The Pink Hotel (18 page)

La Vista Apartments

For the first time since Mrs. Dukemer had smiled at him, Mr. Mather couldn’t sleep and even the alarm clock didn’t help. Mr. Mather was either ten days or two weeks overdue in Waltham, he didn’t remember which, but apparently Violet did, and she had been writing him:

Dear Will: I am enclosing Dr. Purdy’s bill for Violetta and your Harvard Club dues. When shall I expect you?

Dear Will: Aunt Fan has had another stroke and coffee is up eight cents a pound at Hogge & Bradfords. Weather remains clear and cold and skating is fine at the pond.

Dear Will: I am in touch with the most wonderful Guru through Mme. Olga. So intuitive! How can you be completely indifferent in the face of Aunt Fan’s imminent translation? I am enclosing Dr. Warren’s bill for Violetta. The new wood is green and won’t burn . . .

Mr. Mather read, and withdrew shudderingly into himself. The Greeks had been right. Not to be born is better. As Millie would say, “Better he should have died in his sleep.”

Mr. Mather’s ulcer was unhappy, too. It viewed with gnawing distaste any return to Waltham. Mr, Mather’s ulcer was addicted now to stingers and Mrs. Dukemer, was apathetic to Aunt Fan’s imminent translation.

Violet’s Aunt Fan had always irritated Mr. Mather’s ulcer, and it dictated strategic telegrams to Violet from the Mme. de Sevigne’ Writing Room:

Quinby quibbling (stop) seeing pomegranate of rosenkrantz and guildenstern.

Coriolanus merger off (stop) conference with C. C. Tremblatt tomorrow.

May stay till first of year (stop) Amalg Unifro down
four points (stop) pozen completely unfavorable to old
setup (stop) iselberg due.

But even Mr. Mather’s ulcer knew that it was impossible to deceive Violet for very long.

Mr. Mather fenced cravenly for time. Millie was his long-sought love, his dear oneness, his very manhood, but Mr. Mather was not accustomed to making personal decisions. His will had atrophied.
Ah-h,
Millie was as perfect as a circle and all his love was to her, but Violet still held the reins. In spite of Laura, Petrarch had said that a thousand pleasures cannot make up for a single pain.

“I’m so damned ah-old,” he told himself. It was very well to laugh, but he couldn’t really imagine being with anyone but Finney, Winney, Goldbeck & Chotek, or a workaday world as existing anywhere but in Waltham.

Violet would take him for everything he had, he knew her
well enough for that, and at his age he’d be lucky to get
sixty-five a week starting anywhere else. Mr. Mather decided,
in desperation, to sleep on it, but that was exactly what he
couldn’t do, and morning had found him as muddled as before, his ulcer rejecting nostrum and panacea, milk toast and weak tea.

Mr. Mather perspired. His sturdy legs trembled. He felt upon himself the onus of drastic action. Purcell was a ah-fellow of considerable assurance. He would look him up. They had had a drink together finally in the Bar-Oque, and he had told Purcell that he loved Mrs. Dukemer ah-passionately, but Purcell had been unsatisfactory.

“I don’t need a gypsy to tell me that,” Purcell said. Hell, he had heard the same story in a thousand bars.

“Dukemer’s a good kid,” he said at last, “but Christ, I wouldn’t tell anyone what kind of cigarettes to smoke.” They had both been embarrassed then, and talked about the weather.

Mr. Mather was ah-nowhere again, and he walked forlornly past Dukemer’s wicket without looking up. In his heart, Mr. Mather rescued her from the wicket, embraced her wholly, but Dukemer did not know that. To her, as to the original, playing Heloise to Mr. Mather’s Abelard was a chilly business.

“Something must have happened. Maybe he’s sick. Out of his head. I’ll call when he’s had time to get to his room.” Dukemer did, only to have the operator tell her that Mr. Mather did not want to be disturbed. Dukemer couldn’t understand any of it.

She made her balance numbly and went off and once at home, called the hotel again but Mr. Mather was still not to be disturbed. About seven o’clock she warmed up some stuff out of the icebox but she couldn’t eat it, after all. She put the dishes
in
the sink, made coffee.

Dukemer’s private gods had deserted her, left her stranded in a world full of People. She was suddenly more desolate than she’d been since she’d left the orphanage. “I didn’t care like this about Harry,” she said to the sink. The lonely verity of Dukemer’s love was tarnished and she needed someone, Purcell, little Street, Wooten, anyone who wasn’t People.

“Bury your dead, kid,” she adjured herself, but Mr. Mather
remained stubbornly alive. They were all alike. There wasn’t one of them you could trust. All
a-like.
All
a-like.
All
a-like.
“But he seemed so
nice,”
she told herself, and returned to the aching void into which Mr. Mather had penetrated with sunglasses and umbrella, seersucker suit and bow tie. The phone rang.

“Dearest love,” Mr. Mather said painfully.
“Degno amore.”

“Are you all right?” And, her perspective returning, “Have you been drinking?” Dukemer asked.

“No,” Mr. Mather stated flatly, “I have not been drinking. I must ah-see you.”

“If you’re sure you’ve nothing better to do. What’s wrong?”

“There is nothing ah-better than seeing you,” Mr. Mather told her.

Dukemer washed the dishes, put on a new face, changed her dress, ran a dustrag and a dustmop over her little apartment. “I must be going crazy,” she told herself.

Mr. Mather kissed her hard and clumsily when she opened the door, pushed her away, and paced off the apartment. There was, now, a big smear of fresh lipstick on his chin.

Dukemer’s strength left her and she sagged against the wall but she rallied after a bit and went to the kichenette, came back with two straight shots.

“Doctor’s orders,” she said.

Mr. Mather drank his off in a gulp and some of the caged wildness went out of his walk. Dukemer sat down heavily in the uncomfortable chair. He was the nicest and most wonderful guy in the world and she loved him so much that, for a minute, she’d thought she was going to be sick.

Mr. Mather stopped his quick circling and took her hand, holding it against his cheek in the sweet, old, familiar way. Dukemer watched a tear slide along his nose and leave a little wet streak on her hand before it fell to the floor.

Dukemer kissed Mr. Mather’s eyes and the salty trickle on his hands.

“Not ah-much of a man, my dear,” he concluded miserably,
and from their chairs they reached for one another in awkward desperation.

Mr. Mather resumed again his distraught pacing. “You are young and very ah-beautiful and nothing lovely is wanting in you. I am, of course, much too ah-old for you.” He wheeled abruptly and kissed her and this time there was no clumsiness in it. “I ah-love only you.”

“Compliments of a Friend,” Dukemer said. “I think I’m going to cry,”

“So damned ah-old. I could almost be your father. I have been a ah middling-good husband for twenty-five years. I ah-dislike my wife, but she is stronger than I. Violet is a ah fool, but she is not ah-weak. Not at all. I have led a dull, unhappy life but you have made me ah-happy. I ah-had not supposed that it was possible to be so happy. I have ah-sought you all my life.”

Dukemer didn’t say anything, and Mr. Mather held his head with both hands, stuck his knuckles into his eyes. When he looked up again, she was gone. He could hear a regular, muffled
h
unh-hunh-hunk, uh-hunh-hunh-hunh
from the bathroom.

He waited, pacing the floor discreetly. Drops came out on Mr. Mather’s forehead. He had hurt her. He had hurt his Mavourneen, his darling, his Snow White and Rose Red. Mr. Mather coughed apologetically and knocked.

“I’m decent,” Dukemer said shakily. “Come in.”

Mr. Mather opened the door, sat sheepishly beside her on the tub. “I have never wished to ah-hurt you,” he whispered, putting his arms around her, patting her shoulder with a slow, gentle insistence, until she removed her face from the washbowl and laid it on his shirt front.

There was something magical in Mr. Mather’s shirt front, a special quality that had quieted Dukemer almost at once. She borrowed his handkerchief and blew her nose. They had suddenly kissed each other a great deal, still sitting uncomfortably on the edge of the tub.

“I ah-love you,” Mr. Mather said.

“I love you too,” Dukemer admitted.

“More than all the ah-world,” Mr. Mather continued, “and I have ah-nothing to offer you. Violet can be vicious. Very
dog in the ah-mangerish.
Could you love a married man? Old and tired and perhaps ah-poor?”

“Married or single, black or white, I love you,” Dukemer said doggedly.

Mr. Mather held Dukemer’s hand against his cheek. “This is ah-not to be undertaken lightly,” he told her. “You must ah-not be hurt. Above all, you must ah-not be hurt.”

“I hurt a lot, right now,” Dukemer said realistically.

“This is not the usual ah-thing,” Mr. Mather told her. “You are not a little piece of ah-fluff. This is ah-not an affair. Not at all. I’m really a ah-dull fellow. A dull ah-old fellow who would like to marry you. If he ah-can.”

“It wouldn’t work,” Dukemer said slowly. “In my right mind, I know that, but I love you just the same. Old or tired or poor, darling. All the ways there are.”

“All the ways there are,” Mr. Mather repeated. “Exactly. Quite ah-so. Sleep on it,” he advised her. He blew his nose. “I shall have the ah-temerity to hope.” She was a remarkable woman. Mr. Mather pulled Dukemer to her feet and kissed her a-tiptoe.

“We ought to be confined,” Dukemer said. “We ought to be confined. There isn’t a prayer.” She sniffed abjectly and borrowed his handkerchief again. “I’ll think about it,” she promised. “I won’t think about anything else. Day after tomorrow, we’ll decide.”

The trouble was that they couldn’t say goodbye with Violet’s foreshortened shadow brooding over them. It was quite possible that there would never be a day after tomorrow.

“I ought to be locked up, but right now I can’t think of anything nicer than living in sin with you,” Dukemer confessed and clung to Mr. Mather.

Mr. Mather departed formally three times and returned twice. “Try to remember that I have loved you.”

“Be a good kid,” Dukemer said.

When Mr. Mather left at last, Dukemer relapsed into the strangled sobs that had found surcease in Mr. Mather’s shirt front. “Bury your dead, stupid,” Dukemer told herself as she kicked off her shoes, pulled her dress over her head.

But in bed, with her eyes closed, Violet’s nose approached Dukemer threateningly, gouged her into awareness. There really wasn’t a prayer, after all.

The Desk

There was a small, brass plate on the big circular marble Desk of the hotel that said
Restricted.
Ordinarily, it faced the lobby, confounding the unwary with its patrician script, but there were occasions when the brass plate was hastily reversed.

There was a nice distinction between
Restricted
and “Yes, indeed, sir. Anything else, sir? Right this way, sir,” that was apparent only to the Old Man.

If a J-w was very rich and very famous and very important, the
Restricted
sign was to be reversed, but if he was only a little less rich and famous and important, the hotel and the clerk were to remain on their dignity.

In the last analysis, only the Old Man himself knew if a J-w was rich enough or famous enough or important enough to be welcomed. The clerk was usually in error, and Moxley’s conclusions, fawning on the wrong J-ws and sending the right J-ws around the corner to the Imperial, were always unfortunate.

When Moxley was faced with any decision, he started to shake inside where it didn’t show. His face got red, and there was a sort of cold block in his head. He couldn’t think, and he automatically did the wrong thing.

Moxley had been holding 1211-15 for a Mr. Milner, but Mr. Milner’s appearance, when he got there at last, was far from prepossessing. Moxley regarded Mr. Milner’s fleshy nose, his heavy horn-rimmed glasses, his silver-white tie disapprovingly.

“The plane was late,” Mr. Milner explained apologetically and signed the register.
M.
Milner—Beverly Hills, Calif.

“Sold out,” Moxley snapped, and pushed the
Restricted
sign into greater prominence.

Without knowing it, Moxley and Mr. Milner grew louder and louder, and interested heads were turned in their direction. Mr. Milner didn’t like anyone to holler on him. It was almost the one thing that made him mad. Mr. Milner sometimes hollered quite a lot himself, hollering on someone who was hollering on him.

“But I had a reservation,” Mr. Milner insisted. “Somebody musta made a mistake. See, I got a lettera confirmation.” But he couldn’t find the letter, although he pushed his hat back and searched his pockets thoroughly. His forehead perspired, and his glasses slipped far down on his nose. There was quite a little scene,

“No mistake,” Moxley said coldly.

“But I tell you I got a lettera confirmation.”

“Sorry. We have no record of a reservation.”

“Whatsa matter? You got no rooms or you got no rooms for me? See,” he said. “I got money.”

“A great many persons have.” Moxley smiled and pushed a crumpled bill away with his pencil, held a long, mysterious conversation with the clerk at the Imperial.

“Sold out,” Moxley repeated. “Sorry,” he said weakly, his voice trailing off. “Sorry, sir. Some mistake. I’ve called the Imperial. They’ll take care of you. The Imperial’s a very nice house, sir,” he said with a straight face. “They’re trying to accommodate you, sir.”

Hell, the Imperial was a flea bag, a roach ranch, a riding academy, but Mr. Milner was out of the lobby and it seemed suddenly to Moxley that he had handled a delicate situation very well.

The cold block in Moxley’s brain began to thaw. He stopped shaking and was lordly with a bellman.

He was still pleased with himself at eight the next morning and told Purcell with some satisfaction of his master stroke. Purcell went pale under his tan. Moxley had
fixed things up in brindle brown. Over, all over, again.

“My God, Moxley. M. Milner is
Miraculous Productions!”

Julie Templar checked out in hysterics at nine-fifteen with Ma’amselle, little Jane and a mountain of blond luggage.

M. Milner, as anyone but Moxley would know, was Julie Templar’s producer, one of the five biggest men in Hollywood. He had never married, and he had a sentimental attachment for Julie and little Jane.

Miraculous Productions would boycott the hotel. Purcell had five empty suites on his hands that might have been filled at season prices. The Old Man . . . but Purcell didn’t like to think about the Old Man.