“Three hundred and eighty-four,” Purcell said quickly and hoped he was close. “Better than the first of December last year.”
“Really, Dave? Could be better, though. Should be. Full house on the first in forty-five. Ate grits and grunts if they had to. Never knew how they all got here but the point is that they did.”
“That’s an interesting point, sir,” Purcell said. “I’d like to go into that with you later.” He wondered what he was going to say next. If he kept talking, poor little Street could have a breather. He wheeled suddenly—a trick he’d learned from the Old Man himself, and tipped a haphazard wink at Mary. What a beating she took!
“Christmas . . .” Purcell began. “We’ve got to merchandise Christmas this year. Give them a real show.” It wasn’t much but it was a beginning. Mr. Wenton looked up with a glimmer of interest. Eliza, cross that ice! “The trouble is, Mr. Wenton, people don’t want to leave home.” He knew it was a blatant lie, that the railroads and airlines were already sold out for the holidays, that the garish new Miami hotels were booked solid and he knew that the Old Man knew it, too.
“I’m not so sure about that, Dave,” Mr. Wenton said. “All those houses down in Miami are doing big things for Christmas—not that a Christian could get in. Why, the Tropi-cayne is having a twenty-foot tree made of orchids and there’s already one of white fox fur at the Du Plage. Very vulgar, I think.”
“You’re right, Mr. Wenton. One hundred per cent right,” Purcell went on desperately. “And that’s what we’ve got to fight—the crass commercialism, the ostentation, the Hollywood approach.”
Mr. Wenton winced at the word “Hollywood.” Purcell knew that he was at last on the right track. “Our Christmas has to have class, just like the house. It should be refined, restrained and traditional. Christmas here should bear the stamp of J. Arthur Wenton.”
The Old Man smiled, preened,
“Christmas should mean family, kids, snow. A real, old-fashioned Merry Christmas.”
“By God, that’s it, Dave!” Mr. Wenton said. “A real, old-fashioned Merry Christmas! How well you understand me!”
Purcell could see it now: Artificial snow in the Pleasaunce; potted poinsettias in every room; a bartender in a red suit with real nylon whiskers handing out eggnog on the house; a ski slide in the lobby—have to sit on it, of course. Purcell suddenly found himself so full of ideas for merchandising Christmas that he began to think it wasn’t bad. We Three Kings of Orient Arrrrre! No-el, No-el, No-ell, No-ellll! Bob Cratchit. Tiny Tim. Ernie, the room-service waiter, would be splendid on crutches. If necessary he’d break Ernie’s leg himself. Ernie could make enough on tips to buy a motel and retire.
“Dave, my boy,” the Old Man said feelingly. “You understand me. It’s a matter of two minds with but a single thought. Now you work out the details. Details. Details. No time for executive thought. No time for executive thought.” And again he shuddered delicately, gripping his brow. “Another letter from Pallas Athene,” he observed, pushing the mail away.
“And what about T. J. Sturt?” Purcell said quickly. “I’m afraid there was yet another Mrs. T. J. Sturt in his room last night.”
“Mmmmmmm,” the Old Man said indulgently. “A little wild perhaps, but a splendid family. Good stock. He’ll settle down. Plenty of money. Nothing to worry about.”
Mary relaxed behind her typewriter with a sigh. If she was careful, Mr. Wenton probably wouldn’t notice her any more than he did the rest of the furniture for a while. He always seemed to enjoy talking to Mr. Purcell.
“. . . and their defecating cat,” he continued. That would be the Mellotts’ Chiang, she supposed. She didn’t like Chiang very well herself, but Mr. Wenton made everything sound so awful. Mrs. Dukemer and Mr. Purcell swore a lot too, but there was something sort of cute about the way they did it. A lump rose in Mary’s throat. She was suddenly very lonely, very far from home.
Florida hadn’t been a bit the way Darlene had told her it would be, except maybe for Darlene. Mary didn’t like to think of herself as a quitter, but if she had the money, she’d catch the very next bus for Centralia. Dad would send the fare like a shot but she didn’t want to admit defeat. She’d made her letters home a little too convincing, she decided.
Mary thought about her old job on the Centralia Sentinel. Mr. White had certainly never called her a Mammalia Centralia, whatever that was, when she was his secretary. Almost everyone had been nice and she had had a good time at home, too. Playing Canasta with Mother and Dad and Bud. Trying out a new Betty Crocker recipe. Making a summer dress on the sewing machine that looked like an end table. There was always lots of milk and cokes, cold beer in the Frigidaire at home. And the food!
Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin were awfully nice, she supposed. Mr. Baldwin had asthma. He was terribly thin and somehow Mrs. Baldwin’s cooking didn’t seem to satisfy her either. Half an hour after dinner she’d be at the drugstore for a chocolate ice cream with marshmallow dope.
She wondered where Darlene was now. The last Mary had heard of her, she’d been in Las Vegas. Mary felt a grudging admiration for Darlene. Darlene hadn’t stayed in Florida very long. Even if she had started it. She and Darlene had been best friends since they had been in the fourth grade. (There had been a lot of talk, even then, about Darlene and the Bittner boys but Mary hadn’t believed a word of it.) They had stayed friends, too, even after they graduated from High and Darlene went to work in the A. C. Brown Shoe Factory, while Mary went on to business college.
The big, double room at the Baldwins’ hadn’t been lonely with Darlene in it even some of the time. Her perfume, her talcum, her bath salts, her dresses, even her dirty underwear, her stockings on the towel rack, were sentient parts without her, alive with Darlene.
Darlene had talked Florida up for maybe as long as a year before she had been able to get Mary to agree to go, telling Mary how they would go down by bus and stop off a lot of different places, see the country. They could go swimming in the ocean every day, lie around on the beach. Orange juice and sun tan and rich husbands would be marvelously theirs. Dad hadn’t wanted her to go. He’d said that she was too young, that she’d never been any farther away from home than St. Louis and Chicago, that the world was an evil place. Mary didn’t suppose that she’d ever have had nerve enough to do it if it hadn’t been for phrenology. Mother believed in it. She was always looking for marital bumps on the fellows who came to see Mary, kept going on about it even at breakfast.
Mary’s mother hadn’t been able to find a marital bump on any of the boys Mary went around with except Ronald Kohler, and even Mary’s mother hadn’t liked Ronald. It had used to make Mary so darned embarrassed when her mother started maneuvering around a new boy until she’d had a good look at the back of his head.
Her mother meant well, she knew that. Mother only wanted Mary to get a good husband, a nice steady fellow like Dad, but it had made Mary feel like such a darned fool to have mother gauging a new man’s intentions before he even had time to hand her his hat, Mr. Purcell’s marital bump, now, was pretty well developed, but Mr. Wenton didn’t seem to have any. She giggled. Mother would have loved Mr. Purcell. . . .
She and Darlene had arrived in Miami on Friday, just before the hurricane. It was raining quite a lot and the sky had been a funny color, like hot lead. “You don’t want to go to no beach hotel today, girls,” the cab driver said. “I’ll take you to the Seminole. It’s been there a long time.”
Darlene had said that there was no point in getting a room. They’d clean up in the Ladies, check their bags and have something to eat, drop into the bar for a beer.
It had all been sort of fun, at first, but it kept getting darker and darker and the rain came down like nothing she’d ever seen before and the wind howled and there seemed to be more and more people around, looking worried, and out in the wet night she could hear things crashing and breaking. It was just palm branches and glass and street signs and fancy store fronts, but she hadn’t known that then.
> Darlene made friends a lot quicker than Mary did. Darlene had been talking to a couple of Cubans, and then somehow the Cubans had been buying them a drink, and then after-while they had all gone up to somebody’s room for a drink and the one Cuban had flashed his teeth and sort of grabbed at Darlene saying, “You wear size fourteen, Yes? You are be-au-di-ful, No?”
Then Darlene had seemed to disappear into an adjoining room, and the other Cuban—his name was Mr, Santos—had made Mary a Rum Collins and they had talked about bananas for a while until he, too, had started flashing his teeth and saying that she was be-au-di-ful, No?
Mary knocked at the door that Darlene had disappeared into, and called her and said that she thought they’d better be going now, but Darlene hadn’t answered and the door had been locked.
Panic carried Mary suddenly into the hall, down an intricate maze of corridors. She had been lost then: one strip of red carpeting looking like another, leading nowhere. Blundering into an enclosed fire escape, she sat down abruptly on the first step. The concrete was very cold, and the wind went Oh-ohohohoh-e-e-e-e-e-ee. Eee-ohohohoh-oh-e-e-e-ee. Darlene had found her there as gray daylight began to mix with the hard incandescence of a naked light bulb on the landing. The rain was slackening now, but the wind still went Oh-ohohoh-oh-e-e-e-ee. Eee-ohohohohoh-ee-e-e. . . .
Mary was aware of scraps of talk. Julie Templar. The Lyric Women. Pallas Athene Smith. Firing poor old Mr. Tilney. Chiang, again, “—receipt of your esteemed letter comma and beg to advise that three adjoining suites will be held pending your anticipated arrival—” Mary’s hands moved lightly, in swift co-ordination with her stenographer’s notebook. What she wouldn’t give to be back home right now, never see Mr. Wenton again.
Darlene had been lucky, she decided. Mary had been a mail clerk and Darlene had had a job in Accounting. That was before Miss Williams had her nervous breakdown. If Mr. Purcell hadn’t told Mr. Wenton about her, how fast she was, she’d probably still be a mail clerk. Gee, he was nice.
Anyhow, Darlene had met Ralph Strawbridge who played the electric guitar in the Fontainebleau Room, and it had been the real thing. They had been married within two weeks. Ralph was a nice boy and he seemed to be just crazy about Darlene. Darlene was maybe getting up about now, taking an aspirin, smoking a cigarette like she’d never get one again, drinking black coffee, walking around without a stitch the way she did.
Purcell closed the door discreetly and headed for the bar, the double Scotch he had promised himself. He was just about the best-looking thing this side of . . . But Mary couldn’t really think of anyone with whom to compare Mr. Purcell.
“Mary, you dull bitch,” Mr. Wenton said suddenly. “How many days till Christmas?” Little Street’s heart pounded. Her mouth went dry. She was afflicted with a sort of paralysis. If Mr. Wenton asked me my name now, I couldn’t tell him.
“Don’t you ever listen when I’m talking to you, Miss Mucus?” the Old Man asked with dangerous politeness. “Get out of here, you midden! Be back in five minutes!” he roared.
311-12
“Dear—” Mr. E. J. Westbury said.
“Yes, dear,” said Mrs. E. J. Westbury.
“I’m. going to get some golf again, dear.”
“Out with the boys, dear?”
“Yes, dear,” E. J. said and sighed.
Mrs. E. J. sighed too, pulled the sheet over her head, turned and went back to her dream. The dream had been very pleasant, it had indicated Mrs. Westbury’s social acceptability.
Mrs. Tewksberry—the Mrs. Tewksberry—had invited her to see her garden. Mrs. Tewksberry had called Mrs. Westbury Nona and Mrs. Westbury had called Mrs. Tewksberry Jane. “Call me plain Jane,” Mrs. Tewksberry had said and then she had removed her pink transformation and taken off out of the garden with the transformation clamped to her breast like water wings. Mrs. Westbury was left alone in the garden, and as the familiar sensation returned, she awoke.
It was reassuring to have dreamed of Mrs. Tewksberry, but privately, Mrs. Westbury did not approve of her, and it was disturbing. Mrs. Westbury considered Mrs. Tewksberry fast and common but there was no disputing her position. She did not even find Mrs. Tewksberry amusing, because Mrs. Westbury was all grave purpose and there was no room for amusement in her.
Mrs. Westbury would have liked to go to the bathroom but Mom had always told her that the best time to go was right after breakfast. In death, Mrs. Westbury referred to Mom, now happily sanctified, as Maume. Mom had been a wonderful woman, she reflected, and called Room Service.
But the trouble was that with Maume dead, Nona Westbury didn’t know any more whom to like, what to do. Mom had always told her things like that. Maume was, now, a presentable shade, a marble mother with blind eyes, eyes blind now to calculation, to the sensible bettering of one’s self.
Mrs. Tewksberry wasn’t even refined, Mrs. Westbury thought. Mrs. Tewksberry was fat and wore that awful pink hair and told dirty stories about everybody but she was terribly important. Her sly barbs and her great, booming laugh were considered formidable indictments among people who counted. Mrs. Westbury felt that she ought to like Mrs. Tewksberry, with her own island and that armful of bracelets and her yacht—not that it was such a very big one.
Mom could have told her what to do in a minute. Mom had had the instinct. Mom used to tell Nona whether or not to like the most impossible little girls, with no more to go on than the quality of their hair ribbons.
If it hadn’t been for Mom, Nona didn’t suppose she would ever even have married E. J., but Mom had recognized his possibilities while he was still in knickers and time had proved her right. Nona had set herself to liking E. J., since it was the thing to do, and it hadn’t been very long before he was taking quite a lot of notice of her. When E. J. was fourteen, he had been fattish and his nose had run a lot, but now it simply frightened Nona to think of his income tax.
Ernie, the room-service waiter, wheeled in Mrs. Westbury’s breakfast.
Mom had seen her married to E. J. and then, her mission complete, had died. In a way, it was probably better that Mom had died. She wouldn’t have fitted in with the kind of people that E. J. knew now, but it would have been wonderful to have been able to go and see Mom sometimes, all by herself, and have Mom tell her what to do.
Mrs. Westbury picked at her avocado. “Nasty, greasy, tasteless thing,” she said, but she supposed that she had to eat it. Everyone who counted raved about avocado so she supposed that probably it was pretty good. It was just that she couldn’t learn to like it. She thought some more about her dream. She could like Mrs. Tewksberry better, she decided, if only she could manage to see a little more of her. They had met twice and that had been that.
And she had thought that she was going to have such a good time down here. She had some really wonderful clothes. She wore them, of course, but what good was that if no one saw them who really mattered. Mrs. Westbury finished her avocado resolutely and went to the bathroom with considerable satisfaction. Mom had been a wonderful woman.
After Mrs. Westbury made up her face, she felt pretty lonely again, discouraged. It was terrible, trying to think up things to do, get through the day. At home, where she could talk to the children or go to the movies or give detailed instructions to the maid and the man, it was bad enough.
She could go to the movies here but that wasn’t what she had come South for. She had thought that here, in Florida, she would finally meet people who really counted. Back home in Grosse Pointe she had seen herself the center of a gay, laughing group of the elect, but the nearest that she had come to gay, laughing groups had been in the bar, and they had all been at other tables.
E. J. certainly wasn’t any fun, not that he ever had been. Although she supposed that he was having a good enough time in his own way. E. J. got up early and played golf all day and got back to the hotel just in time to dress for dinner. After that, he drank double bourbons until bedtime. Mrs. Westbury sighed. She wished that E. J. would drink Scotch instead of that old
bourbon. Everyone who really belonged seemed to drink Scotch but she couldn’t get E. J. to change. He just said he didn’t like the damned stuff.
Mrs. Westbury decided finally that she would go down and have a swim. She looked out over the ocean. It wouldn’t be much fun all by herself but she had a new, black bathing suit, pure silk, and maybe the dream had meant that something was going to happen. She couldn’t stand it here all winter if it didn’t. They would just have to give up and go back home.
It was pleasant on the beach—far pleasanter than the hotel pool. The sun was hot and strong and a soft, warm breeze caressed her breast and legs. She watched the alternate advance and retreat of the sand tits, and rollers broke over her feet in a series of ecstatic little green explosions. Mrs. Westbury swam adequately, if not well, and she started for the sand bar. She could see it, a long, white ribbon wavering through the blue water ahead.
She swam easily, enjoying the motion, the salty breeze, the playful little swells. A well-muscled man in his early thirties caught her eye, smiled, and swam toward her. Fresh thing! Mrs. Westbury thought.
“There’s a hole along in here,” he shouted. “If you aren’t a good swimmer, you’d better go back. Want any help?”
Men! Mrs. Westbury thought, and exerted herself to reach the sand bar. They only thought about one thing, always after you. It was bad enough to have to put up with E. J.
“Go away!” she said. The man turned and was hidden quickly behind a wave and Mrs. Westbury continued, unmolested, through the blue water. All that she could see was blue water. There wasn’t, she thought exultantly, a man in sight.
A cramp bit into Mrs. Westbury without warning. She struggled, but in sudden, incredulous panic she felt herself going down. She went down so far that she didn’t think she’d ever come up again but she did, slowly, gasping and fighting. The second time was even worse.
The Pink Hotel Page 6
