8:08 p.m.
It was elegant. It was egalitarian. It was a most star-studded bash. Ben Siegel beats the rap. The Trocadero swings tonight!
Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra. Tantrum-tossing Harry Cohn. “Jittery Joe” Kennedy. Joan Crawford, ogling Scotty Bennett. Sheriff Gene Biscailuz, news nabob Sid Hudgens, three dozen jarheads.
Benny invited the lads. He oozed patriotic largesse. He waltzed on the “Big Greenie” Greenberg snuff. Benny showed off shakedown snapshots. Bill McPherson hosed a darky girl in boots.
Dudley circulated. Mike Breuning and Dick Carlisle jawed with Dot Rothstein. Jack Webb dogged Sheriff Gene and plagued him with kid bullshit. Ellen Drew and Elmer Jackson bobbed for apples in rum punch.
Jack Kennedy fucked Ellen yesterday. Ellen whored for Brenda Allen between ingénue stints. Benny lined up Brenda girls for the jarheads. Herr Siegel, the Jew Santa Claus.
Dudley circulated. Jimmie and his boys launched a raucous “Lunceford Special.” Clarinets swayed. Trombone slides waggled. The Troc was all bonhomie.
Packed dance floor, swamped tables, standing-room-only bar.
Time tipped. New Year’s, ’38. He saw Bette here that first time. She was perched in a booth now. They’d shared lovers’ looks. It was we’ll-meet-later semaphore.
Bette sat with her froufrou hubby. He eager-eyed a waiter. Will homo hijinx ensue?
Dudley orbited. Benzedrine and Macallan ’24. He chatted up Jewboy Harry. My smut-film plan—say ye yea or nay? Harry said he leaned toward yea—don’t crowd me, you mick fuck.
Dudley circulated. Jittery Joe waved him over. Dudley hovered by his booth. They gabbed old times in Dublin and Boston. Yak, yak. Dudley’s Army commission. Jack’s L.A. gash run.
Joe brought up their smut jaunts to T.J. The Dotstress and Ruth Mildred were grand company. Dudley outlined his smut scheme. Joe pledged twenty-five grand.
Joan Crawford and Scotty Bennett necked. Elmer Jackson and Ellen Drew jitterbugged. Brenda Allen swooped by and pulled Joe up to fox-trot.
A Benny goon sidled close. He handed Dudley an envelope. Dudley slit it and read the note inside.
That party list. Benny delivered the dish. Claire De Haven’s do Monday night. Notable Reds had RSVP’d. It was a Commie conga line.
Miss Katherine Lake would be there. Miss Lake was spotted at Red Claire’s last bash. Whiskey Bill’s “outside deal.” The Parker-Smith stalemate. All allegiances must be scrutinized.
Bette hit the dance floor. Dudley caught a flash of her green dress, aswirl. It was kelly green. She wore it for him.
She danced with a tall Marine. A short Marine cut in. She danced with him. A stout Marine cut in. She danced with him and waved to Dudley.
The room weaved. It reprised the ’33 earthquake. Bette placed his world on springs.
The short Marine walked up. Dudley saluted him. The short Marine delivered a note. Dudley unfolded it.
“D.S. I keep a suite upstairs. Join me after the festivities, please. Ever yours, B.D.”
The short Marine vanished. Dudley kissed the note and caught patchouli. He orbited—Benzedrine and Macallan ’24.
Scotty Bennett necked with Joan Crawford. Brenda Allen necked with the short Marine. The Dotstress and Ruth Mildred saw it and went Uggggh.
The wingding wound down. Jimmie Lunceford blared the national anthem and shooed folks to the doors. Bette headed for a staircase. Dudley watched her dress trail up the steps. Hubby and a swish waiter swapped anxious looks. They walked toward a cloakroom, seconds apart.
Hubby opened the door and ducked in. The waiter ducked in moments later. Dudley strolled over and peeped the keyhole. Hubby had the waiter’s prick in his mouth.
This grand war. The world on springs. D.S. + B.D.—the heart and arrow.
The room evaporated. Couples swerved outside, entwined. Joan C. had Scotty B. fuckstruck.
Dudley walked up the staircase. Her door featured a cupid’s-quiver knocker. He banged it. She opened up, sans pause.
They kissed in the doorway. Dudley unhooked the green dress. The straps caught on Bette’s shoulders. He slid them off and pulled the green to her breasts. She wriggled the door shut. She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. Champagne and tobacco—he knew her breath now.
Her mouth on him. His mouth in her—he wanted that. He picked her up and carried her. He looked for a kneeling spot.
A velvet-tufted sofa. Yes—that’s your spot.
He put Bette down. He pushed up her dress. Her stockings were hooked to a garter belt. She said, “Dudley Liam Smith.” He bit at her stocking snaps.
He bit them off. He ripped her stockings and dainties down to her feet. Bette said, “Dudley Liam Smith.” She pulled at his hair and brought her hips up.
He found that her he wanted. She said his name. He learned that taste. She held his head down and pushed her hips up. He pulled at her breasts. She pulled his hair.
She pushed her hips and said his name. She thrashed and lost his name and went to gasps. She arched and pushed the sofa up against a wall. Her last thrash knocked over a lamp.
11:23 p.m.
“Dudley Liam Smith. Are you tired of hearing it?”
“No, darling. I am not.”
“You can’t be comfortable where you are.”
“I’m a Church-bred lad. You can’t imagine how familiar this is.”
“I wouldn’t want you to regard me as familiar.”
“Consoling, then. Familiar only in the sense that I’ve imagined this moment a great many times.”
“Dear, dear you. The big Irish cop with four daughters, while I’d give anything for just one.”
“I have a fifth daughter, of illicit birth. She’s living in Boston now. She’s my favorite daughter, but I would lovingly bequeath her to you.”
“Tell me about her.”
“Her name is Elizabeth. She’s seventeen, and quite gifted and lovely. She has evolved a peculiar narrative form with a blind friend of hers. She describes the action in motion pictures to him, as he concurrently hears the dialogue. It’s quite a grand collaboration. She never falls behind in her description, and thus a young blind man is given God’s gift of sight.”
“I would like to meet that girl and witness that gift of hers.”
“She’ll be in Los Angeles, with her friend, for Christmas. I’ll arrange an outing.”
“Is she a sympathetic lapse between your bouts of brutality, Dudley? I say this because it reminds me of myself.”
“Your perceptions honor me, darling. I imagined you as vividly lucid, but you are lucid in excess of your most potently imagined self.”
“Such recognition you grant me. I’m jaded, you know. I outgrew fatuous acclaim some time ago. ‘It takes one to know one.’ I see that adage at work here.”
“I won’t belabor the point. I wouldn’t want you to consider me familiar.”
“You’re redefining ‘familiar’ for me. This unseemly posture of ours has me questioning concepts and acts.”
“Dear, dear girl. You’re getting sleepy, I can tell.”
“I am sleepy. And I’m a selfish woman who has every intention of falling asleep right here.”
“I would not want to keep you from that.”
“My God, those young Marines. I do not want one single one of them to die. I don’t want it, and I will not permit it. Shit, those fucking Japs.”
“You’re yawning, lass. Say something grand before you fall off.”
“Dudley Liam Smith, please kill a Jap for me.”
11:54 p.m.
Bette slept. He didn’t. He was Church-bred. He shifted his knees and refined the posture. He reached that toppled lamp and killed the room light.
The Macallan ’24 wore off. The Benzedrine stayed. Bette slept, he didn’t. Cars backfired out on the Strip. Doors slammed down in the Troc. Pictures flashed off their echoes.
His mother hit him. His mother snapped a razor strap. He held his gun and kept his head on Bette’s breasts.
The sounds dwindled. The sky went second-by-second bright. He stood up and rubbed his knees alive. He arranged Bette head-to-toe on the sofa. He placed his suit coat over her and walked to his car in shirtsleeves.
The world rolled on springs. He smelled Bette all over him. He took Sunset east and cut south on Virgil.
The Melrose stoplight stalled him. He looked around and saw a lanky Jap in a phone booth. He was making Jap-like gestures on a call.
The light went green. Dudley pulled to the curb and got out. The Jap blathered on. Dudley walked to the booth. The Jap noticed him.
What’s this? Where’s your coat? What’s with that gun?
Dudley pulled that gun and shot the Jap four times in the face. It blew out the back of his head and the back of the booth.
Dudley said, “For Bette Davis.”