now. Got any?”
6
Y ou were a model?”
In the time it took me to reshape what she’d told me into a question, she’d flounced over to a platform rocker upholstered in flowered chintz and lowered herself into it with the same grace she had used getting up. She put on her glasses, smiled at what she saw, and said, “You might try not to look so surprised. Just because a girl turns sixty and puts on a few pounds doesn’t mean her feelings can’t be hurt. How about that cigarette?”
She was banging hard on seventy, but her fat filled in the wrinkles. I shook a Winston out of the pack and went over and held it out. “I’m out the window at the first siren.”
“I’m not a charity case. I’m paying rent on this dump and if I feel like smoking it up I’ll build a campfire on the rug.” She leaned forward to let me light it, then sat back and tilted her head to one side to blow smoke out the corner of her mouth. “You might close the door and open the window, though, just to avoid upsetting a nurse. They’re delicate creatures, poor dears.”
I saw it then, when she mentioned the nurses: the feral look of the woman wielding the broken bottle. You never outgrow enemies in this life. Near the end they all wear white and drape stethoscopes around their necks.
The window was one of those horizontal jobs that tilt out on pivots. I tilted it and walked over and shut the door and leaned back against the bureau and lit a cigarette for myself. I didn’t want one especially, but the generation she belonged to never let a lady smoke alone. We took turns tipping our ashes into a squat turquoise-painted Mexican pot that was supposed to contain a plant on a round some-assembly-required pedestal table beside the rocker. That made me an ash brother and someone to confide in. A fine gray powder coated the top of the black potting soil inside. No plant had grown there in a while, only butts.
“Edencrest seems like a nice place,” I said. “Modeling must have paid well even back then.”
She spat smoke. “It’s a rathole with a fresh coat of paint. My Social Security just covers the rent. I made more in tips waiting tables. But waiting tables won’t get you into the movies.”
“Did you get into the movies?”
“Plenty of times. All it cost me was the price of a ticket.”
“How’d you wind up posing for paperback covers?”
“ ‘Wind up’ is right. I came to the agency hoping to do magazine covers. That’s how Lauren Bacall and Audrey Hepburn started. I shot lingerie spreads for catalogues for almost a year. Eleven months into my career I was still parading around in my undies with my head cut off in every shot. When they told me the art director at Tiger Books had requested me for a cover I thought I was on my way. The address they gave me belonged to the Alamo Motel. You know the Alamo?”
“I know the Alamo.” I saw Eugene Booth’s typewritten note to Louise Starr on Alamo stationery. I took in a lungful of smoke to keep my body from vibrating.
“It ought to go on the National Register of historical fleatraps. The architect, if it ever had one, designed bus stations and none of the owners ever changed anything but the lightbulbs. ‘Fleta,’ I said, ‘you’re in the arts. Van Gogh worked out of an attic.’ So I go in and meet the artist and he hands me a slip two sizes too small to squeeze myself into. I’m coming up on my second year in the business and I’m still modeling underwear. I think that’s when I realized Lana Turner had nothing to fear from me.”
“That was the
Paradise Valley
cover?”
“Mm-mm.” She shook her head, sucking on the filter tip.
“Truck Stop.
You never heard of it. It was the first Tiger title not to go into a second printing. The guy that wrote it made a bigger noise when he threw himself out of a window at the Book-Cadillac. It didn’t help sales, though. I didn’t work for six months after that. The goddamn editor that bought the book blamed it on me. He
6
Y ou were a model?”
In the time it took me to reshape what she’d told me into a question, she’d flounced over to a platform rocker upholstered in flowered chintz and lowered herself into it with the same grace she had used getting up. She put on her glasses, smiled at what she saw, and said, “You might try not to look so surprised. Just because a girl turns sixty and puts on a few pounds doesn’t mean her feelings can’t be hurt. How about that cigarette?”
She was banging hard on seventy, but her fat filled in the wrinkles. I shook a Winston out of the pack and went over and held it out. “I’m out the window at the first siren.”
“I’m not a charity case. I’m paying rent on this dump and if I feel like smoking it up I’ll build a campfire on the rug.” She leaned forward to let me light it, then sat back and tilted her head to one side to blow smoke out the corner of her mouth. “You might close the door and open the window, though, just to avoid upsetting a nurse. They’re delicate creatures, poor dears.”
I saw it then, when she mentioned the nurses: the feral look of the woman wielding the broken bottle. You never outgrow enemies in this life. Near the end they all wear white and drape stethoscopes around their necks.
The window was one of those horizontal jobs that tilt out on pivots. I tilted it and walked over and shut the door and leaned back against the bureau and lit a cigarette for myself. I didn’t want one especially, but the generation she belonged to never let a lady smoke alone. We took turns tipping our ashes into a squat turquoise-painted Mexican pot that was supposed to contain a plant on a round some-assembly-required pedestal table beside the rocker. That made me an ash brother and someone to confide in. A fine gray powder coated the top of the black potting soil inside. No plant had grown there in a while, only butts.
“Edencrest seems like a nice place,” I said. “Modeling must have paid well even back then.”
She spat smoke. “It’s a rathole with a fresh coat of paint. My Social Security just covers the rent. I made more in tips waiting tables. But waiting tables won’t get you into the movies.”
“Did you get into the movies?”
“Plenty of times. All it cost me was the price of a ticket.”
“How’d you wind up posing for paperback covers?”
“ ‘Wind up’ is right. I came to the agency hoping to do magazine covers. That’s how Lauren Bacall and Audrey Hepburn started. I shot lingerie spreads for catalogues for almost a year. Eleven months into my career I was still parading around in my undies with my head cut off in every shot. When they told me the art director at Tiger Books had requested me for a cover I thought I was on my way. The address they gave me belonged to the Alamo Motel. You know the Alamo?”
“I know the Alamo.” I saw Eugene Booth’s typewritten note to Louise Starr on Alamo stationery. I took in a lungful of smoke to keep my body from vibrating.
“It ought to go on the National Register of historical fleatraps. The architect, if it ever had one, designed bus stations and none of the owners ever changed anything but the lightbulbs. ‘Fleta,’ I said, ‘you’re in the arts. Van Gogh worked out of an attic.’ So I go in and meet the artist and he hands me a slip two sizes too small to squeeze myself into. I’m coming up on my second year in the business and I’m still modeling underwear. I think that’s when I realized Lana Turner had nothing to fear from me.”
“That was the
Paradise Valley
cover?”
“Mm-mm.” She shook her head, sucking on the filter tip.
“Truck Stop.
You never heard of it. It was the first Tiger title not to go into a second printing. The guy that wrote it made a bigger noise when he threw himself out of a window at the Book-Cadillac. It didn’t help sales, though. I didn’t work for six months after that. The goddamn editor that bought the book blamed it on me. He
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