“Genco and Leelee” – A novel excerpt from Hot Tamale.

How many friendships have been forged over the barrel of a gun? It was clear from the very beginning that Genco and Leelee played by their own rules when it came to just about everything. As a couple, they were impossible to resist. Sure, you could try for a little while, but eventually you’d just get swept up and carried along like a metal shaving under a powerful magnet. One’s moral compass was bound to weaken under those conditions.
It was 1920—two weeks after my eighteenth birthday—when my brother Charley and I left Iowa for the bright lights of Hollywood. We came from respectable middle-class stock and Charley was college educated, but we were still just a couple of small town hayseeds from Quick Creek.
As a going-away present, our family maid Ginny bought us passage on the famed California Limited passenger train. She’d seen an advertisement in some fancy magazine years ago and said she wanted to send us out in style. And that she did: First Class Cabin, Chicago to Los Angeles, Travel Time: 60 hours. Those tickets must have eaten up every last penny of her savings, so I knew I had to do her proud when we got there.
We arrived in the train’s day cabin to find another couple had already made themselves at home there. They were so deeply involved in a game of cards that it appeared they hadn’t even heard us come in. But their combined glamour was so blinding that I almost didn’t mind standing and gawking for a while. The girl, skimpily-dressed and around my age, was stretched out on the leather settee on top of a full-length mink coat, her stockinged feet resting in the lap of the man sitting across from her. His tailored suit barely contained his hulking torso, and a broad-knuckled fistful of playing cards hid his face from my view. Then suddenly, without looking up, the girl shot up an armful of beaded bracelets and waved furiously in our direction. She bit her lip and twirled a lock of her short golden curls around her index finger. “Nooker!” she screamed suddenly, and threw her cards on the table. “Four queens, tootsie-boy!” She took a drag off her cigarette and gleefully exhaled a cloud of gray smoke in the direction of her companion.
The man threw down his cards and stood up. “You cheat, baby. I know it.” His boyish voice clashed cartoonishly with his physicality. Turning to us, he said, “I’m Genco, and this here’s Leelee. Guess we’ll be seein’ a lot of each other for a while on account of us sharing a cabin and all.”
My brother stepped forward to shake his hand. “I’m Charley, and this is Gladys.”
“Cop a flop, kids,” Leelee said. We sat down across from the couple as Genco brushed Leelee’s feet off their side of the bench.
“You don’t gotta take up the whole thing, princess.”
“Woof! Woof!” she retorted, then rolled her eyes and sat forward. “So what brings you out to Los Angeles? Business or pleasure?”
“I’m gonna be a movie star,” I said shyly.
“Well ain’t that swell?” Leelee poked her finger in my direction. “I bet you need a place to stay. We got plenty of space at our house, don’t we Daddy?”
Genco grunted in agreement.
“That’s very kind of you,” Charley said. “But we wouldn’t want to put you out.”
“There’s no puttin’ out involved,” Genco said with a shrug. “Me casa is you casa.”
Charley nodded appreciatively. “So what brings you two to Chicago?”
“This associate of mine,” Genco said, getting shifty-eyed all of a sudden. “He asked me to eyeball some of his operations cross-country, if you know what I mean.”
Charley’s face suddenly went white. “I see.”
“Things were a mess when we showed up, but I set everything straight.” He pulled a small silver flask out of his breast pocket and took a swig.
Leelee frowned and poked a bony elbow into his side. “Don’t be rude,” she hissed.
“Sorry. You kids want a little toot?”
We stared blankly at him, not sure what he was talking about.
“Hooch? Giggle water? You familiar?”
I can assure you we weren’t.
“Yeah sure,” Charley said, much to my surprise. Genco wiped the lip of the flask on his jacket sleeve and passed it across the table. I saw my brother take a quick glance upward before sending it down the hatch.
“Attaboy!” Leelee whooped. “But don’t you bother with that crummy moonshine, Gladys. I got the real McCoy in my trunk.” She crawled over Genco’s lap, her chemise hiking up her thigh. Genco spanked her behind as she went across. “Watch it, buster,” she said as she got on her feet and adjusted her skirt and stockings, which were rolled down to just below her knees. She skittered off to their sleeping car and quickly returned with a half-empty bottle of a tea-colored substance and handed it to me. “Bottoms up, doll.”
As I put the bottle to my lips—my first drink of alcohol ever—I said a silent prayer. I thought the burning sensation in my mouth would be the worst of it, but… oh no. The whiskey burned a trail the whole way down to my belly, then settled in there like it was setting up camp. My shoulders shuddered as I gasped for air. Leelee let out a hoot and clapped me on the back.
“Now you’re on the trolley!” she said, and grabbed the bottle out of my suddenly warm hands to take a nip herself.
It’s here that the rest of the night becomes a little fuzzy. Genco and Charley left for a while and returned with a platter of bread and cheese they stole from the train’s dining car. Around dawn, I managed to find my way to one of the sleeping cars, where Leelee had instructed me to keep one leg on the floor to keep it from spinning. I remember lying there for hours, desperately waiting for the lull of slumber to deliver me from the grotesque flashbacks of the night repeating on a loop in my brain. Exaggerated scenes in which I laughed too loud, interrupted everyone, and made an overall ass of myself. The first of many such experiences to come, though I would have sworn my soul against it at the time.
I woke up late the next morning, confused and regretful. I discovered Genco passed out in the top bunk, wearing only saggy, faded underpants and black sock garters. In the day cabin, I found only a pile of mink and pillows on the floor. However, my whimper of panic made it wriggle suddenly to life. Soon Leelee’s curls materialized from underneath, followed by Charley’s messy brown mop. Judging by the articles of clothing strewn across the window seats, they were both completely naked.
“What is this?” was all I could muster.
Leelee let loose a snorting laugh and elbowed my brother. “Beats me. You’d better ask him.”
Charley opened his mouth to talk, but though his jaw bobbed loosely a few times, not a sound came out. I was waiting for an explanation I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear when a booming voice came from behind me to break the silence.
“What’s goin’ on, kids?” Genco asked. He stood in the doorway scratching his head groggily with the butt of a revolver. Leelee just smiled, stretched and rose lazily from the floor, pulling the mink with her. My brother was left to scramble for nearby pillows to cover himself up.
“Hey Daddy! What’s shakin’?” Leelee stepped over an upturned ice bucket to Genco and kissed him on the mouth. He whispered something in her ear and smacked her behind, then she giggled and scampered down the hallway to their sleeping car.
Genco sauntered over to the window and looked out. “Ah, look at this great American landscape,” he said. “Nothing but grassland and injun camps as far as the eye can see. Must be Wyoming.” He took a seat on the bench and gave us a full-faced grin. “Hey, you kids up for some eggs or somethin’? I don’t eat breakfast myself, but I could sure go for a cup of joe.”
I noticed Genco’s thumb was absent-mindedly stroked the gun’s ivory handle, so I took a quick peek at Charley. He was busy scanning the room, most likely contemplating his chances of a naked escape.
“Take a look at that,” Genco continued, setting the gun on the table so that he could point out at the horizon. When neither of us moved, he turned to look at us impatiently. “Buffalo! Youse gonna miss it!” He stopped when he saw our faces. “What?” Genco followed my gaze to the gun. “What, that? Geez, don’t worry—it’s empty.” He popped the cylinder for emphasis. “Just a little something I like to keep under the mattress. You never know what might be waitin’ for you in the morning.”
I must have whimpered again, because he dropped the gun and put up his hands. “Don’t you go spoony on me, doll. Everything’s copacetic. Ain’t that right, Charley?”
My brother nodded dumbly, causing Genco to let out a belly laugh.
“Ain’t that Leelee a bearcat, though? You best watch out for them claws.”

Erin Foster Hartley is a freelance writer and film studies instructor at Kirkwood Community College in Iowa City, Iowa. She is concurrently working on Hot Tamale: The Lost Memoirs of Hester Carmella, a faux memoir of a forgotten Hollywood star, and Prom of the Undead (tentative title), a YA choose-your-own-adventure novel set thirteen years into a zombie apocalypse. She lives in Iowa City with her husband and two dogs