“You must be in heaven, Heller,” a high-pitched, sultry voice said.
I recognized it at once-she had a faint, very sexy, unmistakable lisp-but turned just the same, to confirm this happy news.
Her smile was playful. “Nassau’s brimming over with pretty girls…all these lonely RAF wives. You must be going to town.”
“Helen! What the hell are you doing in Nassau?”
She swept off her sunglasses so we could have a better look at each other. A petite, shapely woman of forty who looked easily a decade younger, she owed some of it to great genes, and some of it to a great face lift.
She wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, tied with an orange scarf under her chin, and a white robe over an orange-and-white floral bathing suit. Her skin was almost white; strands of her dark blond hair, pinned up under the hat, tickled a graceful neck. She wasn’t wearing makeup, but her features didn’t need any: pert nose, full lips, apple cheeks, long-lashed eyes that were a green-blue shade even the Bahamas could envy.
“I’m just hanging around, after finishing a gig,” she said. “How about you?”
“Same. Sit! Have you had lunch?”
“No. Go get me some. Conch salad.”
“I’ll do that.”
I did. I was pleased to see Helen Beck, who was better known to the general public by her stage name: Sally Rand. We went way back, to the Chicago World’s Fair, where I worked pick-pocket security, and where she made a name for herself (not to mention kept the fair afloat financially) doing a graceful nude ballet behind huge fluffy ostrich feathers. Or, at times, an equally oversize bouncing bubble. Sally-or Helen, as she preferred me to call her-was versatile.
I brought her the salad and a Bahama Mama. She ate the salad heartily-raw chopped conch marinated in lime juice and spices with some chopped crunchy vegetables tossed in for good measure-but merely sipped at her rum punch.
“How’s Turk?” I asked.
She grimaced; now she took a belt of the punch.
Turk was her husband, a rodeo rider she’d met when she put together a revue called Sally Rand’s Nude Ranch; they’d been married since ‘41, but it had been a rocky ride. Last time I’d seen her, about four months ago in Chicago, they’d been separated.
“I gave him another chance, and he blew it big-time. Son of a bitch hit me, Heller!”
“We can’t have that.”
“Well, I can’t. I filed on the fucker.” Her expression was as hard as her language. “Sure, I feel sorry for him…I mean, he goes overseas to serve his country, can’t take it, cracks up, gets sent home on a Section Eight…I’d like to stand by him, but the guy’s nuts!”
“Sure.”
She looked at me and her expression melted; she leaned over and touched my hand. “I’m sorry, Heller…I forgot you went through the same damn thing.”
“No problem, Helen.”
She pulled back and her expression was troubled now. “He’s drinking too much. I had to throw him out. Why didn’t we get married, Heller? You and me?”
“I ask myself that, from time to time.”
“How often?”
I shrugged. “I just did.”
That made her smile; that wide smile of hers was a honey.
We chatted for a good hour. Not that we had much catching up to do; a few months ago in Chicago, we’d done our reminiscing about our summer together, back in ‘34. Some of that reminiscing had been between the sheets, but Helen and I weren’t lovers, anymore. Not really.
But we’d always be friends.
“I’m surprised to find you working Nassau in the off-season, Helen,” I said. “The wartime nightlife here is a little limited right now, or so I understand….”
She shrugged; she’d finished her lunch and was smoking a cigarette. “It was a Red Cross fund-raising drive benefit. You know how patriotic I am.”
And she was. She was an FDR fan, as well as a self-styled intellectual who leaned a bit left, and had attracted non-nude attention when she spoke out for the republican forces in the Spanish Civil War; she’d also got publicity out of lecturing at colleges. In between getting arrested for public indecency, of course.
“Sounds like you’re getting respectable in…”
“If you say ‘old age,’ Heller, I’ll conk you with a conch shell.”
“…these troubled times.”
Her smile turned crinkly. “I am respectable. Saturday night, at the Prince George. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor were ringside.”
“Pretty posh audience at that.”
She lifted her chin, blew out smoke elegantly. “Not only am I respectable, but my perfectly round balloons…”
“You’ve always had perfectly round balloons.”
“Shut up, Heller. The perfectly round balloons I dance behind, which are manufactured to my personal specifications by a company that I own, are now being used by the U.S. government for target practice.”
That made me laugh, and she laughed along.
“Well, then,” I said, “it was patriotic of the Duke to watch you strut your stuff. Didn’t Wallis mind?”
I referred, of course, to Wallis Simpson, the American divorcee David Windsor, aka King Edward VIII, current Governor of the Bahamas, had abandoned his throne to marry-“the woman he loved!”
“Wallis smiled and giggled throughout. Frankly, the Duke was the one who seemed ill at ease. Embarrassed.”
“These ex-kings have no sense of humor.”
“I’ll say. I hear he’s issued an official ban on reporting that the Windsors actually saw my act. Of course, that ban doesn’t extend to my press agent back home.”
“Of course.” I clicked in my cheek. “The poor royal dears…banished to a tropical Elba like this.”
She lifted an arching, plucked eyebrow. “Well, there always have been rumors the Duke is a Nazi sympathizer. Churchill had to get him out of Europe so Hitler couldn’t grab him, and set Edward up as a puppet king!”
“What would I do, without a burlesque queen to explain world politics to me?”
She slapped my arm, but she was smiling. “You’re such a louse.”
“That’s what you like about me.”
“True. But I have to say, I really do admire Wallis…”
“Admire her? Everybody says she’s a shrew who pushes poor ol’ Dave around.”
“That’s ridiculous! You’re just threatened by strong women, Heller!”
“Sorry,” I said sheepishly.
She smirked. “In fact, both the Duke and Duchess have chalked up a lot of good works to their credit, in the short time they’ve been here. The local Negro population has benefited particularly…”
“Here we go.”
“Be good. Did you know the Duke started a CCC-type farm, for the native men? And the Duchess works in the local Red Cross clinic, side by side with black women…something the local whites certainly wouldn’t lower themselves to do.”
“Really gets her hands dirty, huh?”
“Yes she does. Personally, I think they’re a lovely couple….”
“You, and every starry-eyed bobby-soxer in America. This bittersweet romance, these tragic lovers!” I laughed. “I can’t believe you’re seduced by this royal horseshit, a left-wing fan-dancing fanatic like you.”
“Heller, you’re getting cynical in your…”
“Watch it.”
“…these troubled times.”
“Thanks. Actually, I’ve always been cynical.”
“You just think you are. That’s why I should have married you: you’re the biggest, most romantic lug I ever met.”
“Fooled you.”
“You said you were doing a job here. Who for?”
“Sir Harry Oakes.”
The green-blue eyes lighted up; lashes fluttered. “No kidding! He’s a real character! You should have seen him at the benefit…eating peas with a knife, swearing like a sailor. But I didn’t get a chance to talk to him. What’s he like?”
“Dead,” I said.
Helen’s eyes were still saucers when somebody tapped my shoulder and I turned to see another pair of those dignified black bobbies.