Authors: Dorothy Parker,Colleen Bresse,Regina Barreca
Complete Stories (12 page)
“Think of it,” said Mrs. Whittaker.
A door clicked open above them, and feet ran quickly and not lightly down the stairs. Miss Chester burst into the room.
“Oh, Mrs. Bain!” she cried. “Oh, the Old Gentleman! Oh, he’s gone! I noticed him kind of stirring and whimpering a little, and he seemed to be trying to make motions at his warm milk, like as if he wanted some. So I put the cup up to his mouth, and he sort of fell over, and just like that he was gone, and the milk all over him.”
Mrs. Bain instantly collapsed into passionate weeping. Her husband put his arm tenderly about her, and murmured a series of “Now-now’s.”
Mrs. Whittaker rose, set her cider-glass carefully on the table, shook out her handkerchief, and moved toward the door.
“A lovely death,” she pronounced. “A wonderful, wonderful life, and now a beautiful, peaceful death. Oh, it’s the best thing, Allie; it’s the best thing.”
“Oh, it is, Mrs. Bain; it’s the best thing,” Miss Chester said earnestly. “It’s really a blessing. That’s what it is.”
Among them they got Mrs. Bain up the stairs.
Pictorial Review
, January 1926
, January 1926
Dialogue at Three in the Morning
“Plain water in mine,” said the woman in the petunia-colored hat. “Or never mind about the water. Hell with it. Just straight Scotch. What I care? Just straight. That’s me. Never gave anybody any trouble in my life. All right, they can say what they like about me, but I know—I know—I never gave anybody any trouble in my life. You can tell them that from me, see? What I care?”
“Listen,” said the man with the ice-blue hair. And he leaned across the table toward her, and frowned heavily at the designs he drew with the plated knife. “Listen. I just want you to get this thing clear——”
“Yeah,” she said. “Get things clear. That’s good. That gives me a big laugh. That’s laughable, a thing like that is. Say, if there’s anybody around here that’s going to get things clear, I’m going to be the one around here that’s going to get things clear. What you do, you go back to Jeannette, see, and you tell her I know what she’s saying about me. I don’t want to get you into this, but you tell her that from me. You can keep out of it. You don’t have to tell her you told me. You don’t even have to tell her you saw me. Say, if you’re ashamed to tell people you know me, that’s all right with me, see? I’m not going to give anybody any trouble. If you’re ashamed to tell your friends you’re a friend of mine, what I care? I guess I’ll be able to stand that, all right. I’ve stood a lot of things.”
“Ah, listen,” he said. “Listen. Will you please listen just a minute?”
“Yeah, listen,” she said. “That’s fine. Listen. Well, I’m through with this listening stuff. You can tell them all from me, see, I’m going to be the one that’s going to do the talking from now on. You can tell Jeannette that. What I care? You can run right to her and blab that. Says I look fat in my red dress, does she? That’s a nice thing to have anybody say about you. Makes you feel great, that does. You can tell Miss Jeannette she’s got a lot to do to make cracks about a person’s red dress. That’s pretty laughable, that is. Say, when I ask her to pay for anything I wear, then it will be time for her to crack. Her or anybody else. I make my own living, thank God, and I don’t have to ask anybody for anything. You can tell them all that. You or anybody else.”
“Will you do me a favor?” he said. “Will you do me one little favor? Will you? Will you listen just——”
“Yeah, favors,” she said. “Nobody’s got to do me any favors. I make my own living, and I don’t have to ask any favors off of anybody. I never gave anybody any trouble in my life. And if they don’t like it, they know what they can do. Tiffany’s window, see? The whole lot of them. Oh, did I break that glass? Oh, isn’t that terrible. All right—if it’s broken it’s broken. Isn’t it? Hell with it. Hell with them all.”
“If you’d listen,” he said. “There isn’t anything for you to get sore about. Just listen——”
“Who’s sore?” she said. “I’m not sore. I’m all right. You don’t have to worry about me. You or Jeannette or anybody else. Sore. Say, if a person’s not going to get sore about a thing like that, what kind of a thing is a person expected to get sore about? After all I’ve done for her. Trouble with me is, I’m too kind-hearted. That’s what everybody always told me. ‘Trouble with you is, you’re too kind-hearted,’ they said. And now look what she goes around and says about me. And you let her say a thing like that to you, and you’re ashamed to say you’re a friend of mine. All right, you don’t have to. You can go back to Jeannette and stay there. The whole lot of you.”
“Now listen, sweetheart,” he said. “Haven’t I always been your friend? Haven’t I? Well now, wouldn’t you listen to your friend just for a——”
“Friends,” she said. “Friends. Fine lot of friends I got. Go around cutting your throat. That’s what you get for being kind-hearted. Just a big kind-hearted slob. That’s me. Oh, hell with the water. I’ll drink it straight. I make my own living, and go around not giving anybody any trouble, and then the whole lot of them turn on me. After the way I was brought up, and the home we used to have, and all, and they go around making cracks about me. Work all day long, and don’t ask anything off of anybody. And here I am with a weak heart, besides. I’d just as soon I was dead. What’ve I got to live for, anyway? Kindly answer me that one question. What’ve I got to live for?”
Tears striped her cheeks.
The man with the ice-blue hair reached across the Scotch-soaked tablecloth and took her hand.
“Ah, listen,” he said. “Listen.”
From the unknown, a waiter appeared. He chirped and fluttered about them. Presently, you felt, he would cover them with leaves. . . .
The New Yorker
, February 13, 1926
, February 13, 1926
The Last Tea
The young man in the chocolate-brown suit sat down at the table, where the girl with the artificial camellia had been sitting for forty minutes.
“Guess I must be late,” he said. “Sorry you been waiting.”
“Oh, goodness!” she said. “I just got here myself, just about a second ago. I simply went ahead and ordered because I was dying for a cup of tea. I was late, myself. I haven’t been here more than a minute.”
“That’s good,” he said. “Hey, hey, easy on the sugar—one lump is fair enough. And take away those cakes. Terrible! Do I feel terrible!”
“Ah,” she said, “you do? Ah. Whadda matter?”
“Oh, I’m ruined,” he said. “I’m in terrible shape.”
“Ah, the poor boy,” she said. “Was it feelin’ mizzable? Ah, and it came way up here to meet me! You shouldn’t have done that—I’d have understood. Ah, just think of it coming all the way up here when it’s so sick!”
“Oh, that’s all right,” he said. “I might as well be here as any place else. Any place is like any other place, the way I feel today. Oh, I’m all shot.”
“Why, that’s just awful,” she said. “Why, you poor sick thing. Goodness, I hope it isn’t influenza. They say there’s a lot of it around.”
“Influenza!” he said. “I wish that was all I had. Oh, I’m poisoned. I’m through. I’m off the stuff for life. Know what time I got to bed? Twenty minutes past five, A.M., this morning. What a night! What an evening!”
“I thought,” she said, “that you were going to stay at the office and work late. You said you’d be working every night this week.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “But it gave me the jumps, thinking about going down there and sitting at that desk. I went up to May’s—she was throwing a party. Say, there was somebody there said they knew you.”
“Honestly?” she said. “Man or woman?”
“Dame,” he said. “Name’s Carol McCall. Say, why haven’t I been told about her before? That’s what I call a girl. What a looker she is!”
“Oh, really?” she said. “That’s funny—I never heard of anyone that thought that. I’ve heard people say she was sort of nice-looking, if she wouldn’t make up so much. But I never heard of anyone that thought she was pretty.”
“Pretty is right,” he said. “What a couple of eyes she’s got on her!”
“Really?” she said. “I never noticed them particularly. But I haven’t seen her for a long time—sometimes people change, or something.”
“She says she used to go to school with you,” he said.
“Well, we went to the same school,” she said. “I simply happened to go to public school because it happened to be right near us, and Mother hated to have me crossing streets. But she was three or four classes ahead of me. She’s ages older than I am.”
“She’s three or four classes ahead of them all,” he said. “Dance! Can she step! ‘Burn your clothes, baby,’ I kept telling her. I must have been fried pretty.”
“I was out dancing myself, last night,” she said. “Wally Dillon and I. He’s just been pestering me to go out with him. He’s the most wonderful dancer. Goodness! I didn’t get home till I don’t know what time. I must look just simply a wreck. Don’t I?”
“You look all right,” he said.
“Wally’s crazy,” she said. “The things he says! For some crazy reason or other, he’s got it into his head that I’ve got beautiful eyes, and, well, he just kept talking about them till I didn’t know where to look, I was so embarrassed. I got so red, I thought everybody in the place would be looking at me. I got just as red as a brick. Beautiful eyes! Isn’t he crazy?”
“He’s all right,” he said. “Say, this little McCall girl, she’s had all kinds of offers to go into moving pictures. ‘Why don’t you go ahead and go?’ I told her. But she says she doesn’t feel like it.”
“There was a man up at the lake, two summers ago,” she said. “He was a director or something with one of the big moving-picture people—oh, he had all kinds of influence!—and he used to keep insisting and insisting that I ought to be in the movies. Said I ought to be doing sort of Garbo parts. I used to just laugh at him. Imagine!”
“She’s had about a million offers,” he said. “I told her to go ahead and go. She keeps getting these offers all the time.”
“Oh, really?” she said. “Oh, listen, I knew I had something to ask you. Did you call me up last night, by any chance?”
“Me?” he said. “No, I didn’t call you.”
“While I was out, Mother said this man’s voice kept calling up,” she said. “I thought maybe it might be you, by some chance. I wonder who it could have been. Oh—I guess I know who it was. Yes, that’s who it was!”
“No, I didn’t call you,” he said. “I couldn’t have seen a telephone, last night. What a head I had on me, this morning! I called Carol up, around ten, and she said she was feeling great. Can that girl hold her liquor!”
“It’s a funny thing about me,” she said. “It just makes me feel sort of sick to see a girl drink. It’s just something in me, I guess. I don’t mind a man so much, but it makes me feel perfectly terrible to see a girl get intoxicated. It’s just the way I am, I suppose.”
“Does she carry it!” he said. “And then feels great the next day. There’s a girl! Hey, what are you doing there? I don’t want any more tea, thanks. I’m not one of these tea boys. And these tea rooms give me the jumps. Look at all those old dames, will you? Enough to give you the jumps.”
“Of course, if you’d rather be some place, drinking, with I don’t know what kinds of people,” she said, “I’m sure I don’t see how I can help that. Goodness, there are enough people that are glad enough to take me to tea. I don’t know how many people keep calling me up and pestering me to take me to tea. Plenty of people!”
“All right, all right, I’m here, aren’t I?” he said. “Keep your hair on.”
“I could name them all day,” she said.
“All right,” he said. “What’s there to crab about?”
“Goodness, it isn’t any of my business what you do,” she said. “But I hate to see you wasting your time with people that aren’t nearly good enough for you. That’s all.”
“No need worrying over me,” he said. “I’ll be all right. Listen. You don’t have to worry.”
“It’s just I don’t like to see you wasting your time,” she said, “staying up all night and then feeling terribly the next day. Ah, I was forgetting he was so sick. Ah, I was mean, wasn’t I, scolding him when he was so mizzable. Poor boy. How’s he feel now?”
“Oh, I’m all right,” he said. “I feel fine. You want anything else? How about getting a check? I got to make a telephone call before six.”
“Oh, really?” she said. “Calling up Carol?”
“She said she might be in around now,” he said.
“Seeing her tonight?” she said.
“She’s going to let me know when I call up,” he said. “She’s probably got about a million dates. Why?”
“I was just wondering,” she said. “Goodness, I’ve got to fly! I’m having dinner with Wally, and he’s so crazy, he’s probably there now. He’s called me up about a hundred times today.”
“Wait till I pay the check,” he said, “and I’ll put you on a bus.”
“Oh, don’t bother,” she said. “It’s right at the corner. I’ve got to fly. I suppose you want to stay and call up your friend from here?”
“It’s an idea,” he said. “Sure you’ll be all right?”
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