I stood there on my shaky legs, reeking of sex, waiting for the bottom to fall out of my world—which it subsequently did, but not in the manner I was expecting.
“This is Stan Weinberg,” said Olive, introducing me to the stranger. “He’s an old friend of Peg’s.”
Nice girl that I was, I made a polite move to approach the gentleman and shake his hand. But Mr. Weinberg blushed as he saw me nearing him, and turned his face away. His obvious discomfort at my presence stopped me in my tracks.
“Stan is an editor on the night desk at the Mirror,” Olive continued, in that same disconcertingly flat tone. “He came over a few hours ago with some bad news. Stan has offered us the courtesy of letting us know that Walter Winchell will be publishing an exposé tomorrow afternoon in his column.”
She looked at me plainly, as though that should explain everything.
“An exposé about what?” I asked.
“About what happened this evening between you and Arthur and Celia.”
“But . . .” I stammered around a bit, and then said, “But what did happen?”
I promise you, Angela, I was not being coy. For a moment, I truly didn’t know what had happened. It was as though I had just shown up on this scene—a stranger to myself, and a stranger to the story that was being told here. Who were these people, anyhow, that everyone was talking about? Arthur and Vivian and Celia? What did they have to do with me?
“Vivian, they’ve got photos.”
That sobered me up.
In a panic, I thought: There was a photographer in the hotel room?! But then I remembered the kisses that Celia and Arthur and I had shared on Fifty-second Street. Right underneath the streetlamp. Beautifully lit. In full view of the tabloid photographers who had been crawling outside the Spotlite earlier this evening, waiting for glimpses of Brenda Frazier and Shipwreck Kelly.
We must have given them quite a show.
That’s when I saw the large manila folder in Mr. Weinberg’s lap. Presumably, it contained these photos. Oh, God help me.
“We’ve been trying to figure out how to stop this from happening, Vivian,” said Olive.
“It can’t be stopped.” Billy spoke up for the first time—and proved by the slur in his voice that he, too, was drunk. “Edna is famous, and Arthur Watson is her husband. Which makes this news, girlie, fair and square. And what news it is! Here’s a man—a semistar, married to a real star—caught kissing what looks like two showgirls outside a nightclub. Then we see this man—this semistar, married to a real star—checking into a hotel with not one, but two women not his wife. It’s news, baby. Nothing this juicy can be stopped. Winchell dines out on this kind of ruin. Christ, that Winchell is a reptile! I can’t bear him. I’ve hated him since I knew him on the vaudeville circuit. I never should’ve let him come see our show. Oh, poor Edna.”
Edna. The sound of her name hurt me all the way down to my bowels.
“Does Edna know?” I asked.
“Yes, Vivian,” said Olive. “Edna knows. She was here when Stan arrived with the photos. She’s gone to bed now.”
I thought I might throw up. “And Anthony—?”
“He knows, too, Vivian. He’s gone home for the evening.”
Everyone knew. So there was no hope of salvation in any direction.
Olive went on, “But Anthony and Edna are the least of your worries right now, if I may say. You have a far bigger problem to contend with, Vivian. Stan has told us that you’ve been identified.”
“Identified?”
“Yes, identified. They know who you are, at the newspaper. Somebody at the nightclub recognized you. This means that your name—your full name—will be printed in Winchell’s column. My objective tonight is to stop that from happening.”
Desperately, I looked at Peg—for what, I could not have said. Maybe I wanted comfort or guidance from my aunt. But Peg was leaning back on the couch with her eyes closed. I wanted to go shake her, and beg her to take care of me, to save me.
“Can’t be stopped,” Peg slurred again.
Stan Weinberg nodded in agreement solemnly. He didn’t look up from his hands, which were clasped over the hideously innocuous manila folder. He looked like a man who operated a funeral parlor, trying to keep his dignity and reserve as he was surrounded by a collapsing, grieving family.
“We can’t stop Winchell from reporting on Arthur’s dalliance, no,” said Olive. “And of course he will gossip about Edna, because she’s a star. But Vivian is your niece, Peg. We cannot allow her name to be in the papers in a scandal like this. Her name is not necessary to the story. It would be ruinous for the poor girl’s life. If you would just call your people at the studio, Billy, and ask them to intervene . . .”
“I’ve told you ten times already that the studio can’t do anything about this,” Billy said. “First of all, this is New York gossip, not Hollywood gossip. They don’t have that kind of clout over here. And even if they could fix it, I can’t play that card. Who do you want me to call? Zanuck himself? Wake him up at this hour, and say, ‘Hey, Darryl—can you get my wife’s niece out of trouble?’ I might need a favor of my own from Zanuck someday. So, no, I’ve got no pull here. Stop being such a mother hen, Olive. Let the chips fall. It’ll be ugly for a few weeks, but it will pass. It always does. Everyone will survive it. Just a little squib in the papers. What do you care?”
“I’ll fix things, I promise,” I said, like an idiot.
“Can’t be fixed,” said Billy. “And maybe for now you should keep your mouth shut. You’ve done enough damage for one night, girlie.”
“Peg,” said Olive, walking over to the couch to shake my aunt awake. “Think. You must have an idea. You know people.”
But Peg just repeated, “Can’t be stopped.”
I found my way to a chair and sat down. I had done something very bad, and tomorrow it would be splashed across the gossip pages, and it could not be stopped. My family would know. My brother would know. Everyone I’d grown up with and gone to school with would know. All of New York City would know.
As Olive had said: my life would be ruined.
I hadn’t tended to my life very carefully thus far, to be sure, but I still cared about it enough that I didn’t want it ruined. No matter how recklessly I’d been behaving for the past year, I guess I’d always had a distant thought that someday I would probably clean myself up and become respectable again (that my “breeding” would kick in, as my brother had said). But this level of scandal, with this level of publicity, would preclude respectability forever.
And then there was Edna. She already knew. Here came another wave of nausea.
“How did Edna take it?” I dared to ask, in a hazardously shaky voice.
Olive looked at me with something like pity, but did not answer.
“How do you think she took it?” said Billy, who was not so pitying. “That woman’s tough as nails, but her heart is constructed of the more typically flimsy composite materials—so, yeah, she’s pretty broken up about it, Vivian. If it had been just one bimbo chomping at her husband’s face, she might have been able to handle it—but two? And one of those girls was you? So what do you think, Vivian? How do you think she feels?”
I put my hands over my face.
The best thing for me to do right now, I thought, would be to never have been born.
“You’re taking an awfully self-righteous position on this, William,” I heard Olive say in a low, warning voice. “For a man with your particular history.”
“Christ, how I hate that Winchell.” Billy ignored Olive’s comment. “And he hates me just as much. I think he would light a match to me if he thought he could get insurance money for it.”