“Shut up, Ace,” the older one said. “I’m in command of this operation!”
They staggered down the corridor, breathing heavily from the exertion. Doña Antoinetta knew somehow that they had just run up forty flights of fire-escape stairs; she had no idea why, but the horrible thought quickly occurred to her that they were after the Reverend Mother Emeritus Margaret. She followed them down the corridor as they examined room numbers, getting ever closer to Suite 40-11/40-15, the suite Doña Antoinetta had ordered set aside for the Reverend Mother’s use.
“Here it is, by God!” the older one said. “Forty eleven.”
“Everything’s all right, Prudence,” the younger one said. “Your Ace is here!”
Both men beat on the door. Somewhat weakly, to be sure, because of their condition, but rather noisily.
There was no response.
“We’ll have to break it down,” the younger one said.
“We’ll put our shoulders together,” the older one said. “Get ready, get set, smash it down!”
As he’d issued the commands, the two had gone to the wall opposite the door, gotten ready, and then, on the command, rushed at the door, obviously determined to strike it with their shoulders.
Desperate, Doña Antoinetta looked around her. Near her were a fire hose and a fire axe behind a glass window. She beat at the glass with her fist. Nothing happened. She took off her shoe and had at the glass with the heel. The glass shattered. Bells began to ring. She snatched the axe from its holders and rushed to defend the Reverend Mother Emeritus and the holy relic.
She turned in time to see the door open just as the two men reached it. They disappeared inside. Doña Antoinetta, axe raised over her head, rushed after them. She stopped in the doorway.
A young blonde woman, wearing nothing but the most fragile of undergarments, stood, hands on hips, looking down at the men on the floor.
“What’s the meaning of this, Ace?” she demanded. “How dare you show up here when you’re falling down drunk?” She looked at the doorway. “And who’s your friend with the axe?”
“Beauregard,” another female voice said, “you’ve been a naughty boy again, haven’t you? And dragging poor little Ace along with you! Shame on you!”
“Miss Margaret,” the older one said, “I give you my word of honor as an officer of the Louisiana National Guard that all Ace and I have had to drink in Miami is a couple of eensy-weensy brandies to settle our stomachs.”
“Then what are you doing on the floor? And who’s the lady with the axe?”
The second lady who spoke was fully, even spectacularly, dressed. She had on a floor-length gown of purple velvet with long sleeves. There was a cape of similar material around her shoulders; it was lined in flaming red silk. A four-inch-wide golden ribbon hung from her right shoulder and went down through the valley between her more than ample mammary developments to her waist. On it was spelled out REVEREND MOTHER EMERITUS. A golden crucifix, a full nine inches long, hung from her neck, the chain also going down the valley of her bosom. Doña Antoinetta looked more closely and saw that the same legend was spelled out in diamonds and rubies on the crucifix. REVEREND went down the vertical piece, and MOTHER and EMERITUS ran along members. In her right hand, the lady clutched the age-old symbol of the shepherd of a religious flock, the shepherd’s crook. “Reverend Mother!” Doña Antoinetta said.
“Be with you in just a minute, honey,” the Reverend Mother said. “As soon as I found out what these two are up to.”
“We have come to save you and Prudence from the Yankees and Cubans,” Col. Beaucoupmots said.
“I can’t live without you, Prudence, darling!” Ace said.
“What did he call her?” Doña Antoinetta asked.
“Which brings us to you, honey,” the Reverend Mother said. “Who are you and what’s with the axe?”
“I am Doña Antoinetta Gomez y Sanchez,” Doña Antoinetta said. Her voice did not manifest its usual firmness. “Reverend Mother, I have to see you.”
“You have problems, honey?” Hot Lips asked.
“Oh, Reverend Mother, do I have problems!”
“I am never too busy to help a sister in trouble,” Hot Lips said. “You look a little old for that sort of thing, but judge not, as I always say. I’ll be right with you.” She turned to Prudence. “You put some clothes on, Prudence,” she said. “Beauregard’s old, but not that old.”
Prudence shrieked, suddenly aware that she was very nearly naked, and dashed into an adjacent room.
“Let me help you, dear,” Ace said, going after her.
“Don’t get any ideas, Beauregard,” Hot Lips said. “They’re married. Close your mouth, get off the floor, and wait on the balcony while I talk to this lady.”
“You wouldn’t have a little something for my indigestion, would you, Miss Margaret?” the colonel asked.
“Out, out, Beauregard!” the Reverend Mother said. She waited until he had left, then looked thoughtful. “Out of the mouths of babes,” she said. “Intellectually speaking.” She went to a liquor cabinet and came out with a bottle of brandy and two snifters.
“Oh, I shouldn’t,” Doña Antoinetta said when Hot Lips handed her one of them filled to the brim.
“ ‘Take a little wine for thy stomach’s sake and thine other infirmities,’ as it says in the Good Book,” Hot Lips said.
“Well, Reverend Mother,” Doña Antoinetta said. “If you put it in that context.” She took the glass and drained it.
“Now, what seems to be the trouble?” Hot Lips said, draining her glass and refilling both.
“I hardly know where to begin,” Doña Antoinetta said. “May I confide in you?”
“Certainly.”
“I’m almost embarrassed to ask,” Doña Antoinetta said, “but have you ever heard of a doctor named T. Mullins Yancey?”
“Yes, of course I have. He’s a dear friend of mine, as a matter of fact.”
“Reverend Mother, have you ever read anything he’s written?”
“I have his complete works, bound in moroccan leather,” the Reverend Mother said. “They were a Christmas present from Dr. Yancey himself.”
“But have you read them?” Doña Antoinetta said. “Do you know what that man says in his books?”
“He was kind enough,” the Reverend Mother said modestly, “to dedicate his monumental work, Always Twice on Thursday, to me. I was very helpful to him, he was kind enough to say, in his basic research.” She looked at Doña Antoinetta. “I think I’m beginning to see,” she said. “You’ve just read your first Yancey book. Is that right?”
“Not only did I read it,” Doña Antoinetta said, “but I realized that I agreed with him.”
“To thine own self be true,” the Reverend Mother said piously. “I gather you have specific questions?”
“Do I,” Doña Antoinetta said. “Do you suppose I could have a little more of that brandy?”
Senator Christopher Columbus Cacciatore had not been as successful as Col. Beaucoupmots and Mr. Travers had been in getting around the hotel security that had been set up to keep the common hordes from getting upstairs to see the Reverend Mother and the holy relic.
The best he’d been able to do was to bribe a waiter and take his place in the kitchen. As he moved through the Grand Ballroom, delivering a tray of jumbo shrimp cocktail fresh from the sparkling ocean waters to the sixteen-seat special banquet table of Mr. Isadore Goldberg and party, he saw Senator Fisch at the head table, looking just a little nervous. He was, understandably, a bit curious about what Senator Fisch was doing up there, but there was nothing he could do about it at the moment. He didn’t want to call undue attention to himself, and Mr. Goldberg was rather nastily pointing out that he could balance three of these jumbo shrimp on his thumbnail.
He would just bide his time. Under his waiter’s apron, their stems sticking him just a little bit in the belly, were the long-stemmed roses he planned to throw at the feet of Doña Antoinetta. That ought to get h
er!
He would throw the roses at her feet and cry out his love! He, Christopher Columbus Cacciatore, was the man with the arms of steel and the hairy chest she had been dreaming about all these years!
Dr. Waldowski, Dr. Yancey, and Mr. Mulligan had some trouble getting into the hotel. A reinforced company of Pinkerton’s finest had been employed to handle the crowds and to keep all but registered guests out of the Winter Palace.
The problem was phrased rather succinctly by Dr. Waldowski to a Pinkerton’s sergeant:
“How can I be a registered guest, you dummy, if I can’t get inside to register?”
“What makes you think you can call me a dummy?” the sergeant asked.
“I do,” François Mulligan replied.
“Right this way, gentlemen,” the sergeant replied, after François had set him back down. “I’m sure there’s been a simple misunderstanding that can be cleared up with no trouble at all.”
Uncle Carlos, in charge of the activity in the lobby, cleared the three for access to the Grand Ballroom. They were equipped with the necessary special passes and ushered through back corridors to the stage.
They got there just in time for the crescendo from the Bayou Perdu Council, Knights of Columbus, Marching Band that interrupted the GILIAFCC, Inc., Blessed Brother Buck Memorial A Cappella Choir’s rendition of “Miss You Since You Went Away, Dear” and brought a hushed, expectant stillness over the crowded room.
The Archbishop of Swengchan rose and went to the podium.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “We have delayed our little program because we were waiting for the arrival of the Reverend Mother Emeritus and Doña Antoinetta. But they seem to have been unavoidably delayed. That may be what is known as a blessing in disguise. In any event, we will go right to the address by one of our more unusual political figures. Ladies and gentleman, may I present Senator J. Ellwood Fisch, better known as Jaws, the senator from California?”
The applause was somewhat less than tumultuous. People who had come to hear a marching band and see holy relics and ceremonial goats were not at all interested in what threatened to be a political speech.
The senator, looking a little wan and pale, took his place behind the microphone.
“Archbishop, Bishop, distinguished guests, friends, neighbors and fellow Radical-Liberals,” he began. “I am honored to be among you today.”
(Mixed boos and hisses.)
“When it was brought to my attention by that distinguished physician, Dr. Hawkeye Pierce, and his distinguished fellow physician, Dr. Trapper John McIntyre, co-proprietors of the Finest Kind Fish Market and Medical Clinic of Spruce Harbor Maine . . .” (Mixed cries and questions from the floor: “Who? What did he say? Is he drunk?”)
“. . . that a certain religious object—I might even say a holy relic—had recently been unearthed, and was about to be given to Doña Antoinetta Gomez y Sanchez and her family .. .”
(Mixed comments from the audience: “About time! Finally? What the hell is he mumbling about?”)
“. . . in appreciation for their generosity to the Ms. Prudence MacDonald Memorial School of Nursing, a thought occurred to me.”
(Mixed comments from the audience: “I don’t believe it. I hope he doesn’t take a drink of water.”)
“I say, it occurred to me that the family Gomez y Sanchez, who, I learned, were about to give the holy relic to Bishop O’Grogarty for his diocese, were really far more interested in the welfare of the nursing school than in merely donating nothing more than a small piece of stone. ...”
(Comment from the audience—shouter has Irish brogue: “Heresy! Heresy!”)
(Comment from Bishop O’Grogarty: “Shut up, O’Hara, and sit down!”)
“And so what I have done, ladies and gentlemen and fellow Radical-Liberals, is to purchase that inanimate object from its present owners. The funds have come from my campaign fund. I knew my contributors would like me to spend their money in such a way. The full purchase price, fifty thousand dollars, goes to the nursing school. The object in question will be presented to the Vatican, where it will be placed in their world-famous library. Archbishop Mulcahy informs me that it will make a pair.”
(Desultory applause. Comments: “Let the fairies sing. Bring on the goats.”)
At that moment, all eyes were drawn to the left of the stage. The Reverend Mother Emeritus Margaret and Doña Antoinetta Gomez y Sanchez had finally arrived. The Reverend Mother was in good spirits. She waved at the audience and winked. Doña Antoinetta, however, was somewhat more subdued. She had a Mona Lisa suggestion of a smile on her face. She was clutching a book, Dr. T. Mullins Yancey’s latest work, to her bosom. She seemed to be flushed in the face and a little unsteady on her feet.
“Right over here, honey,” the Reverend Mother was heard to say. “Get a little black coffee in you and you’ll be good as new.”
At that point, someone the newspapers later described as a “crazed waiter” went berserk. He jumped up onto the stage, reached under his apron, and threw something (later discovered to be a bunch of rather badly mangled long-stemmed roses) at Doña Antoinetta.
“I love you!” he cried. “Here I am, your hairy-chested devil with—”
He got no further. A guest at the head table, a former Marine, Mr. François Mulligan, jumped to his feet, lunged across the table, and grabbed the “crazed waiter” by the neck. He then threw the “crazed waiter” into the audience. The distance was later measured at thirty-five feet.
An alert stagehand dropped the curtain instantly, depriving the audience of a view of what happened next.
François e Mulligan turned to Doña Antoinetta. “After what one of you lousy Latin broads once did to me,” he said, “I don’t want nothin’ to do with you. I did that because this is Dago Red’s party and I didn’t want it messed up.”
“François !” the archbishop said.
“Frankie!” Doña Antoinetta said.
“What did you call me? Don’t you dare call me that! That miserable Latin broad who did me dirt called me Frankie!” François replied furiously.
“Frankie,” Doña Antoinetta said. “Frankie, it’s me, your little Tony!”
“I’ll be goddamned!” François Mulligan said. “Why the hell didn’t you show up at the marriage license office?”
“Marriage license office? I was waiting at the church! I waited three days!”
“I waited a week at the marriage license office. I only had a three-day pass, and the MPs came after me.”
“Oh, Frankie!” Doña Antoinetta said. She stood up and rushed toward him, falling (whether from passion or from the brandy she’d shared with the Reverend Mother will never be known) into his arms. François caught her.
“Oh, how I’ve dreamed of those steely arms,” Doña Antoinetta said.
Bishop O’Grogarty turned to Monsignor Moran. “Bob, I believe I know that gentleman by reputation.’’ Boris Alexandrovich Korsky-Rimsakov walked onto the stage with the Baroness d’Iberville on one arm and Esmerelda Hoffenburg on the other.
“You may raise the curtain,” heannounced. “I am here. The festivities may begin.” He looked at François .
“Get rid of the broad, François , what are you trying to do—embarrass Dago Red?”
François gathered Doña Antoinetta into his arms of steel and ran off the stage with her.
“Bishop O’Grogarty,” Archbishop Mulcahy said. “Might I suggest that you go along and make sure that this time they get to the church on time?”
“Yes, of course, Your Eminence,” Bishop O’Grogarty said.
“You, Boris,” His Eminence said. “Start singing!” He motioned to the stagehand to raise the curtain, and the festivities resumed.
with friends
MASH 10 MASH goes to Miami Page 23
