The questions were still nagging at me when Voluptua mounted a low stool on the patio and claimed the group’s attention. “I am the Earth Mother!” When she'd said it before, it had merely been a statement. Now it was a proclamation. “All pay homage to the Earth Mother!” she demanded. “My haunches are the touchstone of life!” She pulled her evening gown up over her waist and turned slowly around so that her derriere might be revered. “Their rhythms are the rhythms of life!” Slowly her cheeks began to move in as remarkable a display of muscular control as I've ever seen. “Come, touch the source of life rhythm!” She beckoned to Louis Ching.
He approached her, reached out gingerly, and gently stroked the vibrating globes.
“Enter the portals of Earth Motherhood!” she commanded Dwight Floyd Rank.
He obeyed, his hand slipping into the cleft separating the imposing mounds of flesh.
“Come penetrate the secrets of the hidden fountainhead of life rhythm!" she ordered Winthrop.
He followed Rank’s example, his hand vanishing from sight as if swallowed up by the action of the oscillating musculature.
And then it was my turn.
“Plumb the depths!” Voluptua instructed me.
It was as if my hand was grabbed in a vise, a vise which might have looked like flesh but was really steel. Amazed, I watched my wrist itself vanish from sight. There was an uncomfortable feeling -- more psychic than physical—of the limb having been amputated. I just had to wriggle my fingers to be sure there was still some feeling left in them.
“OOOEEE!” Voluptua shrilled.
“Dot,” I decided, “is not a Lung Island duckling!”
CHAPTER FOUR
Somehow, some time after dawn, the “trip” ended. We all disembarked relatively unharmed and scattered to our various resting places. I went back to my hotel and slept the day away.
It was after dusk when I was awakened by a knock at the door to my room. Groggily I got out of bed and opened the door a crack. There was nobody there. Something tickled my bare feet. I looked down and made out a folded message which had evidently been slipped under the door. I picked it up, sat down on the edge of the bed, turned on the lamp and read the message. It was very brief:
“GET A HAIRCUT."
That’s all it said. “GET A HAIRCUT," neatly printed in capital letters on hotel stationery. What the hell?
I crossed over to the mirror over the bureau and took a look at myself. Well, a haircut wouldn't do any harm. My curly locks had been in worse shape many a time, but I suppose to a tonsorial stickler I would have seemed a likely candidate for a clipjob. The real question was the identity of, the anonymous note writer who took such trouble over the state of my pate.
I scratched the offending follicles and picked up the phone. “Give me the barber shop, please,” I told the operator. A sadistic crackling assailed my ears, and then I was connected. “This is Mr. Victor in room one-oh-nine,” I identified myself. “I’d like to come in for a trim. How late are you open?”
“We are open twenty-four hours a day, Mr. Victor.”
The voice sounded miffed that I might even presume to question the nature of the service. “I can give you an appointment in about an hour or so. Say seven-thirty. Will that be satisfactory?”
“Fine,” I soothed him. “I’ll see you then.” I hung up.
Such service might seem the hallmark of an efficient and exclusive hotel dedicated to catering to the whims of its customers. Once the Beverly Topless had enjoyed the reputation of being just such a hostelry. But that was before the name had been changed from “Casa Elite" to “Beverly Topless.”
The days of glory for the Casa Elite dated from the Mary Pickford era to the early 1960s. During those days, the hotel was known as an exclusive hideaway for the creme de la creme of Hollywood society. It was renowned for three things: the fame of its clientele; the pains it took to insure its patrons privacy and the discretion it spread like a blanket between them and the press and the public; and the luxurious nature of its facilities and its appointments.
The Casa Elite had been more than a hotel; it had been a walled city all to itself. Behind the walls were outlets for every conceivable form of recreation. The grounds encompassed a nine-hole golf course, the finest tennis courts in the Los Angeles area, riding stables with ample trails for horseback enthusiasts running through acres of wooded lands, a large outdoor swimming pool with cabana facilities, a separate building housing bowling alleys and ping-pong and billiard tables, three lawns set aside for croquet, and even cemented paths for bicycle riders. Inside the hotel itself there was a small movie theater which featured films not yet released to the general public, game rooms, and three cocktail lounges and two restaurants, one of them enjoying the reputation of offering the finest cuisine to be found in Southern California. There were also four ballrooms in which some of the by-now historic Hollywood parties had been held.
In addition, the Casa Elite had offered every conceivable service its patrons might desire. Its beauty salon was as well-known as Elizabeth Arden, albeit more high-priced. There were laundry and cleaning facilities on the premises. There was a house dentist, and many a Hollywood star had her teeth capped while staying at the Casa Elite. There was also a house doctor, of course, as well as a team of valets and lady dressers, a shoemaker who actually made shoes for some customers, chauffeurs with limousines, seamstresses, tailors and dressmaker, etc.
On the lower level of the hotel, beneath the lobby, there was a concourse lined with exclusive and very high-priced shops. It was not only possible –- it had actually happened -- that one could purchase a diamond bracelet for as high as $150,000 in the jewelry shop on the concourse. Next door was a high-fashion boutique which specialized in one-of-a-kind Paris originals at prices that could have paid the bar bill of a moderate drinker for a year or two. Across the way was a toy shop with offerings so mechanically elaborate that it had gained a reputation for offering gifts for the man who has everything, rather than for children. And there was also a made-to-order men’s clothing store, an antique shop with contents to rival San Simeon, a glass-blower to fashion crystal to one’s fancy, a lingerie store dedicated to turning the flabbiest figure into an object of appreciation, a massage parlor, a photographic studio, even a furniture store and a sports car showroom, and others, many others.
One could have been born and lived and died at the old Casa Elite and never have wanted for anything, not for necessities, not for luxuries, certainly not for service. In a physical sense, most of this had remained unchanged when the Casa Elite changed hands and its name was changed to “Beverly Topless.” All of the facilities still remained intact, but with the change in management there was a change in the quality of the service and, by now, a change in the very atmosphere of the hotel. Let me explain. It’s not true that the Beverly Topless was run by the Marx Brothers at their wildest. It only seemed that way. And, to some extent, the way it seemed was doubtless the result of the new policy symbolized by the intriguing new name.
The hotel had changed hands for the simple reason that its business had decreased. This was because of the way in which the movie business had changed. In the halcyon days of the Casa Elite, the great bulk of the world's film production came out of Hollywood. This peak production meant that there were always hordes of celebrities in the area. With the reputation it enjoyed, the Casa Elite was frequently in the position of having to turn away some very renowned people.