The Tale of the Allergist's Wife and Other Plays Read online

  GIRL (Crosses to the Succubus.) Yes, yes, I shall suckle thy poisonous udder.

  The Succubus lunges toward the girl and drinks her blood ravenously.

  BLACKOUT

  SCENE 2

  Hollywood, 1920. The drawing room of La Condesa’s spectacular mansion high in the Hollywood hills. KING CARLISLE, a handsome, young matinee idol is pacing back and forth. ETIENNE, La Condesa’s extremely nervous butler enters.

  ETIENNE Young man, you will have to leave at once. Madame La Condesa is incommunicado.

  KING You have kept me waiting for over an hour. I demand to see La Condesa. Why won’t she see me?

  ETIENNE Madame is ruled by her caprices.

  KING This is intolerable. Sir, don’t you know who I am?

  ETIENNE Are you here to fix the victrola?

  KING I take it you never go to the movies.

  ETIENNE I only see Madame’s films.

  KING I am King Carlisle, the newest and biggest male star in silent pictures. She can’t treat me this way.

  ETIENNE My good man, only yesterday Madame received Winston Churchill, Monsieur Diaghilev and the King of Spain. King Carlisle? Small potatoes.

  KING Well, Monsieur Le Butler, I consider your mistress even smaller potatoes. Furthermore, I am not impressed by her phoney title, Madame La Condesa Scrofula de Hoya, indeed. Surely she knows that the studio has brought the great stage actress, Madeleine Astarté out to Hollywood and is grooming her as Magda’s rival.

  ETIENNE Magda Legerdemain is a great artist with the divine spark, Madeleine Astarté: pure hambone.

  KING You must help me. I have nothing against your mistress. I merely wish to save my fiancée Renee from her clutches. Renee is an innocent. She is new to Hollywood. She doesn’t recognize corruption when she sees it. I must save her from La Condesa.

  ETIENNE What have you to fear?

  KING There are so many rumors surrounding Magda Legerdemain. Rumors that she’s not only a vamp but . . . a vampire.

  ETIENNE Excuse me, I must go. It’s time to run Madame’s leopards in Griffith Park.

  He tries to leave. King stops him.

  KING You’re hiding something from me.

  ETIENNE (Screams.) Don’t touch me! I will tell you this. You have entered a mad household. This isn’t hair on my head, these are nerve endings.

  KING Then why do you work here?

  ETIENNE Who else but Madame would employ me? You don’t recognize me, do you?

  KING No, who are you?

  ETIENNE Suffering has changed my face as completely as a surgeon’s scalpel. I will tell you this, Baby Kelly Ambrose lives!

  KING Surely you’re not Baby Kelly Ambrose, the hatchet wielding vaudeville child star.

  ETIENNE (Breaks into a timestep and swings an imaginary hatchet.) I did them all in after a milk fund benefit in Kokomo. I dismembered all six of them and scattered their body parts along the entire Keith-Orpheum circuit. Only one person would aid my escape from the lunatic asylum and that was La Condesa and for her sake, I would gladly strike again.

  KING Oh dear, I must remove Renee from this bedlam.

  RENEE VAIN runs on and speaks to Etienne. Renee is a lovely ingenue in the Mary Pickford mode but with the toughness of a Ma Barker.

  RENEE Etienne, La Condesa would like . . . (Sees King.) King, what on earth are you doing here?

  KING My dearest darling, I’m here to talk some sense into you.

  RENEE Please, go away. You don’t understand.

  KING I understand all too well.

  RENEE (With mad vitality.) No, you don’t. You want me to lead a quiet, dreary life as your wife. Well, that’s not why I came to Hollywood. I want to live! I want to drive my roadster faster than anyone else on the road. I want to stay up all night, drinking whiskey and dancing on table tops. (Laughs with wild abandon.) I’m young, let me be reckless!

  KING My darling, I fear for you.

  RENEE Etienne, could you leave us alone for a moment?

  ETIENNE If you think that’s wise. (He exits.)

  RENEE (As tough as nails.) King, you nincompoop, you’re going to spoil everything. This dame’s my entree to the big wigs in this burgh. She knows everyone. We had breakfast with Wallace Reid, lunch with Alma Rubens, tea with Clare Kimball Young and dinner with Rod La Rocque. This place is a social gold mine and I’m reaping in the nuggets. I got me three screen tests lined up for next week.

  KING But I know people. I could help you.

  RENEE (Disdainfully.) Oh, a lot of help you are. You got me tossed off the DeMille picture. You didn’t think I knew that, did you?

  KING The role was cheap and degrading.

  RENEE Let me be cheap and degraded, I’m an actress! I’ve had enough of you butting into my career, you great big buddinsky!

  He reaches for her.

  RENEE Don’t touch me. You repulse me. When I think of your feeble attempts to make love to me, I laugh. Do you hear me, I laugh. (Explodes in hysterical laughter.)

  KING (Shakes her violently.) Stop it! Stop it! This isn’t you, this isn’t my Renee.

  RENEE (Suddenly lovely and vulnerable.) King, I don’t know what came over me. That was a different girl speaking. Some strange power overtook me and made me say those cruel words. Can you forgive me?

  KING Of course darling. I must get you out of this mansion. Can’t you smell the presence of evil?

  LA CONDESA [Condaysa]enters garbed in the barbaric excesses of silent screen vamps. She is of course the Succubus from Sodom looking not a day older.

  LA CONDESA Mr. Carlisle, you smell the presence of evil? Perhaps you are mistaking it for my perfume. If you are, it’s expensive evil, fifty dollars an ounce. Now state your business.

  KING I demand that you give up Renee.

  LA CONDESA (With flamboyant levity.) Give her up? I see no handcuffs, I see no chains.

  KING I believe she is under your spell. I’ve heard tales of the stream of young girls who pass through these portals. Young starlets who are never heard of again. Where are those starlets? You are an affront to everything that’s good and decent in this country.

  LA CONDESA Are you casting aspersions on my patriotism. I’ll have you know, in the last war, I was a captain in the Medical Corps, I had twenty nurses under me. Now Renee, would you inform Mister Carbunckle, I mean Mr. Carlisle, what terrible evil we’re up to.

  RENEE La Condesa is giving me acting lessons. Tonight, she’s going to teach me how to play a passionate love scene.

  KING I can’t bear this torment. Don’t you know what she is?

  RENEE A very nice lady?

  KING (With self-righteous fury.) This very nice lady drinks the blood of young virgins. Yes, I know the truth about you, Madame La Condesa. I know you had to flee Europe because of the rumors of your evil ways. And here you are corrupting every virgin in Hollywood.

  LA CONDESA Slim pickings I must say. If I were interested in virgins, why the hell would I come to Hollywood? My friend, you’ve seen too many motion pictures.

  KING I am not your friend. I spit on your friendship! (He spits on the floor.)

  LA CONDESA (Mad as a hornet.) Spit on my friendship but not on my rug!

  KING I will, I will if that will save my Renee. (Spits several times.)

  LA CONDESA (With great vulgarity.) You clam one more time and there’s gonna be hell to pay. Etienne! Clean up this mess.

  Etienne runs in.

  LA CONDESA Now look here you . . .

  ETIENNE Madame, Miss Carewe from the Hearst newspapers will be here momentarily. Don’t you think you should be composing yourself?

  LA CONDESA Yes, I must compose myself before that nosy bitch arrives. Mr. Carlisle, the door is that way.

  KING I am not leaving. I shall be here when Oatsie Carewe arrives and I shall provide her with some juicy gossip for her column.

  RENEE (Angrily.) You wouldn’t!

  ETIENNE Madame, shall I call the police?

  LA CONDESA No, let him stay. And let him r
epeat this slander. It shall only add fuel to my legend.

  Doorbell rings.

  LA CONDESA That must be Miss Carewe. Show her in, Etienne. Etienne exits.

  RENEE King, I wish you would get the point that you’re not wanted here.

  ETIENNE (Enters.) Madame Madeleine Astarté.

  LA CONDESA (Aghast.) Astarté!

  RENEE What’s she doing here?

  LA CONDESA Tell her to go away. Tell her I’m not receiving.

  MADELEINÉ ASTARTÉ [Astartay]enters in the grand manner. She is none other than the virgin from Sodom, now the dazzling grande dame of the New York stage.

  MADELEINE Balderdash, La Condesa. I’ve traveled all the way from New York just to see you.

  LA CONDESA You must not flatter me. All Hollywood knows of your million dollar contract.

  MADELEINE (With gaiety.) Million point five. The point five darlings is to keep me in mascara. (Laughs and looks at Etienne next to her. She does a big burlesque double take at his deadpan expression.)

  LA CONDESA Madame Astarté, I would love to offer you tea but unfortunately I’m expecting Oatsie Carewe any minute for an in-depth profile.

  MADELEINE Oh, I must stay for that. I do so want to get to know you better. Besides this will dispel all those awful rumors that we’re rivals. How absurd, you and I rivals, we’re entirely different. I’m sort of an elegant grande dame, perhaps a tad too aristocratic for my own good. But you have this marvelous, extraordinary vulgarity. An exhilarating streak of the gutter.

  LA CONDESA (Lightly bitchy.) Thank you Madeleine and if I can be of any help to you because you know, acting for the screen is a special art. You can’t be as hammy and grotesque as you’ve been on the stage.

  MADELEINE I so appreciate your offer, Contessa.

  LA CONDESA (Cordially correcting her.) Condesa [Condaysa] Dear, have they chosen your first vehicle?

  MADELEINE Yes, I am to do the life of Madame DuBarry.

  LA CONDESA You must be mistaken. I am to play DuBarry. My costumes are all made.

  MADELEINE We had to take in the waist a little. Lay off the paté, Cunt-tessa.

  LA CONDESA (Angrily.) Condesa! [Condaysa]

  MADELEINE After the DuBarry picture, for a change of pace, I shall do the title role of Peter Pan.“Fly with me Wendy to the stars.”

  LA CONDESA But I was supposed to play that role. I am Peter Pan!!

  MADELEINE Darling, you’ve been replaced. Studio wags have been saying your box office is sinking faster than your bustline.

  LA CONDESA You conniving, manipulative . . .

  MADELEINE The studio’s been so kind. They gave me dressing room A.

  LA CONDESA My dressing room?

  MADELEINE And that divine dresser, Mamacita. She’s such a . . .

  LA CONDESA Not Mamacita.

  MADELEINE And I found this adorable little pooch wandering lost on the back lot.

  LA CONDESA (Wildly.) She stole my dog! The bitch stole my schnauzer! You won’t get away with this treachery!

  KING Madame Astarté, she has the devil on her side.

  LA CONDESA I’ll fix you, I’ll fix you by all the powers that be!

  RENEE What will you do?

  LA CONDESA (With intense frustration.) I’m calling my agent! (She exits.)

  ETIENNE Oh dear! (Follows her out.)

  KING Madeleine, I fear for your life. You may think me mad but I have reason to believe La Condesa is one of the undead.

  MADELEINE No darling, she just looks like death. (To Renee.) But you, my dear, you look much livelier. I don’t believe we’ve met.

  RENEE My name is Renee Vain. I’m a new contract player at the studio.

  MADELEINE How perfectly divine. You have such a lovely face. Profile. Ah, yes.

  KING We’re engaged to be married.

  MADELEINE Pish posh. An actress must be married to her art. Men, ugh. (Shudders.) Thespis shall be your lover.

  RENEE That’s what La Condesa says.

  MADELEINE Does she? I suppose you and La Condesa are quite intimate.

  RENEE I love her so much.

  MADELEINE Yes, an older woman can be such a comfort to a young girl. I can tell you are a superb actress and we must play together. I know the perfect vehicle. I’ve just optioned a new book on an old subject. The story of Sappho. I play Sappho, a noble Greek woman, passionate, vibrant, a sexual revolutionary and you, my fair one, you shall play her lesbian lover . . . (Searches for a name.) Rusty.

  RENEE Rusty?

  MADELEINE I can see the scene. The cameraman lining up the shot. The director calls “Action,” the off-screen violinist commences to play. Sappho sees Rusty coming out of the Parthenon, the wind tossing her hair away from her face. Sappho slips her arm around Rusty’s waist and silently they . . .

  RENEE But I don’t . . .

  MADELEINE I said silently, they walk down a dark winding street. It’s the street where Sappho lives with her grandmother, um uh. . . Lillian. The street is empty. Everyone being at the Olympic games. They look into each other’s eyes. Rusty finds herself yielding to the older woman’s incandescent beauty. Cameras pan in for a tight shot. They kiss.

  They kiss and then Astarté bites Renee’s neck until the girl faints.

  MADELEINE Kill the lights, call it a wrap.

  KING (In shock.) You . . . you . . . you’re a vampire!

  MADELEINE I don’t suppose you have a handkerchief.

  KING She devil! Fiend! You’ve killed my Renee.

  MADELEINE Nah, she’ll come to, but let’s say I’ve taken the bloom off the peach.

  KING I’ll expose you, I’ll expose you as the monster you are.

  MADELEINE (Coolly.) I wouldn’t talk about exposing anyone if I were you.

  KING What do you mean?

  MADELEINE I happen to know King Carlisle’s not your real name.

  KING So, many stars change their names.

  MADELEINE I happen to know your real name is Trixie Monahan and five years ago the coppers tossed you in the sex tank for impersonating a woman.

  KING Drag is a perfectly legitimate theatrical tradition.

  MADELEINE That may well be true but not on the corner of Hollywood and Vine.

  KING I’d be ruined if anyone knew of my past. I’ll be forced to kill myself.

  MADELEINE There are other alternatives.

  KING Such as?

  MADELEINE You can be my personal slave.

  KING What would you expect of me?

  MADELEINE Lots of things. Escort me to premieres, wash my car, rinse out my dirty panties, but don’t you dare let me catch you wearing them. I get plenty mad.

  He collapses into despair. La Condesa enters.

  LA CONDESA What is this? What have you done to her? Now you’ve really gone too far. You imagine yourself quite the cunning vixen. You have delusions that you can conquer me. Though I have always found you vulgar, I have never taken you for a fool, until now. Hollywood is my town. For centuries, you have been an albatross around my neck. First in Rome, I claimed as my bride, the most beautiful of Caligula’s courtesans. She was mine until you stole her away to China. Then there was the nun in the dark ages who became my personal slave, stolen once again. We all know what treachery you conspired against me during the Spanish Inquisition but I triumphed. And did I plot revenge? No. Then in the sixteenth century, I had as my mistress, the most desired of Queen Elizabeth’s ladies in waiting. You, the ever present vulture snatched her off to the colonies. Even then, did I choose revenge? No. And why? Because I am a great lady. I conduct myself with dignity and grandeur whilst you roll in the gutter, parading your twat onstage and calling it acting. You’ve got as much glamour as a common street whore and now madame, you have gone too far. I am the queen of vampires and I shall never, never relinquish my hold on Hollywood!

  MADELEINE Are you through? As you desire to relive the past, shall we travel even further back in time. Many centuries ago, back in the days of the Bible, there was a young girl, a mere child of fou
rteen, a lovely girl, full of high spirits. A lottery was held to choose a sacrificial victim for the dreaded Succubus. As fate would have it, she chose the black stone of death. She was dragged by soldiers to the cave of the creature and there left to her desecration. The monster emerged and there under a Godless sky, the creature dug its teeth into the girl’s fair flesh. Having gorged itself, the monster retired to its cave, leaving the girl’s body to be pecked and devoured as carrion. But the girl did not die. The monster in its fury did not even notice that all the while it was sucking the girl’s blood, the child herself had lodged her teeth into a vein of the monster. In her terror she drank. More and more she filled herself with the creature’s fluid. And there on that bleached rocky point, left to rot like a piece of old meat, the girl did not die but was transformed, transformed into one of the undead, never to find eternal rest but to stalk the earth forever in search of a victim, forever alone, forever damned. Look at me, I am that girl! And I demand the death of the Succubus!

  ETIENNE (Enters.) Miss Oatsie Carewe of the Hearst Newspapers.

  OATSIE (Enters—a middle-aged gossip columnist garbed in the matronly but bohemian manner of Madame Elinor Glyn.) Darling! And Madeleine Astarté too. What a marvelous surprise. Who’d have thought you two gals would be chums. And they say Hollywood is a heartless town. Magda, I adore the dress. It does wonders for your figure, so concealing. And Madeleine, I just know that must be a Paris creation. I must have a description of it for my column.

  LA CONDESA Oatsie darling, may I get you some tea?

  OATSIE No, no, never touch the stuff. Okay girls, straight from the hip. My readers just gobble up movie star romance. Madeleine, love blooming anywhere?

  MADELEINE As my dear friend Gertrude Stein says “My mystery is a mystery is a mystery.”

  OATSIE Hmmm. I wonder if any man has ever pierced your enigma.

  MADELEINE (Tough.) Let him try.

  OATSIE And you Magda, a man in your life?

  LA CONDESA I still mourn my late husband, the Count Scrofula de Hoya. (With a heavy castilian lisp.) How I long for our life in Barthelona. A thity thaturated with thenuality.

  OATSIE (Sees King and Renee.) What’s this, King Carlisle, Renee Vain, two stars of tomorrow?

  LA CONDESA Oatsie, we were having cocktails and these two lapped up the hootch like hogs at a trough. Look at them, out cold, stinko. I guess I’ve seen it all.