All the Stars Came Out That Night by Kevin King

Author:Kevin King
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

Guests who were not already in doctors’, nurses’, or orderlies’ uniforms were given hospital gowns, open down the back and tied top and bottom with strings. The house itself was designed by Billy Haines with parties in mind. It had a good-sized swimming pool. The drawing room was hung in velvet, six shades of blue. The furniture was Empire period. She had an oversized plum satin bed with threefold mirror screens on either side. And she had the loan of unemployed, neophyte gangsters John Henry Seadlund and James Atwood Gray to help put the party together.

The phone was ringing as she rose from the stretcher. Fieldsie answered it and handed it to Carole. She hung up and frowned. It was Louella Parsons, calling to warn that W. C. Fields was coming with a diarrheic pig on a bicycle. It was part of an old vaudeville act he once did. Fields was obviously plowed, already.

“What’s wrong?” asked John Henry.

“W. C. Fields. Nasty old man is coming to the party with a diarrheic pig, on a bicycle.”

“The pig is on the bicycle, or he is?”

Carole swatted a throw pillow with Chinese characters onto the floor and pouted, legs tucked under her, on the couch. “What does it matter?”

John Henry consoled her, “Don’t you worry, Miss Lombard. I’ll take care of Mr. Fields.”

“You will?” Her legs swiveled to the floor. She pushed herself up off the couch and gave him a hug that was every bit as melodramatic as the line that followed, “Oh, Johnny. That’s swell.”

Acting had become a part of her quotidian repertoire. The star born as Jane Peters was playing Carole Lombard twenty-four hours a day. But she was genuinely happy to have two bodyguards out waiting for Fields when the party was under way. She also knew that there was a good chance Fields would be in such a stupor that he might completely forget where he was going. Odds were even that if he started out for her house he might end up in Baja.

George Raft was at Carole’s pool table, taking everyone’s money at 8-ball. It figured, they all thought, for a gangster—probably spent most of his formative years in a pool hall, if he hadn’t been born in one. George put down the cue. There was no one left to be had. He walked to the swimming pool. A dragonfly crashed the meretricious blue surface of the bottom-lighted pool. Did it take this as a misplaced sky? On the other side of the pool, Carole tested the water with her foot, sending a wave across as Gable slithered up. As they talked George felt jealousy welling up. He still wasn’t comfortable starting a conversation with a beautiful, classy dame. Gable had nothing to say, but he had the nerve to say it anyway. The waves kissed off the long sidewall of the pool, delivering the dragonfly to the sucking side-pocket and a faster oblivion.

I got George’s attention and extended my hand. “I’m Walter Winchell. We’ve never met, formally.

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