Seduction of Moxie

by Colette Moody

  *

  As Moxie started to sing “What’ll I Do?” into the microphone, she couldn’t help but think of the dance she had shared with Violet as this song played just two nights before. She tried to focus on the lyrics, the low murmur of soft conversation coming from the crowd, the piano—anything besides that provocative memory that gave her a rush of adrenaline.

  As she struggled to get past the sad sentiment of love lost, her stomach lurched when she recalled moving slowly against Violet’s body. She shut her eyes tight as her mind again wandered to what their night of intimacy must have entailed.

  Lyrics, for God’s sake—focus on the lyrics. You’re performing, after all.

  She opened her eyes to look at the patrons. A few tables back she spied Julian, seated with a rather attractive-looking fellow. He nodded at her in recognition and sipped his drink.

  When the song ended, the applause was generous.

  “Thanks so much,” she said. “I’ll be back for more soon.” She took a few more bows and headed over to Julian’s table.

  “Hey there, hotsy,” he said affably as he motioned for her to join them. “Get that extra set that you wanted?” He motioned for her to sit.

  “I did, yes. Just today, actually.” She pulled up a chair. “I’m up to three a night now.”

  “Well, Violet must have more pull than I thought. Gary, this is Moxie, singer extraordinaire. This is Gary, master sodomite.”

  She examined Gary as she smiled politely. “Nice to meet you.” He had chestnut hair and wore spectacles, and his jaw was prominent and chiseled.

  “Enchanted,” he replied, flashing his perfect white teeth.

  Moxie thought she saw Julian’s chest swell a bit with pride—having someone so clean-cut and handsome for his date. “What do you mean about Violet having pull? Are you saying she had something to do with it?”

  “I know our girl had a chat with the owner about you the other night, to put in a good word. It could just be a coincidence, but I’m sure having a Broadway actress sing your praises can’t hurt. Unless, of course, that Broadway actress is Wil.” He tapped a cigarette on the back of his hand before lighting it.

  She supposed she owed Violet her thanks, if only she was able to tell her. “So where is Wil tonight?”

  “We just came from seeing her in Scandals and Lies. She was very nearly sober—”

  “You really had to pay attention to tell that she wasn’t,” Gary added.

  “And she wasn’t completely unintelligible.”

  “Oh dear,” Moxie said, rubbing her chin. “As good as all that, huh?”

  “Which was a profound improvement from last night’s show, where she shouted out the word fuck when she tripped over a piece of stage furniture.”

  “An ottoman,” Gary said helpfully.

  “Inconsequential.” Julian waved his hand. “Let us just say that she’s still settling into the role, and that may require a bit more time.”

  Moxie narrowed her eyes. “And is the producer willing to give her this settling-in time?”

  Neither man answered right away.

  “I suppose we’ll see,” Julian finally said. “You seem to have fully recovered from the other night.” He looked at Gary for a moment. “She bravely decided to go out on the town with Wil, Vi London, and myself. She was a real trouper.”

  “Yes,” she said, with some degree of embarrassment. “I’m sure you’ll razz me for this, but yesterday all I managed to swallow was a handful of saltines and some water.”

  Julian chuckled and shook his head. “But you’re better now?”

  She knocked on the table. “It’s all silk so far.”

  “Hmm, what you needed was one of Wil’s eye-openers,” Julian said. “That would have set you straight.”

  “And what exactly is in her eye-opener?”

  Julian began counting on his fingers. “Seltzer, lemon, sugar, and gin.”

  Gary looked perplexed. “Isn’t that a gin fizz?”

  “That sounds more like an eye-closer,” Moxie said.

  “Well, it depends on how many you have. If you have three or less, it’s an eye-opener.”

  “Tell me, Julian,” she asked cautiously. “What business are you in that you can see Wil’s play every night of the week?”

  “I’m a freelance writer.” He lightly flicked the ash from his Lucky Strike.

  “Which means he’s unemployed,” Gary said.

  “I have a story coming out in Harper’s next month.” His voice dripped with smarmy defensiveness. “So I’m not unemployed. If you’re good enough at what you do, you can get by doing a ridiculously negligible amount of work.”

  Gary squinted at Julian. “Says you. Sounds like laziness to me.”

  Julian coughed indignantly and stared at Gary for what felt like a very long time. Finally, he turned back to Moxie. “So have you heard from our gal Vi?”

  She fought to hide her sudden discomfort. “Nope. Is she in California yet?”

  “I don’t think she’s due to arrive until tomorrow afternoon, but I’m sure she’ll be in touch.”

  “You seem pretty sure of that.” She avoided his gaze.

  “She seemed dizzy with you, darling. I’m sure you noticed. I mean, you did give her your address and phone number, after all.”

  Time seemed to come to a screeching halt. “I did?”

  *

  Irene ran the scalding iron over the peach skirt that was stretched over the ironing board. “So then the bastard leans his chair backward and tries to grab my costume as we’re all starting the finale.”

  Moxie flipped idly through a movie magazine as she listened to her roommate’s story. “No kidding? What did you do?”

  “Well, I was already doing a high kick. So I just kicked a little more to the left. I got him right in the jaw.”

  “Holy Toledo! What happened then?”

  “He spat out a little blood and scooted his chair back. I never even missed a beat.”

  “You slay me, sister,” Moxie said appreciatively. “Who knew that being a chorus girl would be such a hazardous job?”

  “Well, the owner told me not to kick anyone else in the face. He said it goes against the highbrow atmosphere that he’s established.” She slid the skirt around on the board to iron the other side.

  “Then why did he name the place Jughead’s Joint? To pull in the opera crowd?”

  “And how,” Irene replied with a sigh.

  There was a knock at the door, and Moxie rose to answer it, not wanting Irene to have to set the hot iron anywhere. Mrs. Bennington, the landlady, stood in the hallway looking irritated.

  “Good mor—”

  “You got a letter,” the woman blurted out between loud hacking. “Here.” She pushed an envelope so close to Moxie’s face that she reflexively drew back.

  “Oh, um, thanks.” She took it from Mrs. Bennington, who turned and left with no further pleasantries, the sound of her wet cough echoing down the stairs.

  The door shut quietly and Irene mumbled, “She’s such a people person. I can see why she chose to be a landlady. Who’s it from?” She looked over her shoulder. “Hey, Beethoven, didn’t you hear me?”

  Moxie stood stunned, staring at the name in the upper corner of the envelope. “It’s from Violet.”

  “Bunk,” Irene declared, carrying the iron with her to look over Moxie’s shoulder.

  Moxie held the letter up to her. “See?”

  Irene whistled a low tone. “Let’s give it the dust,” she said. “Open it.”

  Moxie took a deep, calming breath, tore it open, and began to read silently.

  “If you think you’re not going to have to read that out loud, you have another think coming, sister.”

  Grudgingly, Moxie cleared her throat.

  Moxie,

  As I write this, Clitty and I are bound for Chicago and hoping you are well and have bounced back from your night of overindulgence. Clitty, cheeky bastard that he is, was concerned that your han
gover would be so colossally debilitating that you would be unable to function for days. But I reminded him that he is, after all, a dog, and therefore not an expert on these things, though I’m sure he has seen things that would make some church-going folk spontaneously combust. To his credit, he is very discreet.

  With any luck, by the time this reaches you, we’ll have arrived in Los Angeles and I’ll be on my way to securing a permanent address. Once I have that, I’ll send it along to you in the hope that at some point you’ll send me a sassy reply.

  Let me know if you want any film-star autographs. I imagine I will meet a few celebrities at the studio, though I can’t guarantee that any of them will be worth a tinker’s damn. (I did promise Clitty that I would help him get a snoot full of Rin Tin Tin, though he may have to settle for Irene Dunne. If so, I would certainly understand his disappointment.)

  I’ve been told that the nightlife in Hollywood makes New York City seem like a convent, so I can’t wait to see how people on the West Coast slowly kill themselves. They say everything out there is grander—so I imagine grand venereal diseases, grand delirium tremens, and an overall grand absence of scruples. How can I possibly be either disappointed or bored?

  You know, even though this trip westward makes me feel like I’m on the precipice of something remarkable, I can’t seem to reconcile that I felt the same way when I was with you.

  Well, I’ll sign off before any further confessions are breached. Do take care.

  Thinking of you,

  Violet

  Once Moxie finished reading the letter aloud, she started rereading it to herself.

  Irene walked back to her ironing board slowly, as though she were contemplating the contents. “She has a dog named Clitty?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does that mean what I think it does?”

  “Yes.”

  “So one of her clitties talks? Is that something you can shed some more light on?”

  Moxie glared at her. “Go climb up your thumb.”

  Irene just laughed.

  Chapter Three

  When Violet and Clitty finally disembarked the train in Pasadena, it was early afternoon. She stood on the platform and inhaled the smell of orange groves, unable to remember the last time she was overcome by nature. It certainly wasn’t any time in the last six years. She inhaled again. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  “Miss London?”

  She turned and looked over her sunglasses at a short, sweaty man in a white linen suit. “Yes?”

  He extended his hand formally. “Shep Abrams—assistant to T. Z. Walter.”

  “Nice to meet you.” She returned his handshake.

  “I trust you had a pleasurable trip?” Before she could reply, Shep became completely engrossed in summoning a porter to transport Violet’s luggage.

  “Are we in a hurry?” His sense of urgency puzzled her.

  “ You are. You need to check into your new apartment, then change and be at Mr. Walter’s estate at seven for dinner.”

  She whistled in surprise. “Anything else I need to squeeze in tonight? Perhaps bake a seven-layer cake? Broker world peace?”

  He squinted at her, seemingly caught off guard by her sarcasm. “Hmm” was his only reply.

  “Is this a formal dinner?” Violet asked. “I’m not sure I have anything packed that’s terribly fancy.”

  “It’s Mr. Walter’s standard Tuesday-night dinner party, so it’s only semiformal.”

  This new hectic pace already irritated her. The porter arrived with her trunks stacked on a luggage cart, and she slipped him a healthy tip.

  The ride in Shep’s roadster from Pasadena to Hollywood lasted forever, and though Violet tried several times to spark healthy discourse, he was not what she would deem a sparkling conversationalist. When she asked about where she would be staying, he merely said, “The Garden of Allah,” nothing further. He was probably being sarcastic and could just as easily have said “the moon,” “purgatory,” or “my ass.”

  Additional questions yielded one-word answers, including those about his employer or lighthearted inquiries about himself. Exasperated, she gave up and concentrated on the scenery, which really was lovely.

  When Shep pulled off Sunset Boulevard into a complex, Violet was stunned to see it actually was called the Garden of Allah—a dizzying series of Mediterranean-style bungalows with red tile roofs and an elaborate swimming pool. He informed her that a car would be around to collect her at 6:40, then drove away, leaving her outside the main building with her luggage and her terrier.

  Clitty barked sharply as they watched the dust from his wake settle. “I agree, boy. He is a tit-faced bastard.”

  She turned back to look at the main building, which was a little dark and foreboding for a hotel. Perhaps it would grow on her. She left her trunks where they were, picked up Clitty, and walked into the office.

  Inside, a friendly-looking fellow wearing an odd hat of some kind greeted her. As she reached the front desk, she was surprised to see that his headwear was actually a belted sanitary napkin, cocked like a jaunty chapeau.

  “Greetings,” the man said. “Checking in?”

  Violet scrutinized him. He was portly and perhaps in his late forties. More important, he seemed oblivious to the fact that he was sporting a feminine hygiene product on his head as though it were a festive fez. “Um…yes. I am checking in. You work here?” She looked around, hoping someone would appear and explain that this man was an escaped mental patient who had wandered in, or maybe the owner’s son who, after haphazardly falling off the roof many years ago, had never been right since.

  His pupils dilated, and he excitedly flipped open the register. “Yes, do you have a reservation?”

  “Currently, I’m having a number of them.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “London.”

  “Ah, yes. Miss London, you’ll be in bungalow eleven.”

  Before he could start checking her in, a beautiful young woman with dark red hair entered the office. “Hey, Lyle,” she said.

  Violet was perplexed that the odd headgear didn’t seem to faze this young lady. She acted like it was nothing out of the ordinary.

  “Afternoon,” Lyle answered cordially.

  “My fridge is on the blink again,” she said, drumming her fingers lightly on the desk.

  “What’s the problem now?”

  “Same as last time. It’s not cold inside.”

  Lyle looked momentarily confused. “You went inside it?”

  Again, this show of peculiarity didn’t seem to shake the woman. “No, but my corned beef did. It mentioned it in passing.”

  “I see. I’ll try to find the name of that repairman. Excuse me, I’ll be right back.” He disappeared into a room behind him.

  “Should I assume this is his usual state?” Violet asked her. “The sanitary fedora or the talking food don’t seem unusual to you?”

  “Oh, that’s just Lyle,” the redhead said calmly. “He’s a little daffy sometimes, sure, but he’s a good egg. Nothing to worry about.”

  “So he won’t sneak into my bungalow at night and try to make a lampshade out of my lower intestine?”

  She smiled. “He may come in and politely ask you for your lower intestine, but it would be only in the most courteous way.”

  “That’s good news. I’m Violet London, checking in.” She extended her hand and the redhead’s strong handshake surprised her.

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Ginger Rogers. My mother and I live in bungalow six.”

  “I’m in eleven.”

  “Singer?” Ginger raised an eyebrow appraisingly.

  “Actress. You?”

  “Actress-dancer-singer.”

  “That certainly improves your odds,” Violet said.

  “I do whatever it takes. If they told me I needed to learn how to juggle live animals, I’d do that too.”

  “Well, based on what I’ve both heard and seen regarding some casting directors, there
are those who might consider that live-animal juggling.”

  “You can say that again, sister.”

  Violet studied her for a moment. Ginger was striking, and if she had met her a week ago, redheads would no doubt be her new favorite thing. But all she could think about now was Moxie—the way she sang, moved, and looked. “Have you ever considered going blond?”

  Ginger seemed to ponder this suggestion. “You think it would make a difference?” She unconsciously ran her hand through her hair.

  “It would be very striking with your features.”

  Lyle appeared from the back with an index card, presumably with the information of the refrigerator repairman on it. “I’ve got it, Miss Rogers. I’ll give him a call presently.”

  “Thanks, Lyle. You’re a doll.” She turned to Violet before leaving. “I appreciate the tip. I’ll think about it.”

  “Anytime,” Violet replied. Lyle held her key out to her and handed her a sheet of paper. “What’s this?”

  “The hours and specials of our restaurant. How long will you be staying, Miss London?”

  “I’m not sure.” She was still wary. “At least five weeks. I’m shooting a picture at Pinnacle.”

  “That’s exciting.” He straightened his belted pad so that it tilted even more daringly to the left.

  “Yes. Well, thanks. I need to mail a letter.” She scrutinized Lyle. “Can you take care of it for me?” She had serious doubts, but Ginger seemed to trust him.

  “Absolutely. I just need two cents for the stamp.”

  After hesitating, Violet produced her letter to Moxie, composed over the last couple days on the train. “Say, what’s the address here?”

  He flipped a book of matches over and set it in front of her so the address was prominently displayed, and she picked up a pen and wrote her name and the Garden of Allah as her return address on the envelope. “And you’re sure you can take care of this for me?” She held the sealed letter out to him.

  He nodded violently, and she handed it over in concern, then fished two pennies out of her handbag. “I’ll give it my utmost attention,” Lyle assured her.

  “Can someone get my bags?”