance.”
“You’ll see. The show must go on. Their show must, and so must ours. Celeste is about five hours away from her watery grave … just as soon as it turns dark.”
Lenny said, “Did Jackie Kennedy get shot, too?”
“Damn you, Tra La, pay attention to us!”
“We’re stopped. At least for now.”
“We’re not stopped. You know, I didn’t plan this for myself, Lenny.”
“Didn’t you?”
“This is all for you and Laura.” “For Laura, anyway.”
“I don’t have time for this. Go and be with Laura.” “Don’t do us any more favors, Nels.” He stopped pacing and faced Lenny. “What does that mean?”
“I’m going to quit while I’m ahead.” “Don’t be a fool!”
“The President’s shot and you’re pacing around planning how to do your sister in!”
“You’re a mush head, Tra La. You’ve got mashed potatoes for brains!”
His eyes were narrowed and his hands were balled to fists. “You don’t deserve Laura!”
“I thought that was it, all along. You wish you had her, Nels, but you don’t and you won’t and you can’t!” Lenny laughed in his face, even though his stomach was turning over.
Lenny was almost crying then. His voice sounded younger and sillier and shrill. “You’ve always wanted what was mine, from my childhood stories to my Handy act to my girl. You can’t make it on your own! That’s why you want your sister home, and it’s why you want Laura and me in New York.”
“I don’t deserve this from you, Tra La.” Nels’s voice was very calm.
For a moment Lenny thought Nels was going to talk to him, make things okay again somehow, take back the ugliness between them.
Instead he socked Lenny, hard.
Lenny lit into him as though all he’d ever been waiting for was an excuse to beat up Nels.
No holds barred.
When Nels finally fell to the floor, there was blood trickling from his mouth. His right eye was already swelling to a slit.
Lenny looked down at him, amazed at what he’d done.
He leaned over, put his hand out, ready to pull Nels up.
“I’m sorry, Nels.”
But Nels shook his head and pushed Lenny’s hand away as he propped himself up on one elbow.
“Get the hell out of my sight,” Nels said quietly.
When Nels didn’t join them all evening, Lenny figured he was angry, and probably resigned to the fact there was no way they could follow through on their plan. He hoped Nels was with his sister, as Laura thought he might be.
Laura was frightened by the assassination. She had put in a ship-to-shore call to her brother, although Lenny had tried to discourage it. Twice she sent Lenny back to the stateroom to find Nels, but he wasn’t there. The garment bag was. Still.
Laura kept saying she bet Nels was taking it hard.
Lenny finally snapped back. “Nels doesn’t give a damn about Jack Kennedy or anybody but Nels! Don’t you know that?”
“You’ve never really liked Nels,” Laura said. “He loves you and you just use him.”
“He uses us, too.”
“How?”
“I’m not going to analyze it now.”
“You can’t. Because he doesn’t.”
Lenny decided not to continue the argument. They made a halfhearted effort to eat dinner. No one in the dining room was finishing. Few were even talking.
“I didn’t mean anything I said a while ago,” Laura finally ventured. “I just feel very insecure.” “Same here,” said Lenny.
“When we get to New York, I’m going on home with my brother, Lenny. Do you mind?”
Lenny lied and said he didn’t. He knew he was losing her.
He wished that suddenly Nels would come around the corner with just the right thing to say, and the perfect thing for the three of them to do … because Nels could always do that.
If anyone was looking for Celeste, Lenny wasn’t aware of it. Nearly everyone was glued to the television. Some were praying; a small group was singing songs like “God Bless America.” The bar was doing a good business.
• • •
After the Seastar docked, Reverend Delacourt, with Carl, came aboard to take Laura back to Philadelphia.
Neither one would speak to Lenny, or believe that Laura had occupied a separate cabin.
“Well, good-bye,” Laura said.
Lenny had to turn away. His eyes were full.
• • •
When Lenny went to get his things, there was still no sign of Nels. His luggage was there. And Celeste was still hanging in the closet, in the garment bag.
Lenny slung it over his shoulder and carried it off the ship with his own luggage.
He didn’t know why he did it.
People, that day, were not thinking about why they did what they did.
Lenny took a cab to his mother’s. All through the early-morning hours, Celeste sat in a chair across the room from them while they watched replays of Johnson taking the oath of office, and of Jackie Kennedy coming home in her blood-stained pink suit with her husband’s coffin.
chapter 13
No, Plum would not need his old clothes. Fen sat in a flood of light, on a stool in the garden of Adieu. Star, in black satin and pearls, was on one knee.
And on the other?
Celeste, in white satin … looking exactly as she had in I Love Las Vegas.
The only difference was around her neck.
The Seven of Diamonds … and where the horizontal bar joined the vertical, there was a single ruby.
• • •
But how could it be?
In the journal Nels Plummer had it in his jacket pocket the day he disappeared. The show began:
CELESTE: Tick tock tickers! Where’s my Snickers?
STAR: I ate them, dear. It seems I was always coming across them in the pockets of the tacky clothes I had to wear.
CELESTE: Even my hand-me-downs are too classy for you, love. You don’t understand class or Swinburne, or —
STAR: My favorite poet is Billy Idol.
CELESTE: That will never do, love, if you’re to perform with moi. You have to change.
STAR: The way you changed? Folks, she changed from a male into a female. She’s one of your transsexuals.
CELESTE: It’s time for a songfest!
STAR: To drown out the truth, Plumsie?
CELESTE: I was see-ing Nel-ly ho-oh-ome, I was —
Join in everyone!
• • •
“And now what do you think of poor old Plum?” a voice asked.
I turned to face Guy Lamb. He had on a cowboy hat and boots, the same bolo tie with the turquoise stone, the black belt with the silver buckle. At that party he stood out like a Froot Loop in a china bowl filled with bonbons.
He didn’t wait for an answer to his question.
He said, “At last I know what became of Celeste. She was turned into Plumsie. I should have figured that out long ago. There aren’t that many McElroy figures still performing.” He popped a shrimp into his mouth as a uniformed maid passed with a tray. “Very tasty!” he said. He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin that said Adieu.
I figured it’d be adieu to him as soon as one of the Keatings spotted him. He’d obviously crashed the party. Not another soul there looked like him; no one looked as if they even knew someone like him.
“How did you get here?” I asked him.
“I was just going to ask you the same question.”
I told him how I had. He said he’d come there to sell Fen an alligator figure case Fen’d wanted to buy. When he couldn’t find Fen all afternoon, he found out Fen had a date at Adieu. “I’m leaving early tomorrow morning. I’m glad it worked out this way. I wouldn’t have missed this for anything.”
“What do you think? Did Fen know he was buying Celeste when he bought Plum?” I decided to get as many question
s in as possible, before he got the boot. I knew the Keatings. They wouldn’t tolerate a gate crasher.
I didn’t have time to tell him anything about the journal. Where I’d left off, Lenny had taken Celeste from the boat the night of Kennedy’s assassination.
Guy Lamb shrugged. “I don’t know what to think. Celeste was way before Fen’s time. She was from the early sixties … and Lenny Last came along with Plumsie near the end of the sixties. But Fen knows her pretty good, I’d say. That’s Celeste, if I ever heard her. That’s how she looks, too, and that’s how she dresses.” He shook his head sadly. “Maybe that lady who owned Celeste sold her to Lenny and then Lenny did the worst thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Changed her sex. You don’t do that. It’s very bad luck…. No wonder Lenny went downhill.”
The Keatings’ guests were joining in singing “Seeing Nelly Home.”
We had to shout to hear each other.
I asked him if he remembered that something had happened to Annette Plummer’s brother.
“Yes,” he said. “He was a missing person. You think that’s why she sold Celeste? Too broken up to perform after?”
I shook my head as though I didn’t have a clue.
He said, “What’s your connection in all this, Fell?”
“None.”
“It doesn’t sound that way.” He grabbed another shrimp from another maid’s tray.
It was around eleven o’clock, with a cool ocean breeze and a full moon overhead.
I could see Keats way down in front, her chair as close as she could get to Fen.
After the song, Celeste started doing Dr. Fraudulent.
I was as amazed as Guy Lamb, who hit his head with his fist and said, “Golly darn! She’s the real thing!”
“What about the necklace?” I asked him. “That’s new, isn’t it?”
“It’s a fake. Star was wearing that same seven yesterday by the pool. I asked Fen if it was insured. He said it was just a copy…. So that surprises me. Celeste would never have worn a fake in the old days.”
“Did Fen say who had the original?”
“I didn’t ask him. You sound like a claims adjuster, Fell.”
Just at that moment I saw Mrs. Keating heading our way.
I figured Guy Lamb was going to be pointed toward the garden gate.
It was me Mrs. Keating wanted.
“I’m sorry to tell you this, John,” she said. “Your mother called. Your sister is missing. The police are looking for her.”
• • •
Whatever Eaton’s official title was (Caretaker? Butler? Estate Manager?), he became my chauffeur that night.
While I waited for him down in the driveway, I stood beside Fen’s Porsche.
When my mother’s in a strange house, she likes to take a peek in the bathroom cabinet. She says you can tell a lot about someone by seeing the bottles and tubes lined up on the shelves.
The closest I could come to discovering anything about this fellow was by reaching into his car for a look in his glove compartment.
Eaton caught me at it.
He said in his sourest tone, “Of course you know that’s not the car we’re going in.”
He was carrying my bag over to the black Lincoln, after giving me one of his looks. I used to suffer them when I was dating Keats.
“I don’t know why Mr. Keating is being so generous to you,” Eaton said. “Perhaps he’s just glad to get rid of you.”
I kept my big mouth shut.
I didn’t feel like a skirmish with Eaton. It never pays to get the driver ruffled when you’re going a long distance.
We were about two and a half hours from Brooklyn.
And I was too worried about Jazzy.
I wasn’t so rattled that I didn’t notice that the bag Eaton was putting into the back with me was not mine. I was about to make off with the little clothes and the journal again, but this time it suited me just fine.
On my excursion into Fen’s glove compartment I’d discovered his address and his last name on his automobile registration and his driver’s license.
I had an excuse now to pay a call there, pretending that I thought Fen would want what was inside the suitcase.
You see, Fen lived on Fifth Avenue.
His last name was Plummer.
THE MOUTH
Lenny’d fallen asleep in front of the TV. It’d been on all night. He didn’t even hear his mother leave for her job at Macy’s next morning. He woke up in time to see Lee Harvey Oswald shot dead. Then the phone rang.
“I’m glad I got ahold of you, Leonard. This is Captain Stirman.”
Stir-Crazy … probably hunting down Celeste.
Lenny had to turn down the sound to hear him. He wondered if he should tell him Oswald had been killed.
“Is Nels with you, Leonard?”
“No. Didn’t he go home?”
“We haven’t seen him. His sister and I are very, very concerned. When did you last see him?”
“Just after Celeste and Annette performed. Around two.”
He could have sworn Celeste was smiling at him from the rocking chair. “He wanted me to be sure Laura was okay, so I went down to Main Dining to be with her.”
“I saw him about an hour later. Did you and Nels have a fight, Leonard?”
“No. Why?”
“Someone had worked him over. He said a kidnapper did it, and Celeste is missing. There’s even a ransom note. What do you know about it, Leonard?”
“Nothing! I’m sitting here watching what’s going on in Dallas. Did you know someone just shot the guy who shot Kennedy?”
Lenny needed time to think. Was this a trick of Nels’? Was Nels trying to pin something on Lenny?
Stirman said, “I’m taking care of my own before I start worrying about Kennedy and the rest of it…. Nels told me he tried to stop a masked man from taking Celeste.”
“I told you. I know nothing about it.”
“Nels said he thought Celeste was thrown into the sea in all the assassination confusion.”
“It’s news to me.”
“Would your girlfriend know anything about it?”
“Of course not!”
“May I talk to her, please?”
“She went home with her family.”
Lenny gave him the number. Lenny hadn’t spoken to Laura since they’d said good-bye aboard the Seastar. He had the feeling it was good-bye forever. He had the feeling he would not fight for her left to his own devices. But Nels would make him do it. Nels would never let her go.
On television they were replaying the most recent shooting. Lee Harvey Oswald was grimacing, holding his stomach in pain.
Suddenly the world seemed to have gone mad.
Lenny imagined that Celeste was winking at him.
“Nels will show up soon enough.” Lenny told the Captain what he had been telling himself over and over. Nels was either hiding somewhere to punish Lenny or he was working on the kidnapping. Lenny doubted Nels was doing that, or he’d be frantic about Celeste’s whereabouts. He’d have called Lenny long ago.
The Captain began asking him about girls in Nels’s life, saying there had to be some.
Lenny said, “Why? He was always bashful.”
“Did you ever know him to buy jewelry for a girlfriend?” the Captain asked.
“No. Did you?” It was a strange question. Had Nels shown him the Seven of Diamonds for some reason?
The Captain said, “I don’t know him as well as you do. Would he buy jewelry for his sister?”
“I doubt that. Why?” Somehow the Captain must have seen the gift for Laura. Next Lenny imagined the Seven around Laura’s neck, the three of them together again, this all forgotten.
He could still see Nels’s bloody face, one eye closing.
He could still hear Nels telling Lenny, I don’t deserve this from you, Tra La.
That was right. Nels hadn’t deserved it.
• • •
&n
bsp; The Captain dropped the subject of the jewelry.
Lenny had crossed the room and picked up Celeste. He had never seen a figure so beautifully made. The head was molded in plastic wood; the eyelids and retractable lips were fashioned from leather, and skillfully grafted onto the head.
There was a plate behind her ears, which opened to a spaghetti network that made her moves and expressions possible. There were levers inside that looked like typewriter keys.
The Captain said, “When Nels gets in touch with you, tell him we’re calling the police. I only waited because I didn’t believe that whole story he told me, and because our problems seem so minuscule compared to what the country’s suffering. But now we have to take steps. Celeste is very much a part of our concern, too. She is extremely valuable. I’m not speaking now just of sentimental value. She is unique.”
Yes … Lenny could see that. He was fondling Celeste’s headstick…. Valuable … complex.
“Take this number down, Leonard. It’s my private phone. If you hear one word from Nels, call me. I’ll make it worth your while…. Dear God, where is he?”
• • •
It was a question that would obsess Leonard Tralastski long after he’d submitted to the police inquiry … long after he’d become Lenny Last.
He would never stop wondering about Nels.
Sober, he would think of all the possible accidents Nels could have had (ill from the punches to his gut, Nels had leaned too far over the ship’s railing). He would toy with the idea Nels had amnesia from the blows to his head. (Nels had just walked off the ship in a daze.)
Drunk, he would suspect everyone of murdering Nels, including himself. Could he have blacked it out? Hadn’t he, deep down, wished Nels dead sometimes?
Nels would haunt him forever.
• • •
But that Saturday afternoon, on the 23rd of November, it was Celeste he became fascinated and obsessed by.
He hung up the phone and bounced her on his knee like a proud father.
“Well, well, well, well,” said he, “how’s the little lady doing?”
He typed inside her head until she tilted a little to the right. She grinned into his eyes.
“What makes you think I’m a lady, Mac?”
“What makes you think I’m Mac? I’m Lenny.”
“How do you do? You can call me Plumsie.”
