1414
Dawn and Earle Tribbie regarded one another without enthusiasm, and the soft Florida night only heightened their constraint. It certainly wasn’t much of a Christmas Eve—not a bit like home. Not even a tree, Dawn told herself, except that funny thing in the lobby—green with gilded nuts and pine cones and candy canes all over it. Dawn thought of her own tree, white plastic with blue lights on a revolving base that played “Noel.” Very modrun and no dirt.
There would be Mama’s eggnog made with real rum ice cream, and the gas log would be burning sort of blue too, the way it did when it was turned down low.
Earle put down his pipe and hitched at the sleeves of his new royal-blue rayon-damask dressing gown. The goldarned thing would fit a elephant. His tongue burned and his throat tickled and he had a funny feeling in his chest.
Dawn sighed with relief. The very smell of Earle’s old pipe simply
nauseated
her, and he seemed to smoke it all the time. Dawn wished that they could have stayed downstairs a little longer, in the bar, even if she
didn’t
drink, but Earle said that only the rich could afford it.
“Sixty cents a bottle beer,” Earle said. “Highway robbery, if you ask me.”
“You must of spent two, three dollars,” Dawn figured rapidly.
“Four ninety-five,” Earle told her grimly. “Including tip. Who wanted potato chips? Who wanted another coke?” he asked.
“My cute little watch,” Dawn said, thinking of the sable-dyed muskrat jaquette at Stearns that she had simply
hinted and hinted
for. She already
had
a watch. You’d think
he’d
notice but no,
he
had to go and give her an old wrist watch that he probably got wholesale.
“Maybe you could exchange it,” Earle said, looking at his cuffs.
“My watch?” Dawn asked. “Not that it wasn’t awfully sweet of you, but—”
“N-yah. This bathrobe. Too big. Get a nice, warm flannel. Wear it a lifetime.”
“You don’t like it!” Dawn said.
“Sure, I like it,” he told her. “I appreciate it and all, but well, looky-here,” and he held out his arm. “Spot like the mischief, too. You take up home. A cold house—”
“Our house is warm as toast,” Dawn said dangerously. “It’s only out in the cold that a person needs to be all bundled up, a fur jaquette or something. Gee, back home it’s probably snowing right this minute. Did I tell you I sent cards to the gang at the office?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. You told me three, four times the last hour.”
“I think you’re just mean, Earle Tribbie. I so much as mention some of the good times I had with the gang at the office and you, you make a molehill out of it!”
I’m dreaming of a white Christmas
. . . “I guess there’s nothing like a white Christmas,” she sighed, fingering a hard swelling under her bang.
“Say, I could use some of that,” Earle said ominously, rising and stretching the way he always did. “You and me under a bearskin, huh?”
Dawn tacked to the open window, put it down. The air smelled of fish and flowers and well, sort of
nasty.
The palm trees rattled like it was raining and Earle just
hurt.
“Earle! Earle Tribbie! Don’t!” she said.
La Vista Apartments
Morning sun washed the big Persian carpet in the lobby with extravagant blues and reds and greens. It lay in pale yellow blocks on the marble floor like puddles of Florida orange juice, glistened in the tumbling blue and white waves, opened the scarlet bells of hibiscus, glinted among garbage
cans in the whitewashed areaway that led to Room Service and slanted through an open doorway to the pantry, where the micron-long cells of Eberth’s bacillus slept snugly in cracked ice among the shellfish, undulated purposefully in a vat of warm milk, divided languidly in the sun.
In Dukemer’s little apartment, the same sun picked out an empty bottle and a dirty glass, crept into her tousled bed, sent splinters and spasms of roaring light through her eyeballs.
We die alone.
Time to get up. Time to get up and go to work.
The light lay painfully along her limbs, sent long shudders of weakness through her trunk, beat explosively about her head. Vio
-let,
the pulse in Dukemer’s temples pounded out. Vio
-let.
All
-alike.
Dearest-
love
. Thirty-
one
. Bury-your
-dead.
All
-alike.
Left-you
-flat.
Dearest-
love
.
Dukemer struggled frantically to her feet, tried to open her eyes, slumped again to the edge of the bed. She sighed. The sheer heroism, the tenacity of purpose, the whipping of faltering flesh that she’d put into going to work with a hangover. I could have been another Joan of Arc, she thought numbly. I could have been a Madame Curie, a Florence Nightingale.
“I never had one like this before.” She couldn’t go to work with her eyes shut and, back in bed with the pulse in her temples repeating her endless despair, she couldn’t go back to sleep. Dearest
-love.
All
-alike.
Left-you
-flat.
All
-alike.
Vio
-let.
Thirty-
one.
She began to shake. “If I could only die, go to sleep and never wake up.” Vio
-let.
All
-alike.
Thirty-
one
.
“I need a drink,” Dukemer told herself, and felt a queer compulsion to go to the hotel. “Maybe he came back. Maybe he left a message for me and I don’t even know.” All
-alike.
Thirty-
one
. Not much of a man, he had said, and he’d been right. Not enough of a man, at any rate, to fight for what he wanted or perhaps, the pulse in her temples insisted, he hadn’t wanted her enough to fight.
As a woman, she wasn’t very much. Look at Mrs. Simpson. Look at Bobo Rockefeller and Helen of Troy and Grace Kelly. She, Martha Mildred Dukemer, wasn’t the stuff of which spoiled darlings were made. You either had it or you didn’t, and she didn’t. All any guy wanted from her was to get her into a hallway, maybe the back of a parked car. They were all alike. All
-alike.
All
-alike.
All
-alike.
All
-alike.
All
-alike.
Dukemer felt her way warily to the refrigerator, got ice for a compress. “I mustn’t cry. If I start again, I’ll never stop.” Vio
-let.
Vio
-let.
Vio
-let.
Vio
-let.
Her eyes opened now to slits. “My God, I look like something left over from the Ice Age.” Look-your-
age
, the pulse in her temples shrieked. Look-your-
age
. Look-your-
age
. Look-your
-age.
She dressed carefully, as carefully as her weakness, her uneasy respiration, her chills, the little dry sobs that still shook her, would permit. “There isn’t much that I can do to my face but put on dark glasses. A good, heavy veil would be better. I’ll be all right when I get to the hotel. I’m almost sure he left a note at the Desk. He wouldn’t not say goodbye.” The doorbell rang, and before she could collect herself there was a great, crashing knock on the door. “I knew you’d come, darling. I knew it. Forgive me for doubting you. Ah-h-h, I’m not good enough for you. Thank you for coming, thank you.”
“Mrs. Dukener?” a hoarse voice bawled. “Mrs. Dukener?
Florist!”
“Hold it, pal,” Dukemer said with the door open, fishing blindly in her purse for a quarter. “These are probably the next to the last flowers I’ll ever get.”
Dearest-
love
, the pulse in Dukemer’s head tuned up. Dearest
-love.
The roses were a dark, velvety red with naked stems protruding from the open end of the box. “If it says Merry Christmas, I’ll curse God and die.” But there was no card. Mr. Mather hadn’t said anything because there wasn’t anything to say.
“My love is like a red, red rose. . .”
What do you do when your love is like a red, red rose? Press him, but not too closely? Martha Mildred Dukemer’s Album of Pressed Flowers and Familiar Quotations.
Degno amore. You are as perfect as a circle. I love only you.
I love only you. That was one hell of a familiar quotation.
There was a lot of mail sticking out of her box, the telephone bill and two hundred Christmas Seals forwarded from Sea Island and cards from Ernie and the Maitre d’, and a homemade linoleum block print from Bob and Eleanor, whoever Bob and Eleanor were. There was a calendar and a tired note from Miss Hande and a letter from Mary Street. Little Street seemed to be on her way back to Centralia. She had mentioned Purcell and been definite about her home address, so Dukemer supposed that poor little Street had probably found out by now that Mother knows best.
All
-alike.
All
-alike.
Left-you-
flat
. Left-you-
flat
. Everything comes to nothing. Poor kid. Poor little kid. She’d like to punch Purcell in the nose. Workers of the World, Unite. Martha Mildred Dukemer’s Planned Economy. A Boy for Every Girl in the World, or Who Was Adam Smith? Cotton-
Candy
. Cotton-
Candy
. Dearest-
love
. Dearest-
love
. Viol
-let.
Thirty-
one
. Left-you
-flat.
All
-alike.
Cotton
-Candy.
Cotton-
Candy.
She wouldn’t think about him any more. It hurt too much. She’d think about something else. Antidisestablishmentarian-ism is the longest word in the English language. Two wrongs do not make a right.
Mister-Right. Mister-Right.
Dearest-
love.
Dearest-
love
.
“Why’re you going to the hotel?” Dukemer asked herself angrily. Antidisestablishmentarianism is the longest word in the English language. Cotton-
Candy
, the metronome in Dukemer’s head ticked out. Cotton-
Candy
. Thirty-
one
. Look-your-
age
. Vio
-let.
Partial-
plate
. Only-
you
.
Antidisestablishmentarianism is the longest word in the English language. “Maybe he didn’t want to embarrass me, barging in at the apartment. Maybe he told Mrs. Bitchleigh the hell with it and is just there waiting for me in the lobby. I’ll be so glad to see him. I won’t cry or anything. I’ll just walk up and put my hand on his arm and say ‘Hi.’ “
She put little Street’s letter in her purse and closed the door on the ruins of her apartment.
The Bar
Christmas morning and the lobby was empty. Two new bellmen spotted up, lost in a listless, golden dream of ten-to-one shots and four-horse parlays. The cigar-stand girl brooded crookedly over her
Confidential
and picked at a box of chocolates. Mrs. Conyngham skirted the Christmas tree and stepped into the elevator. Mr. Browne-Smythe stepped out.
“Anything for me?” Dukemer asked. “Cablegrams? Air Mail Specials? Postcards? I’ll take anything.”
Daniels shuffled through a big pile of unsorted mail. “Afraid not. Hey, wait a minute. Aren’t you supposed to be. . .” he called after her suddenly, but Dukemer was gone.
Phil was polishing the big mirror over the bar. It was something terrible from last night.
“A small beer, please,” Dukemer said in a small voice.
“Whatsa matter? You feeling bad, Tootsie?” Phil asked. “Ain’t you working?”
Dukemer sipped and put her glass down.
Not even a note.
She had a crazy feeling that everything had stopped, that she was waiting for something. There was a warm gush over her lip.
“Here,” Phil said. “I got one clean bar towel, and you got to get the nosebleed. Aw,” he patted her lightly on the shoulder.
Not even a note.
Antidisestablishmentarianism is the longest word in the English language.
I
mustn’t cry.
Antidisestablishmentarianism is the longest word in the English language. Antidisestab. . . Phil folded a scrap of paper napkin into a plug. “Put this under your lip,” he said.
“Thanks. Gee, I’m sorry,” Dukemer said. “Never felt like this before.”
“The nosebleed, it does you good,” Phil told her. “Cleans out your passages, like.”
“My passages could use a good hosing. Probably full of
Pressed Flowers and Familiar Quotations, not to mention Adam Smith.”
“Maybe I ought to call a doctor,” Phil said hastily. “You sure you feeling all right, Tootsie? You always look so nice and all. Maybe you oughta go wash your face.” Phil poured himself a careful two ounces of the best, poured Dukemer one on the house. “You sure you ain’t sick?”
Phil returned to his mirror, and presently Dukemer came back, her face shiny with soap, and wearing a careful, new red mouth below her black glasses.
“I gave your towel the heave-ho, Phil,” she said. “You wouldn’t have wanted it.”
I mustn’t cry.
Antidisestablishmentarianism is the longest word in the English language. Dearest-
love
. Dearest-
love
.
“Your little girl, Phil. Germaine. She have a nice Christmas?”
“Sa-ay,” Phil said. “I tell you what she says to me? Here it is Christmas morning, and I and the wife has just got up. ‘Daddy,’ she says, ‘I watched. Sandy Claus looks just like you.’ I give her a portable television—fourteen-inch screen,” he continued, swallowing. “There wasn’t nothing else she wanted.”
Dukemer coughed again.
“You catching cold?” Phil said accusingly. “Try a little schnapps.”
“I’m too thirsty for schnapps,” Dukemer said.
Not even a note.
The Pleasaunce
In the lobby, Mr. Browne-Smythe exchanged five new twenties for twenty new fives, while three phones rang, and old Colonel Croy and his manservant waited to be checked in. The phones rang again and a sun-warmed blonde in a white shantung suit joined the Colonel and his man. Mr. Browne-Smythe shifted on his feet, considered, and asked for thirty new ones. He considered again, and asked for twenty-five dimes and a dollar’s worth of nickels. He counted his coins as the phones rang, recounted them, and went in to breakfast.
At table, Mr. Browne-Smythe was a chopper and a snipper and a pouncer and a picker and a pusher. He harried his food, skirmished around it, took it in little surprise raids, chopped and snipped and pounced and pushed and picked, until he worried it at last into his mouth.
Mr. Browne-Smythe was, ordinarily, fond of his food, once he had subdued it, but this morning he was strangely out of sorts. He violated his poached eggs, chipped savagely at his toast, pursued recalcitrant crumbs around his plate and brought them back, captive, to the struggling, central mass, chopped and pounced and picked and pushed almost as before, but his heart was not in it.
Mr. Browne-Smythe had slept even more poorly than usual. He had a frontal headache and chills, and he pushed his plate away. He was careful, yes. Always careful, but a shocked, sure conviction settled over him that he hadn’t been quite careful enough.
Thin and dry and brittle and gray, he moved along to the Pleasaunce.
Dr. Pomery skewered the bun on the back of her head crookedly with her good hand. She’d seen in the hotel almost everything she’d seen in private practice. Tabetics. Sarcoma. Nephritis. Carcinoma. Petit mal and enough psychoneuroses for a textbook. Where there were no children, there were, of course, no children’s diseases.
Cora May would soon be gone, back to turpentine country, and Dr. Anna was conscious of a whisper of relief. She was very tired. Cora May’s appetite was poor. She was listless and broody. The child was far from well yet, but there was no indication of septicemia.
In the Pleasaunce, a Spanish roach from the kitchen scuttled frantically against her foot like a dry, brown leaf. Far off, in the blue water, an adelantado was swallowed by a jackfish. The jackfish was swallowed by a tarpon, and the
tarpon by a shark. Gulls wheeled screaming, and in the Coffee Shop a thin waitress rang up No Sale and took out five.
Mr. Browne-Smythe chirred tentatively in his throat,
“H-h-h-h-h-h,”
worried at his chair, hitched his brittle, dry grayness a little nearer to Dr. Anna’s decent person. There was reassurance today in her warm brown eyes, her sensible angularity. Careful, always careful, but his head had no business to be aching, and he felt a helpless gray impatience with his gray flesh.
By George, he paid Ludwig to keep him well. Ludwig was a charlatan, a high-priced humbug.
“H-h-hhh!”
he said. This medical party here looked pretty promising, pret-ty promising. Mr. Browne-Smythe prided himself on his ability to read faces, and he had seen at a glance that the medical party was no fool. Honest as a silver dollar. He’d have a little talk with her, and before you knew it, he’d bring the conversation around. Wouldn’t cost him a penny, and the professional party would probably enjoy talking a little shop.
“H-h-hhhh!”
he said again, hitching his chair. Dr. Pomery looked up.
“Yessirree,” Mr. Browne-Smythe said. “Old sun feels pretty good, pret-ty good. Your first trip?”
First and last, first and last. She knew what she knew. “First trip,” she admitted. “Beautiful.” She indicated the sea, the sky, with a hungry gesture.
“Come every year,” Mr. Browne-Smythe said. “Yessirree. Wouldn’t miss it. Keeps me young.
H-h-hhh.
Fountain of Youth. Ponce de Leon, you know.” Careful, always careful.
“My blood pressure,” Mr. Browne-Smythe began. “Try to keep it down.” He nodded in gray complacence of his blood pressure.
“Clear out,” Dr. Anna said and smiled a little. “Move to China. Nobody knows why; it isn’t racial. Unsalted rice, probably. Transplanted Chinese suffer from hypertension just the—”
“You don’t say? You don’t say? Very interesting.
H-h-h-hhh.
V-e-r-y interesting.” Mr. Browne-Smythe made a church and steeple, applied the steeple, considering, to the tip of his nose. Careful, always careful; he didn’t know but he’d try a little rice for luncheon. “Have a funny headache today,” he said, “Right in front. My arms . . .”
No one wanted free medical advice more than the people who could and did pay for the best. She’d given him his little victory and a slow joke formed, like a bubble, within her. The practice of medicine was usually a vast placebo.
“Ever try aceta-salicylic acid?” she asked, and shook three aspirins out of a glass phial. “About an hour apart. Drink two glasses of water before and after each tablet. Two glasses,” she emphasized.
Mr. Browne-Smythe showed his gray teeth in a little gray smile. “Don’t know how to thank you,” he said. China. Rice. Aceta-salicylic acid. Miracle agents that would preserve intact his thin, dry grayness. Careful, always careful. Mr. Browne-Smythe bowed and left abruptly for his rooms and a glass of the proper height and circumference.
Dr. Pomery permitted herself a brief uncharitableness. The man was an old fool. Well, eight to ten glasses of water should certainly flush his kidneys, offhand she couldn’t think of a better diuretic, and the aspirin would do him no harm. He’d have eaten a soap suppository, she supposed, if she’d called it sodium stearate.
She’d look in on Cora May in an hour or so, give her her Christmas present, a simulated red alligator bag with ten tens in the bill compartment. The child could have a little vacation too. Dr. Anna pulled her bamboo chair a little apart from the circle of sociable sitters, slept restlessly in the sun.
The sun that had opened the hibiscus and wakened Dukemer, that stirred the flagella in their culture of warm milk to wriggling life, that glinted in the blue and white waves and caressed old Dr. Pomery as she drowsed at ease in the Pleasaunce, found a small, round imperfection in a window of the service wing and focused genially upon it.
Cirrus and cumulus advanced and retreated in a thin, blue
pas de deux. A
white ibis ate some shrimp and then a fiddler crab. Mr. Goodenow smacked his lips noisily and grunted
with approval. It was
his
turn for fruit
and
for cereal. Purcell shaved disastrously, and the blonde in the white shantung suit pushed a check for $300.00 through the cashier’s wicket and, when Daniels asked her for identification, announced that she had never been so insulted in her life.
In Centralia, Mary Street bathed her face again in cold water and decided to go downstairs. She’d say she had a cold.
The sun concentrated its rays through a bubble of cheap glass and heated the rim of a celluloid mirror in a barrel of loose trash.
A rat was a gray streak between garbage cans. One of the dishwashers was drunk, one was sick and one was sensitive. The Old Man sulked in his gold and white suite meditating ingratitude, and planning Personal Touches for the Future.
At the Colony in Palm Beach, Mr. Mather munched a bismuth tablet and listened to Violetta practicing scales, and to Violet, The Greeks were right.
Not to be born is better.
Cloud banks shifted ponderously in the bright violence of the day. The radiant heat and energy at the point of concentration increased. There was a cracking noise, and a little blue tongue of flame ran rapidly around the celluloid mirror.