[Dorothy Parker 03] - Mystic Mah Jong

by Agata Stanford

  “What about the boys?”

  “I’ll leave a note with the manager for them to meet us there.”

  It was a fine evening, so we decided to walk the few short blocks to Tony’s. Along the side streets and avenues masses of people spilled out of the lobbies of the theatres where shows were breaking for intermission. Apple Annie hawked her shiny red fruit for a nickel a piece—“Get your apples from Annie, the best apples are here from Annie!” The mouthwatering, sweet-musty smell of chestnuts and peanuts roasting in their shells over charcoal fires, scooped and bagged, conjured memories of winters past—sleigh rides through Central Park when I was a child and horses ruled and the automobile was just a novelty. These nostalgic smells taunted me and were reminders of my lost innocence, long before my childish hopes had deserted me.

  The brightly flashing billboard advertisements suspended from rooftops lining Times Square warred with the city of my infancy and screamed of modernity. The cobbled streets of midtown were mostly paved over now and crisscrossed with imbedded iron tracks, and the din of clanking streetcar bells and squawking automobile horns and the rumble of the Sixth Avenue El overhead sent my old memories—the smells, the noises, the landscape of New York at the end of the last century—adrift with my youthful expectations.

  We wove through the hordes of theatregoers who’d gathered outside for intermissions on our way to the speakeasy. Without looking at titles on the marquees you could tell the dramas from the comedies and musicals by the collective mood of each crowd. Men in dress suits or tails, white ties, and silk hats scurried to “speaks” down the street for refreshment, their opera scarves catching the bright lights in a flashing, jaunty play of black and white; their women, dripping with jewels and sequins and crystals and wrapped in sable, marabou, fox, and monkey-trimmed capes, were a testament to affluence. Twenty minutes, enough time to belly up to the bar for a drink.

  The little clerks and shopgirls, housewives, insurance salesmen, students, and secretaries, more modestly attired, and who came by streetcar to fill the fifty-cent seats in the mezzanines, lit up cigarettes and admired the fashion show fluttering by. And there, thin and hungry, with threadbare cuffs and worn, patched elbows, gather the hopeful young actors and chorines of Broadway’s future seasons, thrilling in the atmosphere and longing for their day before the footlights. Waif-like, yet resilient, these soulful creatures wear the self-conscious badge of the novice, their eyes huge and overflowing with wild ideas and delusions of coming fame, while waiting for the moment and place of their discovery—the big break that could come at any time. Even while standing outside a lobby it was possible to be discovered by Sam Harris or Ziegfeld, Belasco, Alexander Woollcott, or Frank Pierce Adams.

  Such big eyes! My eyes were once wide and filled with ambition in a quest for glory. I thought about the many studio photographs I’d seen taken of actors early on in their careers—their eyes so full of possibilities. In time their eyes would dim with age, jaded wisdom, and disillusionment.

  I was depressed!

  “Fred,” I said, suddenly stopping short a couple blocks from Tony’s. “Let’s stop in at the Waldorf and see how Bette is faring. The hotel is only an avenue over—”

  He took my arm, and in a few minutes we were calling up to Bette’s room from the house telephone.

  “I am sorry, Madame,” said the operator after many rings, “no one is answering. Would you like to leave a message?”

  “No, thank you, I’ll try again later.” I was about to hang up when it dawned on me that perhaps Bette was with Lord Wildly. “Please connect me with Lord Wildly’s room.”

  “Haven’t seen Bette all day,” said Wildly. “She was gone before breakfast, I understand, because when she didn’t show here at eight o’clock for a bite, I called her room, and then the front desk, and the clerk told me she’d gone out quite early. Your Detective Morgan paid me a call soon after—I suppose there is communication between the police and the hotel staff in cases such as these, and as I could offer them no suggestions about Bette’s whereabouts, Morgan had the manager open the door to her room with a passkey. As everything was in order—luggage and personal belongings about the room—it was assumed she’d simply snuck past the policemen stationed in the lobby.”

  “She could be out looking for him, you know,” I said.

  Mr. Benchley wrestled the receiver from my hand: “Wildly, shake a leg, and we’ll paint the town red.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Hit the town, put on the Ritz, go button-shining!”

  “Here, here, Bobby; whatever are you suggesting?”

  “I’m on the up-and-up!”

  I wrestled the receiver from Mr. Benchley: “Drinks and a late supper.”

  “Bob’s your uncle! I’ll be right there.”

  Mr. Benchley and Lord Wildly each took an arm, and with me feeling like the filling in a top-hat sandwich, hustled me briskly to the speakeasy. Once arrived at Tony’s, we ordered drinks at a little table near the kitchen.

  Half an hour later, Harpo marched in with FPA. Mr. Benchley set right to work. “Mrs. Parker needs a little fun.”

  “Dorothy’s on the hump,” announced Lord Wildly.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Down in the dumps,” explained Mr. Benchley.

  “She’s had enough of murder, so it’s time for mayhem, that it?” asked Frank, chewing on a stinky cheroot, eager for the challenge.

  “Let the games begin,” said Harpo, mischief in his eyes. “Now, where should we start? We’ve got Aleck and Heywood as the perfect foils. Right now they’re turning in their reviews of the show for their dailies, and we’re to meet them at the Colony for supper. What trick should we pull on ’em?”

  “Too bad Ross isn’t around,” said FPA. “Fooling around with Ross’s head is always a good time, dontchaknow?”

  “I was hoping for the fewest casualties and the least amount of vandalism possible, Frank,” said Mr. Benchley. “Thought we could do less damage—like, well, telephoning the Russian ambassador. Harpo, how’s your Russian?”

  “Worse every day.”

  “All right, then pretend the White House is calling. Can you do a good imitation of the president?”

  “The president does a bad imitation of a president, so he’s set the standards pretty low. What do you want the president to say?”

  ”Tell him we plan to invade the Ukraine.”

  “I thought you said no casualties!” said Harpo.

  “Let me start a list,” said Frank, taking out a little notebook and pencil from his suit pocket. “Call the Reds,” he said, jotting the item down. “Next?”

  Mr. Benchley leaned back in his chair, a boss dictating a letter to his secretary: “Send the following telegram to: Lee Shubert, Noel Coward, J. Edgar Hoover, Alfred Lunt, Somerset Maugham, Johnny Barrymore, our illustrious mayor, James J. Walker. Let’s add Tommy, the maître d’ at the Colony and the Russian Ambassador. Reads as follows: ‘Flee the country—stop—the secret is out—stop.’ Sign it—on second thought, better not sign it! More menacing, don’t you think? We can go to the train station later and see who gets on the midnight express.”

  “Add Condé Nast to that list,” I said, joining in the mischief and referring to my much-despised publisher from my years at Vanity Fair.

  “We should send a cable to Aleck,” said FPA.

  “He’s smarter than the others; he’ll know we sent it.”

  “I’ll take care of Aleck,” said Harpo, rubbing his hands with glee. “I have something special for him.”

  The idea came to me in a flash. “Let’s send that cable to a couple of other people, Fred.”

  “Who’d you have in mind, my little minx?”

  Lord Wildly sat quietly observing our discussions and marveling at the dredge we called “hooch.” “It’s a crime, ain’t it?” said Frank.

  Later, at the Colony, during a late supper with Aleck and Heywood, we watched as a telegram was delivered to Tommy the maître d’.
As we gathered our coats and hats from the hat-check girl, we watched as Tommy fiddled with the details of running the restaurant with nervous distraction.

  “G’night, Tommy, it’s been grand,” said FPA. “Is something wrong?”

  “Wrong, Mr. Adams?” he asked. “Nahh, everything’s hunky-dory. What could be wrong?”

  “I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking,” said Frank. “You look a little piqued.”

  “Waiters misbehaving?” asked Aleck.

  “That’s it, yes.”

  “Call it a night and hit the springs, Tommy,” said Frank, as we watched Tommy pull his arm into the sleeve of his overcoat and toss a scarf around his neck.

  “Yes. Herman will cover the floor for the rest of the evening.”

  We walked out into the cool night, Mr. Benchley offering Tommy to share our cab, actually insisting when the man resisted the idea. The men ushered him into the taxi like gangsters a mark to be fitted for cement shoes and a recreational swim with the fishes.

  “What you need, Tommy,” said Mr. Benchley, “is a long vacation.”

  “Maybe to a warm climate,” suggested Aleck.

  “Now you’re talking!” said Harpo

  “Or to a foreign land,” said FPA.

  “Say, Canada,” said Heywood. “The booze flows freely there.”

  “Tommy should ditch the city for the exotic—like Hackensack!” said Harpo.

  “In Brazil they don’t ask questions, and there’s no extradition,” said Mr. Benchley.

  The light clicked on and Tommy screamed out, “Why, you sons of bitches!” before leaning back in the seat, taking a deep breath, and howling with laughter.

  “We figured you were square. Well, the jig is up!” said Harpo.

  “Want to come to the train station with us to see who else is leaving town?”

  “You mean that you sent that cable to others?”

  “You betcha!” said Harpo.

  “Who else?”

  “If they’re on the skids they show up boarding the Twentieth Century.”

  “Holy moly, Harpo, you don’t know what’s good for you—why, I should send you right down on your ear!”

  “Don’t give anybody ideas. Anyway, it won’t be the first time.”

  “Why are we going uptown?”

  “Gotta make a stop,” said Mr. Benchley. “Driver, pull over at the monument, please.”

  The cabbie did as instructed and pulled off the Riverside Drive at Grant’s Tomb.

  “Frank, write this down. Are you ready?”

  “Yessiree, Bob!”

  “Leave two quarts grade A and one pint whipping cream. Sign it, ‘U-S-G.’ Got that?”

  “Got it!”

  “Give it!”

  Frank ripped out the paper from the notebook and handed it to Mr. Benchley, who dashed from the cab to the tomb. Slipping the paper in the crack between door and jam, he left the note for the milkman.

  “Now,” he said, “let’s leave notes at the homes of anybody of Tommy’s choosing.”

  Tommy joined in the fun, and off the top of his head he named two particularly parsimonious tippers he dealt with on a regular basis at the restaurant. He looked invigorated after leaving requests for twenty-two quarts grade A and seventeen quarts whipping cream at each address.

  We had a nightcap or two at Slippery Dick’s, a marvelous dive on West 64th Street, where the colored piano player, Willie Nelson, played the popular tunes, “Oh, How I Miss You Tonight,” and “I’ll See You in My Dreams.” These sappy songs, which just a few hours earlier would have sent me under the wheels of a truck, now served only to level out the high I was feeling. There we left Tommy in the company of one who he hoped might be a very affectionate blonde.

  From a telephone at the bar, Frank called his paper’s city desk with a tip that several persons of interest might be seen leaving town over the next few hours. Reporters and photographers could catch the action by heading down to Pennsylvania Station for the Twentieth Century’s midnight departure, and to Pier 57 where the ocean liner Roosevelt was scheduled to sail at midnight.

  At two A.M., when our work was done, we tumbled out onto the street and, with nary a taxi in sight, walked east to Ninth Avenue, where we had a better chance of getting a ride. But there was not a cab in sight for ten blocks up or down the thoroughfare.

  I suppose we were rather loud and disruptive. Mr. Benchley’s repeatedly whistling for nonexistent taxis, and Heywood’s colorful observations, along with the duet of “Stout Hearted Men,” croaked out by Aleck and FPA and accompanied by Harpo on his kazoo while keeping the rhythm with garbage-can-lid cymbals, were responded to with equally colorful shouts from pajama-clad residents leaning out of windows above the street. A vase crashed onto the sidewalk, just missing Aleck’s head.

  Lord Wildly made for the cover of a doorway, and I thought, poor dear, he’d spent much of the evening swigging down rotgut gin and jotting down rotgut American slang. I glanced into his little notebook where he’d written down highlights of conversation—mostly FPA’s lingo: slaphappy, fly-by-night pippin, my goose is cooked, it’s a doozie!, they sure can wingdoodle, moxie, and gaga.

  “Do you know who I am, you monkey’s ass?” Aleck shouted, shaking his ivory-and-sterling-headed walking stick at the angry resident who threw the vase. “I don’t give a rat’s ass who you are!”

  “Well, you should, you hissing hyena!”

  More household objets d’art from neighboring windows crashed to the street, again narrowly missing our heads.

  “Do you know who I am, you flatulent ferret?” demanded Aleck, irate and unwilling to budge.

  “No, but I bet you’re gonna tell me. I’d like to know. Then I’m gonna track you down and kill you in your bed!” announced the strange, cross-bred monkey-hyena-ferret man.

  “Not on your life, you cockroach!”

  More maligned critters!

  Fruit smashed and splattered; a cabbage survived the fall and rolled down to the curb; Harpo kicked it in a line drive down the avenue. Tomato juice spritzed my satin dress shoes. We ran out of striking distance, while Mr. Benchley commandeered a taxi turning onto the avenue from a side street. Once in the cab, a war of words erupted between Aleck and Heywood, about what, I cannot say exactly, as the drunken motivation that encouraged their foul language and incoherent argument eluded me entirely. Some dribble about the impertinent lower classes, “the great unwashed,” as Wildly called them.

  We dropped off FPA at his apartment, skirted Central Park’s southwest corner at Columbus Circle, and then went over to Park Avenue and the Waldorf, where a very tipsy Wildly tumbled out of the cab and announced in incongruously pearly tones: “I’m going to hit the pack, now.”

  Then we headed west toward Fifth Avenue and 44th Street to the Algonquin Hotel.

  Aleck and Heywood were still going at each other; one claiming the other was a fascist, and he claiming the other was a Jew.

  The taxi idling, Mr. Benchley helped me out of the cab. Harpo tried but was not able to get the attention of the two arguing men. “Now’s the time,” said Harpo to me and Mr. Benchley with a sparkle in his eyes and mischief in his voice. “Watch this.”

  Harpo walked around to the driver’s side and spoke with the cabbie.

  The cab drove off, and we watched the silhouettes of our friends in cameo in the rear window, fingers wagging, growing smaller and receding into the night as the cab disappeared up the street.

  Harpo’s hissing laughter lent the little demon an impish look.

  “Have you been a bad boy, my little Puck?” I asked.

  “You’re darn-tootin’!”

  “What tomfoolery is this, my boy?” asked Mr. Benchley.

  “Wave bye-bye! Our friends are off to the world of burlesque—way, way off to the ends of the earth: Werba’s!”

  “End of the world, all right; the end of Brooklyn!” laughed Mr. Benchley.

  “I told you I’d take care of Woollcott!”

  “And
I’m sure he’ll take care of you, Harpo, old sport!”

  “Where are you going now, Harpo?” I asked as the Marx Brother strolled along the street toward 5th Avenue.

  “A few doors down, the Harvard Club,” he said, turning to wave. “Sleep it off there.”

  Of course we knew he wasn’t going to the Club at all—they’d never let him in—but to the apartment of a chorus girl in whom he’d taken an interest.

  “Come on, Mrs. Parker, it’s time to tuck you into bed.”

  “Awww, Fred. I don’t need tucking, I need f— oh, never mind,” I said, not completing the rhyme, but aware that I didn’t have to in order to raise an embarrassed blush on my friend’s face. He hated such blatant sex talk.

  “Whew! That was a close call!” he said, recovering. “A tuck is all I shall offer! Take it or leave it!”

  “Very well, fluff my pillow, dear.”

  I was drunker than I thought, and Mr. Benchley led me gently into the elevator, his arm around my waist for support.

  “I’ve had enough, Fred; no more trying to find murderers for me! Gets me all nerved-up.”

  “It can be a dangerous preoccupation, that’s for sure.”

  “Of course, it does pass the time . . . .”

  “So does a game or two of cribbage.”

  “Why do I get so—?”

  “Involved?”

  “Yes, that’s it. Why do I have to know who—?

  “Done it?”

  “Yes. Why can I just let the police—?

  “Handle it?”

  “No, solve it,” I corrected. “No more, nevermore, nevermore . . . .”

  “All right, Poe,” he said, lifting me into his arms, “let’s get you settled.”

  Unlocking and then nudging the apartment door open with his foot, he carried me to the sofa. Woodrow, wakened from a deep sleep on forbidden territory, figured I was too tight to care; he edged over to make room for my landing and then went back to sleep.

  As Mr. Benchley tried to get my arm out from the sleeve of my evening coat, I noticed movement behind him in the open doorway.

  “Fred!” I said, and the alarm in my face alerted him immediately.

  “What’s wrong? Your eyes are popping!”