Skinny arms akimbo on broad hips and pot belly, Schnelz stood waiting for him in the late glow of twilight on the remains of the theater's back loading dock, hunched forward atop her skinny, heavily veined legs, gnarled fists on hips, broad, ugly head thrust forward following the lead of her aggressive, stubbly bulldog chin topped by her usual garish harlequin glasses on an equally gaudy chain.
She snorted dismissively at his approach.
Spike, in the mood to antagonize her, hell, anybody he encountered, turned his leather-clad back to her as he hitched himself up on to the warm, blackened concrete, pulling out his hip flask, fags and lighter; taking his own sweet time to light up in between loud, gulping pulls at the Bourbon his flask held.
As the sky darkened and the stars came out, one by one, starting with Venus, followed by Mars, ending with Orion, she ponderously lowered herself down beside him, a rhinoceros parking itself on a Lazy Boy recliner but without the grace.
"So, what do you do when you're the big fat ugly daughter of a south side Chicago Jewish tailor that everybody takes for a man in drag and no boy in his right mind would be seen in public with? Someone who was called Inelda SMELLS on the playground? You go into show business, kid, you head straight for Hollywood." She said in her usual wet, gravelly rasp.
Spike, lighting one butt from another, turned where he sat and stared at the dragon of the Rialto, who wryly continued, "That's where I met Hermann, doin' extra work. You know, show up, be part of a crowd in front of the camera, get paid – or do they do that any more? Anyway, he thought I was a man. I thought he was a woman. I made a pass. He made a pass. We wound up gropin' in the backseat of a taxi. That's when he realized I weren't no guy. That's when I realized he weren't no doll and that under that raised hemline was strictly kosher beans and franks. But he was ok with it, he says, "Inelda, bubblah, you look like a man. I look like a woman. I'm a fairy, you're, ehhhhhh, whatever you are – let's make it legal and make a go of it big time!"
She stared at the scorched brick wall of the coffee shop that backed The Grand Rialto, traffic a distant murmur before she held out one gnarled talon, knuckles swollen with arthritis, the tattooed number on her forearm quietly there. Wordlessly, Spike handed her his pack and lighter.
"I prefer matches, easier on the hands." Schnelz knocked a fag out of the pack, tamped it on the concrete and put it in her mouth – Spike lit it for her. She took a long, deep drag before contemplatively releasing it in a series of diminishing rings, adding. "That's when we realized Hollywood wasn't big enough for us, so we went to Europe - we was a sensation." She took the fag from Spike's hand, and took a long, thoughtful drag, adding, "Ehhhh… who am I kiddin'? Sort of."
"By then, we was professional ballroom dancers – the tango, mostly. Can you believe they used to pay people to do that? But it wasn't enough – even with me makin' all Hermann's gowns and doin' my own tailoring. Pick a few pockets here, a few pockets there, work whatever shows was cookin, private parlor lessons' – I even did costumes – that was Paris, but I never did no couture work in the design houses – didn't have the fancy trainin' and certificates but as my papa used to say, "Show me a gown, kätzchen, and I'll make it for you - wholesale!" So my Hermann always had the best even when he had to put on a pair of trousers and work as a set carpenter so we could afford our daily bread!"
She continued, eyes distant behind thick tri-focal lenses, "After a while, Paris wasn't big enough for us, even with Josephine Baker there." She laughed, grating sound that ended in a cough.
"My God, that WOMAN! She showed up one summer night at our favorite jazz club in only a fur coat and a diamond ankle bracelet– her and me, we go up to me and Hermann's room across the street. When she realized I wasn't a man or was I? she said, "La di dah!" and when Hermann walked in on us an hour later, he dropped his dress and all she said was, "Any more where that came from?" Yeah, Josephine– better than Frieda when we tried to make a go of it in Mexico City in '39!"
Spike had to agree there: he'd had his own turn on Josephine's dance card. If Dru hadn't have thrown a fit when she caught them making like salt and pepper in a pissoir near the base of the Eiffel Tower and broken it up out of sheer spite because Josephine wasn't her idea but his. Spike would have Sired la Baker on the spot. As for Kahlo, unibrows were a deal breaker, Leftists were boring, and her art pretentious. Anyway, Mexican always gave him heartburn.
Inelda continued around a second fag. "Paris wasn't big enough for us, and the gendarmes was on to our little pick-pocket racket whenever work was scarce. So after I socks Hemingway in the eye for calling my sweet Hermann a queer? "Oh, my gindeleh, my dainty doe, but I AM!" was all my Hermann said afterwards, "You may be the only, ahem, woman in my life, but schatzi, sweetie, I am the queerest queer of all queers, and proud of it!" Ernie, the big macho sissy started crying right there in front of everyone when I let him know what I thought about what he called my bubblah – and that a doll blacked his eye! (Spike nodded in agreement. Hemingway had been a disappointment: all show and no dog— even if he wrote like a god… a constipated god with hemorrhoids.) After that we hoofs it to Berlin."
"Yeah, Berlin." Spike smiled inwardly, "Despite being full of Germans? Paradise! (or so I've heard)."
Schnelz shot him a suspicious look before exclaiming, "Gawd, yes! Prostitutes lined the streets. There was ones who'd beat you to order, there was ones who wore big boots to trample you with: pissers, shitters, hairy men in frocks, pretty men as women, pretty women as men, women as women, men as men, half beavers, geese, grannies, you name it – you could even make a phone call and have whatever you wanted DELIVERED to your doorstep like they does pizzas now; it was all one big party, with us two for the price of one!"
Yeah, mate, Berlin in the 1930s had been brill. The street scene had been a great way for him and Drusilla to pick up a quick meal and quicker cash as long as the cash wasn't useless German marks. All the two of them had to do was stand out on some corner, any corner after sundown, and some rich fool would invite them into their car for a bit of slap and tickle in the rumble seat, or better yet, back home in the family parlor... things were so fast and loose at the time that like a lot of demons, they didn't even bother concealing what they were: fangs in, fangs out, whatever the customer wanted – and fangs got you more money, even a weekend in the country!
"But all parties has to end. Before we could get out, I wound up with a pink triangle and a yellow star stitched to my coat, and Hermann, well, Hermann couldn't get away when they came to get us before we could flee to Paris, to Hollywood, anywhere but Germany – I went to Bergen-Belsen – what save me was tailoring uniforms for officers and the fact that some doctor discovered I was a man – they was inside my body the whole time! – I was an oddity he wanted to preserve for his future "Museum of Degenerate Subhumans!" Anyways, my Hermann was sent to Auschwitz. Gawd knows what he did to survive – we didn't see each other until years later when he found me through the Red Cross in a DP camp, serial number tattoo and all.
So, we comes back to Hollywood. I became a stuntman, I say man because nobody ever suspected that under all that padding and harness was a woman's or whatever's body that was too big and clumsy to be anything else. By the time someone figured it out years later, nobody cared – we was too old. Hermann talked me into coming home with him to Sunnydale. He'd inherited this building from his ol' man, Herr Rosenberg."
This was too delicious to let pass, Spike smirked around the fag he was lighting, "Rosenberg? I know a Rosenberg… Anyway, I thought you said your last name was "Schnelz".
Inelda snorted, "I was the one wearing trousers the day we made it legal so he took my last name. My Hermann became Mrs. Harriet Schnelz. It worked – so what if I was born both?" Spike stared at her, almost dropping his cigarette. "Didn't you hear me the first time? Clean out your ears, boychik! Anyway, after having six boys, ol' lady Schnelz wanted a girl. So, snip snip, little Master What'sit became little Miss What'sit !" She laughed at the expression on Spike's face ending in another long, wet cough, "Nobody asked, nobody respectable, that is. Hermann had a nephew, Ira, who married some well-meaning kook of a USC Sunnydale "Women's Studies" professor with red hair. To show solidarity, they invited us to their daughter's Bat Mitzvah where we embarrassed 'em because we already knew what we was and didn't need them to join our cause – haven't seen 'em since. You're about the right age, how's the kid doin'? Smart, but t.i.m.i.d.!"
"We've, heh, met…" All but howling and slapping his knee inside at the mental image of the cynically flamboyant Herman and Inelda showing up to Willow's Bat Mitzvah in full drag, Spike tried unsuccessfully to hide his laughter in a long pull at his flask so that it came out in a long, erratic snort, "…in passing." He wiped his mouth on his sleeve thinking, "Oh God, if Willow ever bothers to ask, I can say with complete confidence that her preferred style of dance partner doesn't so much run in the family as gallop down Main Street blowing a trumpet in Jimmy Choo stillettos and a rainbow sequin jockstrap with matching unicorn horn!"
"Anyways," Inelda continued, ""It won't be so bad," he sez, "It's a quiet place, the building has an apartment over the theater – the one I grew up in. We two aging fairies can live there, show some shows, and scandalize the good people of Sunnydale by walkin' 'round like the Berlin whores we is whenever things get boring.""
Obviously Hermann had never heard about the Hellmouth under his boyhood home or he wouldn't have said that… unless he'd been a master of understatement, something Spike highly doubted.
"'Bout then cancer caught up with Hermann – prostate, of course! The most feminine creature I knows dies of a male cancer? But my bubblah was like that! So I've lived here, ever since, taking care of Hermann's building, renting it out, wearing his dresses, and remembering what it felt like to be walking the streets of Berlin with the love of my life hanging off my arm after paying a visit to some rich bastard, lipstick all smeared."
"Love of your life? My ass!" Spike snarled, bitterly remembering how fast things had gone downhill on greased skis only to be greeted at the bottom by a direct lightning strike in regards to the first love of his life, Dru, and then Buffy, the real thing.
Ignoring Spike, Inelda gestured at the still standing enclosed stairs to her apartment, "Before I forget, dispose of my body at the bottom of what's left of the back stairs to my apartment. Door's locked, but the keys are still in the drawer on the right side of what's left of my desk, unless you already swiped 'em – I seen you snooping." Her outline blurred, growing taller, more masculine.
"What?" Spike rubbed at his eyes, which didn't help. He'd always noticed a faint stink about the back alley, but had put it down to the used cooking oil collection tank nearby. Obviously the two closed doors had trapped most of the pong.
Inelda flapped a negligent hand dismissively. "I had a heart attack on my way to work a month ago. Fell ass over teakettle down my apartment stairs - broke my neck. Don't worry, I was dead before I hit the bottom – you get the job because you was the only one who can handle nasty things when ordered to." Inelda said as she continued fading, "The fact that you handled my Uncle Jacob – my mother's brother, may he rise on the Day all toothpicks inside, IS proof enough! He was family, but a real shit, that one. Back in Berlin, that stinker betrayed me and my Hermann to the Gestapo to save his own ass. That, and he must have made a deal with something, he never aged a day until you scraped him up with a shovel for me! Anyway, after you've disposed of my rotten carcass, maybe put me on my Herman's grave, I don't know, you'll get your paycheck, cash, whatever. While I'm at it, there's two envelopes on my desk in the business office addressed to Willow Rosenberg and friend. If they ain't ash, be a good boy and drop 'em in the nearest mailbox for me, will you? Already stamped and everything - so no problem!"
Puzzled, Spike stared at Inelda's slowly dissipating but now unmistakably masculine form in the yellow glare of the street lamp at the mouth of the alley, "But you rented… to him… anyway?"
Inelda's outline shrugged, "Family is family, business is business!" and with a wave of a fedora, he was gone.