[Dorothy Parker 04] - Death Rides the Midnight Owl

by Agata Stanford

  Hundreds of elaborately gilded and fringed Chinese lanterns shone red and yellow as they hung in a line against the darkening sky before disappearing into the inky oblivion of water beyond the stonewalled jetty shaped like an arrowhead pointing to Connecticut across the Sound. Long banquet tables and smaller groupings were set with cloth and dinner service for the first dinner of the night. The usual custom of these affairs was to serve a sit-down supper again at midnight, the hour marking the arrival of the theatre people driving out after final curtains on Broadway. There was no point in figuring out how many guests the Mellons had invited. There might be hundreds, and perhaps many more would wander through after making an appearance at the Morgans’, a couple miles down the road.

  This was not just a dinky jazz band tootling away, but a full-sized orchestra hired to fit the bill, with a dozen men in the string section alone, a wall of brass pumping out mellow notes, and woodwinds providing the necessary details. A warm baritone voice was crooning through the microphone, “I’ll See You in My Dreams.” On the dance floor the flappers, having finished with the “Drag,” gave way to the fox-trotting couples. As they strolled off, their chatter and giggles floated into the night like fireflies seeking new haunts along cool lawns in lush shadows.

  “Where’s Tallulah?” I asked Mr. Benchley, who had my arm and was leading me toward the bar for the hard liquor.

  “On the search for stout-hearten men, I should think. Scotch on the rocks?”

  “Make mine a julep, please, and I suppose that means that Bunny—”

  “What about the boy?”

  “Oh, never mind, I’ve spotted him. He’s got Woodrow, a surefire method for attracting the babes,” I said, belting down the remains of the champagne. I grabbed a bacon-wrapped scallop from off a passing hors d’oeuvres tray, and then made a beeline for the buffet table for a plate of crab-cakes and a couple of Little Necks on the half-shell. Mr. Benchley reappeared at my side to warn he’d spotted our hosts. I asked how we might avoid them altogether; I was not really in the mood for the chatter of halfwits. But, I knew that eventually Hermione would sniff me out—caught hiding behind a pillar or palm, or holding my breath under the waterline of a wharf piling. It really was better to get the chore over with so she might move on to setting her claws into the arriving movie star, her director, and their respective spouses. Gossip had it that these refugees from Hollywood were having affairs with each other. At the thought, I tried to calculate how many possible combinations there really could be, if one didn’t set rigid standards about such things. I’d arrived at a figure of eight, when another thought popped into my mind. I was about to turn to Mr. Benchley to ask if such a thing were physically possible—as he would surely know—to increase the final number to twelve combinations, when there she stood before me, Hermione Mellon, and Mr. Benchley nowhere in sight! I cursed the man under my breath and into my glass, the sprig of mint catching between my upper lip and teeth, before turning a leafy smile on my hostess.

  “Dot, honey!” brayed Hermione. “Why, there’s something in your—that’s it; I love chewing mint, too. Cleans the breath. So glad you could come.”

  “Delighted,” I drawled out exaggeratedly, like I meant it. “Some digs you got here, by the way.”

  Roger put his foot in, thinking I had paid them a compliment: “Dorothy,” he began, taking my hand in greeting, “this house took three years to build, you know. I always believed that Hermione would get well and come to live here. I built this house with that faith.”

  And three-hundred-thousand dollars!

  Let me give you a little tour of our humble home,” he said, taking my arm and steering me toward the grand staircases. “All the marble is imported from a quarry in Italy; the mahogany, Honduran; the tile—”

  I would have asked him to send me a price list, but that would have been crass. I was pretty sure he would eventually tell me how much the whole damn thing cost, so I would just have to endure the docent tour. After all, I was drinking his liquor and planned on eating my fair share of the filet mignon, so I allowed him to drone on as he guided me from room to room along the east wing and then on to the wonders of the west. And a generous little tourist I was, oohing and aahing about the specially fitted sunken tubs and solid-gold fixtures in the eighteen full bathrooms attached to the fifteen suites and five cottages, and god-remembers-how-many square miles of inlaid starburst-patterned parquet flooring, costing god-remembers-how-much, that were installed using seven kinds of hardwoods, as well as the controlled humidifying heating system, and the ninety-seven Venetian glass mirrors on the walls all over the house. All the while I was waiting for Hermione to close the floodgates against the boring host with her signature “Don’t be an Airedale” remark. Alas, she remained mum.

  And then I was led into a long room, a gallery that held the art collection, and I sighed. Here were gathered some fifty or more masterpieces of impressionist art—several Monets, two Cézannes, one spectacular Manet river landscape, a Van Gogh, a Renoir, and a delightful Corot, along with a smattering of Renaissance masters—a Titian, a Rembrandt, a Da Vinci silverpoint sketch, a Durer, and a Michelangelo study! I wanted to linger in this room, but after a prideful smile and a few boastful words about the accumulated value of the collection, Roger steered me out of the room by the elbow to continue on the tour for another excruciating ten minutes of viewing the accoutrements here, and the appurtenances there. My eyes were crossing by the time we landed in the suite of rooms that comprised Roger’s and Hermione’s bedroom. It smelled warm and citrusy of her perfume.

  Their bed was a huge round affair, covered with plump gold-satin bedding and draped from the ceiling with gauzy and shimmering gold netting. Except for the gallery, I had nearly bored myself to sleep with my mantra of accolades, and upon seeing the oversized bed, wanted nothing more than to crash-land on King Midas’s inviting monstrosity, which I figured was so full of goose down that I could sink into an abyss of feathers and never be seen or heard from again. But, alas, the tour was not yet over, for I was led into a sitting-room alcove off the bedroom. I half-listened as Roger pointed to the large portrait of a blonde woman sitting on a blue-velvet sofa, very Bouguereau in its romantic style, and painted by a very competent hand around the turn of the century. On either side of the beautiful woman stood girls in their early teens, Hermione, I was told, and her sister, Penelope, who had died. The portrait hung above one of the three-thousand or so fireplaces that heated the joint.

  A maid entered the bedroom, linens draped over an elbow, carrying a grand bowl of gardenias, which she placed on a table. She walked into the extravagant bathroom, and then out again without the towels. I followed her progress across the thick powder-blue carpet in the bedroom to Hermione’s dressing table, atop which was a shambles of dozens of elaborate perfume bottles arranged like a city skyline of skyscrapers. There was the hypnotizing sparkle of diamond and gold and ruby jewelry, flung about like so much junk beside discarded tissues bearing cosmetic fingerprints, cotton balls, lipstick tubes. The powder puff’s snowfall-like dusting cushioned the vivid ice of diamonds.

  Finally, we trotted down one of the curving staircases, I with a feeling of lightness at my imminent release. I would have slid down the banister like a sick child being told she was well enough to go out and play but for the fact that people were standing on the stairs, leaning against the railing, like Dresden figurines resting upon display shelves. I was headed for the bar when I was stopped by Hermione and introduced to a young man.

  “Roger, honey, I’m sure Dot wants you to take her on a tour of the wine cellars, but maybe later. Right now, I have to fulfill a promise I made to Johnny, here, to introduce him to our Dorothy, don’t you know.”

  Roger, in the fashion of his hairline, receded back a bit to make way for the introduction. He appeared chuffed and mumbled something before turning to another mark, a poor fellow alone at the bar, so he could finish his tour of the cellars.

  It was not long after he’d taken
my hand that I recognized this “John” as one of the many youthful “refugees” born high up on the Social Register. Like many I’ve come across, he was currently on the prowl for adventure, looking for a good time to be had away from the stuffy drawing-rooms, dusty from all that flaking old money just lying about on their parents’ tasteful estates that dotted the waterfront. These sons and daughters of statesmen, bankers, and industrialists, these young Brahmins of American Society were just itching to shed the hairshirts worn by past generations and touted as a privilege of their class. They just couldn’t strip-down fast enough and escape their stone palaces for adventures to be found in the garrets of artists, writers, and people of The Theatre—the lowly society of riffraff snubbed by their staid parents. Golly! There was jazz in the clubs of Harlem, sassy musical revues aplenty in Greenwich Village, the new abstract art to see hanging on the walls of galleries and in the salons about town. And there was booze to be had and cocaine to make things all light and gay. No girdles, no corsets, no barriers, no rules, no holds barred!

  The new sensibility insists on honesty; be honest and say what you really think, and the more shocking, the more self-liberating! Even if you sound rude, you are being honest, aren’t you? True to yourself? Same thing with sex. Why try to deny sex? Sex is everywhere. Sex, and all that Freud said about it, has to be discussed out in the open, and you have to be ready for a fast rejoinder about this or that conquest, because that’s all anyone ever talks about. Sex. Even when you don’t want to hear about the dalliances of others the conversation is always in progress and hard to get away from. Virginity is deemed a burden and a modern taboo.

  So I danced with this fellow, John (a possible future senator from New York State if he ever returned to the fold, or a professional polo player if he didn’t), to a couple of peppy tunes.

  “Hermione looks pretty good, considering,” commented young John, as he pushed me around the dance floor like he was dealing an old deck of cards around a poker table.

  “Considering what?”

  “I expected an old lady, from what I heard tell. The old maid Roger married over in Africa. I’m surprised she isn’t an old lady, and with her pretty blonde hair, she looks like a movie star. I think she’s dazzling, don’t you?”

  “She’s a dazzler, all right.”

  “And now, after all these years, Roger’s come back to live here in the States, and his wife is a beaut!”

  “What are you? Twenty, twenty-one?”

  He hesitated, nodded, and then came clean: “Nineteen . . . next December.”

  I wanted to put an end to being pushed about by this little bulldozer, but the music didn’t end and nobody cut in.

  “Mother says they stayed in Europe these past three years because Hermione was ill. She never got over the death of her parents, they say, and her twin sister who drowned when she was just a little kid.”

  “She looks pretty healthy to me.”

  “I hear she has spells, headaches and stuff. But the big secret is that she was in a sanatorium with an alienist.”

  I thought about it. It’s why Hermione seems so loopy, why she rattles on no end. It has to be a cover-up for her mental limitations. If so, I am sorry if I was mean to the poor thing, with my little innuendos and impatient barbs.

  “This house is the bees’ knees, ain’t it? Got a games room with a pool table and a basketball court—”

  “Well, build a fortune like Roger Mellon’s and you, too, can have your very own games room and court.”

  “Father refuses to put in a basketball court.”

  “Then I misspoke. You already have a fortune like Roger Mellon’s.”

  “Well, it’s mostly Hermione’s money, now, you know; Mother said.”

  “’S that so? Well, when two fortunes collide—”

  “Father said Mellon Industries is sinking. Stock’s been sliding this past year, with Roger out of the country and Hermione ill, and all. No big munitions contracts. No war, no money, says Mother. Father had a friend who was on the board, you know? No, this was built with Hermione’s money.”

  “All in the family, I guess . . . . Listen, Johnny, my dogs are killing me.”

  “I’ll walk with you.”

  I took off my shoes and we walked on the cool lawn, the night air fragrant with the smell of camellias and the tang of the sea.

  I asked the kid, “So, you must be going off to college soon?”

  “Monday, I’m afraid. Yale.” Said like a doctor informing his patient he’d be dead within a day.

  “You don’t sound too thrilled about roaming the halls of academe.”

  “I want to sail around the world, first, before they tie me down with school and all,” said Johnny, an adolescent whine bleeding through his voice. “Father says there is plenty of time after my degree.”

  “What kind of business would you like to go into?”

  “We Harringtons don’t work. So I think it’s silly, having to go to school. Why? If I don’t ever need to work . . .?”

  “What will you do with yourself if you don’t work? What are your interests, other than sailing?”

  “I like industry. I’d like to have thousands of men working in some kind of factory I own, with me running the show, so to speak,” he said, frowning in all seriousness while sorting out his thoughts. “Father says there will be another war. I like guns and stuff—like Roger Mellon—so maybe if there is another war, I’ll open a factory and make them and have more money, only, I won’t lose my shirt or have to depend on a girl to keep me afloat.”

  Oh, crap, a little capitalist—or was this a budding fascist?

  “Might go into politics . . . .” He was now puffing up from the possibilities he was presenting himself. Didn’t I just say to myself a few minutes ago that here was a future senator? “Yes, I might do that, go to Congress, run for political office . . . .”

  “What are your politics?”

  “Oh, I don’t know—this and that, I suppose. Repeal the Nineteenth Amendment—”

  “Surely, you jest! You don’t want women—?”

  “No, no! I mean Prohibition—which is that?”

  “The Eighteenth Amend—”

  “Yes, that’s the one! Why, Father has the hardest time getting—”

  Oh, my God! When I thought of all the boobs already serving in Washington, I felt it my duty as an American citizen to steer this budding one onto another course: “You play polo?”

  “Yes, but I don’t like it very much. Father says it is important to play.”

  “Why, in fresh hell?”

  “Social connections, and all.”

  “You’re a good-looking young boy; ever think about trying your hand as an actor?” Lots of boobs in the Theatre, I thought, and with family money he wouldn’t have to worry about actually earning a living.

  He was musing over the possibility when we arrived back where we’d started from—on the dance floor. Fortunately, Mr. Benchley appeared and fox-trotted me off to one of the dinner tables set for six where sat Tallulah, busily seducing a couple of “boys” who rented a house down the road. They had seen all the lights on here and decided to crash the party. (A month later, these same two fellows were to have their faces on the front pages of all the big dailies when they were arraigned for jewel robberies from the homes of the better North Shore families. For now, Tallulah was safe from their pilfering hands, if not their wandering ones, ’cause she wore only paste.)

  Bunny arrived, Woodrow in tow, just as the waiter began to serve the first course. I suppose Bunny was exhausted from all the fawning, the petting, and the scratching behind the ears because he curled up to sleep under the table as we ate, my foot his pillow. So as Bunny snoozed, Woodrow Wilson jumped up into Bunny’s chair, lapped out the Coquille Saint Jacque off the shell, turned his nose up at the salad, and ran off with a dinner roll.

  “Why do I let you drag me to these things, Dorothy?” said Bunny, when I accidently kicked him in the head. He’d begun dribbling on my foot
.

  “Really, Bunny, come up here and sit in a chair like a grownup!”

  He crawled up, using my knee as leverage, and claimed his seat, recently vacated by Woodrow.

  “You had a very nice nap in the car to the musical accompaniment of Mr. Robert Benchley, baritone and sometime-contralto—”

  “No, no, my dear,” piped up Mr. Benchley, “not contralto, rather, boy soprano.”

  “Excuse me, Fred; I stand corrected. As I was saying, Bunny, you fortunately slept through the entire mind-numbing concert.”

  “Why, I never!” protested Mr. Benchley.

  “And you, Edmund Wilson, Frank begged me to take you off his hands. You were turning his lobby into a college dormitory—only not so fresh-smelling.”

  “Now, see here, Dorothy Parker!” objected Bunny.

  “That’s good,” chuckled Tallulah, “at least he remembers your name!”

  “Well, in the spirit of good fellowship,” said Mr. Benchley, casting off feigned hurt feelings, “on the return trip, I will sing not one single note—”

  “I knew there was a God,” I said, “and He is good—”

  “—but instead will recite all 49 verses of Edgar Poe’s, The Raven—”

  “And once again, I become an atheist!”

  “—and if you are very good children, I shall present to you my rendition of The Wreck of the Hesperus—”

  “I’ll be taking the train,” I said.

  “—accompanied with the sound effects of an ocean voyage—”

  “What’s that supposed to sound like? Confetti being tossed?” said Bunny, softening. At this, Mr. Benchley let loose the blood-curdling caw-caw of a seabird (I suppose it was meant as a preview of his idea of what an albatross sounded like). Those at other tables turned to look at us and laughed, and because they were well sloshed on gallons of champagne—the imported stuff—they thought Mr. Benchley very clever indeed. Raising their glasses to toast him, and with the infectious inanity of drunks, they began a series of birdcalls that swept over the tables and out into the night. In the near-distance I heard Roger Mellon’s voice boom out, “Goddamn seagulls stealing the shrimp! Where’s my shotgun?” This nonsense—the birdcalls—went on for the rest of the evening. Whenever anyone else was about to speak, they’d start with, “Caw-caw! It’s a real dandy! Caw-caw!” Which proves that even stupid seems funny if you’ve had enough to drink.