Nine Month's Sin
The first few months were easy to hide. She drank so hard and danced so fiercely that days of groaning and illness seemed a given. Velma didn't notice; a roll of the eyes, a complaint that she 'needed to move her goddamned ass', and she was safe for another day.
Three months in, her body began to change subtle shape; promoters began to bitch that 'Hart was getting fat'. Roxie responded with a sneer and a roll of the eyes, and Velma made ample excuses for her suddenly amply curvaceous 'sister'.
For four months, Roxie lied to herself. She had a virus, yeah, a virus that made you gain weight and made you want to puke at the same time.
By the fifth month, Velma glared at her through sweat-damp bangs. "You told me there wasn't a baby."
"There ain't."
"Then how come you're getting fat, mmm?"
Roxie responded with an open palm to Velma's face. Needless to say, Chicago's Killer Dillers didn't speak for a good, long time.
She thought about marching up to Billy's door when she got back to Chicago, dumping the kid on his desk, and walking away, laughing her pretty head off. But, then...she supposed it wouldn't be fair to Billy.
After all, there had been a night a month before her enchanting celebratory whoopee session with Billy. And someone else a month before that.
That Goddamned doctor...why would someone in his profession NOT want to wear a rubber?
At night, Roxie would lie on her back with pins pinching her scalp, trying to find a classy and dignified way to pitch herself down a flight of stairs during her next performance.
Six months, and she decided that maybe it wasn't so bad to be pregnant after all. It DID force Velma to do all of the work in the act, after all. So what, if the stage door johnnies stopped swooning at the sight of her? So what if her routines were gradually being reduced to standing there tapping her toes while Velma danced with her shadow? She was still Roxie Hart, the queen of the bloodhounds. She could buy and sell them all. And yet...every night there would be more Champaign, more bankers and politicians, or men who swore they were bankers or politicians, and she would desperately flaunt her charms.
For, by the seventh month, they stopped paying her any heed at all.
Eight months, and her body was a bloated, disgusting wreck. Telegrams sent to Billy Flynn were ignored. Roxie regretted ever giving him a good time. In desperation, she wired to Amos from Kansas City, explaining that the rabbit had died. She had been loony, really gone, when she had told him that she wasn't pregnant back at the courthouse. Couldn't he forgive her just one more time?
No word came from him by the ninth month.
She sat alone with a bottle of gin, up in some fleabag motel most nights now; Velma paid her, out of courtesy, perhaps, even, morbid affection. "Kelly and Hart" had become "Velma Kelly" on all of the marquees -but, Roxie bragged to herself, those marquees were awfully dingy now- and the clubs were smaller. As soon as she dumped this brat off at a convent, she would get herself back in dancing shape and VELMA would be under her on the marquee, and boy, wouldn't she be surprised?
In the ninth month, she lay on her bed in a pool of water. The baby came, a twisted mess of vessels and cord. And the bleeding came, fierce and strong. But the alcohol was there for her, and it always would be, and it pulled her by her toes down as silver-guilded river.
In her last mortal thought, she wished that pool was deep enough to drown her.