The New York Stories

by John O'Hara

  “Yeah? Who for?”

  “None of your business. I don’t have to tell who I voted for. I didn’t tell—anybody else. A lot of people asked me to vote for certain people because they knew it was my first vote and they all said to get started right, then when 1944 came along I’d know which way.”

  “I get it,” he said.

  “You get what?”

  “It’s easy. The gang I see your name in the paper with, they were all for Dewey.”

  “Very clever, aren’t you? Well, I’m not admitting anything, see? Oh, what about you?”

  “Who did I vote for? Al Smith. That’s the last person I voted for.”

  “I didn’t mean that. I mean, where are you in the draft?”

  “Where do you think?” he said, sipping his drink.

  “I don’t know. You could put your mother down for a dependent, and are you all right again?”

  “Go on,” he said.

  “That’s right,” she said. “I guess you’re over age too.”

  “I’m surprised I didn’t see you in some Waac uniform or something.”

  “Is that a crack?”

  “No. You mean a corny crack about wacky? Give me credit for better than that.”

  “Well, I never can tell with you,” she said. “Do you think I have time for another drink?”

  He laughed. “How should I know?”

  “My date,” she said. “Oh, that’s right, I didn’t tell you what time I had the date for.” She looked at the bar clock. “No, I guess not. I’m going to a cocktail party but I have to meet somebody before I go.”

  “You’re right up there, aren’t you?” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Cocktail parties. Elmer’s. All that big stuff.”

  “Well, why not?”

  “Sure. Why not? You’re young, and you’re a dish.”

  “You think so, Harry?”

  “I still got eyes,” he said.

  “Well, thanks for the compliment,” she said. “I apologize for what I said when we came in. About rye being cheap. You were always all right with money when we had it. It wasn’t money that was your trouble—our trouble.”

  “Thanks, kid,” he said. “I guess you better blow now or you’ll be late.”

  “Don’t you want me to stay for another? We aren’t fighting now.”

  “No, but maybe in two minutes we would be,” he said.

  “Maybe you’re right,” she said. She stood up. “Well, I guess I better say goodbye. I’d like to see you sometime, Harry.”

  “Why?”

  “Didn’t we get along all right just now? We had a little scrap but we ended up all right. Here—” She reached in her purse and tore the back off a pack of matches. “That’s where I live. Give me a call.”

  “All right,” he said.

  “Don’t forget,” she said. “G’bye.” She smiled and left.

  From his corner of the booth Allen called out to Eddie, who came back and stood at the table. “Yes, Harry,” he said.

  “Could you let me have a quart?”

  Eddie rubbed his hand over his smooth bald head. “I don’t know, Harry. That tab is gettin’ pretty big and you oughtn’ta be drinking so’s it is.” He turned his head, looked in the direction in which the girl had gone, then he looked at his diamond ring. “All right, Harry. I’ll wrap it for you.”

  (1972)

  FAMILY EVENING

  “Mother,” said Rosie, “who’s the fourth for dinner tonight? Are you planning some neat surprise for me, like Gregory Peck? Fat chance, end parentheses.”

  “It just so happens that Gregory Peck backed out at the last minute,” said Mrs. James. “No, we’re having Bob Martin, a friend of ours from home.”

  “‘From home,’” said Rosie. “Mother, isn’t this home? This is where we live, isn’t it? I was born in New York City. What about Mr. Martin?”

  “He’s what you used to call one of the B.D.s.”

  “I used to call the B.D.s? I never even heard the expression. It rings no bell here.”

  “Well, I remember it, and so does your father,” said Mrs. James.

  “Then lift me out of this suspense. What does it mean?”

  “Oh, a few years ago when we were all spending the weekend at Aunt Ada’s we overheard you and Kenny and the rest of you talking about B.D.s.” Mrs. James waited. “You were referring to me, and your father, and Aunt Ada, and Uncle Archie, and people of our age.”

  “Oh, yes! The Better Deads. I must have been at the Brearley then,” said Rosie.

  “Yes, and it made me cry,” said Mrs. James. “I was only thirty-five or thirty-six then. Only. I don’t suppose thirty-five seems like the prime of life to you even now.”

  “A girl in my class quit college to marry a man thirty-four. That brings thirty-five much closer to me. I’m capable of marrying a man thirty-five. What’s to stop me? You, of course, but I mean theoretically. What about Mr. Martin? Is he attractive?”

  “He used to be. I haven’t seen him for years.”

  “Well, I like that. Every Christmas vacation you make me spend one evening at home with you and Father, then you go and invite some total stranger. I call that consistent.”

  “We don’t make you spend an evening at home. We ask you to because we want to see something of you, and Bob Martin is not a total stranger. He was an usher at our wedding and he’s somebody we’ve known all our lives. He called up this afternoon and it’s the only time we could see him. He wanted to take us to 21.”

  “Three good parties I passed up to be with the bosom of my family. If he’s remotely presentable can’t we all go to Larry’s later?”

  “Larry Who?”

  “Larue’s,” said Rosie.

  “Let’s see how it works out,” said Mrs. James.

  “Maybe you’re right,” said Rosie. “A little caution now.”

  Martin turned up in evening clothes and when Libby James chided him he made the old joke about dressing for dinner in the tropics. It was neither old nor a joke to Rosie, but she noticed he wore pumps, of which she definitely approved. He was heavy but not yet fat, so that his regular features were not altogether lost in cheek and chin.

  “Martinis okay for you, Robert?” said Rosie’s father.

  “They better be. It’s what I’ve had a string of,” said Martin. “Why don’t you pour Rosie’s in the cup I gave her and she can catch up with me?”

  “Oh, a tragedy, Bob,” said Libby James. “Your cup was lost in the fire. We had a fire when we were living on Fifty-first Street. Luckily most of our things were in storage, but the cup Bob gave you when you were born, Rosie, that was one of the things we lost. I was convinced the firemen stole it, but Norman said I was crazy. I still think I was right. Firemen are honest, they look honest, but with the thousands of them in New York City there must be one or two.”

  “Well, I’ll give Rosie another one when she has her first baby,” said Martin. “Or will you settle for a cocktail shaker now, Rosie?”

  “I’ll settle for a cocktail shaker,” said Rosie.

  “Why, Rosie!” said her mother.

  “Well, Mr. Martin suggested it, and I haven’t got a cocktail shaker.”

  “You’ll have one tomorrow afternoon,” said Martin.

  “No such thing, Bob Martin,” said Mrs. James.

  “There’ll be no more discussion. This young lady needs a cocktail shaker, and it’s Christmastime, and that’s what middle-aged friends are for. E.R.J. I know somebody, so I can have it engraved right away.”

  “I don’t use the ‘E,’” said Rosie. “Too much confusion.”

  “Okay. R.J.,” said Martin.

  “Let’s have dinner,” said Libby. “We’re letting the servants off early.”

  “I’ll take mine in
with me,” said Martin.

  “We all will,” said Norman James.

  Throughout dinner Rosie could see that Martin thoroughly approved of her and of her mother. She was less sure that she approved of him. He told the story of the time he broke his leg while skiing at the country club, and of the time Libby’s father forbade her going out with him because he kept her up so late, and of the time they drove seventy miles to a dance that was not to take place until the following evening. Libby James remembered almost all of it in the same detail as Martin’s. Norman James smoked a good deal and kept his champagne glass empty and full, supplying a name or a date when he was called upon, or admitting total ignorance of an entire episode. Once or twice Mr. Martin began stories with the statement that Rosie would like this item, if she wanted to know what kind of person her mother was at her age. The martinis and the wine, in addition to the string of martinis he had had before his arrival, had no apparent effect on Mr. Martin. This was not quite the case with Rosie’s mother and father. Rosie herself did not like to drink much.

  “Wanta come in here, Robert?” said Norman James.

  “Why sure, if you do,” said Martin.

  “I do. I do indeed,” said Norman James. Rosie and her mother went to Rosie’s room.

  “Well,” said Rosie, “I’m getting a bird’s-eye view of an old romance.”

  “How do you mean, dear?” said her mother. “Bob Martin? And I?” She laughed.

  “Stop giggling. You’ve been giggling all through dinner. I’ll bet it wasn’t Father that asked him here.”

  “As a matter of fact, it was,” said Libby James.

  “Well then, he was just being polite.”

  “Oh, stop. I was thinking I might put on my new evening dress and you could put on yours, and we could step out. Not if you’re going to be disagreeable, though.”

  “Well, if you think I’d wear my new evening dress for this occasion, pardon me. I’m in favor of lights and music, especially if Mr. Martin wants to pay for it, but I’ll wear the pink I got last summer.”

  “Wear what you please, my dear. Could you do something about my hair? Does it look all right?”

  “Mother, Mr. Martin hasn’t said anything about going out. Besides, he probably has a late date.”

  “You’re such a child. I know he hasn’t said anything, but what if he hasn’t? I’ll merely suggest it to your father, and if Bob Martin has a late date I’ll take great pleasure in watching him wriggle out of it.” She studied herself in the mirror, at first arrogantly, chin up; but then that disappeared. She looked at the mirror’s reflection of Rosie’s face. “How do I really look?” she said.

  “You look fine,” said Rosie.

  “No, I don’t,” said her mother. She turned away from the mirror. “Do me a favor, Rosie. You suggest it.”

  “Me! . . . All right, if you stop feeling sorry for yourself all of a sudden. You and the rest of the B.D.s.”

  Her mother smiled. “Dear Rosie. It hurt, but it worked.” She got up and followed Rosie down the hall, humming “Do It Again,” a danceable number of 1922.

  (1972)

  FIRST DAY IN TOWN

  At twenty-five past one Nick Orlando, alone, got out of a taxi, punched the doorman playfully in the ribs, and entered the restaurant. In the foyer there was a crowd, mostly women, who wanted to sit downstairs but who, as matinee time got nearer, were about to decide to go upstairs. Nick Orlando firmly pushed his way forward among these women. At his touch they would turn angrily and say, “I beg yaw podden—oh, Nick Orlando! It’s Nick Orlando!”

  The captain of waiters raised his hand high. He had not immediately seen Nick Orlando, whose height only flatteringly could be called average, but the repetition of the Orlando name reached the captain. “I have your table, Mr. Orlando,” he said. Then, when Nick Orlando had pushed his way to the rope, the captain whispered, “I don’t have a table, but maybe you see somebody.” Nick Orlando, who had not said a word since getting out of the taxi, squeezed the captain’s arm. He nodded; he saw somebody.

  He made his way to a banquette where two women were seated side by side; the one a girl of twenty or so, with a scarf knotted about her neck; the other a woman in her late thirties, who had a ballpoint pen in her right hand and was writing something in a stenographer’s dictation tablet. Nick Orlando, heading for this table, picked up a chair without asking permission of a threesome at an island table. He set the chair down so that he faced the two women on the banquette. The girl squinted. “Go away. You’re lousing up my interview,” she said, laughing.

  “Oh, say, this is a treat,” said the interviewer. “Nick Orlando. You know where I met you? At Harry Browning’s.”

  “Who is Harry Browning?” said Nick Orlando.

  “Get him! Pretending you don’t know who Harry Browning is,” said the girl. “Five years ago you didn’t know who Harry Browning is, you’d be telling the truth then, you big faker. When did you get in, you dog?”

  “What’s the interview for?” said Nick Orlando.

  “My syndicate. My name is Camilla Strong.”

  “Your syndicate? I bet it ain’t the syndicate I got friends in. Syndicate. A syndicate is a man that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Who said that, Camilla?”

  “Oscar Wilde.”

  “You know, hey? Wud you, go to college, Camilla?”

  “I sure did,” said Camilla Strong.

  “This jerk just stard reading books three years ago, and now the whole field of literature is all his. All his. Nobody ever read anything before him, hey, jerk?”

  “Where did you two know each other? Is this a thing with you two?” said Camilla Strong. “Should I have known about this?”

  “Her? This tramp?”

  “Don’t make it too emphatic, jerk, or otherwise she’ll think we did have a thing,” said the girl. “No, we didn’t have a thing, but not for want of him trying.”

  “That’s where everybody makes a mistake with this tramp, is trying. Nobody has to try with this one.”

  “Oh, I wish I could write this the way it really comes out,” said Camilla. “If they’d ever print it.”

  “Go ahead write it,” said Nick Orlando. “You’re not gonna destroy any illusions. You seen her that night on the Paar show.”

  “Aah, shut up with the Paar show,” said the girl. “Why’d you have to remind her of that? We been here since one o’clock and not a word about the Paar show till you crashed the party.”

  “Two nominations for Tonys, and one Academy Award, and what are you famous for?” said Nick Orlando.

  “You know what really happened, Camilla, was I never drink. I don’t have any tolerance for it. And this jerk made me take two drinks before I was to go on. Two, and one is all I need to get looping. Write that in your article. The inside story of Mary Coolidge getting cut off the air. I think he did it on purpose, too.”

  “What else? I told you I did it on purpose. You were getting too big for your britches. Your head was getting too big for your britches.”

  “You know, Nick, I really hate you. I hate you with a cold, consuming, venomous hatred.”

  “I know you do, but I can’t get you to admit it.”

  “You kids, do you talk this way all the time?” said Camilla.

  “When we’re talking. Sometimes we aren’t on conversational terms,” said Nick Orlando.

  “I wish that was now,” said Mary Coolidge. “How did you know I was here?”

  “Stop with the kidding. Camilla knows I was with you till an hour ago,” said Nick Orlando.

  “Oh, now you said too much, Nick,” said Camilla. “Unfortunately I’ve been with Mary since ten o’clock this morning.”

  “She said you were here since one o’clock,” said Nick Orlando.

  “Interviewing. But all morning I was with her picking out the dr
esses for the new play. If you’re going to ruin a girl’s reputation you’ve got to do better than that, Nick. What about you, by the way? I know you’re in town for the opening of Mad River.”

  “You seen it yet?”

  “No, I missed two screenings, but I hear you’re only great in it. If I call Irving Rudson maybe we could set up an interview. Are you booked pretty solid?”

  “Irving don’t know I’m in town. I come in a day early.”

  “To louse up my interview,” said Mary Coolidge. “And you succeeded, so go away.”

  “Oh, he didn’t louse it up, Mary. I can have sort of fun with this. It’ll read better than just an ordinary interview.”

  “I don’t give ordinary interviews,” said Mary Coolidge.

  “Ooh, I think this one is burning,” said Nick Orlando. “I don’t know if it’s me or you she’s sore at.”

  “Mary isn’t sore at anybody. Where are you staying?”

  “Sixteen Twenty-four Pitkin Avenue.”

  “That’s Brooklyn. You’re from The Bronx.”

  “Kidding. I got an uncle living on Pitkin Avenue. I’m at the Sherry. You set it up with Irving.”

  “And I’ll come along and louse it up,” said Mary Coolidge.

  Camilla Strong pressed the button of her ballpoint, and closed the notebook. “I don’t know what your act is, you two. I can’t fathom whether you’re a thing or not a thing. Come on, level with Camilla before I go.”

  “I’m mad for him, but religion keeps us apart,” said Mary Coolidge.

  “Religion? You’re both Italian extraction, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, but I want to be a nun and he wants to be a priest. So religion keeps us apart,” said Mary Coolidge.

  “This is a very fast little girl, Nicky,” said Camilla.

  “Talking, but not running,” said Nick Orlando. “She can outtalk anybody but I never heard of her outrunning anybody. Never.”

  “I kind of think she outran you,” said Camilla Strong. “But I’ll find that out when I interview you. ’Bye now, kids.” She left.

  Nick Orlando moved to the vacated seat. “That’ll be the day. When that broad interviews me.”