For the first time I’m starting to feel like my life may not have limits. Things are really looking up for me, and somehow meeting you seems to be a part of that sensation—perhaps the catalyst.
I do think of you, quite a bit, and I recall our night on the town every day in some fashion or another. I’d be a fool to say that I completely understand my feelings for you, but I do know that somewhere mixed in with the trepidation, anxiety, and confusion is a good deal of appreciation, elation, and amusement.
In no way could I consider you a nuisance. There is a strange void that your letters somehow help to fill. They make me laugh and feel significant, so please keep writing them.
Tell me how the film is going and how your co-stars are. How has Clitty been enjoying it out there? (I mean the dog.) Have you been able to convince the powers that be to modify the ending? When might you be coming back to New York? Anytime soon?
Well, I’ll close this. I’m apparently finally running out of words.
Regards,
Genitalia Finkelstein
Violet sighed and leaned back on the sofa. “Clitty, I’m falling in love with this woman.” She reached over and scratched his back. “What the hell am I going to do?”
*
After Violet mailed her reply to Moxie, she and Clitty spent some quality time playing fetch amongst the jacaranda trees outside her bungalow.
In her peripheral vision, she saw Peter approaching her, and she sighed loudly, not wanting to reopen that particular can of worms.
“Vi?”
She turned to him, feeling a mixture of irritation and dread.
“Pardon me,” he said softly. His eyes nervously darted from her face to the ground and back again. “I need to get this off my chest. You owe me nothing, but I’d appreciate it if you’d let me apologize.”
She took the ball from Clitty and tossed it again, and the little dog took off after it. “Give it a try. I’m mildly curious.”
“Thank you. First, let me say that I have never felt quite so small as I did after you left last night. I’ve always considered myself to be both liberal and humane, and you showed me that I am neither. If I made you feel ashamed, I’m sorry.”
She squinted at him as Clitty dropped the ball at her feet. “I don’t feel ashamed, Peter. That seems to be the critical point you’re missing.” She threw the toy back out past the trees. “I don’t have anything to feel ashamed about.”
“Yes—”
“Shame should be reserved for occasions when you’ve hurt someone. I’m just living. I don’t have time to worry about what some homespun, folksy neighbors think about my choices. I mean, God only knows who’s sucking Pastor Stevenson’s cock when his wife is at the temperance meetings, and who’s spanking the schoolmarm with a steel-wire brush. What even remotely gives them the right to judge me?”
He cleared his throat nervously. “I have worded it poorly.”
“You have, yes.”
“What I meant was that I had no right to say such things, to belittle you in that way.”
“Agreed, though obviously it’s not just me who’s belittled. It’s everyone who gets lumped into a category for one thing or another and then treated like utter shit for it.”
“Understood. I am very sorry. I behaved terribly.”
“I mean, how would you feel if everyone judged you because of your dreadful mustache?”
“I love my mustache,” he said softly, beginning to stroke it gingerly with both hands.
“And as a consenting adult, you should be permitted to do so in the privacy of your own home, without anyone casting aspersions on you for it.”
He seemed to relax slightly at her humor. “You really think it’s dreadful?”
“It resembles the tightly packed bundles that Clitty pushes through his colon. But I only share that observation because you asked. I’m far too polite to simply volunteer something so tactless.”
“Clearly.” He paused. “Can I buy you a drink, Vi? Make it up to you?”
She smiled. “I believe you may, sir.”
*
Cotton took a long drag on his cigar. “Look, this is no easy feat, kid.”
Moxie looked at him closely, in the hopes of determining if he was lying. “But it’s just taking so long. I mean, how much coercion does it take to get a fella to go see a show? It’s not like you’re trying to talk him into castration.”
“Shh.” Cotton brought his flattened hand down slowly, signaling for her to lower her voice.
Moxie looked around the parlor of her apartment building where they sat. No one nearby seemed to be paying them any attention whatsoever. Was this one of Cotton’s many ploys to regain control of the conversation? “What?”
“Look, you act like I haven’t been on my dogs all day and night working to get you places. I got you that third set at the Luna, didn’t I?”
She studied him suspiciously. “Hmm, how’d you do that, anyway?”
“With my nose to the grindstone, that’s how. I campaigned for weeks on your behalf with the management there. They didn’t tell you?”
“Must have slipped their minds,” Moxie said in a monotone. The more Cotton talked, the more she wished he’d stop, and the less she tended to believe him.
“Look, I’ve got Brown’s word that he’ll be by the Luna to see one of your sets next Saturday. He’s going to be out of town this coming weekend. That’s the only reason this is taking so long.”
“Okay, Cotton. I’ll be ready for him.” She was starting to wonder if getting the manager of the Kasbah to come by and see her perform would ever happen, and she was quickly tiring of this conversation with her self-congratulatory agent. Cotton represented a number of people now, and he had more clients to consider than just her. But lately, even though he seemed to be putting less effort into her career, he still managed to take credit for anything good that came her way.
“Make sure you wear a fancy dress that knocks him on his ass.”
“How fancy?”
“As high class as you can stand, sister. You’ve got to really get all dolled up, you know? You need to look upscale if you want an upscale gig.”
Now she was officially irritated. “I don’t look upscale?”
“You look like a singer in a gin joint. You need to seem like you just dropped in from a swanky dinner party at a Manhattan penthouse, like you shit diamonds.”
“And will you be fronting me the jack for said diamond-shitting dress?”
He looked put out. “What, you can’t borrow one from someone? There must be fifty dames living here with you.”
She sighed. “Sure, Ebenezer. I’ll just ask the countess on the third floor if I can borrow her tiara while I’m at it.”
Mrs. Bennington approached her, making a disgustingly vile sound as she snorted something from her sinuses into her mouth. Moxie tried to ignore it.
“You got another letter,” she rasped, tossing the envelope into Moxie’s lap where she sat on the divan.
“Thanks,” she murmured, though the woman had already turned to leave.
Cotton’s brow furrowed. “Who is that from?”
She smiled as she regarding the writing on the outside. “A friend of mine out West.”
“Since when do you have friends out West?”
“Why do you want to know? So you can figure out what I can borrow from her? Want me to see if she has some upscale shoes?”
He rolled his eyes. “You know, I don’t get any kind of gratitude from you. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be mopping up urine in a clip joint in the middle of nowhere.” He expelled cigar smoke dramatically.
Moxie was no longer interested in this conversation. She had a letter to read, after all. She decided to just skip to the end of this all-too-familiar conversation in order to speed things along. “Yes, Cotton. You are wonderful yet I mistreat you. I am a selfish bitch, and you ejaculate rainbows. I get it.”
He stared at her. “Ejaculate rainbows?”
“O
r something like that, yes. I’ll find something to wear before next Saturday.” She stood and kissed him on the cheek. “Thanks for stopping by.” She scurried up the staircase, leaving him alone in the parlor looking completely bewildered.
Once she was contained within the relative safety of her apartment, she opened the letter.
Miss Genitalia (Genny) Finkelstein,
I received your letter tonight and I was touched and delighted by both the gesture, as well as the sentiment within. I’ve been holding my breath since I mailed that last letter to you, wondering if I would hear back. And while things have obviously progressed here—the shooting is more than half completed now—with regard to you, time has stood still for me.
So let me catch you up on the last couple of weeks here in Hollywood. The accommodations that the studio arranged for me are a perfect match—private bungalows nestled amidst nature and lunatics, which happen to be two of my favorite things to sit and observe.
The front desk is diligently manned by Captain Napkin, as I call him, and I’m sure that over the phone, without any visual cues, he may come off as only slightly deranged. Good for him that he doesn’t allow his dementia to interfere with his conscientiousness. He is a very hard worker; it’s just that sometimes his “work” includes wearing menstrual accoutrement on his head or periodically liberating pieces of garbage from the residents’ trash, burying them in shallow graves, and performing tiny funerals. I caught him saying a few words over an empty anchovy tin and some coffee grounds the other day.
Incidentally, I don’t know what you mean when you say that I attract odd and eccentric people. Perhaps you can provide an example?
Other residents here have shown themselves to be both kind and unkind to varying degrees, which makes them very much like New Yorkers, but with a healthier glow about them.
Manhattan Rhapsody is progressing ahead of schedule. My leading man is Rex Kelly, a fella who might be slightly more engaging were he not abusing morphine so regularly. The director, Henry Childs, is marvelous, though he wasn’t exactly sold on my suggestion that my character have an epiphany, renounce her worldly possessions, and devote the rest of her life to working for charities. When he said we would need to gin up that ending a bit, I suggested that perhaps in addition to her work in soup kitchens, she could have lots of anonymous, back-alley sex with random hobos. Remarkably, he seemed to consider this possibility.
It’s astounding to me that a protagonist who embarks on a long spiritual journey is only considered interesting while she’s sucking someone’s cock. I can’t wait to see what Hollywood adds to a film of Helen Keller’s life story. Perhaps they’ll try to imply that her blindness was brought on by syphilis, the deserved precipitant of an infancy filled with immorality and depravity. Surely you know how promiscuous babies raised in the South can be.
Regardless, it’s safe to say that the ending of the film is still very much in question. At this point, I’d settle for my character to merely not end up with some rich douchebag, to coin Wil’s term of endearment. I mean, what personal progress is there in that?
Speaking of Wil, I’m concerned about her, based on your updates from Julian. I’ll try to get in touch with her before she slurs (or urinates) herself right out of the best job she’s ever had. But I find that Broadway actresses are a difficult species to get hold of, especially the ones who spend a good deal of time unconscious in random places. This habit makes them much less inclined to answer the phone.
I know it may not seem like it, but Wil really does want to be a success. I think she battles self-doubt more than she would ever admit and, worse, that self-doubt wins a hell of a lot of the time. Should you hear anything else, or actually see her, please let me know how she’s doing.
Congratulations on getting that third set. I’d love to take credit for it, but all I did was talk to the manager and tell him how fabulous you were. You’re the one who actually went through all the effort of being fabulous—much more difficult in my mind than just talking about it.
Keep me posted on what happens with the Kasbah. But remember that you’ve got “it,” doll, that special something that sets you apart. You have a face like an angel and a singing voice that could give a jellyfish a hard-on. I can’t imagine there’s anyone out there who wouldn’t be able to see and appreciate that fact.
Lord knows I’ve been missing both your face and your voice, and all the delicate goods stowed below them. I have to confess that I think about you a great deal as well. And while I can’t really say that trepidation and confusion were even remotely what I hoped to conjure in you, it warms me no end to know that thousands of miles away, you may be looking into the same night sky that I am, wishing just as much that we were in the same place.
I’d love to take this opportunity to continue fawning over you, Moxie, to tell you how absolutely amazing and beautiful I think you are, but I worry that I’ll just exacerbate your anxiety and perhaps drive you away. Do know that as much as you enjoy getting my letters, yours evoked the same feelings in me, and it cheered me at a particularly low ebb. It was more helpful than you know.
I’m not sure when I’ll get back to New York, but at this point I hope it’s soon. With at least two more weeks of shooting, I already feel as though I’ve been here for ages. All I know for certain is that I can’t leave until filming concludes, so I just try to make no mistakes in the hope that will move things along quicker.
Clitty misses you (and so does the dog).*
Thinking of you fondly,
Vi
*I simply couldn’t let you be the only one to use that joke, and I must admit that I laughed so hard when I read it in your letter that I very nearly spotted. Consider the above usage to be just a humble homage to yours.
Moxie laughed and brought the stationery to her nose, inhaling deeply. She wasn’t sure what the paper smelled like exactly, but it contained a faint trace of something floral.
When Irene suddenly walked into the apartment, Moxie self-consciously jerked the letter away from her face and tried to look nonchalant.
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” Moxie answered quickly. “Just reading.”
Irene cocked an eyebrow. “Did you get another letter?”
“I did.”
Irene scurried eagerly to the sofa to sit beside her. “Ooh, let’s see.”
“It’s kind of personal.”
“Personal? Are you kidding?” Irene looked more surprised than hurt.
“Well, it’s just that I wrote her—”
“You did?”
“And this is her reply.”
“Moxie, what gives? Are you and this dame getting serious?”
“No…maybe. Oh, I don’t know!” She ran her hand through her hair in frustration. “Irene, I don’t know what’s going on, except that I love talking to her and struggling to keep up with her breakneck quips. She’s fun and smart, and I really like the way she makes me feel.”
Irene whistled a long, descending tone. “You’re a real mess, sister. You know what you need?”
“A manicure?” She glanced at her fingernails.
“Close. You need a man.”
Moxie scoffed. “What are you talking about?”
“Look, if you’re really worried about how you feel and which path you might be taking, then you should walk down both roads before you decide, right?”
“I’m worried where your road may lead me, Irene. Perhaps into the woods at night.”
“Aw, applesauce,” Irene said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Before you decide that men aren’t your cup of tea, you need to suck on the teabag a little.”
“You use the most disturbing metaphors.”
“Well, you get my meaning. Look, I’ve got a fella who’s perfect for you.”
Moxie rolled her eyes and groaned. “Here we go.”
“He’s a friend of Tom,” she said, referring to the gangly man she sometimes went out with. “We could double-date, if you like. It
doesn’t get any safer than that.”
“I’ll think about it. But first I need a pen and paper.”
Chapter Six
Moxie sat at the table with her chin in her hand, pushing the food on her plate around idly with her fork as the man across from her, her date for the night, continued to drone on. She glanced back up to him politely, feigning interest, before she looked over at Irene, who clearly was avoiding looking her in the eye.
She wasn’t sure how she had let Irene convince her that this double date was a good idea. She had insisted that Tom’s friend Noel was a wonderful match for Moxie, that he was a smart, engaging gentleman. Now she was starting to realize that Irene based her definition of a gentleman solely on where he peed. If Noel had to choose a public restroom, he was more likely to visit the one that read Gentlemen than the one marked Ladies.
She glanced back at him.
“And so I told him no dice,” he was saying as she started paying attention again. He laughed awkwardly.
“Then what happened?” Moxie asked.
“What do you mean?”
“After that, once you said no, what did he do?”
Noel seemed confused by this line of questioning. “Um, he walked away.”
“Oh. So that was the end of the story.”
“Well, yes,” he stammered. “I must have told it wrong.” The scraping of utensils on plates punctuated the awkward silence among them. “So, what is the name Moxie short for?”
Moxie wondered if she had misheard him. “What?”
“I’m sure it’s something exotic,” Noel said, cutting his meat with his knife and fork. “Is it something foreign?” He suddenly looked horrified. “You’re not foreign, are you?”
“I sure am,” she said. “My full name is Sharamoxatolia.” She made sure to trill her tongue as much as possible.
“Goodness! Where are you from?” Noel was plainly stricken by the notion that Moxie might hail from some barbaric locale beyond the States, and she found it telling that he made no attempt to hide his rampant prejudice. If Violet had been there, she would have mocked him mercilessly for his jaundiced eye.
Seduction of Moxie Page 9
