Buster Midnight's Cafe by Dallas Sandra

Author:Dallas, Sandra [Dallas, Sandra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780312180621
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2007-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

10

After that trip, we knew May Anna would never come back to Butte to live. In fact, she never came back to Butte at all. It wasn’t just those ladies. It was that May Anna was a big star now, bigger than Butte. There was nothing here for her. May Anna belonged to the world, Whippy Bird said.

We also knew, finally, there were things more important to her than Buster. She loved Buster, all right—he was good to her and she knew he’d always love her, and he was the only man in her life she could ever depend on. Even Jackfish left. But we knew her career was more important. May Anna may have loved Buster, but she loved Marion Street more.

Buster knew that, too, though it didn’t seem to matter so much to him anymore. I guess Buster thought now that they had been reunited, he’d never really lose May Anna even if they didn’t get married and live in a house in Centerville and have kids like the rest of us. “Hell,” he told Pink, “me and May Anna already got married once. If we do it again, that’s bigamy.”

Buster was happy just being around May Anna, and Toney made sure he had plenty of chances to do that. After all the newspaper write-ups at the premiere of Trouble on the Waterfront in Butte and the pictures of the two of them, Toney knew May Anna was a sure ticket to fame for Buster. Not that Buster wasn’t famous already, but because of May Anna, Buster got to be known by a whole new group of people who normally didn’t follow boxing. “Icing on the cake,” he said, and he lined up a series of fights in California.

“We’re going to make him a western contender. California’s west, ain’t it?” Toney asked. “Besides, who wouldn’t rather train under a bunch of coconut trees with May Anna Street serving up mint juleps than in a ball-breaking Butte blizzard.” Whippy Bird said he had something there.

May Anna hung around Buster, all right. She went to every Buster Midnight fight in California. Sometimes she brought a crowd of Hollywood people with her and sat ringside in a white dress and a white fur coat and yelled like hell. May Anna knew plenty of things to shout, which was the result of her growing up in Butte. Also a result of working in Venus Alley. A big Hollywood producer who took her to one fight told her, “Good God, Marion, I thought those gangster dame roles were just an act. You talk like the real thing.”

May Anna replied, “Thank you.” When May Anna wrote us that, Whippy Bird said it was not a compliment, even though May Anna thought so.

Sometimes May Anna took Buster to Hollywood parties. At first she dragged him there because Buster didn’t want to go. He said he was liable to knock something over, though like most fighters, he was not clumsy. I’ve seen Buster carry half a dozen full glasses in one hand and not spill a drop.

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