The Pink Hotel

by Patrick Dennis; Dorothy Erskine

  There were still occasional young men who wanted to marry her but they somehow weren’t quite—well—not that she was a snob, but. And most of them didn’t seem to have any money except for drinks so that she would probably have had to go on working anyhow, and it was working and being cold that she was trying to get away from.

  Working and being cold, and the prop cherry and magnolia and palm trees made her dream of the sun, the South, a benign natural warmth that had nothing to do with borrowed mink coats and sips of brandy. Under the influence of her dream she began to acquire a cute, little old accent that disturbed and impressed Parsley and Nougat and Cinnamon and Zanzibar.

  The girls shared a furnished apartment in which they lived lives of periodic privation, eating crackers and milk for supper, going to bed at seven o’clock when they didn’t have dates. Parsley and Cinnamon and Nougat and Caramel and Zanzibar dressed and danced furiously, slept too little or too much. And so did Peggy/Coral. They set one another’s hair, massaged one another’s faces, plucked their eyebrows into thin arches of interrogation, watched one another’s hips. The girls with the queer names were fun but they weren’t somehow like the girls at St. Brighida’s, ad astro, per aspera, or her friends and her friends’ friends.

  All of them were careful of the money they spent on food, what with custom-made bras and clothes and Clairols and electrolysis and the necessity for a decent address. She herself was so careful, what with little Donnie’s bills at school and dressing well enough to get jobs, that she was almost always hungry as well as almost always cold.

  She attained a new skill at ordering. She always said that she wasn’t a bit hungry and dallied, considering soups, until she knew who was going to pick up the check. When the girls went Dutch, she dallied even more, tasting this and that, snatching bits off plates, finishing rolls and butter, unwanted potatoes. She was addicted to buns in her room, but on dates, she ate and drank surprisingly well.

  Young men, in particular, found it disconcerting that a girl with no appetite should eat so much, and gay young men from out of town who had bought her drinks and dinner married Caramel and Nougat, and later, Parsley and Zanzibar. Poor Cinnamon had taken an overdose of sleeping tablets in a south-side hotel room when the man to whom she was engaged had decided not to get a divorce after all.

  Suddenly she was left alone, and after that Cleveland seemed as cold and hungry and friendless as Chicago. In August, modeling fur coats, she already shivered at the approach of fall, another winter. She was restive, impatient with personable young men, thinking of zephyrs and warm blue waters, romantic backdrops of tropic moon and Royal Palm.

  She went South now by degrees, Cincinnati, Washington, Atlanta, Birmingham, her warm dream inviolate, the sweet languor of her speech remarkable anywhere. It had been hard to get a job in Florida in August, but it had been easy to get invitations to dinner. She was suddenly lonely and frightened, for all that she was warm now, warm all the time, except for a little doubtful cold spot in her heart.

  She grew increasingly lonely and more grateful for the random invitations to dinner. She was hungry now, not only for dinner but for all the love that she had somehow missed, hungry for the quick kisses, the warm affection, that her mother’s defection, Aunt Di’s parsimony, Jim Donovan’s careless death, and Mr. Furman’s perfidy had denied her.

  She wanted now to be kissed, and after a certain point, everything was just sort of natural and friendly, not that she ever felt anything herself.

  But even though she was too relaxed and glad that the whole thing was over, she always somehow hoped that her dinner partner’s earlier protestations would be love, that he would want to marry her now, take care of her and little Donnie.

  As soon as she mentioned little Donnie, though, men treated her with a chilling new respect and stopped taking her out to dinner. Sometimes she had been faithful and unrequited for two or three whole weeks, crying into her pillow, pacing the screaming midnight through, but after a bit she had been diverted by other faces, other invitations to dinner, drinks.

  She had been greedily grateful for the job at the hotel and she had almost—but not quite—groveled to get it. Eschewing Coral for the quicker intimacy of Peggy, she had become suddenly Mrs. Furman, a pious widow-woman with a little daughter to rear as gently as she herself had been reared. Bringing everything to the interview, short of a rosary and lock of Mr. Furman’s hair, Furman had been the very essence of an aristocratic Southern belle brought to her knees by unkind fate and the plundering of General Sherman. Her education at St. Brighida’s was brought to the fore just as prominently as her career in Cleveland receded. She dredged up the names of all the prominent people she had ever met and a great many more she had never met. It had been a valiant last stand.

  Mr. Wenton had been impressed by Mrs. Furman, but not too impressed. She was too young, too attractive and he suspected anyone who used “you-all” in the singular. His ideal Social Hostess was Ethel Barrymore and not Marilyn Monroe. But Mrs. Wenton had taken to Furman instantly, had felt that Furman understood her. It was like dealing with Aunt Di all over again. Furman had finally been hired, installed in a room somewhat smaller than Purcell’s with a bath to be shared by Mrs. Conyngham (who, for all her airs and graces, was not always too fastidious about—well—little things) and assured of three meals a day and plenty of people to love.

  Furman had been glad to be Social Hostess, have a job, when the season finally came around. She had her unemployment compensation, of course, but she still remembered St. Brighida’s. Ad astra per aspera. Furman managed somehow to be always gay but the maddest, the cutest little old trick with men, and, remembering Aunt Di, wonderfully understanding with middle-aged women, even if she did cry alone at night when her feet hurt, thinking of little Donnie, the unreason of men. There was always a lot of dowlin’ men around, but most of them were stubbornly attached to another woman. Furman’s mind idled over the eligible men at the hotel. Pu-uh-cell and that funneh little old Misteh Math-eh and Misteh Stu-uh-h-h-t. There weren’t so many really.

  Misteh Stu-uh-h-h-t now, was a sweet little old thing, real befoah-the-woah rich. Furman’s mind stopped idling, picked a card, a small, engraved white one. Mrs. Thomas Jefferson Sturt, III Furman’s mind read, testing it absently with her forefinger.

  Furman lay back on her bed and kicked off her pumps. She wouldn’t think about T. J. Sturt, III right now. She would coldly blot from her mind his big, foreign car, his apartment on Fifth Avenue, the famous old Sturt house in Southampton, his annual forays abroad. Duty came first. She’d think about the Christmas festivities at the hotel—Mr. Wenton as Santa Claus, the big tree, the carolers, those nay-asty reindeer. She’d think about. . .

  The chaste white card in Furman’s mind was reassuringly rich under her finger tips, gave promise of the not impossible sweet dignities of wife. Mrs. Thomas Jefferson Stu-uh-h-h-t, III. “Lauveyou, lauve you, dowlin’. Honeh dowlin’,” Furman sighed.

  711

  Purcell was very tired, now that he had time to think of it. Mather had hired a boat last night, and the four of them had gone putt-putting around Calaga Creek. The whole thing had been as wholesome as a toasted marshmallow, but it had been late when they reached their separate beds. It took so damned long, these days, to say goodbye.

  He called the Executive Suite but the line was busy. Mary was a wonderful girl, he told himself. He’d send her the flowers, but he’d send them some other time. Mañana, maybe.

  After all, he’d see her in a couple of hours, but right now that seemed like a long time. They were going to Ruby Foo’s and eat egg roll. It had come out last night that neither of them had ever had enough of the stuff. With English mustard. No Chicken Sub Gum. No Lobster Cantonese. No Moo Goo Gai Pan. They’d eat egg roll until they never wanted to see it again and finish off on almond cakes and tea. Afterwards they’d go to a movie, maybe drink a little beer, they usually did.

  What a sweetheart Mary was, what a honey. Purcell told himself that e
ssentially he’d never been a body snatcher. He was a one-woman man, and he enjoyed, solemnly, the sunny satisfaction of a good husband. He hadn’t looked at a babe for a long time now; he’d been faithful to Mary, and by God, he’d stay that way once he got around to asking her.

  It had been a very rough day all around though, so it was a good thing that he had his health. Things had started to happen as soon as he came on duty and they had kept right on happening through four o’clock, his relief.

  The phone had started ringing before he got his tie tied, and he had found himself suddenly in an ambulance with old Mrs. Goodenow and double pneumonia. Mrs. Goodenow’s face had been a parchment mask, her breathing had been noisy and querulous, and she had picked at the coverlet and fingered the blanket until he had held her hand just to keep it quiet. The hand was hot and dry and yellow, twisted with arthritis but capable of sudden strength. Christ, was he sick of old ladies. It would be a holy miracle if he didn’t end up as queer as J. Arthur.

  Still, it wasn’t the poor old woman’s fault. She had probably just got a little too close to her flinty old bastard of a husband. If Mr. Goodenow had a heart, which was doubtful, it was probably as cold as a piece of dry ice, enough to throw a chill into anyone.

  Take it all in all, it was a break all around for the old lady, even in a semi private room. At least she’d get three squares a day at the hospital, her very own too, and double pneumonia must be a nice little change after Mr. Goodenow’s sniggery laugh, his pound-wise penny pinching.

  Miss Libya Hall had dropped a pear-shaped emerald down the drain, the Mellotts had lost Chiang temporarily in a maze of concrete fire escapes, and an unidentified black-haired woman had been found in diabetic stupor in the bathroom of one of the two-bedroom-parlor suites, following an early morning check-out.

  Purcell lunched in the bar. Without people, without Zack and Mack’s little ivory pianos, the room was about as cheerful as a funeral home, but it was quiet and the lady in the bathtub had really got him. “. . . He said, ‘She hath a lovely face. God, in his mercy, lend her Grace, the Lady of Shallott.” He had been gibbering when Phil had given him a double Gibson in a water glass, but that had put the roses back in his cheeks again.

  He had eaten something and had a pot of black coffee, but before he had finished his second cup he was back in circulation. T. J. Sturt, III was still on brandy, and he had got hold of a Bronx telephone book and was calling everyone in it whose name began with a B. The Third was methodical though, he called the desk first to see if they were registered, and between while notified local fire departments of blazes of mysterious origin.

  Still wearing the pink Lastex girdle and the bouquet of yellow Shasta daisies, the Third made occasional brief forays into the halls, inviting all comers to luncheon and offering them fruits in season, a plethora of lovely girls and Recitations from McGuffey’s Reader delivered in person. “Who killed the Chippie?” he had demanded. “See, here it lies, the life gone out of its once bright eyes,” and then he had begun to cry.

  The Third had sat down cross-legged in the middle of the room, still crying, his lace Lastex girdle riding up, the Shasta daisies drooping forlornly. “Not an hour ago, it saw the sun, but now, poor thing, its living’s done.” He had fallen asleep abruptly on “I saw a boy with a pebble sling, and now I find this poor dead thing,” when the house doctor arrived and gave him a shot in the arm.

  Purcell filled the pitcher on the Third’s night table with water, left a glass and a package of cigarettes beside it. He and the house doctor lifted him onto the bed, closed and locked the door. The needle ought to be good for nine hours, maybe ten or twelve. When that wore off, the house doctor could give him another one. The Third had come South for a Test, and, by God, they would see that he got it.

  Coming right out flatfooted and popping the question was quite a hurdle, hard to do, when he’d evaded it for so long. He’d devoted the best years of his life, as they say, to staying single, but he was giving in fast now. Twist my arm, Mary.

  This kid is headed for that little vine-covered cottage, that second mortgage, that small solitaire. He could see people eying the small solitaire, hear them saying “Very neat” because they couldn’t think of anything else to say about it. “Very neat.” He had said it himself when what he’d really meant was “Very small.” He couldn’t swing much more than half a carat either, unless a blood bank somewhere decided to pick up its option on him.

  He’d like to give her a piece of ice the size of the pond in Central Park, wrap her in sables. Very neat. Purcell was suddenly more tired than before. Very neat. It was five o’clock, and he headed for the bar.

  1406

  Old Dr. Anna Pomery straightened up painfully. She was a Victorian and she believed in God, but she had just performed her first criminal operation, and like all criminals, she was engaged in destroying the evidence.

  It was a desolate, forbidding stretch of beach that she had chosen, pocked with dunes and infested with land crabs. The wind off the ocean was cold, but the night was fine and clear.

  She knelt awkwardly again, sprinkled lime over the foetus and the bloody newspapers and covered them with a large, flat stone. She shoveled sand back into the hole with her good hand. It was all slow work because she didn’t have much use of her left hand and arm. She could move her fingers a little and she had trained the hand to perform certain functions, but it wasn’t much good except as a weight or a lever.

  Old Dr. Anna rose uncertainly and took a deep breath, a careful look around for the beach patrol. It had been a dirty business and she was glad that it was over. Sand grated in her shoes and she looked around again for the beach patrol, but she supposed that she was safe enough; nobody paid any attention to an old woman.

  Dr. Anna wiped her face, her hands, on her underskirt, picked up her instrument bag and started back, her left foot dragging a little with every step. It was ten or twelve blocks back to the hotel and she was very tired; it had been a long, exhausting day.

  She had broken her Hippocratic oath, but she didn’t know what else God would have had her do. It had been a wrench, though, for all that. She had brought so many babies into the world that it had been hard to turn her thoughts any other way.

  “To give no deadly drug and not to commit abortion, to keep inviolate the professional secret and to seduce no member of the household where called to visit the sick. . . .” She had kept all her promises faithfully and well.

  Oh, she had helped girls before, delivered their babies and placed them for adoption, given them money, but Cora May had refused to take her money, and none of the legitimate abortifacients had worked.

  She had dosed the girl with ergot and quinine and castor oil, but they had no efficacy against such a strong constitution. Cora May had been a farm girl before she had left home and done hotel work; she could have pulled a plow for nine months and fallen downstairs every day without miscarrying.

  Dr. Anna didn’t suppose that she would have had the moral courage to be guilty of criminal practice if circumstance hadn’t forced her hand. When she had found out that Cora May had made a bloody mess of herself with a buttonhook, Dr. Anna had naturally put her to bed and examined her. And after that she had kept going, instinctively knowing exactly what to do.

  She let herself down slowly on a curb and emptied the sand out of her shoes, then heaved her gaunt old body erect and brushed a little at the wrinkles in her skirt. After all, she was closer to this than she had been to any of the others; she saw Cora May, red-eyed and tearful, every day when she made up the room and she loved young girls, liked to look at them, touch their soft hair. You might say that barring the difference in age and station, Dr. Pomery and Cora May were old friends by now, in addition to the compassion that sheer animal helplessness had always evoked in the old doctor.

  Girls in trouble were an old story to Dr. Anna, but her excitement at having a case of her own again, a patient dependent upon her, mounted. She was an old woman now; had had no active p
ractice for five years and her left side slowed her down, but she still knew the inside of a woman as she knew the inside of a cup. She’d like to see any of these young cubs do a prettier job. She puffed a little in satisfaction, professional pride. This was like the old days.

  Her thoughts were punctuated by the pound and dash of the surf, the stiff, taffeta rustle of the palms. The young fellows had to have their chance, she told herself; she herself had come almost full circle, couldn’t live forever.

  She was the beginning and the end of an era, she supposed. Cora May would probably be the last case she’d ever have. She would go back to reading her medical journal, to giving away free samples, pepsin compounds and fruit salts, salves for boils, specifics for eczema, headache and influenza tablets, suppositories, dried milk preparations, fish oil. She would be dead five, ten years, she supposed, before the drug houses took her off their mailing lists, and in the meantime she would wait for her end in reasonable content, as a child waits through the friendly dusk for sleep.

  I swear by Apollo, Physician . . .

  “Yes, maam, and he seemed real nice.”

  . . . by Aesculapius, by Health, by Panacea. . .

  “Quiet and well spoke.”

  . . . and by all the Gods and Goddesses, making them my witnesses. . .

  “Hit come down cool, so I wear my new red fox chubby.”