Complete Stories (32 page)

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Authors: Dorothy Parker,Colleen Bresse,Regina Barreca

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“Good evening,” the young man said. “At least, I beg your pardon. At least, I wonder if you’d mind if I sat down here beside of you. If you wouldn’t mind, that is. If you’d let me, at least.”
“But certainly,” the young woman said, for she had recently returned from France. “But of course.”
She lent him room on the little sofa where she sat, light and languid, and he rested none too easily beside her. He set his gaze upon her face, nor did he take it away.
“You know, this is terribly nice of you to let me do this,” he said. “It’s—well, what I mean is, I was afraid maybe you wouldn’t.”
“But no!” she said.
“You see,” he said, “I’ve been looking at you all evening. At least, I couldn’t get my eyes off of you. Honest. First thing I saw you, I tried to get Marge to introduce me, but she’s been so busy fixing drinks and everything, I couldn’t get near her. And then I saw you come and sit here, all by yourself, and I’ve been trying to get up my nerve to come over and talk to you. I thought you might be sore or something, at least. I’d get all set to start over, and then I’d think, ‘Oh, she’s so sweet and pretty, she’ll just give me the bum’s rush.’ I thought you’d be sore or something, me coming over and talking to you without an introduction, I mean.”
“Oh,
non,
” she said. “Why, I’d never dream of being sore. Abroad, you know, they say the roof is an introduction.”
“Beg pardon?” he said.
“That’s what they say abroad,” she said. “In Paris and places. You go to a party, and the person that’s giving the party doesn’t introduce anybody to anybody. They just take it for granted that everybody will talk to everybody else, because they take it for granted that their friends are their friends’ friends.
Comprenez-vous?
Oh, I’m sorry. Slips. I
must
stop talking French. Only it’s so hard, once you get into the habit of rattling it off. I mean, see what I mean? Why, I’d forgotten all about people having to be introduced to other people at a party.”
“Well, I’m certainly glad you aren’t sore,” he said. “At least, it’s wonderful for me. Only maybe you’d rather be alone, here. Would you?”
“Oh,
non, non, non, non, non,
” she said. “Goodness, no. I was just sitting here, watching everybody. I feel as if I don’t know a soul since I’ve come back. But it’s so interesting, just to sit and watch the way people behave and their clothes and everything. You feel as if you were in another world. Well, you know how you feel when you’ve come back from being abroad. Don’t you?”
“I’ve never been abroad,” he said.
“Oh, my,” she said. “Oh,
là-là-là
. Haven’t you really? Well, you must go, the very first minute you can. You’ll adore it. I can tell just by looking at you you’ll be crazy over it.”
“Were you abroad long?” he said.
“I was in Paris over three weeks,” she said.
“That’s one place I’d like to go,” he said. “I guess that must be tops.”
“Oh, don’t talk about it,” she said. “It makes me so homesick I can’t see straight. Oh, Paree, Paree,
ma chère
Paree. I just feel as though it’s
my
city. Honestly, I don’t know how I’m ever going to get along away from it. I’d like to go right straight back this minute.”
“Hey, don’t talk like that, will you?” he said. “We need you around here. At least, don’t go back yet a while, will you please? I’ve only just met you.”
“Oh, that’s sweet of you,” she said. “Goodness, so few American men know how to talk to a woman. I guess they’re all too busy, or something. Everybody seems in such a hurry—no time for anything but money, money, money. Well,
c’est ça,
I suppose.”
“We could find time for other things,” he said. “There’s a lot of fun we could have. There’s a lot of fun around New York, at least.”
“This old New York!” she said. “I don’t believe I’ll ever get used to it. There’s nothing to
do
here. Now in Paris, it’s so picturesque and everything, you’re never blue a second. And there are all these cute little places where you can go and have a drink, when you want. Oh, it’s wonderful.”
“I know any amount of cute little places where you can go and have a drink,” he said. “I can take you to any one of them in ten minutes.”
“It wouldn’t be like Paris,” she said. “Oh, every time I think of it, I get
terriblement triste
. Darn it, there I go again. Will I
ever
remember?”
“Look,” he said, “can’t I get you a drink now? Why, you haven’t been doing a thing. What would you like?”
“Oh,
mon dieu,
I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve got so in the habit of drinking champagne that really—What have they got? What do people drink here, anyway?”
“Well, there’s Scotch and gin,” he said, “and I think maybe there’s some rye out in the dining-room. At least there may be.”
“How funny!” she said. “You forget about the terrible things that people drink. Well, when in Rome—Gin, I guess.”
“With ginger ale?” he said.
“Quel horreur!”
she said. “No, just plain, I think, just—what do you call it?—straight.”
“I’ll be right back,” he said, “and it’ll be too long.”
He left her and quickly returned, bearing little full glasses. Carefully he presented one to her.
“Merci mille fois,”
she said. “Oh, darn me. Thank you, I mean.”
The young man sat down again beside her. He drank, but he did not look at the glass in his hand. He looked at the young woman.
“J’ai soif,”
she said. “
Mon dieu.
I hope you don’t think I swear terribly. I’ve got so in the way of doing it, I really don’t realize what I’m saying. And in French, you know, they don’t think anything of it at all. Everybody says it. It isn’t even like swearing. Ugh. My goodness, this is strong.”
“It’s all right, though,” he said. “Marge has a good man.”
“Marge?” she said. “A good man?”
“At least,” he said, “the stuff isn’t cut.”
“Stuff?” she said. “Isn’t cut?”
“She’s got a good bootlegger, at least,” he said. “I wouldn’t be much surprised if he really did get it off the boat.”
“Oh, please don’t talk about boats!” she said. “It makes me so homesick, I just nearly die. It makes me want to get right on a boat now.”
“Ah, don’t,” he said. “Give me just a little chance. Lord, when I think I nearly passed up this party. Honestly, I wasn’t going to come at first. And then the minute I saw you, I knew I’d never been so right in my life. At least, when I saw you sitting there and that dress and everything—well, I went for a loop, that’s all.”
“What, this old thing?” she said. “Why, it’s old as the hills. I got it before I went abroad. I sort of didn’t want to wear any of my French things tonight because—well, of course no one thinks anything of them over there, but I thought maybe these New York people might think they were pretty extreme. You know how Paris clothes are. They’re so Frenchy.”
“Would I like to see you in them,” he said. “Boy! Why, I’d—Hey, there isn’t anything in your glass. Here, let me fix that up for you. And don’t move, will you?”
Again he went and came back, and again he bore glasses filled with colorless fluid. He resumed looking at the young woman.
“Well,” she said. “
À votre santé.
Heavens, I wish I could stop that. I mean good luck.”
“I’ve got it,” he said, “ever since I met you. I wish—at least I wish we could get off somewhere away from here. Marge says they’re going to roll back the rugs and dance, and everybody’ll be wanting to dance with you, and I won’t have a prayer.”
“Oh, I don’t want to dance,” she said. “American men dance so badly, most of them. And I don’t want to meet a lot of people, anyway. It’s awfully hard for me to talk to them. I can’t seem to understand what they’re talking about, since I’ve been back. I suppose they think their slang is funny, but I don’t see it.”
“You know what we might do,” he said, “if you would, at least? We might wait till they start dancing, and then just ease out. We might do the town for a while. What would you say, at least?”
“You know, that might be rather amusing,” she said. “I’d really like to see some of your new little
bistros
—what do you call them?—oh, you know what I mean—speakeasies. I hear some of them are really quite interesting. I suppose this stuff is strong, but it doesn’t seem to do anything at all to me. It must be because I haven’t been used to anything but those wonderful French wines.”
“Can I get you some more?” he said.
“Well,” she said, “I might have a little. One has to do what everybody else does, don’t you?”
“Same thing?” he said. “Straight gin?”
“S’il vous plaît,”
she said. “But yes.”
“Lady,” he said, “can you take it! Are we going to have an evening!”
For the third time he went and came. For the third time he watched her though he drank.
“Ce n’est pas mal,”
she said. “
Pas du tout,
at all. There’s a little place in one of the Boulevards—they’re those big avenues they have—that has a sort of cordial that tastes almost exactly like this. My, I’d like to be there now.”
“Ah, no, you wouldn’t,” he said. “Would you, really? You won’t after a little while, anyway. There’s a little place on Fifty-Second Street I want to take you first. Look, when they start dancing, what do you say you get your coat, or at least whatever you have, and meet me in the hall? There’s no sense saying good-night. Marge will never know. I can show you a couple of places might make you forget Paris.”
“Oh, don’t say that,” she said. “Please. As if I could ever forget my Paree! You just can’t know how I feel about it. Every time anybody says ‘Paris,’ I just want to cry and cry.”
“You can even do that,” he said, “at least as long as you do it on my shoulder. It’s waiting right here for you. What do you say we get started, baby? Mind if I call you baby? Let’s go get ourselves a couple of pretty edges. How are you coming with that gin? Finished? Atta girl. How about it we go out now and get stinking?”
“But oke!” said the young woman in green lace.
They went out.
 
The New Yorker
, September 24, 1932
Horsie
 
When young Mrs. Gerald Cruger came home from the hospital, Miss Wilmarth came along with her and the baby. Miss Wilmarth was an admirable trained nurse, sure and calm and tireless, with a real taste for the arranging of flowers in bowls and vases. She had never known a patient to receive so many flowers, or such uncommon ones; yellow violets and strange lilies and little white orchids poised like a bevy of delicate moths along green branches. Care and thought must have been put into their selection that they, like all the other fragile and costly things she kept about her, should be so right for young Mrs. Cruger. No one who knew her could have caught up the telephone and lightly bidden the florist to deliver her one of his five-dollar assortments of tulips, stock, and daffodils. Camilla Cruger was no complement to garden blooms.
Sometimes, when she opened the shiny boxes and carefully grouped the cards, there would come a curious expression upon Miss Wilmarth’s face. Playing over shorter features, it might almost have been one of wistfulness. Upon Miss Wilmarth, it served to perfect the strange resemblance that she bore through her years; her face was truly complete with that look of friendly melancholy peculiar to the gentle horse. It was not, of course, Miss Wilmarth’s fault that she looked like a horse. Indeed, there was nowhere to attach any blame. But the resemblance remained.
She was tall, pronounced of bone, and erect of carriage; it was somehow impossible to speculate upon her appearance undressed. Her long face was innocent, indeed ignorant, of cosmetics, and its color stayed steady. Confusion, heat, or haste caused her neck to flush crimson. Her mild hair was pinned with loops of nicked black wire into a narrow knot, practical to support her little high cap, like a charlotte russe from a bake-shop. She had big, trustworthy hands, scrubbed and dry, with nails cut short and so deeply cleaned with some small sharp instrument that the ends stood away from the spatulate finger-tips. Gerald Cruger, who nightly sat opposite her at his own dinner table, tried not to see her hands. It irritated him to be reminded by their sight that they must feel like straw matting and smell of white soap. For him, women who were not softly lovely were simply not women.
He tried, too, so far as it was possible to his beautiful manners, to keep his eyes from her face. Not that it was unpleasant—a kind face, certainly. But, as he told Camilla, once he looked he stayed fascinated, awaiting the toss and the whinny.
“I love horses, myself,” he said to Camilla, who lay all white and languid on her apricot satin chaise-longue. “I’m a fool for a horse. Ah, what a noble animal, darling! All I say is, nobody has any business to go around looking like a horse and behaving as if it were all right. You don’t catch horses going around looking like people, do you?”

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