The Desert Rose

  Well, why not? Harmony thought, they were all young guys. Cherri was a beautiful girl and she was their age, it was perfectly appropriate and if Cherri would just notice it might cheer her up and take her mind off her homesickness. But it sort of went on for a while, the guys kept looking and Cherri kept not noticing and Harmony found to be honest that it kind of lowered her spirits, even though she thought highly of Cherri and would have loved to see her have a nice romance. Still, it made her feel a little blue that the kid had been so startled when she smiled back, as if she were an old lady or something. After all she had had her share of young admirers, several of Pepper’s boyfriends had sort of had crushes on her. If it was just going to be a matter of having a laugh once in a while then age differences didn’t bother her. But the guys from Texas or wherever they were from had accidentally hurt her feelings a little, they acted like they thought she was Cherri’s mother. Basically all they wanted was the thrill of flirting with a showgirl at the Taco Belle, only Cherri didn’t notice and the guys sort of ruled her out, totally unaware that she was probably the most famous showgirl in Las Vegas, they just ruled her out, whereas Cherri didn’t even seem to be aware of masculine attention, she hadn’t even noticed Gene.

  They took their time walking back to the Stardust, after all they still had nearly an hour before the second show. It was quite a beautiful night, warm, nice to be outside. Harmony had meant to try and catch Bonventre but she didn’t feel like it, Bonventre was not exactly what she needed in her present mood. Cherri wanted to go on in, she was taking a course in real estate at the university so she hustled on in to study and Harmony took a little walk up toward Caesars Palace, she felt blue and didn’t want to just sit around the dressing room watching Jessie be paranoid about the space between her teeth.

  Too bad Billy was already off duty, he was the sweetest security cop in town so far as she was concerned, a smile or two from Billy would have improved her mood but Billy was probably up at the Trop keeping his wife company during her break. Harmony could remember when Ross would run up to the Trop to see her for a little while although his job was at the Desert Inn. It was a sacrifice for him to come up there every night just so she wouldn’t feel lonely during her break, but Ross didn’t seem to mind, he just considered it part of being a good husband. It was funny that she was remembering Ross more and more often, there had been years when she wouldn’t think of him at all unless he sent some money or maybe a birthday present for Pepper or something. He was very good about birthdays, his present had only been late once all the time Pepper had been growing up, and that time it had been an ant farm and the ants had to come all the way from New England.

  Harmony walked nearly to Caesars before turning back. She was remembering all the things that had happened to her in her years in Las Vegas, Didier falling in love with her and then dying, and Ross marrying her and then leaving, and Pepper growing up and quite a few guys who had been around for different lengths of time, not such long lengths most of them, still, it added up, she just hadn’t expected it to suddenly start to show in that particular way, like at the Taco Belle. Of course the Taco Belle was very brightly lit, it would be instantly obvious even with both of them in makeup that Cherri was a lot younger. If they had been sitting in the keno bar or somewhere a little dimmer the guys might not have noticed at all.

  But then it was true—why shouldn’t they notice? They were just thinking in terms of someone their own age. The sad part was that she didn’t care, she wasn’t after them, she just liked to smile at guys and have them smile back. That was absolutely as far as it went most of the time, unless some guy got a little more interested and made an effort, on the order of Dave rearranging his break to meet her at the craps table. Over the years it must have been thousands of times that some guys from out of town would steal a few looks and she would smile, that was all that would happen, it wasn’t like she was trying to drag them off to the sack or get them in trouble with their wives or anything. After all, showgirls were supposed to give the impression of friendliness. It had never been hard for her because she really felt friendly, it just had never happened before that a guy had looked startled when she smiled at him.

  It left her with a little bit of a hurt feeling. She had never spent too much time worrying about the future, but it was the sort of incident that could kind of make you wonder what the future held. Probably all it meant was that she would have to learn a little discretion and not smile at guys so young. Leave them to Cherri, only that meant leaving them without even a smile, because Cherri just didn’t notice.

  Harmony spent so much time walking around, not exactly thinking gloomy thoughts, just mainly walking and enjoying the warm air—a little down but not in any bottomless pit of depression or anything—that she was almost late getting back. Gary was frantic, he assumed she had been kidnapped or Denny had done something crazy, she was usually back at least thirty minutes before the curtain. Gary was quite orderly, he always had the schedule in mind and any little thing that didn’t seem normal, like her going for a walk instead of just coming back to the dressing room made him quite anxious.

  “Gary, I was just taking a walk, it’s a pretty night,” Harmony said. It had been smart too. Jessie was no less depressed and sitting around the dressing room was no fun when everyone was in a bad mood anyway. Rodney in particular was in a terrible mood and was giving Genevieve a bad time because two of her costumes had tears but she hadn’t bothered to point it out and give Rodney time to get them fixed. Harmony just quickly got undressed and into her G-string and left, it took all of about a minute and she wasn’t that late anyway, it was just that Gary liked to get her into her feathers early, so he’d have more time to devote to people who were really late, like Jessie, who had been right there all the time, taking a nap or talking to Monroe on the telephone—the muffler shop stayed open till midnight, except on weekends.

  “Guess what the latest rumor is, Pepper’s engaged,” Harmony said, as the hoist was bringing the feathers down.

  “Oh no, who told you that?” Gary said. He didn’t take it particularly seriously.

  It was only when she was up on the disc that Harmony sort of felt a little nervous. There was general agreement that Buddy did too many drugs and was not that stable. In her view one of his worst faults was that he had no sense of humor and was too possessive of Pepper, she was bound to get tired of it. Harmony didn’t want Pepper to get into something like that at sixteen and get hurt. If it was true that she was engaged they were all going to have to make an effort to talk her out of it. Pepper would undoubtedly just get resentful if she said anything, the best thing might be to get Gary to talk to her, Pepper had a lot of respect for Gary’s opinion and hardly any for hers or Jessie’s or Myrtle’s or even Madonna’s. For a moment just as the curtain was going up she thought of Ross again, what would he think if he knew the rumor? Before she had time even to wonder much about Ross’s reaction the lights hit and the audience broke into a big hand.

  2.

  SOMETIMES IN the second show things got a little slack, after all it was late and they had all done it before three or four thousand times. Maybe the audience would have too much to drink and would get a little boisterous, they tended to be more respectful at the first show. Some of the dancing was totally lifeless, plus the acrobats were having an off night, they missed a couple of times and even when they didn’t miss the catches weren’t too smooth, the audience was not impressed. Harmony did her best, she thought any audience deserved to get its money’s worth, but then she wasn’t a dancer or an acrobat, there wasn’t that much she could do about it. But it was depressing to be in a show that had sort of fallen dead on its feet, all you could do was keep smiling and wait for it to be over, at which point Bonventre would be sure to throw a fit and threaten to fire everyone.

  It was definitely not the best show they had ever put on but everybody did sort of rouse themselves and make an effort for the finale. They got a burst of energy at the thought that it might
finally be over. Harmony was glad herself, it seemed sort of endless when it wasn’t really working but at least the finale was lively, the audience started clapping, it wasn’t a total disgrace. Harmony gave them her best smile as her disc started up and was holding the smile when she got a big shock, someone in the audience screamed. The lights were so strong she couldn’t see anything and didn’t know if there was a murderer loose or what. Once at the Trop something like that happened. A guy evidently got so bored with the show that he pulled out a pistol and started playing Russian roulette. Nobody noticed except his wife, who thought it was a big joke until he suddenly blew his brains out. Fortunately he had been at the back, so Harmony had not really seen the blood and gore, but the cigarette girls and the waitresses were definitely shook up.

  But the screams kept coming. With the lights in her eyes it was very confusing, it seemed like most of the people were clapping but a few were screaming. She had no idea what it could be until she got a little higher and looked down and had a horrible shock, there was Jessie lying on the stage sort of crumpled up between the two lines of dancers. It was such a shock that she thought for a moment it wasn’t real. It was like a very bad dream that you wake up from and feel relieved. Only it wasn’t, she looked over and saw that Jessie’s disc was broken, it was just dangling from a couple of wires. She looked down and saw that at least Jessie wasn’t killed, she was sitting up, with the dancers all around her. It was the very end of the finale and the dancers couldn’t stop, they had to keep dancing and singing, it was only about ten seconds to the curtain. At least Jessie wasn’t broken to bits, she was definitely sitting up. Meanwhile Harmony could see Bonventre in the wings having a fit that his finale had been spoiled. He was waving at Jessie as if he wanted her to get up and hop off or something. Poor Jessie either didn’t hear him or didn’t want to, she just kept sitting there trying to smile. It had to be horribly embarrassing to have to sit in the middle of the stage during the finale. She would probably never get over it even if she wasn’t really hurt.

  Then the curtain finally dropped and Gary and a couple of stagehands ran out and sort of lifted Jessie off, but of course the audience was worried, they didn’t know what to make of it. Harmony saw Bonventre talking to Jessie with Gary sort of shaking his head and looking more and more distraught. Then the curtain went up again for the curtain calls and somehow Bonventre got Jessie on her feet, or at least on one foot—she teetered for a moment and waved and gave the audience a smile to show she was all right. Of course the audience gave her a big hand. It was not exactly a standing ovation since most of them were leaving anyway but it was a big hand. Then she fell right into Gary’s arms.

  The minute the curtain went down again she got off the disc and hurried down the steps and out of her feathers, and got across the stage just in time to hear Bonventre yell at Gary.

  “For Christ’s sake, she only fell six or eight feet, will you stop making it into an Ann-Margret situation?” Bonventre said, he sort of looked bored.

  But Jessie was one of Gary’s pets and he was definitely disturbed.

  “Listen, she didn’t need to stand up, undoubtedly her ankle’s broken—you could have just made an announcement!” he said.

  It was no big argument though. Bonventre just walked off, probably he was disgusted because the accident happened just when he was ready to launch into a tirade about the poor quality of the second show.

  Jessie was lying on a little cot backstage. She was crying which was no surprise and Rodney was trying to get her out of her feathers. She wasn’t skinned or anything. Harmony hurried to the dressing room and got her her robe.

  The showgirls and quite a few of the dancers were standing around looking sort of paralyzed. Three or four stagehands were examining the disc, to see what might have happened. There was a crowd gathered but no one was saying much, it was like they were all sort of a little bit in shock. Even Murdo the ventriloquist was standing by the cot and Murdo didn’t mix with the group much. He was sort of unpopular with the gay dancers because though he was known to be basically gay he kept refusing to come out of the closet. Some said he was about the last person in the closet in the whole city of Las Vegas, and the boy dancers resented it fiercely.

  Harmony helped Jessie get into her robe, it was hard to tell if she was in pain or just crying because it had been a shock and she was embarrassed.

  “Do you hurt?” Harmony asked. Gary came and sat on the cot and held one of her hands.

  “I did when I stood up, I got a real sharp pain,” Jessie said. “I just wish I could take my makeup off, I don’t want to go to the hospital in it.”

  “Well, it’ll just be to the emergency room so they can take some X-rays, maybe it’s not even broken, you actually didn’t fall all that far,” Gary said.

  “Yeah, look on the bright side, kid,” Murdo said. “If the fuckin’ disc had slipped when you were way at the top you’d have broken every bone in your body.”

  “Murdo, I don’t think she wants to hear that,” Gary said. He was irritated because the ambulance hadn’t come, although it had been called almost the second Jessie fell.

  Murdo got his feelings hurt at that. “I was only trying to cheer her up,” he said. Probably he had meant well but the fact was that the mere mention of having every bone in her body broken only caused Jessie to cry a lot harder. She had a vivid imagination when it came to accidents and disasters of any kind.

  Harmony didn’t think she looked too damaged, though, maybe it was just a bad sprain. She told Jessie she’d go to the emergency room with her and hurried to the dressing room to get dressed.

  As she was going back Bonventre suddenly popped out of his office and grabbed her elbow, it was just like him to suddenly appear just when it was a bad time to talk.

  “Come in a minute,” he said.

  “What is it, Jackie, I’ve got to go with Jessie to the emergency room,” she said.

  “Far be it for me to detain you while you’re on a fuckin’ errand of mercy,” Bonventre said, with a smirk. The fact that Jessie had at the very least a bad sprain wasn’t going to cause Bonventre to lose any sleep.

  “I’d like you to go down to the sheriff’s office tomorrow and sign a work consent form for Pepper, since she’s under age,” he said.

  “Jackie, I wish you’d talked to me about that, I don’t know if Pepper ought to work here,” she said.

  “Who’s the guy she’s engaged to?” Bonventre asked. It was really pointless to say anything to him because he just completely ignored it and asked another question, he didn’t even pretend he hadn’t heard you he just ignored all words except his own.

  “Pepper’s not engaged, maybe her boyfriend just spread that rumor,” she said. The ambulance had arrived, a couple of guys in white were wheeling a little ambulance bed backstage, sort of a stretcher on wheels.

  “Well, Pepper spread it to me” Bonventre said. “It may be that you’re not particularly well informed about your daughter’s plans, which would not surprise me.”

  “I think I’d know if she was getting married,” Harmony said, although she was not too confident really, maybe she wouldn’t. Pepper was not one to confide, at least not in her.

  “Harmony, if they ever decide to hold a Miss Vacant contest, I’ll back you all the way,” Bonventre said, and grinned at his own humor. It was just the kind of remark he seemed to think was funny. “Meanwhile just do me the small favor of signing a work consent form so we can audition your daughter,” he said.

  Harmony didn’t have time to argue about it, they had lifted Jessie out onto the little bed and were already wheeling her out.

  “No, I don’t want Monique to hate me. Anyway, Pepper’s still in school,” she said, she had to hurry to catch up with the ambulance, the guys who were wheeling Jessie out were really fast. Bonventre was frowning, he was not pleased, she knew perfectly well she hadn’t heard the last of that one but at least she could put it off.

  She showed up just as they were about to
shut the ambulance doors. Gary was already inside, but when she showed up he decided maybe it made more sense if he brought his car in case it wasn’t as bad as it looked and Jessie got released right away they would have something to ride in. The ambulance drivers didn’t care, they just said make up your minds. So Gary climbed out and she climbed in. By that time a crowd had gathered, mainly just couples who had been walking up and down the Strip and stopped when they saw the lights flashing. They were wondering if it had been a murder or somebody with a heart attack or what.

  “I’m scared,” Jessie said, gripping Harmony’s hand tightly. It would have been good if she could have got her makeup off, it was a total mess from the tears. The guys in the ambulance didn’t regard it as a life or death emergency. They left on the flashing lights but didn’t bother with the siren except once or twice at intersections when the pedestrians didn’t get out of the way quick enough to suit them.

  “Maybe it’s just a sprain, don’t look on the dark side,” Harmony said, though expecting Jessie not to look on the dark side was like expecting the desert not to be dry or something.

  “No, I felt a real sharp pain when I stood up, I just know this is the end,” Jessie said.