The Fame Game (23 page)

Why is it
, Silky thought,
that now when everything I ever wanted in my life is coming true I can’t believe it, and I’d give it all up in a minute if I could only have Dick back again?
But she was not really sure the last part of that was true. She wanted to be a success. Not just because she had nothing else, either. She wanted to be a success because … because … why? She didn’t know. But she did remember the alternative, and if she could think of no other reason for wanting to be a famous star, thinking of the alternative was enough.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Vincent-Slash-Bonnie! What was Gerry to do with her/him? When Libra first passed the edict that the kid was to live with her, making her sort of a foster matron, Gerry was appalled. He/she was a beautiful kid, with a cuddly sexual quality that was quite unnerving. She felt rather dikey in the presence of Bonnie, feeling that odd attraction, even though she knew quite well that Bonnie was really Vincent, so it was all right. And Bonnie/Vincent, or Vincent/Bonnie, played his/her sexuality up for all it was worth. Gerry couldn’t figure out how much of this was unconscious. Evidently the kid was at a loss for anything to talk to her about, and they both watched each other like wary animals at first. Vincent/Bonnie was waiting to see if Gerry was going to laugh at him/her, consider him a freak. And Gerry was suspicious of this silent, watchful kid who locked the bathroom door when he/she went in to dress or put on make-up, used her things and then denied he’d used them, who watched her every move as she watched his. She wondered if the kid was a kleptomaniac. How could you tell? You could hardly get a word out of him. She knew Vincent/Bonnie resented having to stay with her far more than she resented having the kid dumped on her.

But as spring went into summer and then the hot summer went on and on, Gerry began to see heartening changes in Bonnie. (She was finally thinking of him/her as Bonnie now, because when the kid had first come to stay she’d asked him what he wanted to be called, and he’d said: “Bonnie, because if you think of me as Vincent and I get a phone call you might forget and say, ‘Vincent, it’s for you.’”) The first time Bonnie really talked to her was the night Bonnie had taken a pill, one of the little cache of Ups Bonnie got from the queens in the gay bars and which she hid somewhere in the apartment. Bonnie was on her way out to romp in the bars, and Gerry made coffee and they sat in the living room and Bonnie talked and talked, about her Me, her childhood, her first love who had gone away.

“I talk a lot on pills, don’t I?” Bonnie said.

“I’m glad to hear you talk at last.”

“I used to be shy. I felt stupid. I’ve learned a lot, haven’t I? I’m not so dumb now, not so loud.”

“You were never loud.”

“Well, I felt loud,” Bonnie said. “I thought you hated me.”

“I thought you hated me.”

“You used to stare at me.”

“Only because you’re so pretty. You used to stare at me, too.”

“Well, I never had a sister or anything. Do you like me now?”

“I always liked you. I just didn’t think you liked me. But I like you more now that I know you don’t hate me. Do you like me now?”

“Yes,” Bonnie said. She lowered her eyes. “Very much.”

Gerry felt a rush of affection for Bonnie. It really wasn’t necessary to treat her as either a girl or a boy; she could just treat her like a very young person. Bonnie had teen-agey interests: clothes, make-up, hairdos, romantic records. And she wasn’t nearly as dumb as she looked. (It was a stereotype to think someone as confectionary as Bonnie was stupid, but it was also a stereotype to think that any astute remark that came out of her mouth was a gem just because it was a surprise.) Gerry had learned to accept Bonnie on her own terms and she realized that Bonnie was quite intelligent and extremely shrewd, with a perception that saw right through the defenses people put up, if only because Bonnie was from such a different world that these defenses were never something she had become conditioned to accept the way everyone else did.

“I want to learn as much as I can,” Bonnie said. “I’m learning a lot with you.”

And she was. Gerry was her image for what real girls did. When Bonnie had first arrived she was extremely sloppy, leaving makeup anywhere in the apartment, losing the tops of all her bottles and jars, leaving her false eyelashes dropped on the bookcase or under the cushion of a chair, wherever she had taken them off. She threw her dresses on the floor as if they were
costumes
that had nothing to do with her. Now she was becoming systematic, everything put in its proper place, even keeping a little notebook for her business appointments and the telephone numbers of new friends. “You’re neat because you’re a girl,” Bonnie said. So Bonnie became neat. Gerry didn’t tell her how messy most girls were.

Right from the start Bonnie was working all the time. She had bookings every day and by summer her pictures began to appear in the newspapers and soon they would be in the magazines. Magazines worked three months in advance. Libra didn’t let her do fashion shows. She was hailed as “the face of the year,” “a sexier Twiggy,” “the new androgynous sex goddess,” “the essence of unselfconscious femininity,” “Marilyn Monroe reincarnated.” Nobody seemed quite sure how to describe her; they only knew that they loved her.

There were crises too. One day a photographer called up, furious, to say that Bonnie had walked off with one of the originals in a collection they had photographed: a fifteen-hundred-dollar pants suit. Bonnie denied it innocently. Gerry denied it heatedly. Then later Gerry found the pants suit crumpled up in a far corner of her closet, on the floor, behind a can of moth crystals she’d been looking for. She confronted Bonnie with it.

“Well, I thought they were supposed to give models all the clothes they were photographed in,” Bonnie said.

“
Give!
” Gerry said. “
Give
, not let you
take!
That’s stealing. They need that pants suit to make copies of.”

“He gave it to me,” Bonnie said.

“Then how come he called up so furious, looking for it?”

Bonnie shrugged and pouted.

“You’ll have to give it back.”

“I didn’t take it.”

“If you didn’t take it, how did it get here? It walked here?”

Gerry didn’t know what to do. She was afraid for Bonnie’s career, for one incident like this could ruin her as a model forever because no one would ever trust her. She couldn’t go to all Bonnie’s bookings as a watchdog. But Bonnie had to learn that even though she was living a fantasy life she still lived in the real world where people had real values like not stealing. She finally decided to give the pants suit to Libra and let him take care of it, and for herself, she simply stopped speaking to Bonnie for two weeks.

What Libra did with the pants suit was a mystery. The only thing Gerry knew was that the photographer spread it around the industry that Bonnie was a lousy model, too stiff, and that he would never use her again—and no one else paid much attention because Bonnie was an excellent model and most of them assumed the photographer had simply tried to go to bed with Bonnie and had been rudely rejected. As for Libra, he deducted the fifteen hundred dollars, in installments, from Bonnie’s allowance, keeping her virtually trapped in Gerry’s apartment with no money except carfare to get to bookings, and Gerry keeping a stony silence.

Bonnie stayed at home, watching television when Gerry turned it on, eating when food was given to her, fasting and sleeping when no food or entertainment was proffered. At the end of two weeks Gerry came home one night from the office to find Bonnie sitting on the floor, wearing boy’s jeans and a torn boy’s shirt, her hair combed back like a boy, no make-up on her face, and sobbing.

“I can’t stand it any more,” Bonnie said. “Please talk to me.” With her eyes and nose swollen from what must have been hours of crying and her hair skinned back like that, she looked more like Vincent than Bonnie. Gerry felt a rush of pity and tenderness.

“You have to learn to respect other people’s property,” she said.

“I will.”

“Maybe you don’t respect a lot of the people you work with, but while you’re working with them, you have to respect their rules.”

“I do respect them,” Bonnie said. “The people, I mean.”

“I’m not saying you have to respect all of them. You’re entitled to your opinion. But just don’t play them for fools, because they’re not.”

“I know it.”

“Okay. What do you want for dinner?”

Bonnie rushed over to her and hugged her. Gerry felt terrible. She didn’t want to have to be a mother to this kid, or a watchdog or a warden. She hated the idea of any adult having so much power over another adult. But she couldn’t let Bonnie get into trouble, either. The world saw only the good Bonnie, the lovely face, the graceful, lovable nymphet. They were not even interested in seeing Bonnie as a whole human being. She had to see both faces of Bonnie—you had to do that with someone you cared about. And she had to protect her. Not just because Libra told her to—it was different now. She had grown used to Bonnie and more than a little attached to her. She was impressed with the way Bonnie seemed to have solved her emotional problems by herself, without ever complaining of feeling sorry for herself, and even seemed to be having a better time in life than most of the normal girls and young men she knew. Bonnie had a lot of strength. Gerry respected her.

After that the relationship changed. Gerry began encouraging Bonnie to go out with her, to shop for groceries or clothes, to the movies, for dinner on hot nights when she was too lazy to cook. And Bonnie seemed to enjoy it. She didn’t go to the gay bars so much any more. She had more dates. The boys came to the apartment to pick her up, and they always seemed like nice, clean-cut, straight boys. They obviously liked and respected Bonnie. Gerry couldn’t see hanging around on Bonnie’s dates even though Libra wanted her to, so she stayed home on the nights she wasn’t seeing Dick. Sometimes now Bonnie insisted Gerry go out with her on a double date, getting the date for Gerry, so Gerry went. It was pleasant, and she did not feel uncomfortable after the first time. Her date was always straight, at least to the best of her knowledge—probably bisexual she told herself, but how did you ever know who was and who wasn’t, anyway? On dates Bonnie was quiet, sitting there looking beautiful and knowing she was beautiful, occasionally saying something unexpectedly witty that made everyone laugh a great deal, partly because her delivery was so well timed. Gerry thought that Bonnie was a natural comedienne and could probably make her debut in a comedy part when Libra found the right film for her.

Libra had already decided that. One day at the office he showed Gerry a script. “
The Marilyn Monroe Story
,” he said. “I’m going to get it for Bonnie.”

“Wow!” Gerry breathed. “What a break for her. Can you do it?”

“Are you asking
me
if I can do it?”

“No, I mean you can do it if anyone can.”

“They’d probably think it’s sacrilegious if they ever find out,” Libra said. “But my theory is that Monroe’s unique appeal was that she really wasn’t sexy at all. Women loved her as much as men did, you remember. They were never jealous. And men really didn’t want to sleep with her, they just wanted to adore her. By being un-sexy she became super-sex. We’re still a nation of prudes. She parodied sex and she knew she was parodying it. That was her genius. Any actress who got the part would be more sacrilegious than Bonnie because they would be second-rate Monroe. Bonnie would be first-rate Bonnie. I think she’s the only one who
can
do the part.”

“Are you going to send her to acting class?”

“I’m not sure,” Libra said. “I want to send her to Simon Budapest, but I don’t know how well she can handle being around that bunch of animals all the time. I think I’m going to get Simon Budapest to take her privately and coach her. She’ll learn faster and we’ll have more control over her.”

Who was “we”? Libra and Simon Budapest or Libra and Gerry? Gerry realized he meant himself and her. She felt herself blushing with surprise and pleasure. Libra had given her her first real responsibility for a client! She was no longer just Big Nurse. She felt now that Bonnie was almost a member of her immediate family. She wondered if under the veneer of scorn Libra showed for his clients he really felt the same affection for them that she did for Bonnie, even though for some he would necessarily have it to a lesser degree. But didn’t he have to care? He spent his whole life on his clients’ lives, saving none for himself. His marriage was ridiculous, he had no one to care about except the procession of girls he showered off and dumped into bed, and he certainly didn’t care about them. He was a strange man. She wondered if she would ever understand him.

She told Bonnie about the script that night. Bonnie was like a little kid, jumping around, saying over and over: “Are you sure? Do you think I’ll get it? Do you think I’ll be a star?”

Then she told Bonnie about the acting lessons.

“Will you come with me?”

“You don’t need me.”

“Yes I do.”

“He’ll be your acting coach. I’ll just make you both self-conscious.”

“Not any more self-conscious than some strange old fossil will make me. Say you’ll come, just the first time at least.”

“Okay, I’ll come the first time.”

“Dick called.”

Gerry looked at her, surprised. “Here? When?”

“About half an hour ago.”

“Well why didn’t he call me at the office, the dumb thing. He knows I never get home that early.”

Bonnie shrugged.

“What did he say?”

“He’s nice,” Bonnie said. “He’s coming over.”

Dick had heard all about Bonnie from Gerry, of course, but he had never met her. He had once even said that he would never want to meet Bonnie, that he was frightened of freaks. He knew that Bonnie was Vincent because Gerry had told him—she told him everything and she trusted him implicitly. She wondered now why he had decided that he was no longer frightened of “freaks,” as he had called her, and she wondered if she was jealous. No need to be jealous—Bonnie
was
a boy. Dick was probably just curious in a friendly way because Bonnie was living with Gerry and he wanted to know who his girl was living with. Still, it annoyed her that he had called at the apartment when he knew he would find Bonnie there and not Gerry. It was an odd thing for him to do. With any other man she would just have thought it was an unthinking thing, but she knew Dick well enough to know that he never did an unthinking thing. She spent more time than usual putting on her make-up and put on an extra pair of false lashes for confidence. Bonnie
was
the most beautiful girl she’d ever seen, even though she
was
a boy, and she’d seen too many men insist that Bonnie was a girl even though they were Bonnie’s lovers and obviously had been playing with something in that bed. Well, maybe Dick was thinking that there might be a part in his Broadway show for Bonnie and wanted to get a look at her.