The Desert Rose (19 page)

“Well, privacy may be a novelty in your life right now but it will soon get old,” Mel said. “I can stay here six months and never see anyone but the servants and be perfectly happy, but not everyone is that way.”

“So maybe I’m that way too, what do you know?” she said.

“I doubt it,” Mel said. “You’re a girl who’s very mad at her mother. You can’t make her stop existing, you know. When you tell her you’re getting married she’s gonna want to meet the guy you’re marrying, which is her right.”

“I don’t have to tell her!” Pepper said. “I don’t have to tell her anything! I’ll just tell her I’ve got a new boyfriend and I’m moving in with him.”

“You certainly must have some grudges,” he said, then he kissed her again. She remembered how he had shaky legs at first, she had thought he was weird, there were the Chiclets, but they weren’t a bad idea, he had sweet breath. It was starting to seem like he was the only one who
wasn’t
weird, he definitely had his life worked out the way he wanted it.

“Can I move in?” she asked. “I don’t want to wait three weeks.”

The thought of being home was kind of revolting, his house was so much more tasteful, plus he could give her a little support, which at home was hard to come by unless Myrtle just happened to be sober or it was Sunday and Gary could come out.

Still, it made her nervous to ask, Mel had his own ideas, maybe he wouldn’t want it.

“You certainly can,” he said, she was so relieved she would have done anything for him, she really was ready to get away from home.

He took her and showed her the room which was going to be hers. That was a surprise, she’d assumed they’d sleep together.

“Nope, you’ve got to be careful about intimacy,” Mel said. “Too much of it can kill you right off.”

Her room was a beautiful room, right next to his bedroom. At one point he had tried to be a painter and the room had been a studio. He said very matter-of-factly he had given up painting, no talent he said. There was no sign of any of his paintings, just an empty room, with another glass wall and another beautiful view.

“Now Pepper, I want you to furnish it,” he said. “After all it’s your room, I think it should reflect your taste.” He had a lot of amazing furniture catalogues, some from Italy and L.A. and various places. He said to look at them and see what attracted her, so she took them out to the pool while he made some phone calls. There was so much furniture available that it was confusing, she sort of let it drop and just sat and watched the night come on. Mel had a little office in the pool house, she could hear him on the phone, then he came out, grinning, and said, well, the rich get richer.

She loved it that he could just talk on the phone for a while and make a lot of money. Woods’s father was rich but he had to spend about twenty hours a day at his office.

Pepper was hoping maybe she could spend the night but Mel said no, I don’t care how mad you are at your mother you owe her a little consideration, you tell her what’s happening and then if you want to move in tomorrow that’s fine.

She felt some anger again that it always had to be her mother that came up. She was ready to tell him forget it, marry my mother if you’re so interested in her, for a second she was ready to flash out of there. But then if she did that would probably be that, Mel looked like he could be pretty
firm if the mood suited him, why blow it? She could tell her mother and if she freaked too bad. Anyway if Jessie was going to move in for a while it would be easier if her room was empty.

Mel was interested in her ideas about the furniture, but she was impatient, it was just one room, she didn’t see the point of calling Italy or anything, there was some pretty expensive stuff in Las Vegas, she said she had rather go to a store and look. He said fine, maybe he’d come with her, which was a surprise. She didn’t think he ever left the house except for the occasional weird-out at the Safeway.

The one thing she still felt uncertain about was the Stardust but Mel pointed out that she had been dancing since she was five and that she might as well find out how she liked doing it on stage.

Then the servants came out with a great Japanese meal, it was just delicious. She hadn’t really eaten all day and was basically starving. Mel didn’t mention her mother again and she got in a better mood and took the Buick on home, only to find Myrtle in her best dress drinking vodka and walking up and down the driveway, she only walked up and down the driveway if she was really upset. It turned out she and Wendell had gone to see Jessie in the hospital and then Wendell had brought her home and gone off to the Amoco station, only he forgot something and came back and caught her on the phone with Bobby. She didn’t know how much he had overheard but she was definitely freaked, she wasn’t even paying any attention to Maude, who was bleating up a storm.

“I don’t know why I done it, all that damn Bobby wants is to get in my pants,” Myrtle said.

“So did Mother call?” Pepper asked.

“No, we seen her at the hospital, she said tell you she’d come home and fix your breakfast in the morning,” Myrtle said. “The pore thing, she’s exhausted, she’s got dark circles
under her eyes. Jessie’s real low, she can’t even move her foot for two weeks, I’d go crazy if that happened to me.”

Crazier, Pepper thought, you’re already crazy. The dress was one Myrtle had bought in Hawaii, it was only about twenty-five years out of style, but who cared, not too many visitors were likely to hit the driveway that night.

“That guy Bonventre called, he said tell you you got the job and please call him, I think they want you to start in a couple of days,” Myrtle said.

Okay, that was quick, Pepper thought, but the immediate problem was how to get Myrtle calmed down, she was very hyper. Meanwhile the peacocks were screeching—nobody had fed them.

“Well, I’m glad you got hired,” Myrtle said. “If Wendell moves out you may have to support me for a while, this recession has killed the garage sales business, I hear it’s that way all over America, too.”

Pepper said fine, but it had no effect, finally she had to take Myrtle to Wendy’s. She ate herself into a stupor and went to sleep on the way home. Nobody could wake Myrtle when she konked out after a binge so Pepper went in and got a couple of blankets to cover her with and put Maude in the car to keep her company and let her sleep, it definitely wasn’t the first time it had happened.

V

1.

“I’
M GLAD
Jesus loves me, I’m just not so sure about Monroe,” Jessie said. Harmony was holding her hand and trying to get her not to cry. When she cried she got her pillow wet and the nurse was annoyed, but trying to get Jessie not to cry when she was upset was like trying to get the rain to stop raining once it started or something, all Harmony could really do was keep handing her Kleenex.

Monroe had come while Harmony was asleep at Gary’s, and evidently it hadn’t been such a great visit. Jessie had got upset because Monroe said Francois wouldn’t eat his dog food. It was her fault, really, she had got the wrong brand. It was liver-flavored, but it was still the wrong brand and according to Jessie Francois would just go on a total hunger strike until he got the brand of his choice. She was convinced he would starve himself to death in protest, sort of like an Irish freedom fighter. Jessie had been very upset by those hunger strikers.

Apparently Monroe wasn’t that crazy about Francois, didn’t like Francois snarling at him every time he came in covered with grease. Anyway, he had not wanted to go get a lot more dog food, he said any dog will eat when he gets hungry but Jessie said he just didn’t understand Francois, who would certainly prefer to starve rather than eat a brand of dog food he didn’t approve of.

Harmony promised to go get some more dog food herself,
she could run over to the Safeway between shows, which would be a long time before Francois reached the starvation point. Her promising didn’t solve the problem though—the problem was Jessie was losing confidence in Monroe.

“Maybe he was just tired and grumpy, he had to work under a truck all night,” Harmony pointed out. “I know he loves you Jessie. He said this very morning that he’d like to marry you.”

“I know, but how can I marry him if he doesn’t get along with Francois?” Jessie said. She was definitely devoted to her poodle.

Harmony had a headache, she had only got to sleep about four hours, which was less than half of what she needed, nine was her preferred number of hours. Besides, though she had gotten real sick to her stomach she still felt queasy as a result of the K rations. The breakfast had really been a severe setback. She didn’t have the strength to take up for Monroe, anyway she had never thought he was much of a boyfriend. But at least he
was
a boyfriend and when Jessie didn’t have one she could be difficult to get along with and would be even more so now that her career was probably over.

It was lucky that Myrtle and Wendell showed up at that point. Myrtle was wearing her Hawaiian dress and had actually made an effort to fix her hair. Wendell was wearing his green sports coat, Harmony thought they looked like a very happy couple. Myrtle immediately invited Jessie to get well and come out and help her with garage sales, although Harmony knew she was just being nice, a garage sale that only took in 75 cents a day didn’t need two people to run it.

Wendell seemed nervous. The old woman who was the other patient in the room woke up and began to wheeze, she made a very unpleasant sound, which Wendell said
reminded him of a pump sucking air. He leaned over to whisper it to Harmony, which was a mistake because Myrtle was so jealous that anything like that made her mad at Wendell. Harmony was always forgetting how jealous she was—things that were completely innocent, such as a whisper, didn’t strike Myrtle as innocent.

I guess I better get out of here before I get Wendell in worse trouble, Harmony thought. She told Jessie not to worry, she was definitely going to get Francois the right brand of dog food, maybe she could even do it before she went to work, though in fact what she did was go back to Gary’s and hold ice packs under her eyes, she got puffiness and dark circles when she didn’t get enough sleep.

The ice pack took care of some of the puffiness but the dark circles were definitely there. She had expected Gary to be asleep but instead of sleeping he had taken a bunch of pills and was irritable and hyper. She was really glad to get to work because she felt she and Gary were probably on the verge of a major fight. He started needling her about a belt she had bought, he said it looked like it was made of tinfoil, like it was a belt of chewing gum wrappers or something. She knew it wasn’t real silver but it definitely wasn’t made of tinfoil. Gary only picked on her clothes when pills or something upset his metabolism, but she wasn’t at her best due to lack of sleep and they barely got to the Stardust without the major fight breaking out. There was a thing or two about him that she wouldn’t mind criticizing if he wasn’t going to let her alone.

They ran into Cherri in the parking lot. She was in a great mood because Bonventre had decided he wanted her sister Patti to come and try out for the show. In fact she was arriving the next day.

“Oh good, now you’ll have your sister for company,” Harmony said. It might be Cherri’s lucky day but it definitely
wasn’t hers because the first person she ran into on the way to the dressing room was Bonventre. He took one look at the dark circles and frowned.

“Harmony, you look awful, will you come see me in my office before you put your makeup on?” he said.

“Jackie, it’s just because of Jessie’s accident, I didn’t get any sleep,” Harmony said, but he wasn’t listening. If you had dark circles under your eyes it didn’t matter to him if it was World War III that caused them, he hated dark circles.

She decided just to go on to his office, if she was going to get lectured it might as well be soon. His office was kind of a pigpen. Bonventre was too paranoid to let his secretary clean it out except once a year, he was afraid she’d stumble on information he didn’t want anyone to have.

He seemed surprised to see her quite so soon, actually she had just stopped at the craps table to tell Gene not to look for her during her break, she thought it might be better to avoid Dave for a while. That perked Gene up quite a bit, his jealousy of Dave had been about to get out of hand.

“Harmony, your daughter had a beautiful audition this afternoon, I guess you heard,” Bonventre said.

“No, I didn’t hear,” she said.

“Well, Gary was there, I assumed he told you,” Bonventre said. It made her wish there had been the major fight, maybe she would have killed him, what did he mean not telling her he had been at Pepper’s audition?

“Well, be that as it may the audition was beautiful, the choreographers were extremely impressed, and we would like her to start as the understudy next week if that’s all right with you. Here’s the form you have to sign.”

He handed her a piece of paper—the form the parent had to sign if a child that was still a minor wanted to work in one of the shows. Quite a few did, she knew of instances
where girls who were only fourteen got their parents’ consent and went right to work.