Jesus, Peter Paul Markin was in a fine stew. I had, over the part forty plus years that I have known him since we first met on a Russian Hill park in San Francisco during the Summer of Love, 1967, seen him in a dither on many occasions, most not worthy of discussion, or mention, but this one was different. This was one of those furies that might not past, especially since it involved his very essence as he called it. A few weeks back on one lonely night he called me up and said he wanted to talk, talk seriously, which tipped me off that I was in for an earful. Later that night at the Surfside Bar over on Main in Ocean City after a few preliminary drinks he let go. For the next two or so hours he, calmly mostly, ran through his life time of grievances, tics, weird allusions and just plain funk on the subject of femmes, fatale or otherwise. I tried to take notes as I as is my wont in these infrequent tirades but I make no claim that I got everything right. Here is the gist of his complaint:
First off Markin (let’s leave it at that since I have already introduced his full name and that is what I have taken to call him of late since Peter Paul seems too ornate and his childhood Pee-Pee, well too childhoody) said he was tired, tired of remembering and writing about remembering that had been his lot for the past several years. On the top of that list was remembering writing and remembering, fatally remembering, those femme fatales that he was addicted to watching on old time black and white film noir flicks. He spoke of the addiction, of his self-imposed addiction, like it was a curse that had befallen him and that he, and he alone, needed to clear the memories of those ancient females who did what they had to do, including a little rough stuff, boom- boom rough stuff or a case of the run offs come hell or high water. See, he said, in those days, and maybe now too although frails (women in his old-time corner boy remembrance Billie Bradley working class Adamsville, Ma. projects days term) have their own dough more now, a woman had to look out for herself, especially working women who it didn’t take much to put on cheap street, walking some red light streets, or in some broken down wreck of a whore house working night to five (night to day) doing what they had tried to avoid doing and so they had to take the main chance when they got it. Especially good- looking frills (another Billie-ism, okay) who maybe didn’t finish high school, maybe were faced with serving them off the arm in some cheap jack hash house, maybe charging a dime a dance in some clip joint, or maybe just avoiding the boss’ passes while taking dictation in some seventh floor seedy run down office building on the back streets of town peopled by in your face repo men, failed dentists, shady chiropractors, flim-flam insurance guys, peeping tom gumshoes and assorted other low life but who had, well, had looks, and a certain way of carrying herself, but mainly the scent, that scent that told every guy, rich or poor, that here comes trouble and what are you going to do about it.
Naturally when old Pee-Pee (his nickname from those Billie day neighborhoods and the last time I will use it here, sorry) got into second gear about femme fatales he (and I) knew that the subject of one Jane Greer would come up. I braced myself although I too could have recited the story he would relate chapter and verse. See I had seen (at his suggestion) Jane Greer in the 1946 classic Out Of The Past although he conveniently forgot that hard fact when he was in the stews. Of course Ms. Greer’s dilemma touched old Markin’s larcenous heart. Seemed that hard pressed drop dead beautiful working girl Jane (if you want to cut to the chase here and look the story up at its Wikipedia entry feel free to do so and as well get the character names because I am using their acting names here) was just the slightest bit trigger- happy and put a slug in her sugar daddy, one Kirk Douglas. She split but not without taking a fistful of his dough (Markin loved that part, the taking the dough “for services rendered” part and if you think about it whatever she did do she earned that dough, earned it the hard way).
Naturally one sugar daddy, one connected don (maybe connected, maybe a free-agent but with muscle and no scruples) did not get, or keep, his sugar by being a patsy, especially not to some twisted forty-five happy gunsel dame. So he hired gumshoe Robert Mitchum (and his partner) to get the damn dough, and bring milady back into the fold. And so the chase was on, well, almost was on because once old Robert got a look at her down in some dusty old Mexican cantina, no, got a whiff of that gardenia, or whatever perfume, even before she came through the door he knew he was hooked. Markin figured that Robert he had it figured that she would be a looker maybe he figured he could withstand that scent, and maybe the slow afternoon whiskies just got to him once he knew he had to have her. Hooked by a femme just as bad as a man can be hooked. So they ran away back to the states and lived happily ever after. Right?
No way. You forgot about Kirk and his little sense of manhood, and maybe Jane and her wants to. He sent the gumshoe partner off to get this pair and the partner does finally find them. Except then Jane’s little problem with guns came back into play. Boom, boom dead partner and she skipped town letting Robert play the fall guy, or at least a prime candidate for that distinction. But all came out well in the end, the noir end. Jane found her way, as a struggling girl must, back to Kirk. But Kirk would be well-advised to not turn his back even a quarter- turn when Jane had her wanting habits on. In the meantime Kirk accidently found out where Robert was holing up, some Podunk town out on the edge of oblivion, they have a am not man powwow and Jane in one last gallant act shot Kirk in order to run away with Robert. But dear Robert had by then learned a lesson or two in life, kind of, and so he crossed up the deal. Crossed it up so bad that Jane, in one last blaze of glory, put a couple in Robert for double-crossing her. So in the end all three were RIP. "What a woman," Markin said almost in a sacred whisper before stating that, hell, he had told that story seventeen different ways, including having her cast as some avenging Madonna angel of the streets out to avenge the historic gash left by primordial man before the fall, and enough was enough. Yah, the stews.
Almost enough that is. Before I could get a yah in edgewise he was off on another femme binge this time whimpering about Miss Lana Turner, damn Miss Turner, who played some California (by way of Okie/Arkie dust bowl beginnings looking some walking daddy to run rings around) tramp round-hell whore who picked up some gabacho old guy and who was serving them off the arm at his seaside diner when Mister John Garfield went left instead of right at the stop where he was left off by some hobo-saving trucker in The Postman Always Rings Twice. When our boy John saw her coming through the door, all dressed in white and ready, ready for anything, and started licking his chops he was doomed just like probably ten million Lana guys before him. Yes Lana had seen the dark side of life and she wanted her’s, wanted it all. And John bought into her dreams, or maybe just that jasmine scent that kept him awake every night until, well, just until. I told you he was hooked, hooked as bad as a man could be hooked, maybe even worst that Robert Mitchum. Jesus. So when dear Lana suggested that all that stood between them and happiness was old hubby the plan was hatched, hatched to perfection.
Except don’t trust amateurs in the murder racket. This pair screwed up about
six-ways- to-Sunday, screwed it up so bad that it was only just when the deal went down that Frank, Frank was left alone to take the rap. Taking the rap and begging for long gone Lana’s smile up in some death row prison cell. The way Markin told it though was like Lana was another one of those Madonna of the streets frails, some virginal vestige of all the bad that could happen to a woman and so she needed, more, she was entitled, to grab, and grab hard for whatever small solace she could dig out of this wicked old world. But Markin yelled, one of his very few outright eruptions, that he had done that story about eighteen different ways, including switching it up and having her as nothing but a money-grubbing man-hater, all men, maybe going back to some unspoken abusive father creeping up to her room time, and while Lana, and her ilk, deserved better that is the way that kind of story went. Basta, So finally he was done with the femme tale stuff, right? No, no way, he still had the trifecta to complete, the ankle bracelet story. Well that ankle bracelet doesn’t play much of a part in the story but that is what Markin always called it when he cornered somebody long enough to tell this tale this Double Indemnity plot line and how poor Barbara Stanwyck really did get the short end of the stick when all was said and done. Barbara needed dough, well she just needed dough, don’t ask the reason maybe just some deprived, depraved childhood or something. But what she really needed was a guy who could do some heavy lifting, was ready to jump hoops for her, and like it. Enter one Fred MacMurray who once he got a load of the ankle bracelet and looked up he was hooked, need I say it, hooked as bad as a man could be hooked and still breath. See Fred sold insurance, life insurance, with nice little riders for double indemnity, extra sugar, in case of some accidental death, like falling off the club car of a slow-moving train that fell from the sky. Manna, pure manna.
So Fred and Barbara were going to be on easy street after this little caper, no problems. Problem is the insurance company that Fred worked for had a tenacious fraud investigator, Edward G. Robinson (more frequently seen working the bang-bang bad guy, guys like mobbed-up Johnny Rico in Key Largo) who almost fouled the plan up except the pair start distrusting each other and saved him the trouble by shooting each other up, bang, bang. Yes, Barbara was a queen-sized femme maybe having had a hand in off-handedly knocking off hubby’s first wife to get to the prize and then tripping up poor Fred. But that crime doesn’t pay thing Markin complained of had been done by him about nineteen different ways, including the inevitable Eve substitute thing that he had a thing about, before. Enough of femmes, enough of driving guys crazy perfumes (or ankle bracelets, for that matter), and enough of guys trying figure them out. Including Markin.
With those several mouthfuls you would have thought that Markin had exhausted his venomous ways. Had gotten his remembering hurts off his chest. No, not by a long shot. Once he had gotten film noir queens out of the way he was just getting up to speed. I will spare the reader a little eyesight though and summarize that he went through just about every frill that had done him wrong since about childhood.
Some bath soap elementary school thing named Rosalind who turned on him because he didn’t have the right clothes or something the way he told it, some perfumed pre-teen named Maria who refused to take a “clipped” (stolen, petty larceny stolen with friend Billie) cheapo onyx ring as a sign of his eternal devotion, a couple of college girls who sounded to me like they were just doing it as a lark, one clearly just slumming before moving on to her dream stockbroker, more that I had previously known about south of the border senorita-led failed drug deal stuff with a couple of dead hombres face down in some dusty Sonora back street, the usual three or ten failed marriage, live together, night together, week together things half the world has been through without becoming apoplectic about femmesat sixty-something , and about six others that I couldn’t keep straight by the time the tirade ended. He even brought in Butterfly Swirl, a Botticelli-picture girl, that I had “stolen” from him out in San Francisco back in the ‘60s and how she dope smoked up the world and left him flat (neglecting to finish for me, although in the end she, Botticelli vision or not, left me for her old time golden-haired surfer boy back in Carlsbad). Then he finished up, finished up classic Markin, with this beauty- “What’s a guy to do when that scent gets to a man.” What, indeed. Jesus, the stews.
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