Buster Midnight's Cafe (10 page)

“Hey, Buster! Wait up,” Toney called, running behind him to catch up. But Buster didn’t answer. He slammed the screen door so hard, it broke off the top hinge.

The next time me and Whippy Bird and Buster and Toney saw May Anna was in the Movietone News, swinging her backside up toward Granite Street.

We didn’t see May Anna for a long time after that. And except for letters every now and then, we didn’t know what was happening to her. Later on, of course, we knew everything about May Anna because we read about her in the movie magazines. But you can’t believe everything you read in them.

Shawn dumped May Anna not long after they got to Hollywood, though May Anna, being the generous person she was, always gave him credit for discovering her. She told
Silver Screen
she was a high school girl walking across the corner of Broadway and Wyoming in Butte when Victor saw her and asked her mother could he give her a screen test—which contains about as many lies as you’d ever find in one statement.

Shawn did give May Anna a screen test, but nobody signed her up because of it. So she got her first important job in Hollywood as a cigarette girl at one of the big nightclubs. She wore a short skirt and a little pillbox hat with a strap under her chin like Johnny in the Philip Morris advertisements and carried a box with different brands of cigarettes and little packages of matches that went with them. They sold for plenty, and most of the men gave May Anna big tips, though you’d be surprised at who would try to stiff her. She said the ones you thought would be cheap, like Jack Benny, were always the nicest.

The biggest tips came from the men who wanted to pick her up, and there were plenty of them. May Anna said in that man’s town your hairdo was more important than your virtue. Whippy Bird says so what was new for May Anna; her hairdo was more important in Venus Alley, where she made her living from not having any virtue.

Some of the men who made passes at May Anna had connections, but most of them just wanted to take off her clothes. Hollywood was not the fine place you might think. There were men who took advantage of young girls. Some of those girls who went to Hollywood to break into pictures ended up as drunks and even junkies. You might think we just discovered cocaine and heroin in America today, but me and Whippy Bird know better. Growing up in Butte, we already knew about the opium and happy dust you bought in China Alley. May Anna learned real early to just say no to drugs. She also learned to just say yes to enough right men so that a year or two after she went to Hollywood, she was modeling in advertisements.

I remember the lunch hour Whippy Bird opened the
Collier’s
and found a picture of May Anna in a Catalina swimsuit. She was reading the magazine in a booth in back, waiting for me to take a break and join her. Then she turned a page and screamed so loud, everybody in the restaurant looked up, including me. “Effa Commander! Look-it here!” she called. I rushed to the booth, along with Babe Gamer, who wanted to know what was going on.

“That’s our friend. That girl in the Catalina swimsuit,” I told her.

“You know, I could swear I’ve seen her someplace,” Mrs. Gamer said. “Maybe here.” Then she remembered who May Anna was and smiled. “Nice to see a local girl make good.”

Whippy Bird went out and bought up a dozen
Collier’s
and gave them to Buster and Toney and even dropped one off for Nell Nolan. We wrote May Anna we’d seen the ad, and May Anna wrote back she’d gotten twenty-five dollars for posing for that picture. Me and Whippy Bird thought that was small change compared to what May Anna made in Venus Alley, but maybe there was more competition in Hollywood than on Butte’s row. After that, me and Whippy Bird were always opening up
Woman’s Home Companion
and the
Delineator
and seeing pictures of May Anna whipping up Jell-0 or putting on Hinds Honey & Almond Cream or taking the Armhole Odor Test for Odorono. Once we saw her in an upsweep hairdo advertising Modess. You couldn’t tell us that May Anna hadn’t made it.

It wasn’t long after that May Anna got her first part in a motion picture. She was so excited she sent us a telegram: LANDED MOVIE ROLE STOP GANGSTERS ON PARADE STOP SPEAKING PART STOP SEEUN PICTURES STOP LOVE MAYANNA. It was the first telegram me and Whippy Bird ever received, and I have it in my memory box. Toney had to explain to me and Whippy Bird what all the “stops” meant.

May Anna wrote us later that a director spotted her in a Spencer corsets ad and said she’d be nice in the part of the woman who got strangled in the movie. You probably never saw
Gangsters on Parade.
Nobody else did except me and Whippy Bird and Buster. It played at the American in Butte, and it even got top billing with a big sign on the marquee that said
BUTTE GIRL STARS,
which wasn’t true. You saw May Anna for about five seconds, saying, “No. No. Ahhhhh.” That was the speaking part. Then she slumped to the floor with her tongue hanging out of her mouth.

We’d seen May Anna play a lot of parts, looking cow-eyed at Buster or carrying on with Shawn at Gamer’s. But sitting at the American watching May Anna get killed, me and Whippy Bird knew she would be a Star of the Silver Screen.

We got Pink and Chick to take us opening night. After that, the boys wouldn’t go again, so the two of us went by ourselves. We spent every night and every day off at the American watching May Anna. Me and Whippy Bird memorized every word of that picture’as well as
West of the Pecos,
which was on the same bill. I got so tired of that movie, I never liked westerns after that, but we had to sit through it so we could see May Anna’s picture again. If we left, we’d have to pay to get back into the theater.

Buster was always at the American, too. He sat there waiting for May Anna to get killed, then left after May Anna’s part and had to buy another ticket to get back into the American to see her get killed the next time. Buster always did waste money.

For a while we used some of those lines we memorized, like “Forget it, you cheap crook” and “Where’s the loot?” so our time wasn’t wasted. Whenever I asked Whippy Bird to do something she didn’t want to, she replied, “No, no, aahhhhh.” And every time a woman customer at Gamer’s was snotty, I’d mutter, “I’ll ice the dame,” under my breath, which was what the killer said before he murdered May Anna.

We didn’t say that stuff around Buster, though, because he took May Anna’s acting very seriously. “Nothing’s going to stop May Anna from getting what she wants,” he said.

Well, we took it seriously, too. Who else did we know who’d made it big like that, except Buster, and he wasn’t big yet. We could see May Anna was doing just fine because it seemed like every time we saw a movie after that, there would be May Anna. She was never in the main feature, just the B pictures, the kind where the men keep their hats on inside. She didn’t get many good speaking parts like in
Gangsters on Parade,
but she worked steady, and that is a major accomplishment in Hollywood where so many of your starlets had to work as waitresses or prostitutes. May Anna said she never had to work as a prostitute in Hollywood. Whippy Bird says that’s how you put it when you don’t get paid cash.

The next big break for May Anna came in
Tough Man,
where she was a supporting actress and got a screen credit, too. She played the girlfriend of a gangster named Mad Dog, and got shot in a getaway car. May Anna got killed a lot in the early days.

Tough Man
was the first time we noticed May Anna had high cheekbones and that “luminous” skin everybody wrote about when she was a sex goddess. Whippy Bird says we sure were a pair of nitwits never noticing all the good parts of May Anna before. I remember when the robbers were in the bank vault and one of the gangsters struck a match that lit up everybody’s face. May Anna glowed like a Madonna with a halo, so you didn’t even notice the others. That’s why when she was a big star, the director always had her stand under a street lamp with a lot of fog blowing around her. Everything was black except May Anna’s shining face. Or you saw her in a dark nightclub smoking a cigarette with smoke swirling over her head and her face shining through it. She must have smoked about a million cigarettes in the movies. Whippy Bird says she is sorry about tobacco causing cancer because she liked to see those scenes in the movies with champagne glasses and cigarette smoke.

May Anna wasn’t the only one doing exciting things. Me and Whippy Bird had plenty of news that you’ll be interested in. While May Anna was getting established in Hollywood, me and Pink decided to get married. Had to get married, Whippy Bird says, and that is surely true though we had planned on it anyway.

Some boys might have run out on you when they found you were pg, but when I told Pink I was in the family way, he was so excited he hugged me and said we’d run off to anyplace I chose that very night. But I wanted a wedding with Whippy Bird as my maid of honor. Pink said I could have the biggest wedding in Butte, but I just wanted it quick since I knew people would be counting.

We got married a week later. I was fretting that Pink wouldn’t show up, which would ruin my life, but Whippy Bird said there wasn’t a thing in the world short of death that would keep Pink away. I guess that was right. Buster stood up with us, too, and he made sure Pink was there even though he was nursing the worst hangover you ever saw. Buster and Chick took Pink to the Jug the night before the wedding, and they got him drunk, and I don’t know what else. I didn’t want to know. All that mattered was that Pink was there, even though he did have to say the words three or four times to get them straight. That was just the hangover, though. When the minister pronounced us man and wife, Pink kissed me for three minutes, until the minister drummed his fingers on the cross. Chick reminded Pink that he was paying by the hour, and we could kiss for free at the Rocky Mountain Cafe.

That’s where we had our reception. Toney made about a hundred toasts to our happiness. He even toasted the Unholy Three. Pink, as an old married man, advised Chick to take the plunge himself. Then as we were leaving on our honeymoon to Ogden, Utah, Buster gave me a hug and said, “Babe, you got a fine man. And Pink’s one hell of a lucky guy.” I told Buster I surely hoped he found happiness, too, one day.

When we got back from the honeymoon, which was only three days, Pink went to the mines; he worked at the Mountain Miser then. I went back to Gamer’s, but things weren’t right with me. I was sick all the time, not just morning sickness but something else. I’d never been pregnant before, but I knew there was something wrong with that baby. Two months later I lost it.

I always thought I failed Pink that way. He was so excited about us having a baby, but he never said a cross word to me about losing it, and I loved him even more for that. He was the love of my life, just like May Anna was for Buster. Losing that baby was one of the sorrows of my life, and Pink’s, too, bless him.

It took me a long time to get well. I had to stay in bed for two months. Pink never complained. He took care of me like I was a little blown-glass ballerina. He cooked and cleaned the house after he got home from work, which is not something your average Butte miner would be pleased to do. Pink told me the only thing in the world he wanted was for me to recover.

Even with all those doctor bills to pay, Pink brought me flowers. The first time I got out of bed and ate at the table, he pinned an orchid corsage on my bathrobe, lit two big candles, and put on a record of “Little Brown Jug.” You’d have thought we were celebrating with plank steak at the Finlen Hotel instead of eggs and hash browns in the kitchen. Whippy Bird says I was the luckiest girl in the world to be married to Pink Varscoe, and she is surely right.

Sometimes Buster stopped to cheer me up, which was especially nice because right then Buster didn’t have much to be cheerful about. His career was going nowhere. In fact, me and Whippy Bird wondered if Buster was finished as a boxer.

When May Anna left, Buster McKnight acted fine, but Buster Midnight went to pieces. I had to laugh when Hunter Harper wrote that the effects of too much fast living caught up with Buster. That’s hogwash. The rest of us were the fast livers. Buster took care of himself. What put him in that long, slow tailspin was May Anna going to Hollywood.

Buster lost his first fight in history a couple of weeks after she left. It was a dinky fight against a punch-drunk old bum who wasn’t good enough to be Buster’s sparring partner let alone face him in the ring. The fight was held in the Knights of Columbus hall. Me and Whippy Bird and Pink and Chick went, and it was the sorriest fight I ever saw. Buster just asked to get beat up. There was no sign of the famous Buster Midnight punch. In fact, Buster didn’t punch at all. He got hit and hit again. People booed, but Buster still didn’t get any better. In one round, the other fighter knocked Buster down, and the only thing that saved him was the bell.

When the fight was over, Buster lost the decision. We booed at that and told Buster he was robbed. But we knew it wasn’t so.

Losing one fight wasn’t bad, but Buster lost five in a row. All of a sudden he was washed up. We didn’t see the other fights, since they were out of town, but Toney said Buster was just as bad. After that Toney had a hard time rounding up matches in Montana for Buster.

“He’s got no heart no more,” Toney said. “It makes me madder than hell that that broad did this to him.”

We were down at the Rocky Mountain Cafe doing our best to get rid of a couple of bottles of red while we fed the slot machines.

“Don’t you blame May Anna. God didn’t put her on this earth to work Venus Alley so Buster could beat up people,” Whippy Bird told him. She was always quick to defend May Anna, just like she is now.

“Hell, it’s Buster’s fault,” Chick said, agreeing with Whippy Bird. “Maybe he’s not as good as we think.”

“He’s good all right,” Toney said. “The best in the business. But he ain’t going to last long at this rate.”

“Maybe he just has to get out of Montana,” Chick told Toney, who was brooding, dropping ashes from his Old Gold on top of his spaghetti. “Where else could you set up Buster? What about Colorado, all those mining towns?”

“Hell, Colorado mining towns are dead. Besides, that ain’t far enough away,” Toney said.

“What about California, since that’s where May Anna is,” I asked.