Mother Finds a Body

by Gypsy Rose Lee

  “I left him at the sheriff’s,” Mandy said casually. “He had to shoot off his mouth, Corny, I mean, and I thought he might just as well go to the head man while he was doing it. I wouldn’t be a damn bit surprised if Hank didn’t throw him in the clink. Boy, it was a rich scene. There’s Corny all set to make Hank’s eyes pop, and Hank just sits there and listens quiet-like. Corny builds it up, holding the corpse for the blackout, and just when he gets to spring it, Hank gets in ahead of him.

  “‘And why didn’t you tell me about this murder a day ago?’ Hank asks him. Then Corny starts sweating. He can’t answer that one and he knows it. Hank answers it for him. ‘In Ysleta,’ he says, ‘we got a name for guys like you. Blackmailers, we call ’em.’”

  “And what did Corny say to that?” Mother asked.

  “What can he say?” Mandy exclaimed. “He blustered a bit, but Hank was too close to the truth for Corny to get much gumption on it.”

  “Well,” Mamie said politely after everyone had finished talking. “I hope he shows up for the performance. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you all act.”

  “For forty bucks he’ll show all right,” Mandy said.

  The back of the truck was built for coal, wood, ice. For humans, no. At least not living humans. I could just manage to crawl down from it when we arrived at The Happy Hour. I ached in every bone. Matter of fact, I think I found a few bones to ache in that I didn’t know I had.

  Dimples felt it, too, but Mamie hopped down like an acrobat. She was all for carrying the ironing board right through the front entrance of the saloon until Biff took it from her and explained there was a stage entrance.

  Mandy and I walked over to the gaudy saloon entrance. We wanted to see the building. Cullucio had certainly splurged in his adjectives. According to him, his three new actors were “colossal, supersensational, terrific.”

  “Everything but talented.” Mandy remarked.

  Dimples’s pictures were plastered all over the entrance. A huge easel held four more. The one where she held a white fox fur up in front of her was center. One in black lace with a back-light silhouetting the body was to the left. There was one large, smiling head. How that got mixed up with the nudes, I’ll never know. Maybe Cullucio wanted the customers to know she had a head; I’m sure they wouldn’t have guessed from looking at the others.

  My favorite picture of her was also on the easel. It was one Dimples had made years ago, but somehow she hadn’t changed much. She was peeking from around a screen, showing just the side of her body. A suggestion of a garter belt, black lacy hose, and a bare breast. Someone had drawn a mustache on Dimples’s mouth. She was billed, I noticed, as an Earl Carroll beauty.

  “Caroll’ll get the shock of his life when he finds that out,” Mandy said.

  He and Corny were billed as “Cobb and Hill. Those Two Funny Fellows. Songs, Dances, and Witty Sayings.”

  “That’s done it,” I said. “I’m going around the back way. Passing that billing is worse than passing a picket line.”

  Mandy took one last fond look. Then he followed me.

  Finding the stage entrance was easy. We just followed an odor of dishwater, sour floor mops, and slightly spoiled food. The door was between two large garbage cans. It entered into a kitchen. The cook didn’t look up as we hurried past him. I was just as pleased. I have seen cooks before, but this one had enough bacteria on his apron to wipe out the Japanese army.

  The dressing room was to the right and opened into a long, narrow room that had once been a hallway, judging from the dimensions. It was directly behind the stage, and if the actors wanted to get from one side of the stage to the other, they had to walk through. The wardrobe hung on nails along the back wall. That left a space of two feet between the wall and the makeup shelf. None of the girls were in yet.

  “What about my dressing room?” Mandy asked.

  I couldn’t tell him. I had a hunch there wasn’t any, but he could find that out for himself.

  “Ask Cullucio,” I said, and Mandy left with a look of determination of his face.

  The girls had made a clearing on the shelf for Dimples. The six inches of shelf allotted to her was at the far end of the room. The door opened in, and Dimples would have to get up from her chair each time anyone wanted in or out.

  “They certainly aren’t knocking themselves out being sociable,” Dimples said. “I’d be more comfortable in the ladies’ room.”

  I helped her unwrap her costumes and makeup, while Mamie plugged in the iron. Biff had set up the ironing board, and Mamie was puttering about nervously. Mother was having herself a time reading the different postcards and letters the chorus girls had been stupid enough to leave in the dressing room. She was very quick about it and I noticed that she hadn’t lost the knack for placing the things back just as they were before. Mother prided herself on that.

  Gee Gee sat in front of one of the mirrors and put on a full makeup, even to a blue eye shadow and heavy cosmetic on her lashes.

  “It seems years since I made up,” she remarked. Her voice sounded a little homesick.

  As crowded and uncomfortable as the room was, there was a smell of theater about it, a smell that made me homesick, too. I watched Dimples as she began putting on her body paint. Even at forty a week I rather envied her.

  “Gimme the sponge,” I said. “I’ll do your back.”

  Dimples used a flat-white body paint. It looked well in a blue spotlight, but in the harsh light of the dressing room it made her flesh look dead. She rouged the nipples of her breasts while I smoothed the white liquid on her back.

  “Opening nights always terrify me,” Dimples said. “I’m as nervous as a cat. First time in a night club and everything. The stage is so small, and instead of it going longways, it goes up and down. I’ll feel so silly doing my number up and down. And having the audience so close to me.”

  “Close?” Gee Gee said. “Say, if they wanted to, they could reach out and touch you!”

  “Omigawd!” Dimples said angrily. “You coulda gone all day without reminding me of that!”

  Mamie finished the pressing. She gazed proudly at the fresh-looking costumes as she hung them near Dimples’s place. She put the hot iron under the shelf and refolded the ironing board. She was almost as nervous as Dimples. Her hands were actually trembling as she fumbled at the doorknob.

  “Come along,” she said to Mother and Gee Gee. “We don’t want to miss the first part.”

  Dimples closed the door behind them. She leaned her back against it for a moment before she spoke.

  “You know Gyp,” she said slowly. “There’s something about that Mamie that gets me. It’s the way she looks at me. Like I was a—well—a tramp or something. Then the next minute she knocks herself out doing favors for me. I don’t like it.”

  “Maybe she’s awed,” I suggested.

  “What’s awed?” Dimples narrowed her eyes as she asked.

  “I mean maybe the thought of all of us being actors has sort of thrown her.”

  My explanation soothed the Queen of Quiver. She sat heavily in the chair and began blending her whitish grease paint. I knew Dimples, but if I hadn’t I would have formed a few choice opinions of her myself, especially as she sat there at the makeup shelf.

  Her stomach was relaxed and it fell into three flabby folds. Her wiry yellow hair was curled tightly around her full face. The center part was growing in darker, and Dimples patted it gingerly with her powder puff. The dead-white body with the rouged breasts and the powdered hair did make her seem unusual. That is, if you didn’t know her.

  “Well,” I said. “You can redeem yourself tonight. What number are you opening with?”

  “‘Have a Smoke on Me,’” Dimples said brightly. “I think the place is ripe for an audience number, don’t you?”

  The room began filling with tired-looking chorus girls. They weren’t very sociable. Without a word to Dimples or to me, they settled themselves before their shelves and started making up. Even Mi
llie and Clarissima were silent. After a moment I realized it wasn’t rudeness so much as dullness. They just weren’t awake yet. I was in the way, so I squeezed past the yawning girls and, after whispering “Good luck” to Dimples, I went out front.

  In the main room I noticed that some of the early customers were taking their lives in their hands and eating the Chef’s Special, a steak sandwich with limp French fries. On the side, for decorative purposes only, was one leaf of lettuce with a slice of soggy tomato. I couldn’t watch the customers eat. Not with that picture of the chef’s apron still in my mind.

  Through the smoky haze I saw Mother and Mamie. They were sitting near the cloakroom very much as though they were sitting in the first row of the Roxy Theater. Mother’s eyes traveled leisurely around the room. To anyone else it would have appeared as though she was quite disinterested. I knew better. I knew Mother was counting the house.

  Gee Gee and Biff were at the bar. I joined them.

  “Well, how goes it?” Biff asked me as I pulled up a stool and settled into it.

  “If you mean the dressing room,” I said, “it’s intimate.”

  Mandy appeared from the crowd and sat next to me.

  “Well, dressing room or no dressing room, it’s for me,” he said. “This gag of doing only two shows a night and having a bar so handy. It’s a racket. Me, what’s four a day since I got in the business and here I am with bankers’ hours already. It’s like stealing the dough.”

  We had one round on that. Then Joyce came in. No stage doors for the prima donna, I noticed. She made her entrance with the carriage trade, right through the front door. Naturally Biff asked her to join us and naturally she did. The bartender handed Biff the check.

  Joyce drained her glass. Then she said, “That goes on mine.”

  The bartender smiled. “The hell it does, girlie. They was drinking before you came in. You’d chisel your own grandmother, so help me, you would.”

  Joyce laughed softly.

  “Well, can’t blame a girl for trying,” she said. “See you all later and thanks for the drink.” She gave Biff a long, slow smile.

  It was supposed to suggest a thousand intimate moments, but Biff wasn’t having any. His rye with a beer chaser was more important.

  Joyce sauntered through the room. As she passed the door with OFFICE-OFFICIO written above it, she stopped and tapped gently. There was no response. She tried the knob. It wouldn’t open. Joyce started backstage. She walked slowly, letting her full hips sway from side to side. As she passed each table she paused for an instant. The customers were too sober to want company. Most of them didn’t bother to look at her. I knew that once she got into her blue satin or cerise velvet it would be easily sailing, but until then she’d drink alone.

  The bartender was busy polishing glasses. He saw me watching Joyce.

  “She’s a damn-good mixer,” he said. “Makes more dough than all the other dames put together.” There was a note of respect in his voice. “But is she a chiseler! If those other dames knew how she works ’em, the fur would sure fly.” He hadn’t dropped the respectful tone. If anything, it was more pronounced. “Yes, sir, she sure knows her way around.”

  Biff ordered another round, and the bartender kept talking while he poured the drinks.

  “First night she’s here,” he said, “she comes up to me and offers me a proposition. The boss don’t allow no downs here, you know . . .”

  “Downs?” Gee Gee asked.

  The bartender gave her a sharp look.

  “Are you kidding?” he asked. “Downs is when you give the girls just enough liquor in it to fool the guy that’s paying. Cullucio don’t like that, he thinks it’s cheating. I don’t know what’s better, cheating a little or having the dames fall down drunk in the last show, but he’s the boss. Anyway, the first night, Joyce comes up to me and this is what she sets up. For every guy I toss her way she’ll give me a fifty-fifty cut. Me? Well, I like to pick up an honest buck here and there, so I say sure. I let her chisel her way into plenty, even stick up for her when she gets into a jam with Tanker Mary. Well, sir, at the end of the week I look for my cut. Nothing happens. I ask her about it, and she slips me two bucks. Two bucks! I send her more than that in one night alone. So I just shut down on the little lady. I don’t send her one customer, and what do you think she does?”

  The bartender waited for Biff to say, “What?”

  “Well, sir, she goes to Cullucio and tell him I’m watering down the stock. Me! The respect I got for liquor I should go watering it!”

  Biff nodded sympathetically. He could understand that kind of respect.

  “Maybe she was trying to get in good with the boss,” Biff suggested.

  The bartender poured another round.

  “This is on me,” he said. “If she was, she sure played it wrong. The boss don’t like liars and from the way he watches us guys back of this bar, he knows damn well she’s lying. Nope, he’s a hot-and-cold guy, that Cullucio. Got funny ideas about honor and honesty. He can change in five minutes from the sweetest guy in town to the toughest. Just let him catch you in one lie or one fast deal and, believe me, you’re out.”

  Well, I thought, that accounts for Tessie having the good spot in the show. Cullucio had gone into his little hot-and-cold act with Joyce Janice and there was the reason. I tried to dig up a sympathetic feeling for Joyce, but my mind wasn’t on it. I decided to tell Dimples to play straight, at least until she learned her way around.

  Two tired-looking women stood in the doorway. They both wore enough makeup to face an audience. One of them swung a red patent leather purse, the other sauntered up to the bar. Before she could seat herself, the bartender hurried toward them.

  “Gowan, beat it, you bums!” he said loudly.

  The woman with the red purse swore. The words weren’t new to me, but she did put a twist on her swearing. If the bartender could do what she suggested, he would have a good vaudeville act.

  “And button yer lip,” he shouted, “or I’ll kick ya out on yer ear.”

  He waited menacingly until the two women left. Then he came back to where we were sitting.

  “If I wasn’t firm,” he said, “this place would be so full of whores the customers couldn’t get in.”

  Biff coughed noisily, and the bartender got the hint.

  “I mean it’d be so full of streetwalkers that it’d be awful.”

  Any feeling of homesickness for the theater I might have had was slowly disappearing. There was something unhealthy about The Happy Hour. It wasn’t only the cook’s apron and the surly waiter. It was more than the hot-and-cold Cullucio. Even the friendliness of the bartender made me uneasy. It wasn’t the sordidness. After all, I’ve been in show business all my life; I know sordidness. Trouping with tab shows, carnivals, and vaudeville, a girl learns to appreciate the full meaning of that word. Then, too, burlesque is no revival meeting.

  But this was different. This was something that made me feel like hitching the trailer to the car and getting as far away from Ysleta as the eight wheels would carry us.

  13WHEN THE SHOW STARTED, BIFF BRIBED ONE of the waiters to get us a table. They all knew us by then, and bribery was the only thing that would get us out of the barroom.

  The show was routined the same as the night before. Dimples followed Turk and Turk, the roller skaters. Bob Reed introduced her as “Stageland’s Loveliest.” The orchestra played the introduction to her music, the lights dimmed, and Dimples made her entrance.

  She didn’t try to sing her number; she talked it. Her voice is thin and weak, but the customers usually hear enough. I couldn’t hear one word of the verse that night. It didn’t matter; she looked well. She wore her red chiffon trimmed with ostrich feathers. With it she wore an ostrich feather cape and a red satin picture hat.

  Cullucio had given her a good spot in the show, following two men and doing the first strip number. He was watching her intently. When he saw me looking at him, he made a circle with his thumb and first
finger. He held them up for me to see.

  I nodded back. Then I nudged Biff.

  “Dimples is in,” I said. “The boss just gave me the high sign. All we have to do now is keep our fingers crossed for Mandy and your friend.”

  Dimples finished the verse of her number and went into the chorus:

  Have a smoke on me,

  Everyone is free.

  She took a package of cigarettes from the bodice of her dress and tossed one to a man in the audience. The cigarette fell on the table and the man let it lay there.

  Cigarette for you to try,

  Chesterfields, they satisfy,

  Or would you walk a mile for a Camel,

  It’s worth a while.

  Dimples paraded around the stage, handing cigarettes to the men at the tables. They were beginning to catch on now, and as she came near them the more venturesome ones would reach out for her.

  Here’s an Old Gold to cure your cold.

  There’s not a cough in a whole carload.

  And down from old Virginia

  Piedmonts are sure to win ya.

  Dimples stopped in front of a bald-headed man. She let out a little squeal of delight.

  “Isn’t he beautiful?”

  She placed a cigarette in the man’s mouth and lit it for him. He had a few hairs growing along the sides of his head. These few hairs she curled with her finger. She took a red ribbon from her wrist and tied it in a bow around one of the locks.

  . . . With a Turkish blend we have Fatimas, too.

  Dimples leaned over and kissed the man on his bald head. With a quick little run she was at the stage exit. She unloosed the feather cape and removed her hat.

  Now don’t forget the name of the cigarette that I gave you.”

  Just before she exited, Dimples flashed one bare breast. The audience was not trained to applaud for strip numbers. There was only a scattered round until Biff began. He cupped his hands to make the clapping sound louder. He shouted, “Take it off!” and suddenly the audience picked it up.