The Pink Hotel

by Patrick Dennis; Dorothy Erskine

  “Charming,” Mrs. Conyngham said, “rilly charming.”

  “Chowmin’, Edie?” Peggy Furman said in her thick, fake Southern accent. “Why, it’s dowlin’, that’s what it is, honeh. Dowlin’!”

  “Quite so, dear,” Mrs. Conyngham said. “Rilly charming.”

  Edythe Conyngham and Peggy Furman, the Social Hostess, hated one another so intensely that they always made a point of conversing a great deal in public, their repartee salted with endearments, peppered with slightly upstaging corrections. Purcell couldn’t for the life of him understand why they disliked one another so much. Conyngham and Furman had many things in common—poverty, pretense, loneliness, frustration and a tendency toward alcoholism that should have made them inseparable. They were both on the make, although the disparity in their ages had rendered them noncompetitive in the matrimonial sweepstakes. But hate they did and in their loathing of one another they became even more nauseatingly gracious and false under public scrutiny.

  “Dowlin’,” Furman added, determined to have the last word.

  “If I may—” Purcell started.

  “Good King Wensez-louse looked out on the Feast of Stee-vun” the carolers bawled.

  Conyngham sat up with a jerk, her blue-lidded eyes popping open catatonically. Then she settled back with a pathetic little clink of bangles and charm bracelets to wait out the siege of song.

  Down the green baize table Purcell noticed Sandy Sands, who was almost as permanent a fixture in the hotel as the Old Man himself. Sandy had run through three wives, six toupees and forty mistresses leading the band in the Fontainebleau Room. The hotel’s supper club had been called the Palm Room, the Surf Room, the Casa Sevilla, the Maisonette Hongroise, the Regency Room and the Embassy Club in past incarnations. Only its pillars and Sandy remained unchanged, and even the pillars were said to be disintegrating under the steady bump-bump-bump of Sandy Sands and his Imperial Floridians. Save for an occasional foray down the corridor to the room of his current mistress, Sandy was rarely seen before seven in the evening when, trimly corseted beneath his dinner jacket, he appeared in the rose glory of the spotlight, lean, bronzed and muscular under a bewitching tangle of red-gold ringlets. For thirty years people had been remarking about how youthful Sandy looked for a man of forty. But this afternoon, in the cold light of the Salle Chinoise, Sandy looked every minute of his sixty. His ultraviolet tan reminded Purcell more of hepatitis than sun-drenched beaches. His golden hairpiece rode unsteadily on the crest of his brilliantined side waves, the mesh surrounding its widow’s peak gooey with spirit gum. Sandy had left off his girdle and his contact lenses so that both his eyes and his diaphragm seemed to reach out over the table in helpless supplication. He reached furtively into the pocket of his too-blue cashmere jacket and popped a pill into his mouth. Then he silenced what might have been a Wagnerian belch and settled back into his chair, an expression on his seamed face that made Purcell think of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian. Sitting beside Sandy was his current soloist and mistress, a shrill doxie with the improbable name of Claire de Lune, who had so far slept with Sandy, the pianist, the percussion man, Purcell, six of the hotel staff, T. J. Sturt, III, and eleven other guests and the season hadn’t really begun. Claire looked tired. She stifled a yawn and gathered her platinum mink stole around her shoulders with a sinuous little shudder. It was only about eighty-five degrees in the room.

  Beyond Claire, Purcell saw five men who were foreign to the hotel staff. Could they be guests? Never! They looked faintly familiar but, other than in a police lineup, Purcell couldn’t imagine where he had seen any of them before. Then he remembered. The first man ran a talent agency and was providing the choristers who, even now, were making the rafters ring with “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” The next man ran a company that made large commercial displays for such traditional feasts as Easter, Thanksgiving, the January White Sales and, of course, Christmas. Beside him sat a flinty-eyed Swede who sold sound effects and recording equipment. Next came an entrepreneur in live animals. That was right. There were to be eight real reindeer standing in the artificial snow of the Pleasaunce. And finally a slick little man from Miami who dealt in slightly soiled costumes for masquerades, pageants and amateur theatricals.

  With a start, Purcell realized that he, David Underdown Purcell, had been responsible for this conference, this travesty on Christmas. “What have I done?” he asked himself aloud.

  “What say, Dave, dear boy?” Mr. Wenton asked.

  Purcell looked up startled. The singing had stopped. The room was still.

  “Charming,” Mrs. Conyngham said. “Rilly charming.”

  “Dowlin’,” Furman offered.

  The trio stood nervously about, looking as though they’d give their souls for cold showers and reefers all around.

  “Well?” their agent said pregnantly.

  “Well, I don’t know,” Mr. Wenton said. “It’s not very original, but. . .”

  “Oh, but it’s so charming, Mr. Wenton,” Mrs. Conyngham said, coming suddenly, vivaciously to life. “Like the Christmases at home when I was just a tiny little girl. I remember how the help used to come up to our big veranda and serenade us. And then we always had this rilly enormous Christmas tree lighted only by candles with our footmen—these two lovable old darkies—stationed beside the tree with—hahahaha—big, wet sponges tied to the poles in case anything caught on. . .”

  Peggy Furman rolled her eyes dangerously in Mrs. Conyngham’s direction. It was tacitly understood that while their backgrounds were supposed to be equally aristocratic, Mrs. Conyngham’s territory was to be above the Mason-Dixon line, Furman’s below.

  “Did yoah dahkies really do that ‘way up in New Yoke City, Edie honeh?” Furman asked dangerously. “Ah’d always though yew came from Yankee stock.”

  “Of course, Peggy darling,” Mrs. Conyngham said velvetly. “But we always spent Christmas down on the Eastern Shore of Maryland with the—”

  “Yes, yes,” Mr. Wenton said, interrupting Edythe’s girlhood reveries. Ordinarily the Old Man would have sat rapt in a burning building, only too happy to be a part of any conversation that had to do with the haut monde. It was Mrs. Conyngham’s only hold on him. But today he was more than Wenton the Gentleman, he was Wenton the Gentleman Executive. Turning briskly toward Sandy Sands he said, “You’re the musician, Sandy, old man. What do you think?” Sandy Sands sat up straight, fought down another wave of flatulence and moistened his lips. Known for his profanity and his frank appraisal of other musicians—almost as damning as their appraisals of him—he was also notorious for his tact whenever his contract was up for renewal. “Well Jesus, Art,” Sandy began dulcetly. “Course it’s corn. Square as a city block. But what the hell. For Chrissakes, that’s what Chriss-mus is for, isn’t it. A mean so’s a lotta cornballs can sit up and weep over White Chrissmus’ an’ Sanny Claus Is Comin’ to Town’ an’ crap like that. Well, what the hell. . .” He sensed, rather than saw the menacing look in Mr. Wenton’s eye. “Sure, Art, I say that for a coupla days before Chrissmus it’s okay. It’s sorta, well, hell, it’s sorta quaint.”

  “That’s it,” the Old Man said. “It’s quaint. Are you getting all this, Miss Street? That’s the feeling I want to get. Quaint. Homey. Just folks—nice folks, of course. Nothing too chichi, too Miami. Just a real, old-fashioned, merry. . .”

  For the first time Purcell was conscious of Mary Street. She sat nervously at a cramped corner of the table writing furiously in her notebook. How like the Old Man to want every vulgar word, every inane comment recorded for posterity. Purcell wondered if poor little Mary had been required to put down the lyrics to the Christmas carols.

  Ah, she was so sweet, so pretty and clean and sweet, the only person in this room—in the whole hotel, practically—who had any notion of what Christmas was all about.

  As he thought of Mary he could hear snatches of the conference going on about him.

  “An’ then when Desire and Dolores finish their Christmas tango
,” Sandy was saying, “all the lights in the Fountain-blow Room go off an’ Claire, here, comes out in this ole-fashion costume and sings ‘Silunt Night’ with a sprig of mistletoe pinned onto her muff.”

  “Onto my what?” Claire de Lune said ominously.

  “It’s parta yer costume, baby,” Sandy said. “Then there’s this chime effect and all the boys in the band . . .”

  Purcell looked again at Mary, his darling girl. He watched the top of her lovely head bent forward as her pencil flew across the pages of her shorthand book. The angel, he thought. My beautiful angel. If I could only catch her eye. Tell her that I. . .

  The talk swirled around his head.

  “Now, we’ll go over the whole Christmas celebration just once more,” Mr. Wenton was saying. “Now, just as my able assistant, Mr. Purcell, has said, we won’t give them even a hint that we’re planning to do anything about Christmas. It’ll be pure Florida—sun, sand and surf—right up until midnight of December twenty-third. And then, on the eve of Christmas Eve, up goes the tree, up go the wreaths, up goes the mistletoe. Out with the Yule log. You’ll have the air conditioning in the lobby turned ‘way up, won’t you, Henderson?” he asked the engineer. “We hit ‘em where they live. Nothing crass, nothing commercial. A real, old-fashioned merry. . .”

  I wonder what would happen, Purcell thought, if I were to get up right now—right here in front of all these people—and ask her to marry me. I wonder . . .

  “This rilly enormous Christmas tree simply covered with candles and our footmen—these two lovable old darkies-posted on either side with wet sponges on . . .”

  “Down home, on ouah plantation, we always had a big ole. . .”

  “Fire department give us fits, Mrs. Conyngham, if we use real candles. But we got these kinds beeswax electruck candles. Can’t tell the difference ten feet away.”

  “Then I can draw up the contracks for the boys? They start caroling—in costume, of course—at the pool aroun’ say lunchtime on the twenny-fourth an’. . .”

  “But what do reindeer eat? Ah’ve got enough to do already, plannin’ all those ole Christmas games an’ the big Aig Nog Pout-ty. Ah doan think it’s fai-yuh fo’ the Social Hostiss ta hafta plan meals fo’ eight reindeer . . .”

  “Sketches for the costumes right here. All be cleaned and pressed. Now here’s da coachman outfit for da doorman. Fit him fine. An’ ‘en I t’ought da lifeguards—jus’ fer da one week—a paira red trunks an’ a paira green trunks widda sequin holly spray imbroider on da. . .”

  “Yes, of course, Mr. Wenton. Francois can cook a hog’s head, but who’d eat one?”

  “Oh, for Chrissake, the boys in the band could do it in a walk. They been singing ‘White Chrissmus’ for God only knows how long. An’ the chime effeck is. . .”

  “Ya mean I jus’ stand out there on the Boor in all that fur an’ a hoop skirt an’ sing it straight, Sandy?”

  My beautiful Mary, Purcell thought, hoping there was something to mental telepathy. Just look up at me this once.

  “Of gourse, Mr. Wenton. They are all ordered. One poin-settia plant for each bedroom and a small decorated tree for each suite. A larcher tree for Miss Templar’s suite. Everything-g is arranged. My son has seen to it. The holly. Of that I am not sure, but we egspect. . .”

  “Yes, Mr. Wenton. The maids all undastand. One of them—those—little tarlatan stockings-like hung on every child’s door Christmas morning. There’s just one thing, Mr. Wenton: There aren’t but three children in the whole ho-tel.”

  “. . . and then the record that goes ‘Hohoho! Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night’ piped over the P. A. system. An’ then the bells. An’ then . . .”

  Anything you say, Mary sweetheart. I may be the crown prince in the snappiest dump in town, but I’d give it all up for you. I’d have to, anyhow. I’ll get a job in another hotel, Mary. We’ll scrimp and save until we can get a little place of our own. I don’t care if it’s only a flophouse. With you to help me we can turn it into the goddamnedest best hotel in the whole state of Florida. Do you hear me, darling? I haven’t much to offer but. . .

  “Mr. Purcell! Mr. Purcell!”

  Purcell was jarred back to life by the urgent voice of the bell captain.

  “Wh-what. . .”

  “See here, young man,” J. Arthur boomed grandly from the head of the table. “This is a closed conference. I distinctly said no interruption. I—”

  “I know, Mr. Wenton, sir, but—”

  “But you choose to come barging into my conference room when—”

  “This is important, Mr. Wenton, sir. There’s been something terrible happen. A kidnapping!”

  The Imperial Suite

  Little Jane Jeremy had been born into an untenable position; a position that a harder head than hers would have found difficult to sustain. As the daughter of an acknowledged genius—her real father was the brilliant Michel Jeremy although that, of course, was several fathers back-little Jane was expected to be a genius as well. And since her mother, Julie Templar, was considered to be one of the twelve most beautiful women in the world, comparisons in that quarter were unfavorable too. At six, people were already saying that she would never have her mother’s legs.

  For all the simple elegance of her clothes and her precocious French, little Jane was not a distinguished child. She was all very well, as little girls go, but through an unfortunate reversal of genes her mother had not made her beautiful and her father had not made her brilliant. Little Jane had inherited her beautiful mother’s practical peasant mind, her famous father’s sharp nose, his full, pouting underlip. About all that could be said for Janie was that she was small for her age.

  To make everything worse, she was losing her teeth. What incisors she had were loose or in a ragged transitional state, and she refused to wear the darling little denture that Julie had had fitted for her except when one of her uncles or a new father was around. It hurt, but she was reasonable enough to want to look her best at such times and to realize that Julie wouldn’t know whether she were wearing it or not except on occasions of state like Getting Married or Divorced or Custody. All of Janie’s fathers adopted her legally; they insisted upon it, and then when everything was over and everyone was just awfully good friends, there were complications.

  Janie didn’t really mind because she was enough Julie’s child to enjoy a little excitement, and because her mother was certainly the most beautiful woman in the world except when she got up in the mornings. Janie didn’t think Julie was so bad even then; it was only her face, her body was lovely, soft and warm and sweet in its perfumed transparencies and it stuck in and out at the right places.

  A lot of fathers and uncles apparently thought so too, didn’t mind the slight puffiness under Julie’s eyes, the faint lines around her mouth. Julie was really beautiful, of course, later in the day; so beautiful that Janie wore her denture gladly in love, only hesitating a little over a sharp bargain like No Poached Eggs or a Napoleon instead of Junket, but knowing that she was going to give in anyhow, the way her fathers and uncles always did when they saw Julie again in the morning, felt and smelled her as Janie had seen them do.

  Janie was a well-adjusted child, civil and reasonable to all of her fathers and uncles because she sensed that they were only temporary and that Julie would always come back to her. Just now though, she was rather bored and lonely and inclined to feel sorry for herself, for Julie had been off to South America with a new uncle for a while.

  Janie always knew that Julie would come back when she said, and that when she did, the uncle would have changed into a new father. She would get a lot of presents and be adopted again and have Napoleons and petits fours and eclairs for dessert. It would be very satisfactory. She would sleep on curlers and wear her denture every day to please Julie and by now, with the experience she had had, a new father was no obstacle at all; she would curtsy and lisp a little and manage to be charming. With Julie in thin, scented silk, sticking in and out the way she
did, with the dark smudges under her eyes that seemed to come with a new father, and her hair tied back with a blue velvet bow the color of the famous Templar eyes, little Jane didn’t think that her new uncle would be inclined to be critical even when he turned into a father.

  Still, until Julie came back she was bored, bored with Mam’selle, with poached eggs, with perennially blue skies and Conversational French. She wasn’t even interested in South America, because she figured that even if she and Julie did go there, it wouldn’t be for long.

  Little Janie gave Mam’selle quite a bit of trouble when Julie was away because it made things more interesting for both of them, Mam’selle couldn’t really do anything, and the only part of Mam’selle that stuck out was her teeth.

  The only person that Jane really liked now was Ernie. Ernie was a room-service boy and he seemed to know the way she felt about poached eggs. He supposed, he said, that he had seen the Browne-Smythes eat about a million of them thinks, and he always slipped her a piece of bubble gum when she had to have them. Bubble gum was proscribed because of Janie’s denture; it was deliciously illicit, and Ernie knew it.

  Ernie was older than Janie but he wasn’t old the way Julie and Mam’selle and everyone else were. He seemed to understand the way it was, even when she followed adventure down concrete fire escapes or hid from poached eggs under strange beds.

  Ernie knew that she didn’t mean anythink by it, that she oney wanted her mother, didn’t like Mam’selle. “Aw, be a good girl,” Ernie would say from his hands and knees. “Come on out and eat the cruddy thinks.” And later he would bring her a well-thumbed bundle of comic books from his locker. In them, there was no Conversational French.

  They were friends, sharing candy bars on the service stairway, and once he had given her a wild, thrilling ride down an empty corridor on his room-service cart. It had been a wonderful ride, and Ernie had picked her up and dusted her off when she had somehow managed to carom off the cart onto her head.