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.”The would-be king missed Mardi Gras altogether that year.Norma said dryly, “I guess you could say we crowned him.”CHAPTER FOURSuch a Wicked CityTwo cabdrivers, brothers from Alabama, were known as Itchem and Scratchem because they looked and drawled so much alike.One night in the early thirties, before the Great Depression hit New Orleans, one of the brothers picked up a fare at Southern Railway on Canal Street.She was a woman of about forty who had with her a much younger woman, a sort of child-woman, very thin and petite with a high-pitched voice.The child-woman wasn’t the older woman’s maid, but she clearly wasn’t in the same class.Itchem didn’t know who the woman was, but he knew that she was someone of importance.He could tell by the way she carried herself—her husky shoulders thrown back, her chin tipped upward ever so slightly; by the glamorous hairdo set in shiny, seductive waves; and by her cashmere coat, which grazed the back of his hand as he took her vanity case from her to put it in the trunk of the taxi.Her rings flashed in the soft interior light of the cab.He closed the door after she and her companion were settled.She told him what she wanted, and Itchem drove through the dark, run-down streets of the Tango Belt to Norma’s beautiful parlor house at 410 Dauphine.Norma recognized her the moment she walked through the front door.She was an actress.Norma, a great moviegoer—she often, in a rush, threw her fur coat on with nothing underneath to catch the last feature at the Saenger Theatre on Canal Street—had seen this actress in several movies and especially liked her when she costarred with Wallace Beery, one of Norma’s favorites.Her name was Marjorie Rambeau.“I can only stay for a couple of hours,” Rambeau told Norma.“We’re catching the last Sunset Limited back to Los Angeles.” She was on her way from Florida, where she’d been vacationing with her husband.As she handed her coat to the maid, she gave Norma a coy but knowing look.“My husband told me not to get off the train in New Orleans because it’s such a wicked city.”People carried cash in those days, and Norma had seen lots of men with big rolls, but never a woman with the kind of roll Rambeau had in her pocketbook.She peeled off a hundred-dollar bill and asked for a bottle of champagne.The maid went for the champagne, Norma put on some music, and Rambeau and the straggler, as Norma immediately thought of the younger woman, settled themselves in the back parlor.Norma had no doubt that Rambeau had picked up the straggler on the train.Men weren’t the only ones fascinated by the madam of the house.There were ten or fifteen girls in residence that night, but Rambeau took a shine to Norma.An hour passed, then two.Rambeau missed the Sunset Limited.She gave Itchem a couple of C-notes and told him to leave.The champagne flowed faster and faster (Norma poured hers into a plant behind the sofa).Rambeau began to paw Norma; she wanted Norma to dance with her.Ever since the carnival king fell and cracked his head, Norma and the girls had not danced with the customers, but they had danced for them.Several girls danced naked for Rambeau and the straggler, who started to carry on and giggle, her voice rising higher and higher the more she drank.When Rambeau wasn’t petting on Norma, she and the straggler petted each other.Norma kept her eye on Rambeau’s purse—she felt protective of the movie star, because she, too, was prone to throwing her money around when she had had too much to drink.The night wore on, with Rambeau cracking those hundred-dollar bills for drinks and tips.She became spectacularly drunk.She wanted to go upstairs and get out of her clothes.She was at the stage of drunkenness where this was not something she could do by herself—she wanted Norma to help her.Daybreak was not far off, and Norma didn’t want Rambeau to fall asleep at the house and wake up feeling humiliated, so she called an entertainer at a French Quarter nightclub, the boyfriend of one of the girls, and asked him to drive Rambeau and her friend to the Roosevelt Hotel.She made sure Rambeau had all of her fabulous jewelry on, most notably the ring that Rambeau had claimed was worth twenty thousand dollars, and she made sure the boy knew that she knew exactly what jewelry Rambeau was wearing [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]