I asked, “Edna, would you like Anthony and me to wait outside?”
“Nah, I’m pretty comfortable right here, baby,” Anthony said.
“No, you may stay,” Edna said to both of us. “This is nothing of concern.” She turned again to her husband. The patient, loving face she’d been showing him thus far was now replaced by an icier expression. “Arthur, I’m attending this event and Anthony is escorting me. We shall sing our duet for some harmless, pewter-haired old ladies, raise a spot of money for England, and I’ll see you when I get home.”
“I’ve about reached my limit with this!” he cried. “It’s not enough that every newspaper in New York forgets I’m your husband, but now you forget it, too? You’re not going, I say. I refuse!”
“Get a load of this guy,” said Anthony helpfully.
“Get a load of you,” retorted Arthur. “You look like a waiter in that tuxedo!”
Anthony shrugged. “I am a waiter, sometimes. At least I don’t need my woman to buy my clothes for me.”
“You get out of here right now!” Arthur shouted at Anthony.
“No dice, pal. The lady invited me. She decides.”
“My wife goes nowhere without me!” said Arthur—somewhat ridiculously, because as I had witnessed over the past several months, she went to many places without him.
“You ain’t in charge of her, bud,” said Anthony.
“Anthony, please,” I said, moving forward and putting my hand on his arm. “Let’s step outside. There’s no reason for us to be involved in this.”
“And you ain’t in charge of me, sister,” Anthony said, shaking off my hand and throwing me a vicious look.
I recoiled as though I’d been kicked. He’d never snapped at me before.
Edna looked at each of us in turn.
“You’re all infants,” she pronounced mildly. Then she threw another rope of pearls around her neck, and collected her hat, her gloves, and her handbag. “Arthur, I’ll see you at ten o’clock.”
“No, you bloody well won’t!” he shouted. “I won’t be here! How will you like that, I wonder?”
She ignored him.
“Vivian, thank you for your assistance in dressing me,” she said. “Enjoy your evening off. Anthony, come.”
And Edna walked out with my boyfriend, leaving me alone with her husband—both of us shaken and cowed.
—
I honestly think that if Anthony had not snarled at me, I would have brushed off this entire incident, dismissing it as a meaningless squabble between Edna and her childish, jealous husband. I would have seen it for what it was: a problem that had nothing whatsoever to do with me. I probably would have left the room immediately and gone out for drinks with Peg and Billy.
But Anthony’s reaction had shocked me, and I was rooted where I stood. What had I done to deserve such vitriol? You ain’t in charge of me, sister! What had he meant by that? When had I ever tried to be in charge of Anthony? (Aside from constantly urging him to move to a new apartment, that is. And wanting him to dress and speak differently. And encouraging him to stop using so much slang. And asking him to style his hair in a more conservative manner. And trying to convince him to stop chewing gum all the time. And arguing with him whenever I saw him flirting with a dancer. But apart from that? Why, I gave the boy nothing but freedom.)
“That woman is destroying me,” Arthur said, a few moments after Edna and Anthony had left. “She is a destroyer of men.”
“I’m sorry?” I asked, once I’d found my voice.
“You should keep an eye on that greasy mutt of yours, if you like him. She’ll make a meal out of him. She likes them young.”
Again—if it hadn’t been for Anthony’s flare-up, I would not have paid attention to a word that Arthur Watson was saying. The world, as a collective habit, never paid attention to a word that Arthur Watson said. I should have known better.
“Oh, she wouldn’t . . .” I didn’t even know how to finish that sentence.
“Oh, yes she would,” said Arthur. “You can be sure of it. She always does. You can be sure of it. She already is, you blind little ninny.”
A cloud of black particles seemed to pass over my eyes.
Edna and Anthony?
I felt dizzy, and I reached for the chair behind me.
“I’m going out,” Arthur declared. “Where’s Celia?”
This question made no sense to me. What did Celia have to do with anything?
“Where’s Celia?” I repeated.
“Is she in your room?”
“Probably.”
“Let’s bloody well go get her, then. We’re clearing out of here. Come on, Vivian. Get your things.”
And what did I do?
I followed that fool.
And why did I follow that fool?
Because I was an idiotic child, Angela, and at that age, I would have followed a stop sign.
—
So this is how it ended up that I spent that beautiful false-spring evening going out on the town with Celia Ray and Arthur Watson.
But not only with Celia and Arthur, as it turned out. We also shared the night with Celia’s unlikely new pals—Brenda Frazier and Shipwreck Kelly.
Angela, you’ve probably never heard of Brenda Frazier and Shipwreck Kelly. At least I hope you haven’t. They got far too much attention as it was, back when they were young and famous. They were a celebrated couple for a few minutes back in 1941. Brenda was an heiress and a debutante; Shipwreck was a star football player. The tabloids followed them everywhere. Walter Winchell invented the obnoxious word “celebutante” to describe Brenda.
If you’re wondering what these sophisticates were doing hanging around my friend Celia Ray, so was I. But pretty soon into that evening, I figured it all out. Apparently New York’s most famous couple had seen City of Girls, loved it, and had adopted Celia as their little accessory—much the same way they bought convertible cars and diamond necklaces on a whim. Evidently, they’d been gamboling about with each other for weeks. I’d missed all this, of course, because I was so entangled with Anthony. But it seemed Celia had found herself some new best friends, when I wasn’t paying attention.
Not that I was jealous, of course.
I mean—not so’s you’d notice.
—
We drove around that evening in Shipwreck Kelly’s opulent, cream-colored, custom-made convertible Packard. Shipwreck drove, Brenda was in the passenger seat, and Arthur and Celia and I sat in the back. Celia was in the middle.
I disliked Brenda Frazier instantly. She was rumored to be the richest girl in the world—so just imagine how fascinating and intimidating I found that, will you? How does the richest girl in the world dress? I couldn’t stop staring at her, to try to figure it all out—captivated by her, even as I was actively disliking her.
Brenda was a very pretty brunette, dressed in a pile of mink, wearing on her hand a diamond engagement ring approximately the size of a suppository. Underneath all those dead minks was a fairly staggering amount of black taffeta and bows. It looked as though she were going to a ball, or had just come from one. She had an overpowdered white face and bright red lips. Her tresses were styled in lush billows, and she was wearing a little black tricorn hat with a simple veil (the kind of thing that Edna used to disparagingly call “Tiny Bird’s Nest Teetering Precariously on a Giant Mountain of Hair”). I didn’t exactly embrace her style, but I had to hand it to her: she sure looked rich. Brenda didn’t say much, but when she did speak, she had a starchy finishing school accent that grated on me. She kept trying to convince Shipwreck to put up the roof of the car, because the breeze was ruining her hairstyle. She didn’t seem like fun.