“Been doing a little thinking about our new policy. The Personal Touch,” J. Arthur said softly. “Our Keynote for the Future. Find out their birthdays. Take five minutes,” he told Purcell. “Send a card. In exceptional cases, I’d say a box of citrus jellies,” he pronounced judicially. “Takes a little thought, that’s all. Eight by ten postcard every three months. Very unusual. Big rotating file. ‘Sincerely, Art Wenton.’ Signature cut, of course. Blue ink. Let them know we appreciate their business. Someone is thinking of you. Take five minutes. Am I right?”
Someone is thinking of you. I love you with a fishbone in your throat. “You probably are, at that,” Purcell said uncomfortably,
“Looking very spruce, Dave. New suit?”
Purcell shook his head. “I took a bath for Christmas.” The Old Man laughed unreasonably. Purcell plunged. “I’m thinking of getting married,” he announced without preamble, and rubbed one foot against the other. “Wish me luck,” he said.
J. Arthur swelled in his corner like a sea urchin. “Hau-g-h,” he said and spat into his handkerchief. “ ‘He travels fastest who travels alone.’ Kipling. Very true too. Compensations, of course. Married myself. My wife is a sow but she is, hau-g-h, well-born. Who’s the lucky ugh, girl?”
“Why, don’t you know?” Purcell said meaningfully. “I thought you’d have known before she did herself. What with one thing and another.”
“It’s not—not Maggie Alexandroff? You could do a lot worse, you know.”
“Nothing that expensive,” Purcell said. “I’m afraid she’ll be an income tax deduction. It’s your Mammalia Centralia. Little Mary Street.”
“No!” The Old Man jumped to his feet. “Not Miss Mucus! Surely you’re not serious, Dave. You can’t be. Nonsense. Vicious nonsense. Dave, dear boy. I sensed that something like this was happening but—”
“Practically clairvoyant, aren’t you?”
“Oh, I knew that you were going around with her. Sleeping with—”
“Take it easy, please,” Purcell said levelly.
“But, Dave, dear boy. A flirtation, an affair is one thing. Marriage is another. A man assumes his wife’s social position . . .”
“My social position isn’t all that exalted. It’s just about what yours is.”
“Marry the right woman, Dave, and you’re accepted anywhere. But marry the wrong one—some little nobody of a typist—and,” he dropped his hands in an eloquent gesture, thumbs down, “you’re done for.”
“What if you happen to be in love with some little nobody of a typist? What if you happen to think she’s somebody?”
“Love! Faugh! You sound like a schoolboy, Dave. Come, now. We’re men of the world, you and I. Do you think that I love that superannuated sow I married? That I ever did? I’m able to have marriage and find love.”
“You seem to have had a little trouble finding it in the Christmas rush,” Purcell said, staring pointedly at the Old Man’s big eye.
Flushing, the Old Man raced on. “I’ve got plans for you, Dave. Big plans. You can go far. You’re worth a lot more than you’ve been getting—oh, a lot more. You’re popular with the guests, especially the—hau-g-h—ladies.”
“Sorry,” Purcell said with a set mouth. You sugary sod! “My mind’s pretty well made up.”
“Ah, ‘pretty well made up,’ eh?” J. Arthur pounced, clutching at a straw. “But it isn’t definite yet? Good. I have plans for you, Dave, just as I told you. Big plans. There’s this hotel. You could take over the management almost—hau-g-h—almost completely. And if this isn’t enough challenge for you, I’ve got other ideas. There’s a house up in Aiken, beautiful place but run-down, badly mismanaged. Going begging on the market. I could pick it up for a song. Give you an absolutely free hand—a partnership, perhaps. You could turn it into the most exclusive place in the South. Aiken. What does that remind you of? Horses! Am I right? You know those little bars of soap in the bathrooms? We’ll give ‘em saddle soap. The best English make. How’s that?”
“It’s great,” Purcell said dully, “but what do they wash with?”
“Mere detail. Worry about that later. Prefer a single man, of course, but still, a wellborn wife—the right kind of woman with the right kind of money.”
“Someone along the lines of Maggie Alexandroff?”
“Exactly. Now you’re beginning to use the old brain, Dave. Maggie would be ideal. She’s a widow. Attractive. Well-bred. Has millions. And she likes you, Dave. I could tell that a mile off.” He moved toward the gold telephone on his desk. “We could call the Penthouse right now. It’s almost eleven. She must be—”
“She checked out yesterday,” Purcell said.
“But she’s not far from here,” J. Arthur went on desperately. “Look. There’s her yacht right out there in the basin. We could—”
“What are you planning to do? Swim out with a wedding ring between your teeth?”
“No, dear boy—heheheheheheh—course not. But we could send a note out by launch. Take five minutes. Ask her to dinner, tell her—”
“Speaking of notes,” Purcell said. “I believe that you have a communication addressed to Mary Street. Something I left here the day—”
“Dave, what are you talking about?”
“You know damned well what I’m talking about, you old bag of guts.”
The Old Man paused. His face went white and then red. And then an unholy gleam came into his one visible eye. “Dave,” he said piously, “I can’t deceive you. I did open that note. Oh, quite by mistake,” he added quickly. “But when I read it. When I saw the dreadful mistake you were about to make—”
“Just what’s so dreadful about falling in love and wanting to get married?”
“Oh, nothing, dear boy, nothing. Most, um, natural thing in the world, I suppose. But you’re a young man, Dave. You didn’t know what you were getting in for. I’m much too fond of you to stand by and let you marry a bit of, um, damaged goods like Mary Street.” The pink and white hands began to caress Purcell’s shoulders, the voice sank to intimacy. “I’m amazed that a bright youngster like you didn’t know about her.” The hands groped, unsatisfied.
“Didn’t know what about her?” Purcell asked through clenched teeth.
“Ah, dear Dave,” the Old man purred and his arms, with the groping pink and white hands, tightened around Purcell. “Love is blind. Why, Dave, those innocent-seeming ones are always the worst. Little Mary Street was notorious. Wanton. There wasn’t a bellboy or lifeguard or guest in the hotel who couldn’t have her. She was even after me.”
Purcell wheeled on J. Arthur. “What did you say?”
“You heard me. I could hardly keep her off me and even now I happen to know for a fact that she’s shacked up with this man Baldwin. She’s been living with him ever since—”
“You’re a liar,” Purcell said. “The most pernicious old bitch I—”
“Dave, I swear to you, that that little slut Street has been to bed with—”
“You need evening up,” Purcell said. And he let the Old Man have it in his good eye. “The personal touch. Sincerely. Dave Purcell.”
The Old Man was still stretched out on the golden Aubusson carpet when Purcell slammed the door of the Executive Suite.
Check Out
The charred boards of the barrel fell inward upon themselves, and flame spread to a pile of oily dustcloths, a battalion of oily dustmops in a corner, hesitated, flared over some open paint cans and plunged down an empty elevator shaft.
A soup cook and a fry cook argued Existentialism. Dr. Pomery considered her neighbors in the Pleasaunce and the use of super sound as a treatment for bursitis.
A nervous bus boy dropped a tray of dirty dishes and collapsed helplessly into another with a resounding crash and tinkle.
Fire roared now up the empty elevator shaft and arrested L. Harvey Crull, Jr., on his solitary rounds. ARE YOU READY? The pamphlets of L. Harvey Crull, Jr. became a flaming sword against the unrighteous. Vengeance is mine. A frightened upstair
s maid heard his low, bubbling laugh and bolted herself, quaking, into a linen closet.
Mrs. Browne-Smythe wrinkled her querulous nose and sniffed oracularly. “I smell smoke,” she said.
“Oh pshaw, Daisy, you’ve been smelling smoke for thirty-five years. When you don’t smell smoke, you hear a funny noise. A funny noise like somebody opening a window, eh Daisy? I smell smoke,” her lord said bitterly. “I hear a funny noise.” He returned to his water. Heat ran along steam-pipes set in concrete to a linen cupboard. Hot gases swept, by convection, up an enclosed metal stairway.
At the Colony in Palm Beach, Mr. Mather yearned for Dukemer’s full, soft mouth, the blue candor of her eyes, for all of her profane, yet sedate, enchantments.
Violet patted her diaphragm (fish was apt to come up on her) and complacently surveyed the thick legs which were the monstrous flowering of her heavy thighs, her thin face, her lean breast. “You know that navy blue ah-sheer I got at Anton’s, with diagonal tucks here; those little mother-of-pearl buttons,” Violet said painfully, seeing the minute seams, counting the buttons, for Violet suffered from total recall.
“I really don’t believe. . .” Mr. Mather began politely, although he knew better.
“Don’t talk to me about little cottons,” Violet said dangerously.
Mr. Mather compressed his lips. He did not mention little cottons. His vagus nerve signaled frantically.
“Dark blue, with a ah-bolero it could be a suit.” Violet’s voice beat Mr. Mather’s ulcer with little whips, echoed hollowly through his umbilicus. “With a ah-kick pleat.”
Mr. Mather’s ulcer drew up in tardy defiance. He rubbed the back of his neck and whistled under his breath.
“What?” Violet asked suspiciously.
“Ah-nothing,” Mr. Mather assured her. His ulcer considered thesis, antithesis and synthesis; rejected them in favor of a stinger. Mr. Mather sighed. Violet sighed too and regarded Mr. Mather almost fondly. He reminded himself that everything only is and took a bismuth tablet.
“Of course Nelly’s gone. Simply left us and got married. All those new uniforms. Naturally I asked her to wait until I could find another size twelve. No point in buying all new uniforms. ‘Which is more important,’ I asked her, ‘Miss Violetta’s recital with Rembski or your big ah-truck driver? You won’t be wearing a size twelve long, missy,’ I told her. She did have the grace to sniffle.”
Mr. Mather’s monad pulled down his sense-windows. His ulcer ground out a bile-green roundelay.
“. . . peanut butter and crab meat. Now about binding those National ah-Geographics, Will. . .”
Hydrochloric acid swirled evilly through Mr. Mather’s interior. Savage gastric juices attacked his mucous membrane. Stomach walls blanched furiously and blushed.
Dukemer left the bar. She was hot and unhappy. She walked to the sour reek of the service stairway, through a lower hall and out into a little areaway devoted to garbage cans and wet bathing suits.
The pulse continued to beat in Dukemer’s head. Thirty-one. Bury-your-dead. Thirty-one. All alike. Thirty-one. Die-alone. Thirty-one. Dearest-love. Vio-let.
The areaway was fresh and cool, with a clean, salt breeze from the ocean, and a deep, blue dome of sky overhead. Heavy white blankets of cloud drifted aimlessly. “Merry Christmas,” Dukemer said aloud. “A very Merry Christmas.”
A tired bellman approached, walking a nervous wire-haired terrier. The Boy was fifty, fifty-five, she supposed. “Afternoon, miss,” he said. The terrier, clipped and chalked, circled the garbage cans, sniffing judiciously, was alerted with a deep-throated snarl for no reason, bolted as far as the leash, barked to save his dignity, scratched in untenable positions, preened himself delicately in a fish head. “Nice day,” the Boy said.
Die-alone. Thirty-one. Dearest-love. All-alike. Thirty-one, the clock in Dukemer’s head ticked. Chiang hissed from the service stairway, and the terrier was towed to barking, reluctant safety. Mewing and spitting, Chiang circled the areaway. He arched his back raspingly against Dukemer’s foreleg and she kicked at him absently. Dukemer’s head ached more fiercely in the blue brilliance of the day. She was hot, and her stomach itched, and she was very low in her mind.
A page of crumpled newspaper blew out suddenly from the garbage cans.
This little waking. Thirty-one, the clock in Dukemer’s head repeated. Die-alone. Thirty-one. All-alike. Thirty-one. Dearest-love.
Dukemer’s knees sagged briefly, but she stiffened herself against the wall until she felt stronger.
Then Dukemer walked out into a world as fair as the first Christmas morning. “Cab, Arch,” she told the doorman. There was a gentle roar of wind and water. A replete sea licked fastidiously at a well-groomed white beach and retreated according to schedule. Two Goodyear zeppelins were lazy silver bubbles overhead and a war surplus B-29, nervous as a dragonfly, smokily lisped the astonishing legend I. J.Fox Furs.
An avenue of royal palms moved their fronds decorously, with a stiff, spinsterish rustle. The sun touched Dukemer delicately, in a bright, blue benignancy. A bank of pink and white and crimson poinsettias nudged her with a blaze of inept color and the Pleasaunce was an improbable dark green. Gulls screamed.
“Thanks, Arch,” Dukemer said as she squirmed heavily into the cab. Little breezes fingered her hot face but Dukemer twisted in her seat, pointed to a red-gold incandescence in the windows of the North wing. “Look,” she said. “Hold it! You think the hotel could be on fire?”
“Na-ah,” the cabbie said. “Na-ah. Prolly just the sun.” He scratched his head. “It reflects, see, off of the water.”
“I guess so.” Dukemer slumped with a kind of furious peace against the cushions of the cab. She sighed. “Who cares, anyhow?”
Mary Street looked out of the coach window at Sandoval and wished that the train would take on its water just a little faster. She’d been riding the Illinois Central all her life, practically, and it seemed to her that it had never taken so long before.
Goodness, she was lucky just to be aboard, what with Mother and Dad being so, well so thick about understanding that she was going to Chicago to meet the man she was going to marry, that she really wasn’t hungry, didn’t want a turkey dinner; that what she wanted most in all the world was a lift down to the I. C. station before it was too late.
Then it had been almost impossible to explain to them that of course David was the most wonderful man in the world, that he had a perfectly enormous marital bump, the fact that she was getting married had simply slipped her mind and that her cold was much better, thanks.
It hadn’t all been easy and Mother and Dad had insisted on coming along with her for the longest time, but eventually a compromise had been reached and Mary had promised not to do anything rash, but to bring David back to Centralia to meet the family and get married in church.
Both Mother and Dad kept repeating that they just couldn’t understand why Mary hadn’t told them about it; at least mentioned it casually. Mother and Dad were sweet, but Mary supposed all parents were a little, well, slow.
There was a lurch. The train inched forward and stopped. Then there was another lurch. The train rolled backwards. “Oh, no, please,” Mary said. “Forward. Go on forward to Chicago. Please!” There was a screech and the train moved shakily, slowly forward again, gaining momentum as it passed the dismal slag heaps of Sandoval.
“Tickets,” the conductor called. “Tickets please. Why, Mary Street! I wouldn’t of recognized you. Lookatcha! Back from Florida an’ brown as an indian! Home to spend Christmas with the folks?”
“Y-yes, that’s right,” Mary said, surrendering her ticket.
“An’ going back already, without you even have Christmas dinner?”
“Oh, no,” Mary said casually—almost grandly. “I’m just going into Chicago to meet my—my husband.” It sounded so comfortable, so customary. As though she were a suburban housewife on her way in to dinner and the theatre. It felt so good she tried it again. “Yes. To meet my husband.”
>
Except for half a dozen uniformed airline employees being transported on the cuff, Purcell was the only passenger on the noon plane from Miami. As such, he was the hostess’s exclusive prey.
“Would you like a magazine to read, Mr. Vursell?” the hostess said, crinkling her nose, dimpling. “Life? Newsweek? The Post? Sports Illustrated?”
“No, thanks,” Purcell said. He had plenty to occupy his mind, such as what he was going to do in Chicago without a job, without even a topcoat. And what’s more, he didn’t care. He had a hundred bucks, a clean shirt and Mary. They’d live on love, get by somehow—
“Your first trip to Florida, Mr. Vursell?” the hostess said, tossing her long, blonde bob.
“That’s right. My first and my last.”
“Some lovely places in Florida. Beautiful homes. Exclusive clubs. Luxurious hotels . . .”
“Do tell?” Purcell said, wishing she’d go away.
“Oh yes. For example, we are now flying over one of America’s most costly and exclusive hotels. You see that big pink hotel just off the tip of the wing? That is called the—Sssay! That’s funny. All that smoke coming out of it. Why, it almost looks like it’s on fire.”
Purcell looked disinterestedly down, saw smoke pouring from the North wing of the hotel. “A fine idea,” he said.
The stewardess’s magenta mouth flew open. Then she closed it, turned on her smile again and switched on up the aisle.
“Mary,” Purcell said aloud. “My lovely Mary.”
Mr. Wenton lay in his darkened bedroom, a boric acid compress over each eye. The white telephone to his left rang. He snatched it up furiously. “I left distinct instructions that no telephone calls were to be—”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Wenton,” Daniels said from the Desk. “But this is a matter of life and death. There’s a man here from the Health Department with a . . .”
The golden telephone at Mr. Wenton’s right rang, not with the sweet dulcet tinkle that the operator usually sent chiming up to the Executive Suite, but with a clangor that nearly thrust J. Arthur off the bed.
The Pink Hotel Page 26
