Playland (18 page)

As there had been a time when a house in the Beverly Hills flats was socially unsuitable for a star of her magnitude. It was almost too much to assimilate.

“Hi, Melba.”

“Herb, what’s your best buy today?”

“Just for you, Melba.” Herb was wearing a long white grocer’s coat and a reddish-brown toupee that sat rakishly askew on top of his head. A plastic name tag identified him as store manager. “There’s a can of Arrid Extra Dry for ninety-nine cents on special, Arrid’s offering a twenty-five-cent coupon, and the store’s doubling that, that’s fifty cents, so you get the Arrid for forty-nine cents.”

“I’d rather pay nothing, Herb.”

“Wouldn’t we all, Melba.”

“But I guess you got to put something down, you want a good deal.”

“That’s how it works, Melba.” Herb nodded in Jack’s direction. “You got yourself a new box boy, I see.” A broad wink for Jack’s benefit. “I bet you didn’t know Melba was an old-time movie star, did you? Silent pictures, that right, Melba? Rudolph Valentino. Clara Bow. Before my time. She’s some kind of shopper, though.” He spoke as if she was not visible, as if she was just another lonely older customer he had to humor while at the same time making sure that she was not shoplifting. “I’ll give her that.”

“Your hair’s falling off, Herb, better fix it.” She did not take offense, seemed in fact to be enjoying the byplay. Even the jocularity about her once having been a movie star. “There’s a
special on Elmer’s Glue, I noticed. That should keep it down in a high wind.”

“Say hello to Clark Gable, you see him, Melba. Tell him I loved him in that
Casablanca
.”

“That was Bogie.” But Herb had cruised off into housewares.

“How does he know you were in the movies?”

“He doesn’t, really.” She did not stop talking as she popped cans into the cart. Progresso lentil soup. College Inn chicken broth. Chicken of the Sea tuna, two dozen cans. Manischewitz unsalted matzos. “Someone must’ve heard a rumor I was, and so I always just say yes, it’s true, as a matter of fact, never deny it, just give a smile and a wink. Sometimes the best way to lie is to tell the truth.” She hadn’t lost the Industry shrewdness. “ ‘Yessir,’ I say, ‘I was the biggest box office star in Hollywood. The envelope, please. And the winner is … Melba Mae Toolate.’ On the face of it, it looks ridiculous, right?” A cackle. “I’m going to pass on that Arrid special of Herb’s. I don’t go in for deodorants much. Carole Lombard always said soap and water, that’s the ticket, it’s all a girl needs.” Suddenly she was pensive. “I was supposed to be on Miss Lombard’s plane when it went down. In Nevada. War-bond tour. Nineteen forty-two.”

Jack thought the memory was going to make her cry.

“I was fourteen. The good lord Jesus Christ was looking out for me.”

That was out of left field. He wondered when Jesus Christ had turned up at Slot 123, Forsythia Lane, Hamtramck. The new man in her life.

She turned up another aisle, the feminine-hygiene shelves. Underwear, sanitary napkins, vaginal sprays, prophylactics. Her mood suddenly lightened. “You know they make a brand of rubbers now that’s got a mint taste, I saw that in
Esquire
magazine, I think a taste of mint wouldn’t be what I’d be looking for. Vanilla, though, that might not be bad, I love the smell of vanilla, a vanilla dick, I think I’d like that. I always preferred sucking people off to fucking them. Less wear and tear on the
plumbing, you don’t get knocked up if you’re dumb enough to swallow it, and you’re in charge.” She gave a lewd wink. “It’s in your hands, get it?” He got it. Now she was fingering a display of training bras. “My boobs were just beginning to show that year.” The year she was meant to be on Carole Lombard’s plane, he guessed. “And the parts I was playing, I wasn’t supposed to have any. So Mr. French sent a memo down to wardrobe. ‘Do something about Miss Tyler’s tits.’ I used to have a copy. Arthur got it for me. I framed it and hung it in my dressing room. Anyway. All my costumes had to be tailored so my tits wouldn’t show. Big collars. And every time I came into a shot, I was carrying a bag of schoolbooks or a bunch of flowers, some shit like that.”

Her voice began to rise again. “My tits were always giving me trouble.” Her troublesome tits and the advantages of a blow job and not fucking the garbage man. Quite a conversational parlay for Farmer Dell’s. “I remember this other time, when I was in Italy, it was that time I couldn’t get arrested in Hollywood, so I went to Rome. And this ginney director wanted me to show a little tit. I didn’t know they let you do that in pictures, you couldn’t even show cleavage when I was at Cosmo, you did, Will Hays got on your ass, and those Catholic fuckers at the Legion of Decency. This was 1951, ’52, the wops got away with murder in those days, it wasn’t like today when what’s-her-name, the blonde with the accent, shows her pussy, and nobody gives a shit. They already said I was a Commie and a whore, so I say to myself no big deal if this dago wants to light my boob. The scene was, I was supposed to be getting laid in the back of a car. And it was a real car, it wasn’t a cutaway car like on a stage at Cosmo, it was one of those little ginney cars, there was no way you could get fucked in it, it was so small my legs would’ve had to go out the window, and garlic breath, this actor, his ass would’ve been bouncing off the roof. But would he listen to me, this director? No. So I had to hold my right tit up in my hand, let him get a light reading. It was night shooting. Out in the street. Via something. Those Italians. They never heard of a
closed set. Half the people in Rome were watching him trying to light my boobs. Then it turns out he didn’t think they were big enough, he wanted molds made to make them look bigger. So there I was, twenty-three years old, and some makeup guy was rubbing petroleum jelly all over my tits so he can lay plaster on them for the molds. Right out there in the street. I think I ended up fucking him. I mean, why not? You talk about foreplay, that’s right up there, I get hot just thinking about it.”

She was like a bag lady talking to herself on the street, nonstop, aggressive, daring him or anyone else to contradict her, all the while throwing cans and boxes and plastic jars so belligerently into the overloaded shopping cart that one or two bounced out onto the floor. Jack picked them up and tried to find a place for them in the cart, at the same time watching her out of the corner of his eye in case she tossed a tube of K-Y Lubricating Jelly at him. No wonder Herb had heard the stories about her being a movie star. Herb, that crazy lady Melba’s at it again, over in aisle seven by the strawberry-scented vaginal sprays, she’s talking dirty about the movies and how she was in them once, her mouth needs washing out with soap, she says the
f
-word so much, and I don’t care how old she is, that is exactly what she needs, can’t you do something about her, Herb, she makes my little granddaughter Opal cry, she’s only seven, Opal, and already she’s asking me what the
f
-word means.

“This cart’s full, I’ll get you another one.”

“No. Just one cart every trip. It’s a matter of principle with me.”

“I can see that.” What can I see, for Christ’s sake, he thought. I’m beginning to sound as loony as she is. He aimed a smile in her direction and, holding the overload steady with one hand, pushed the cart toward a checkout line. The cashier was concentrating on her nails, flourishing an emery board, shape, buff, not acknowledging his presence even with a glance.

“No, not that one,” Blue hissed. “That’s Tiara. She’s a real pain in the ass.”

He smiled brightly at Tiara, who still did not look up, and with difficulty wheeled the shopping cart toward another line. Blue was talking loudly now, not so much to him as to the store at large. “You got to get the exact item on the coupon or she yells at you. Just yells. These colored girls …” He thought, Jesus, will you shut up. “… been on food stamps most of their lives, you think they’d learn.” Then she disappeared down an outer aisle. “Forgot the Band-Aid special. You start checking out. I’ll be right back. Use lane one. That tall colored girl.”

The cashier at the new checkout counter stared blankly at him. “This the express lane.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Ten items or less.”

“Sorry.” It occurred to Jack how little he knew about grocery shopping. It was not something he did. In any case he ate most of his meals out, whatever city he was in. He was sweating. A shopping cart loaded with what seemed to him enough items to provision a medium-sized city was harder to maneuver through the narrow aisles than he would have thought. Like a goddamn tank. And the shit was beginning to give way. The last thing he wanted was for that bottle of A-1 Sauce to smash on the floor. He wondered if it would be his responsibility to clean it up. He looked around. Tiara was the only other cashier on duty. Still working on her nails. I need a tug to dock this fucking thing, he thought, jerking the cart back into her checkout line. “Hi, Tiara.”

“How come you know my name?”

“I heard it around.”

“That crazy woman tell you my name?”

“Actually she’s not so crazy.”

“Bitch said I was a pain in the ass.”

So she had heard that. Why not? Everyone else in the store had. “I don’t think she really meant it.” He was unloading items fast onto the conveyor belt. Mild long-lasting Ivory Liquid. Canada Dry Ginger Ale. Tucks’s Vaginal Wipes. A half dozen Fleet’s enemas. These aren’t for me, he wanted to say,
the postprandial dump is regular as clockwork. “It’s what you call a figure of speech.”

“A what?”

Blue was bearing down on the checkout line, holding up her Band-Aid special. “I thought I told you not to use Tiara.” She might have been complaining to a director about a grip who was in her sight line. “Use that girl on register one.”

“That’s the express lane over there. Ten items or less.” He was not up to a racial incident at Farmer Dell’s. “And as you can plainly see, we have more than ten items.” Do I sound as demented as I think? Yes. No contest. Nolo contendere.

“Well, she’s supposed to take you if there’s nobody else on line. That’s the rule. Call Herb.”

“Forget it,” he said, and kept unloading. Get into the game. “Make those bar codes hum, Tiara. Put the emery board away. This is the checkout Olympics.”

For a moment Tiara stared truculently at Blue, then stuck the emery board into her hair, took a can of Chicken of the Sea tuna and deliberately ran its bar code over the magnetic scanner.

“Go for the gold, Tiara.”

“Shit, you is as crazy as the crazy lady.”

If Blue heard, she gave no indication. She seemed mesmerized by the mounting numbers on the cash register. Turning her tote upside down, she emptied all her coupons and rebates onto the counter. A few fluttered down under the register. Sixty dollars. Eighty. Ninety. A hundred. Jack struggled to keep pace with his unloading. Blue was on her hands and knees picking up the coupons that had fallen. A hundred and ten. Herb suddenly appeared at the register. He had straightened his hairpiece. “You going for the record, Melba?”

“This won’t even hit two hundred, Herb.” On her feet now. Content to win the race, not set a new Farmer Dell’s record. “You been at this as long as I have, you get a feel for how much you’ve got.” She shoved the pile of coupons toward him. “There was this time in Kalamazoo, at Kroger’s in the mall, I bagged two hundred ninety-six dollars and thirty-seven cents’ worth, one cart like always, got it down to nine dollars and
sixteen cents with my coupons. The funny thing was, I had to call a cab, take me back to my trailer, and it cost more to get home than it did the groceries. Eleven dollars. Ten dollars and thirty-five cents for the fare, sixty-five cents for the tip.”

“You’re some kind of big tipper, Melba, that cabdriver must’ve been glad he picked you up.” The register stopped at one hundred seventy-two dollars and nine cents. Herb smoothed the crumpled coupons and began discounting. Tiara began bagging. “Melba.” Herb talking. “How about taking your picture for the Farmer Dell’s employee newspaper. Our number-one shopper at location twenty-seven. Might even be, the picture comes out good, we can put you on the TV.” An elaborate smile. “You should like that, you being from the movies and all. You and Farmer Dell. Talking about our discounts. Our double-coupon days …”

Sock it away at Farmer Dell’s.

She looked stricken. “No.”

“It’ll mean a little money come in your direction. And be a feather in my cap.”

Every day.

Every way.

Herb’s serious, Jack thought. He wondered how she would react. Go fuck yourself, I bet. But she surprised him. A hauteur he had not seen before. The kind of piss elegance that only a star of her generation could get away with. “I don’t do commercials. I don’t believe a star should. It detracts from her mystery.”

Sock it away at Farmer Dell’s.

“You’re a pistol, Melba. Isn’t she a pistol?”

Jack nodded. “She sure is.”

“I wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but that’s show business, isn’t that what they say?” Herb was making his final calculations. “Melba, that’s going to be seventeen dollars and fifty-one cents exactly.”

“He will pay.”

He. Of course. The old studio training. The star never carried cash. The flack picked up all the bills. Herb, you are seeing star
power, and you don’t even know it. He paid with a twenty and left the change on the counter for Tiara. Recompense for the crazy lady’s calling her a pain in the ass. However accurate the assessment might have been. And conversely, however crazy the crazy lady might be.

Plenty.