CITY_OF_GIRLS_by_Elizabeth_Gilbert

“Vivvie is a sad little kitten tonight,” said Celia to Arthur, after they had kissed with considerable passion for a good long while, right in my ear.

“Who’s a sad little kitten?” said Arthur. “This one?”

And then he kissed me—without letting go of either of us.

Now, this was a peculiar line of conduct.

I’d kissed Celia’s boyfriends before, but not with her face an inch away from mine. And this wasn’t just any random boyfriend—this was Arthur Watson, whom I rather detested. And whose wife I very much loved. But whose wife was right now quite likely having sex with my boyfriend—and if Anthony were using his talented mouth right now, doing to Edna what he could do to me . . .

I couldn’t bear it.

I felt a sob rising in my throat. I pulled my mouth away from Arthur’s to catch my breath, and in the next instant, Celia’s lips were on mine.

“Now you’re getting the idea,” Arthur said.

In all my months of sensual adventures, I’d never yet kissed a girl— nor had I thought to. You’d think by this point in my journey I would have stopped being so easily surprised by the twists and vagaries of life —but Celia’s kiss astonished me. Then it kept on astonishing me, as she dug in only deeper.

My first impression was that kissing Celia felt like such a frightful extravagance. There was so much to her. So much softness. So much in the way of lips. So much in the way of heat. Everything about her was pillowy and absorbing. Between Celia’s enormously soft mouth, and the abundance of her breasts, and the familiar flowery smell of her —I felt subsumed by it all. It was nothing like kissing a man—not even like kissing Anthony, who knew how to kiss with rare tenderness. Even the gentlest kiss from a man would be rough compared to this experience with Celia’s lips. This was velvet quicksand. I could not pull myself away from this. Who in their right mind would want to?

For a dreamy thousand years or so, I stood there under that streetlamp, letting her kiss me, and kissing her back. Gazing into each other’s oh-so-beautiful and oh-so-similar eyes, kissing each other’s oh-

so-lovely and oh-so-similar lips, Celia Ray and I had finally reached the absolute zenith of our complete and mutual narcissism.

Then Arthur broke the trance.

“All right girls, I hate to interrupt, but it’s time for us to nip on out of here and head to a nice hotel I know,” he said.

He was grinning like a man who’d just won the trifecta, which I suppose he had done.

—

It’s not all it’s cracked up to be, Angela.

I know that this would be a fantasy for many women—to find yourself in a big bed in a fancy hotel room with both a handsome man and a beautiful girl available for your enjoyment. But from a matter of sheer logistics, I quickly discovered that three people engaging in sexual exploits at the same time can be both a problematic and arduous situation. One never quite knows where to put one’s attention, you see. There are so many limbs to organize! There can be a great deal of: Oh, pardon me, I didn’t see you there. And just when you’re getting settled into something nice, somebody new shows up to interrupt you. One also never quite knows when it is over. Just when you think you’re done with your pleasure, you find that somebody out there isn’t yet done with theirs, and back you go, into the fray.

Then again, maybe this triad would have been more satisfying if the man in question hadn’t been Arthur Watson. He was practiced and vigorous in the sport of copulation, to be sure, but he was exactly as off-putting in bed as he was in the world—and for the same reasons. He was always looking at or thinking about himself, which was irritating. My sense was that Arthur had a deep and penetrating appreciation for his own physique, and thus he liked to arrange himself into tableaux that brought maximum attention to his own musculature and handsomeness. Never once did I get the feeling that he had stopped posing for us or admiring himself. (And imagine that ridiculousness, if you would! Imagine being in bed with the likes of Celia Ray and a twenty-year-old version of me—and not paying attention to anything but your own body! What a dumb man!)

As for Celia, I didn’t know what to do with her. She was too much for me to manage—volcanic in her raptures, and labyrinthine in the secrets of her needs. She was forked lightning. I felt like I’d never met her before. Yes, I’d been sleeping and cuddling with Celia in the same bed for almost a year—but this was a very different kind of bed, and a very different kind of Celia. This Celia was a country I’d never visited, a language I could not speak. I could not find my friend hidden anywhere in this dark stranger of a woman, whose eyes never opened, and whose body never stopped moving—driven, it seemed, by some ferocious sexual incubus that was equal parts fever and wrath.

In the midst of all this—in fact, right at the white-hot center of it—I had never felt more lost or lonely.

—

Imust say, Angela, that I had almost backed out of this arrangement at the door of the hotel room. Almost. But then I’d remembered the

promise I’d made to myself months ago—that I would never again excuse myself from participating in something dangerous that Celia Ray was doing.

If she were engaged in wildness, then I would be, too.

While this promise now seemed stale and even confusing to me (so much had changed in the past few months, so why did it even matter to me anymore, to keep up with my friend’s exploits?), I stuck with my vow anyway. I hung right in there. With no small amount of irony, I can say: consider it an expression of my immature honor.

I probably had other motives, as well.

I could still feel Anthony shoving my hand away from his arm, and saying that I wasn’t in charge of him. Calling me sister, in that contemptuous tone.

I could still hear Celia talking about Edna and Arthur’s marital arrangement—“They’re continental, Vivvie”—and looking at me as if I were the most naïve and pitiable creature she’d ever encountered in all her days.

I could still hear Edna’s voice, calling me an infant.

Who wants to be an infant?

So I proceeded. I rooted about that bed from one corner of the mattress to another—trying to be continental, trying not to be an infant—digging and pawing at Arthur and Celia’s Olympian bodies for proof of something necessary about myself.

But all the while, somewhere in the only remaining corner of my brain that was not drunk or sorrowful or lusty or stupid, I perceived with unblurred clarity that this decision was going to bring me nothing but grief.

And boy, was I right.

NINETEEN

What befell me next is quickly told.

Eventually our activities ended. Arthur and Celia and I immediately fell asleep—or passed out. Awhile later (I had

lost track of time) I got up and put on my clothes. I left the two of them sleeping in the hotel room and ran the eleven blocks home, clutching at my shaking, underdressed body, trying and failing to stay warm despite the cruel March wind.

It was well after midnight when I opened the door to the third floor of the Lily Playhouse and rushed in.

Instantly, I could see that something was wrong.

First of all, every light in the place was blazing.

Secondly, people were there—and they were all staring at me.

Olive and Peg and Billy were sitting in the living room, surrounded by a cumulus cloud of dense cigarette and pipe smoke. With them was a man I didn’t recognize.

“There she is!” cried Olive, leaping up. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

“Doesn’t matter,” said Peg. “It’s too late.” (This made no sense to me, but I didn’t pay the comment much mind. I could tell by her voice that Peg was very drunk, so I didn’t expect her to make sense. I was far more concerned about why Olive had been up waiting for me, and who was this strange man?)

“Hello,” I said. (Because what else do you say? Always helpful to start with the preliminaries.)

“We have an emergency, Vivian,” Olive said.

I could tell by how calm Olive was that something truly terrible had happened. She only became hysterical over insignificant matters.

Whenever she was this composed, it had to be a real crisis.

I could only assume that somebody had died.

My parents? My brother? Anthony?

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.”

“Just call the studio, Billy,” Olive pleaded again. “Just call them and ask them to intervene. They can do anything.”

“No the studio can’t do anything, Olive,” said Billy. “Not with something as red hot as this. This is 1941, not 1931. Nobody has that

kind of weight anymore. Winchell’s got more power than the goddamn president. You and I can fight about this till next Christmas, but the answer will always be the same—I can’t do anything to help, and the studio can’t do anything to help, either.”

“Can’t be stopped,” said Peg again, and sighed—a deep, sickly sigh.

I rocked in the chair with my eyes closed, nauseated by self-disgust and alcohol.

—

Minutes passed, I guess. They always do.

When next I looked up, Olive was coming back into the room wearing her coat and hat and carrying her purse. I suppose she’d stepped out for a moment, but I hadn’t taken notice. Stan Weinberg had gone, leaving his horrible news behind like a stench. Peg was still slumped on the couch with her head knocked back against the upholstery, muttering something insensible every once in a while.

“Vivian,” said Olive, “I need you to go change into something more modest. Do it quickly, please. Put on one of those flowery dresses you brought with you from Clinton. And get yourself a coat and a hat. It’s cold out there. We’re going out. I don’t know when we’ll be back.”

“We’re going out?” Christ, would this night of horrors never end?

“We’re going to the Stork Club. I’m going to find Walter Winchell and talk to him about this myself.”

Billy laughed. “Olive’s going to the Stork Club! To demand an audience with the great Winchell! Ain’t that a tickle! I didn’t know you’d ever heard of the Stork Club, Olive! I would’ve guessed you thought it was a maternity ward!”

Olive ignored this, other than to say, “Don’t let Peg drink any more tonight, Billy, please. We will need her clearheadedness to help us manage all this mess, just as soon as we can get her back to her senses.”

“She can’t drink any more,” exclaimed Billy, waving to his wife’s prostrate form. “Look at her!”