My Sister's Hand in Mine

by Jane Bowles

“What would you suggest, young man, that’s really delicious?” said Mrs. Quill, turning to the waiter.

  “Fruit punch à la Washington Hotel,” said the waiter abruptly.

  “That does sound good.”

  “O.K.,” said Toby, “bring one, and a straight rye for me.”

  When Mrs. Quill had sipped quite a bit of her drink Toby spoke to her. “So you got the dough, but you never bothered to fix it up.”

  “Mmmmmm!” said Mrs. Quill. “They’ve got every kind of fruit in the world in this drink. I’m afraid I’m behaving just like a baby, but there’s no one who likes the good things in this world better than me. Of course, I’ve never had to do without them, you know.”

  “You don’t call livin’ the way you’re livin’ havin’ the good things in life, do you?” said Toby.

  “I live much better than you think. How do you know how I live?”

  “Well, you could have more style,” said Toby, “and you could have that easy. I mean the place could be better very easy.”

  “It probably would be easy, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” Toby waited to see if she would say anything more by herself before he addressed her again.

  “Take all these people here,” said Mrs. Quill. “There aren’t many of them, but you’d think they’d all get together instead of staying in twos and threes. As long as they’re all living here in this gorgeous hotel, you’d think they’d have on their ball dresses and be having a wonderful time every minute, instead of looking out over the terrace or reading. You’d think they’d always be dressed up to the hilt and flirting together instead of wearing those plain clothes.”

  “They got on sport clothes,” said Toby. “They don’t want to be bothered dressin’. They probably come here for a rest. They’re probably business people. Maybe some of them belong to society. They got to rest too. They got so many places they got to show up at when they’re home.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t pay out all that money just to rest. I’d stay in my own house.”

  “It don’t make no difference. They got plenty.”

  “That’s true enough. Isn’t it sad?”

  “I don’t see nothin’ sad about it. What looks sad to me,” said Toby, leaning way over and crushing his cigar out in the ash-tray, “what looks sad to me is that you’ve got that bar and hotel set-up and you ain’t makin’ enough money on it.”

  “Yes, isn’t it terrible?”

  “I like you and I don’t like to see you not gettin’ what you could.” He took hold of her hand with a certain amount of gentleness. “Now, I know what to do with your place. Like I told you before. Do you remember what I told you before?”

  “Well, you’ve told me so many things.”

  “I’ll tell you again. I’ve been working with restaurants and bars and hotels all my life and makin’ them go. I said makin’ them go. If I had the dough right now, if it wasn’t that I’m short because I had to help my brother and his family out of a jam, I’d take my own dough before you could say Jack Robinson and sink it into your joint and fix it up. I know that I’d get it right back anyway, so it wouldn’t be no act of charity.”

  “Certainly it wouldn’t,” said Mrs. Quill. Her head was swaying gently from side to side. She looked at Toby with luminous eyes.

  “Well, I got to go easy now until next October, when I got a big contract comin’. A contract with a chain. I could use a little money now, but that ain’t the point.”

  “Don’t bother to explain, Toby,” said Mrs. Quill.

  “What do you mean, don’t bother to explain? Ain’t you interested in what I’ve got to tell you?”

  “Toby, I’m interested in every word you have to say. But you must not worry about the drinks. Your friend Flora Quill tells you that you needn’t worry. We’re out to enjoy ourselves and Heaven knows we’re going to, aren’t we, Toby?”

  “Yeah, but just let me explain this to you. I think the reason you ain’t done nothin’ about the place is because you didn’t know where to begin, maybe. Understand? You don’t know the ropes. Now, I know all about gettin’ orchestras and carpenters and waiters, cheap. I know how to do all that. You got a name, and lots of people like to come there even now because they can go right from the bar upstairs. Pacifica is a big item because she knows every bloke in town and they like her and they trust her. The trouble is, you ain’t got no atmosphere, no bright lights, no dancin’. It ain’t pretty or big enough. People go to the other places and then they come to your place late. Just before they go to bed. If I was you, I’d turn over in my grave. It’s the other guys that are gettin’ the meat. You only get a little bit. What’s left near the bone, see?”

  “The meat nearest the bone is the sweetest,” said Mrs. Quill.

  “Hey, is there any use my talkin’ to you or are you gonna be silly? I’m serious. Now, you got some money in the bank. You got money in the bank, ain’t you?”

  “Yes, I’ve got money in the bank,” said Mrs. Quill.

  “O.K. Well, you let me help you fix up the joint. I’ll take everything off your hands. All you got to do is lie back and enjoy the haul.”

  “Nonsense,” said Mrs. Quill.

  “Now come on,” said Toby, beginning to get angry. “I’m not askin’ you for nothin’ except maybe a little percentage in the place and a little cash to pay expenses for a while. I can do it all for you cheap and quick and I can manage the joint for you so that it won’t cost you much more than it’s costin’ you now.”

  “But I think that’s wonderful, Toby. I think it’s so wonderful.”

  “You don’t have to tell me it’s wonderful. I know it’s wonderful. It ain’t wonderful, it’s swell. It’s marvelous. We ain’t got no time to lose. Have another drink.”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “I’m spendin’ my last cent on you,” he said recklessly.

  Mrs. Quill was drunk by now and she just nodded her head.

  “It’s worth it.” He sat back in his chair and studied the horizon. He was very busy calculating in his head. “What percentage in the place do you think I ought to get? Don’t forget I’m gonna manage the whole thing for you for a year.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Quill, “I’m sure I haven’t got any idea.” She smiled at him blissfully.

  “O.K. How much advance will you give me just so I can stay on here until I get the place goin’?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, we’ll figure it this way,” said Toby cautiously. He was not sure yet that he had taken the right move. “We’ll figure it this way. I don’t want you to do more than you can. I want to go in this deal with you. You tell me how much money you got in the bank. Then I’ll figure out how much fixin’ the place up will cost you and then how much I think is a minimum for me. If you ain’t got much I’m not gonna let you go busted. You be honest with me and I’ll be honest with you.”

  “Toby,” said Mrs. Quill seriously, “don’t you think I’m an honest woman?”

  “What the hell,” said Toby, “do you think I’d put a proposition like that to you if I didn’t think you were?”

  “No, I guess you wouldn’t,” said Mrs. Quill sadly.

  “How much you got?” asked Toby, looking at her intently.

  “What?” asked Mrs. Quill.

  “How much money you got in the bank?”

  “I’ll show you, Toby. I’ll show you right away.” She started to fumble in her big black leather pocketbook.

  Toby had his jaw locked and his eyes averted from the face of Mrs. Quill.

  “Messy—messy—messy,” Mrs. Quill was saying. “I have everything in this pocketbook but the kitchen stove.”

  There was a very still look in Toby’s eyes as he stared first at the water and then at the palm trees. He considered that he had already won, and he was beginning to wonder whether or not it was really a good thing.

  “Dear me,” said Mrs. Quill, “I live just like a gypsy. Twenty-two fifty in the bank and I don’t even care.”
r />   Toby snatched the book from her hands. When he saw that the balance was marked twenty-two dollars and fifty cents, he rose to his feet and, clutching his napkin in one hand and his hat in the other, he walked off the terrace.

  After Toby had left the table so abruptly, Mrs. Quill felt deeply ashamed of herself.

  “He’s just so disgusted,” she decided, “that he can’t even look me in the face without feeling like throwing up. It’s because he thinks I’m balmy to go around gay as a lark with only twenty-two fifty in the bank. Well, well, I expect I’d better start worrying a little more. When he comes back I’ll tell him I’ll turn over a new leaf.”

  Everyone had left the terrace by now with the exception of the waiter who had served Mrs. Quill. He stood with his hands behind his back and stared straight ahead of him.

  “Sit down for a bit and talk to me,” said Mrs. Quill to him. “I’m lonesome on this dark old terrace. It’s really a beautiful terrace. You might tell me something about yourself. How much money have you got in the bank? I know you think I’m fresh to ask you, but I’d really like to know.”

  “Why not?” answered the waiter. “I’ve got about three hundred and fifty dollars in the bank.” He did not sit down.

  “Where did you get it?” asked Mrs. Quill.

  “From my uncle.”

  “I guess you feel pretty secure.”

  “No.”

  Mrs. Quill began to wonder whether or not Toby would come back at all. She pressed her hands together and asked the young waiter if he knew where the gentleman who had been sitting next to her had gone.

  “Home, I guess,” said the waiter.

  “Well, let’s just have one look in the lobby,” said Mrs. Quill nervously. She beckoned to the waiter to follow her.

  They went into the lobby and together they searched the faces of the guests, who were either standing around in groups or sitting along the wall in armchairs. The hotel was much livelier now than it had been when Mrs. Quill first arrived with Toby. She was deeply troubled and hurt at not seeing Toby anywhere.

  “I guess I’d better go home and let you get some sleep,” she said absentmindedly to the waiter, “but not before I’ve bought something for Pacifica.…” She had been trembling a little, but the thought of Pacifica filled her with assurance.

  “Such an awful, dreadful, mean thing to be alone in the world even for a minute,” she said to the waiter. “Come with me and help me choose something, nothing important, just some remembrance of the hotel.”

  “They’re all the same,” said the waiter, following her reluctantly. “Just a lot of junk. I don’t know what your friend wants. You might get her a little pocketbook with Panama painted on it.”

  “No, I want it to be specially marked with the name of the hotel.”

  “Well,” said the waiter, “most people don’t go in for that.”

  “Oh my—oh my,” said Mrs. Quill emphatically, “must I always be told what other people do? I’ve had just about enough of it.” She marched up to the magazine stand and said to the young man behind the counter: “Now, I want something with Hotel Washington written on it. For a woman.”

  The man looked through his stock and pulled out a handkerchief on the corner of which were painted two palm trees and the words: Souvenir of Panama.

  “Most people prefer this, though,” he said, drawing a tremendous straw hat from under the counter and placing it on his own head.

  “You see, it gives you as much shadow as an umbrella and it is very becoming.” There was nothing written on the hat at all.

  “That handkerchief,” continued the young man, “most people consider it kind of, you know…”

  “My dear young man,” said Mrs. Quill, “I expressly told you that I wanted this gift to bear the words Hotel Washington and if possible also a picture of the hotel.”

  “But, lady, nobody wants that. People don’t want pictures of hotels on their souvenirs. Palm trees, sunsets, sometimes even bridges, but not hotels.”

  “Do you or do you not have anything that bears the words Hotel Washington?” said Mrs. Quill, raising her voice.

  The salesman was beginning to get angry. “I do have,” he said, his eyes flashing, “if you will wait one minute please, madam.” He opened a little gate and went out into the lobby. He was back in a short time carrying a heavy black ash-tray which he set on the counter in front of Mrs. Quill. The name of the hotel was stamped in the center of the ash-tray in yellow lettering.

  “Is this the type of thing you wanted?” asked the salesman.

  “Why, yes,” said Mrs. Quill, “it is.”

  “All right, madam, that’ll be fifty cents.”

  “That’s not worth fifty cents.” whispered the waiter to Mrs. Quill.

  Mrs. Quill looked through her purse; she was able to find no more than a quarter in change and no bills at all.

  “Look,” she said to the young man, “I’m the proprietress of the Hotel de las Palmas. I will show you my bank book with my address written in the front of it. Are you going to trust me with this ash-tray just this once? You see, I came with a gentleman friend and we had a falling out and he went home ahead of me.”

  “I can’t help that, madam,” said the salesman.

  Meanwhile one of the assistant managers who had been watching the group at the magazine stand from another corner of the lobby thought it time to intervene. He was exceedingly suspicious of Mrs. Quill, who did not appear to him to measure up to the standard of the other guests in any way, not even from a distance. He also wondered what could possibly be keeping the waiter standing in front of the magazine stand for such a long while. He walked over to them looking as serious and as thoughtful as he was able.

  “Here’s my bank book,” Mrs. Quill was saying to the salesman.

  The waiter, seeing the assistant manager approaching, was frightened and immediately presented Mrs. Quill with the check for the drinks she and Toby had consumed together.

  “You owe six dollars on the terrace,” he said to Mrs. Quill.

  “Didn’t he pay for them?” she said. “I guess he must have been in an awful state.”

  “Can I help you?” the assistant manager asked of Mrs. Quill.

  “I’m sure you can,” she said. “I’m the owner of the Hotel de las Palmas.”

  “I’m sorry,” the manager said, “but I’m not familiar with the Hotel de las Palmas.”

  “Well,” said Mrs. Quill, “I have no money with me. I came here with a gentleman, we had a falling out, but I have my bank book here with me which will prove to you that I will have the money as soon as I can run over to the bank tomorrow. I can’t sign a check because it’s in the savings bank.”

  “I’m sorry,” said the assistant manager, “but we extend credit only to guests residing in the hotel.”

  “I do that too, in my hotel,” said Mrs. Quill, “unless it is something out of the ordinary.”

  “We make a rule of never extending credit…”

  “I wanted to take this ash-tray home to my girl friend. She admires your hotel.”

  “That ash-tray is the property of the Hotel Washington,” said the assistant manager, frowning sternly at the salesman, who said quickly: “She wanted something with Hotel Washington written on it. I didn’t have anything so I thought I’d sell her one of these—for fifty cents,” he added, winking at the assistant manager, who was standing farther and farther back on his heels.

  “These ash-trays,” he repeated, “are the property of the Hotel Washington. We have only a limited number of them in stock and every available tray is in constant use.”

  The salesman, not caring to have anything more to do with the ash-tray lest he lose his job, carried it back to the table from which he had originally removed it and took up his position again behind the counter.

  “Do you want either the handkerchief or the hat?” he asked of Mrs. Quill as though nothing had happened.

  “She’s got all the hats and the hankies she needs,” said
Mrs. Quill. “I suppose I’d better go home.”

  “Would you care to come to the desk with me and settle the bill?” asked the assistant manager.

  “Well, if you’ll just wait until tomorrow—”

  “I’m afraid it is definitely against the rules of the hotel, madam. If you’ll just step this way with me.” He turned to the waiter, who was following the conversation intently. “Te necesitan afuera,” he said to him, “go on.”

  The waiter was about to say something, but he decided against it and walked slowly away towards the terrace. Mrs. Quill began to cry.

  “Wait a minute,” she said, taking a handkerchief from her bag. “Wait a minute—I would like to telephone to my friend Pacifica.”

  The assistant manager pointed in the direction of the telephone booths, and she hurried away, her face buried in her handkerchief. Fifteen minutes later she returned, crying more pitifully than before.

  “Mrs. Copperfield is coming to get me—I told her all about it. I think I’ll sit down somewhere and wait.”

  “Does Mrs. Copperfield have the necessary funds with which to cover your bill?”

  “I don’t know,” said Mrs. Quill, walking away from him.

  “You mean you don’t know whether or not she will be able to pay your bill?”

  “Yes, yes, she’ll pay my bill. Please let me sit down over there.”

  The manager nodded. Mrs. Quill fell into an armchair that stood beside a tall palm tree. She covered her face with her hands and continued to cry.

  Twenty minutes later Mrs. Copperfield arrived. In spite of the heat she was wearing a silver-fox cape which she had brought with her for use only in higher altitudes.

  Although she was perspiring and badly made up, she felt assured of being treated with a certain amount of deference by the hotel employees because of the silver-fox cape.

  She had awakened quite some time before and was again a little drunk. She rushed up to Mrs. Quill and kissed her on the top of her head.

  “Where’s the man who made you cry?” she asked.

  Mrs. Quill looked around through her tear-veiled eyes and pointed to the assistant manager. Mrs. Copperfield beckoned to him with her index finger.