The Desert Rose (7 page)

“What’s the matter, did the novocaine hurt?” Harmony asked.

“Yes but that’s not the terrible part,” Jessie said. “He says I have to have two root canals.”

That was pretty sobering, a root canal for Jessie would be the equivalent of open heart surgery for most people, she was just not up to dealing with much pain.

Jessie’s apartment was a mess, she got around to basic matters like making the bed only about once a week. The sight of it always brought out the housewife in Gary, he went around picking up beer bottles and emptying ash trays, Jessie didn’t smoke but Monroe was seldom without a cigar.

Harmony didn’t know what to say about the root canals, when it happened they were all going to have to be very supportive, for sure. While she was trying to think of something a little bit cheerful she could say to Jessie she wandered into the bedroom to see if Jessie had bought any new stuffed animals recently and woke up Francois, Jessie’s
miniature black poodle, who had been napping beside a stuffed raccoon. Jessie was totally vulnerable to stuffed animals, she would buy any species not already in her collection. She had about a hundred arranged along one wall of the bedroom plus several on her bed.

A stranger just walking in probably would have thought Francois was stuffed too but in fact he was a live dog and the minute Harmony woke him up he began to yip and jump around on the bed wanting to be picked up and cuddled. Jessie loved Francois more than she loved Monroe or anybody else—naturally he was extremely spoiled and got very outraged if he didn’t get whatever he wanted instantly. Fortunately he was cute, Harmony enjoyed cuddling him herself and took him over and sat him on top of the stuffed hippopotamus, supposedly a third life-size that was by far the most expensive of all Jessie’s stuffed animals. Once for about two weeks Jessie had gotten a boyfriend who was sort of a high roller, he was from Texas and very excited about the fact that he had actually seduced a show girl. He had been generous enough to buy her the hippo, which cost $600, before he went back to his wife.

Now Jessie had her heart set on a stuffed polar bear that was about as large as the hippo but there was widespread agreement that she would be lucky ever to get the polar bear, certainly Monroe wasn’t likely to pop for it.

Francois was not wild about being on the hippo. He began to yip so Harmony took him back into the other room. Gary was holding Jessie’s hand but had evidently not come up with too many cheering words about root canals because Jessie still looked frightened and actually paler than usual.

“Okay, but I didn’t even tell you the
really
bad part,” she said, totally miserable as only Jessie could be. “The really bad part is he wants me to have braces.”

“My goodness, you’re a grown woman,” Harmony said, “you don’t need braces.”

“Well, he said that at my age your gums get soft and mine are real soft and they’re letting my teeth begin to move around. I do have a space, see?” And Jessie opened her mouth so they could see the tiny space that had developed between Jessie’s front teeth and the ones just to the side of them.

“Well, so what, nobody has to look at your teeth under a microscope or anything,” Gary said.

Except the human microscope, Bonventre, Harmony thought, she had never known anybody with such an appetite for flaws as Bonventre, he could look at you as you walked down a hall in street clothes and say “Harmony, you look like a chub-ette,” or “This is the Stardust, not the Fat Follies, Harmony, how come you gained three-quarters of a pound?” and when she actually got on the scale it would probably be three-quarters of a pound exactly. Some girls became so paranoid about it they suspected Bonventre must have a secret scale set in the floor, maybe out by the check-in sheet or somewhere so that he knew everybody’s weight to a hair before they even got to the dressing room. Harmony’s instinct was that one reason Bonventre treated her so sullenly was because all these years he kept expecting her to gain and she hadn’t, she was only maybe two pounds over what she weighed when she came to Las Vegas as a girl, mainly because right off Didier had told her what to eat and impressed upon her that the very worst thing was to turn to food when she was depressed. She might not have any control in the love area but she didn’t just sit around and eat because she was blue.

It was a big frustration to Bonventre, nothing would have made him happier than for her to walk in with a couple of new pounds on her midriff, but she hadn’t let it happen. If she had Bonventre would have demoted her long ago or else fired her altogether.

It did seem though that Jessie’s dental problems were more major than usual, even having to have novocaine
wouldn’t make her cry up a whole box of Kleenex, which she had practically done.

“On top of that my overbite’s getting worse,” Jessie added. Harmony gave her Francois to hold, hoping that would cheer her up.

Gary was looking like he had had a little too much depression for one day.

“Nobody ever died of an overbite,” he said. “Nobody ever died of having an insurance check stolen, either. What we need around here is a little perspective.”

“I’ve already got a prescription,” Jessie said, misunderstanding completely. “Who stole the insurance check?”

“Well, Denny, I’m hoping it’s a joke,” Harmony said.

Both of them looked at her as if to say who do you think you’re kidding, she didn’t particularly think she was kidding anybody, maybe she just didn’t want to admit he was a total criminal yet.

Jessie had never been able to work up much outrage. Her view was that Denny probably needed to see a minister. She herself had been brought to Christ a few months ago and had been baptized in the swimming pool of a little motel whose owner was quite religious, but she was timid about trying to get other people to find Jesus, she felt it had to be a personal need and had never pressed Harmony or Gary very much about it.

Then Gary noticed it was nearly seven, they all had to get to work. It was not until they were driving along the Strip that Harmony remembered to tell Jessie about Bonventre offering to audition Pepper to understudy Monique. Jessie was a lot more surprised by the information than Gary had been.

“Goodness,” Jessie said. “Then if Monique quits Pepper might be making more than you.”

That was an aspect of the matter that had not so much as dawned on Harmony, it would certainly mean Pepper would have a lot more money to spend on clothes. That
didn’t necessarily make it a good idea, though, Pepper had plenty of clothes.

Meanwhile the sun was setting but they were only a block from the Stardust, she wouldn’t get to see the whole sunset. She loved driving and looking out the window, it was too bad there wasn’t time for a little drive, she had sort of a tiny fantasy which was that Denny was waiting for them in the parking lot in the blue car, he gave her back the check and they made up. Harmony took her time walking in, giving the fantasy every chance to happen, but it didn’t, basically she was just out thirteen hundred dollars and late for work too. She could only take about three seconds to flirt with Billy, the sweet young cop who sort of kept the traffic moving in front of the Stardust. Gary practically cried every time he saw Billy, Billy was so beautiful, but he was married to an English girl, a dancer at the Trop, Gary was just out of luck in that instance.

Still, Billy was sweet, he gave Harmony one of his wonderful little shy smiles that you had to look quick even to catch, but she caught it, he was a beautiful kid and it was pretty cheering, by the time she got backstage her spirits had risen, she was feeling okay and was not the least affected by the fact that Rodney tore into her for checking in five minutes late.

6.

W
HAT WAS
actually more bothersome than Rodney was the fact that the backstage smelled of elephant fart, probably for the very simple reason that one of the elephants had recently let one. A couple of younger stagehands waved brooms around pretending it would make the smell go away, but it didn’t.

“Rodney, is the elephant sick or what?” Harmony
asked. Rodney was one of Gary’s protégés, he was only twenty-two and seemed to think it was his duty to bitch if anyone in the show was a few minutes late.

“Do I look like an elephant doctor?” Rodney asked, he always liked to have a comeback. In fact he just looked like a slightly pimply kid from L.A. who had probably been gay from the moment he was born.

“Rodney, I just asked,” Harmony reminded him and went on to the dressing room. Probably the trainer had been trying to make the old elephant learn something new. It didn’t like to and farted a lot on those occasions.

Harmony waltzed into the dressing room to discover Jessie standing there in her G-string showing the other girls the little space between her teeth, though about the only one who was trying to be sympathetic was Cherri, the other three girls were basically more interested in getting their makeup on. Cherri was the youngest showgirl, she was only nineteen and by her own report had pretty much been happy all her life. Consequently she was sort of awestruck by the number of miseries Jessie came up with day after day. Cherri was from Houston and her breasts were sort of the envy of everyone, including people from other shows, they weren’t small and yet they stuck straight out, without the tiniest suggestion of sag. Even Bonventre, who had seen his share of breasts and had had horrible remarks to make about most of them, hadn’t been able to come up with an immediate criticism when he saw Cherri’s.

“Well, I sympathize if you have to have braces, I had to wear mine till two days before I graduated,” Cherri said, leaning over and smiling at the mirror to make sure she wasn’t developing gaps.

The dressing room was tiny, converted from a wardrobe closet actually, but Harmony didn’t really mind, she got undressed and got her G-string on and a bathrobe and sat down to do her makeup, something she had done so many
times she was convinced she could probably do it okay even if she suddenly went into a coma or something. Jessie’s space was next to hers at the makeup table and when Jessie had done her eyes she sort of practiced smiles for a while, obviously trying to come up with a way to smile that wouldn’t show the gap between her teeth or maybe her braces if she actually had to have them. Of course it was ridiculous for Jessie even to fantasize that she could be a showgirl and wear braces, after all wonderful smiles were part of what made the show a gay spectacle. When Bonventre really wanted to fire somebody but didn’t want to bother to even think up a good excuse he would usually just say a waiter had told him the girl wasn’t smiling enough, or it could be a boy, Bonventre didn’t like men any better than he liked women.

“Jessie, you’re getting on my nerves doing that, just put your makeup on,” Harmony said.

“This is gonna give me bad dreams, I know it is,” Jessie said.

In fact the dressing room was kind of gloomy. Linda, who was next to Jessie, was three and a half months pregnant and was going to have to quit in another week or two, plus Beryl who was English finally thought she had found a boyfriend only to have the guy inform her he had decided to be gay, after all. When Jessie got tired of looking at her teeth she turned around and began to look at her ass, having remembered that Genevieve had told her it was dimpled. Nobody in the dressing room was speaking to Genevieve except Harmony. Genevieve had even alienated Cherri, who was a perfectly friendly girl, by laughing sarcastically just because Cherri hadn’t understood about having to shave her pubic hair before she could wear a G-string. She had been very embarrassed, but Genevieve had just laughed and not been at all sympathetic.

But then Genevieve’s lover, who was on the order of
forty years older than she was, had recently lost his job and become a taxi driver, plus her child had learning disabilities, she tended to carry a lot of unhappiness from her home life into the dressing room. Even Murdo the ventriloquist hated her because she kept pointing out that she could see his lips move every time she happened to glance at his act. She wasn’t particularly pretty and the consensus was Bonventre only kept her in the show because he liked to have someone around who was as critical as he was.

When Harmony was satisfied with her makeup she stepped out of the dressing room hoping to spot Bonventre and did spot him, only he was talking to Monique, obviously an argument, Monique’s face looked very tight. She was almost Harmony’s age only she was thinner and had a narrow face which showed whatever strains Monique happened to be suffering from. Harmony didn’t dare interrupt, particularly not to ask Bonventre what she had been going to ask him, she sort of gave him a wide berth. When Bonventre argued he kept squirting a nasal spray up his nose to keep his mucous membranes from drying out, he hated a dry nose. In the twenty years she had known Bonventre the only real change was that at first he had worn white suits and now he wore black suits, he had decided black suits were more sophisticated or more in keeping with the sinister image he liked to cultivate or something.

Gary was backstage checking out all the costumes, he looked frazzled but things were no more out of control than usual, that Harmony could tell. She and the rest of the showgirls were in feathers for the opening number. The feather outfits were so large you couldn’t just put them on, they had to be lowered by a little hoist, which was another reason Harmony usually came out a little early, that way Gary could always adjust hers himself and help her get the huge headdress sitting right. That was very important, the headdresses were really heavy and if you didn’t carry them
right you could really screw up your back. Another wonderful thing Didier had done for her was to educate her about posture, which was all-important if you had to walk around in heavy headdresses six nights a week.

“Bonventre’s on Monique’s ass,” Harmony said as she was standing with her arms out, waiting for the feathers to come down around her, they were pink in the first number and she did sort of love it, being a feathered beauty, they were gorgeous costumes and the people out front sort of gasped when the curtain finally went up and they saw them for the first time.