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