Kitty’s friend May June, whom Kitty had met before her son Roy was born, when both women were hat and glove models in New York, was an actress who had recently suffered a nervous breakdown. May had come to Chicago, where her mother and sister and Kitty lived, to rest and recover. She was living in Hollywood at the time of her collapse, following a bad divorce and forced withdrawal from the movie she was working on.
Kitty and May were the same age, twenty-eight. They had kept in touch by correspondence and occasionally by telephone during the six years since Kitty had gotten married and moved to Chicago. Now separated from her own husband, Kitty kept busy raising her son, who was five years old, and working part-time modelling fur coats at the Merchandise Mart.
May was staying with her unmarried sister, Mona, who worked as a registered nurse at Edgewater Beach Hospital, where May was being treated for her unstable condition. It wasn’t until almost a month after her arrival in Chicago that she felt well enough to meet Kitty for lunch at Armando’s Restaurant, which was next door to Kitty’s husband Rudy’s liquor store and pharmacy.
“Kitty, can Rudy give me some pills?”
“Don’t you get medication from the hospital?”
“Yes, but they’re not enough. I need something stronger.”
Both women were drinking martinis and May was chainsmoking Lucky Strikes.
“Are you allowed to drink alcohol while you’re on medication?” asked Kitty.
May exhaled a cloud of smoke before saying, “My doctor asked me what I like to drink. I told him gin martinis, very dry, and he said to limit myself to one.”
May quickly polished off the martini she had in hand, held up her glass and signalled to their waiter.
“May, you just said that your doctor limited you to one.”
“I took it to mean one at a time.”
Kitty took a sip from her glass, then said, “I’m sure Rudy won’t give you anything while you’re under a doctor’s care. He could lose his pharmacist’s license.”
May’s second martini arrived. She stubbed out her cigarette and lit another.
“Did something bad happen to you in Hollywood?”
“Too many things. After I got fired from Don’t Say No, I was broke and lonely, drinking too much, not thinking straight. I made a few regrettable decisions. More than a few.”
May picked up her glass, looked into it as if it were a crystal ball, then put it down.
“I turned some tricks. Slept with guys who’d been after me, not really strangers, but men I never would have gone with had I not been desperate and friendless.”
“Surely you have friends there, people who could have helped you out.”
“I was humiliated. I didn’t want to beg. It was an easy way to get money.”
“Begging would have been better than prostituting yourself.”
“Every girl out there prostitutes herself one way or another, most often by marrying men they don’t love.”
May lifted her glass again and drank a little.
“You’re right, Kitty, I won’t ask Rudy, or bug you to.”
“Trust your doctor, May. Mona knows who’s best at Edgewater. And just rest, you’ll get better.”
May smiled for the first time since she’d been with Kitty. Her eyes were bloodshot and her cheeks were pale. Hollywood had fled from her face.
“I was sorry to hear about you and Rudy separating. Any chance you’ll get back together?”
“I don’t think so. We’re friends, good friends, and he’s very good to Roy. Also generous. I’m going through with the divorce. What happened to Bob?”
“He blamed me for walking out on him. Told the judge I’d made a play for a rich producer friend of his.”
“Did you?”
“I don’t really know. I might have. Whatever I did, it wasn’t serious. And Bob had his peccadillos, some I knew about, some I didn’t.”
Kitty laughed. “That’s a good word for it. Everyone has their secrets.”
“In Hollywood somebody always has the goods on you and uses it sooner or later. I’m so glad you didn’t follow me there. Rudy will always be your friend, and you have Roy.”
Their waiter came over.
“Are you ladies ready to order lunch? The kitchen closes in fifteen minutes.”
“What’s your name?” May asked him.
“Roberto.”
“You have lovely, wavy hair, Roberto,” said May. “Do you dye it?”
“We aren’t staying,” Kitty told him. “Bring me the check.”
He walked away.
May lit another Lucky Strike off of her half-smoked one. She tossed back her head and her hair fell over one eye like Rita Hayworth’s did in Gilda.
“Do you remember in Streetcar Named Desire when Stanley Kowalski is terrorizing his shaky sister-in-law and shouts in her face, ‘Ha, ha, ha, Blanche!’ That’s what I say to myself after I realize I’ve done something terrible. I’m not Blanche DuBois, I’m a beast. There’s no forgiveness in me, Kitty, at least not for myself.”
May’s hand holding the cigarette was trembling. She tried to put it to her lips but couldn’t find them.
“Come on, May, I’ll drive you back to Mona’s.”
“My secret is that I don’t have one. I can’t keep anything to myself. Or is it from myself?”
Roberto came back.
“There’s no charge for the drinks,” he said.
“Bring me another,” said May.
