Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from The New Yorker (39 page)

“Now, then,” I ordered the poodle, flicking on the switch, “back to the hay we go. Better be up bright and early before someone finds this and misinterprets it.”

“Applesauce,” he retorted. “It’s your recorder, isn’t it?”

“Sure,” I said, “but you know how silly peop—
What did you say?
” Of course, he dried up then, not another word out of him, and you’d have thought the cat had his tongue.

I GOT to bed pretty perplexed about the whole thing and, what with fear lest I oversleep and worry at the quantity of current the machine was using, fell into a wretched slumber that terminated around daylight. Hastening to the kitchen, I downed some black coffee, and rewound the spool of tape to get the playback. The first few revolutions were unproductive of anything but conspiratorial whispers and an occasional word too jumbled to decipher. Then, all at once, I heard a low-pitched voice in the background, oily and yet pompous, stiff with disdain.

“Beggars on horseback,” it was saying contemptuously. “Strictly keeping up appearances. I spotted him and the Missis right away the day they came into the delicatessen. She was wearing an old Persian-lamb coat, remodelled. ‘Something in the way of a cocktail snack, Greengrass,’ she says, yawning like she’s Mrs. T. Markoe Robertson. ‘I’ll take a two-ounce jar of that domestic caviar.’ Then she turns to her husband, which he’s nervously jingling the change in his pants, and she says, ‘Dear, don’t you think it would be amusing to have a slice or two of Novy for our guests?’ Well, the poor
shmendrick
turned all different colors when the boss weighed me on the scales. Five cents more and he’d have had to walk home in the rain like a Hemingway hero.”

“Listen,” rejoined a grumpy bass voice that unmistakably proceeded from a forsaken bottle of horseradish. “Stick around as long as I have and nothing these people do will surprise you. Why, one time we had a rack of lamb in here seven weeks. The plumber had to cut it out with a blowtorch.”

A mincing, rather overbred voice, of the sort usually associated with Harvard beets, chimed agreement. “There’s one thing that doesn’t get stale here, though,” it said. “Club soda. How long can he last on that liquid diet of his?”

“Forever, if he don’t fall down and cut himself,” the lox replied with a coarse guffaw.

“Can’t you make less noise, please?” put in a hateful, meaching soprano. “I haven’t closed an eye. I’m just a bundle of nerves ever since my operation—”

“Pssst, there goes Tillie again,” warned the horseradish. “Pipe down or she’ll write him another note. The little sneak repeats everything you say.” A hubbub of maledictions and recriminations broke out, the upshot of which I never heard. Quivering with fury, I stripped the tape off the reel, ran into the living room, and flung it on the embers in the hearth. Specks of assorted hues swam before my eyes; it was unendurable that I should have nourished such vipers in my bosom. Drastic steps were indicated, and I was the boy who could take them. As I flew back to the refrigerator, bent on evicting the whole kit and caboodle without mercy, I caromed off my wife, huddled in a plain wrapper, for all the world like a copy of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” and gaping at the recorder.

“Wh-what happened?” she stammered. “What are you doing with that microphone in the icebox?”

WELL, I learned one lesson from the episode; suavity is lost on women. There isn’t a blessed one, from the Colonel’s Lady to Judy O’Grady, capable of dealing with abstract ideas, and if you try a civilized, worldly approach, it just antagonizes them. Can you imagine a person getting so huffy that she barricades herself in a henhouse and refuses to breakfast with her own husband? I made a meal off a few odds and ends—a grapefruit and a couple of eggs—but I can’t say much for their dialogue. You need someone you can really talk to.

1953

S. J. PERELMAN

EINE KLEINE MOTHMUSIK

War on Moths Begins

The moths are beginning to eat. Even if the weather seems cool, this is their season for gluttony. Miss Rose Finkel, manager of Keystone Cleaners at 313 West Fifty-seventh Street, urges that these precautions be taken:

All winter clothes should be dry-cleaned, even if no stains are apparent. Moths feast on soiled clothes, and if a garment has been worn several times in the last few months, it should be cleaned.

Clean clothes may be kept in the closet in a plastic bag. It is safer, however, to send all woolens to a dry cleaner to put in cold storage.

Customers should check to make sure that their clothes are really sent to a cold storage and not hung in the back of the store.

—
The Times.

Gay Head,

Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.,

July 14

Mr. Stanley Merlin,

Busy Bee Cleaners,

161 Macdougal Street,

New York City

D
EAR
M
R.
M
ERLIN:

I heard on the radio this morning before I went for my swim that the heat in New York is catastrophic, but you wouldn’t guess it up here. There is a dandy breeze at all times, and the salt-water bathing, as you can imagine, is superlative. Miles of glorious white beach, marvellous breakers, rainbow-colored cliffs—in short, paradise. One feels so rested, so completely purified, that it seems profane to mention anything as sordid as dry cleaning. Still, that’s not exactly your problem, is it? I have one that is.

Do you, by chance, remember a tan gabardine suit I sent in to be pressed three or four years ago? It’s a very expensive garment, made of that changeable, shimmering material they call solari cloth. The reverse side is a reddish color, like cayenne pepper; during the British occupation of India, as you doubtless know, it was widely used for officers’ dress uniforms. Anyway, I’m a trifle concerned lest moths get into the closet where I left it in our apartment. The suit isn’t really stained, mind you; there’s just a faint smudge of lychee syrup on the right sleeve, about the size of your pinkie, that I got in a Chinese restaurant last winter. (I identify it only to help you expunge it without too much friction. I mean, it’s a pretty costly garment, and the nap could be damaged if some boob started rubbing it with pumice or whatever.)

Will you, hence, arrange to have your delivery boy pick up the suit at my flat any time next Thursday morning after nine-fifteen? He’ll have to show before ten-twenty, since the maid leaves on the dot and would certainly split a gusset if she had to sit around a hot apartment waiting for a delivery boy. (You know how they are, Mr. Merlin.) Tell the boy to be sure and take the right suit; it’s hanging next to one made of covert cloth with diagonal flap pockets, and as the Venetian blinds are drawn, he could easily make a mistake in the dark. Flotilla, the maid, is new, so I think I’d better explain which closet to look in. It’s in the hall, on his right when he stands facing the bedroom windows. If he stands facing the other way, naturally it’s on his left. The main thing, tell him, is not to get rattled and look in the closet
opposite,
because there may be a gabardine suit in there, without pockets, but that isn’t the one I have reference to.

Should Flotilla have gone, the visiting super will admit your boy to the flat if he arrives before eleven; otherwise, he is to press our landlord’s bell (Coopersmith), in the next building, and ask them for the key. They can’t very well give it to him, as they’re in Amalfi, but they have a Yugoslav woman dusting for them, a highly intelligent person, to whom he can explain the situation. This woman speaks English.

After the suit is dry-cleaned—which, I repeat, is not essential if you’ll only brush the stain with a little moist flannel—make certain that it goes into cold storage at once. I read a piece in the newspaper recently that upset me. It quoted a prominent lady in your profession, a Miss Rose Finkel, to the effect that some dry cleaners have been known to hang such orders in the back of their store. You and I have had such a long, cordial relationship, Mr. Merlin, that I realize you’d never do anything so unethical, but I just thought I’d underscore it.

Incidentally, and since I know what the temperature in your shop must be these days, let me pass on a couple of hot-weather tips. Eat lots of curries—the spicier the better—and try to take at least a three-hour siesta in the middle of the day. I learned this trick in India, where Old Sol can be a cruel taskmaster indeed. That’s also the place, you’ll recall, where solari cloth used to get a big play in officers’ dress uniforms. Wears like iron, if you don’t abuse it. With every good wish,

Yours sincerely,
S. J. P
ERELMAN

New York City,

July 22

D
EAR
M
R.
P
EARLMAN:

I got your letter of instructions spelling everything out, and was happy to hear what a glorious vacation you are enjoying in that paradise. I only hope you will be careful to not run any fishhooks in your hand, or step in the undertow, or sunburn your body so badly you lay in the hospital. These troubles I personally don’t have. I am a poor man with a wife and family to support, not like some people with stocks and bonds that they can sit in a resort all summer and look down their nose at the rest of humanity. Also my pressing machine was out of commission two days and we are shorthanded. Except for this, everything is peaches and cream.

I sent the boy over like you told me on Thursday. There was no sign of the maid, but for your information he found a note under the door saying she has quit. She says you need a bulldozer, not a servant, and the pay is so small she can do better on relief. Your landlady, by the way, is back from Amalfi, because some of the tenants, she didn’t name names, are slow with the rent. She let the boy in the apartment, and while he was finding your red suit she checked over the icebox and the stove, which she claims are very greasy. (I am not criticizing your housekeeping, only reporting what she said.) She also examined the mail in the bureau drawers to see if the post office was forwarding your bills, urgent telegrams, etc.

I don’t believe in telling a man his own business. Mine is dry cleaning, yours I don’t know what, but you’re deceiving yourself about this Indian outfit you gave us. It was one big stain from top to bottom. Maybe you leaned up against the stove or the icebox? (Just kidding.) The plant used every kind of solvent they had on it—benzine, naphtha, turpentine, even lighter fluid—and knocked out the spots, all right, but I warn you beforehand, there are a few brownish rings. The lining was shot to begin with, so that will be no surprise to you; according to the label, you had the suit since 1944. If you want us to replace same, I can supply a first-class, all-satin quarter lining for $91.50, workmanship included. Finally, buttons. Some of my beatnik customers wear the jacket open and don’t need them. For a conservative man like yourself, I would advise spending another eight dollars.

As regards your worry about hiding cold-storage articles in the back of my store, I am not now nor have I ever been a chiseller, and I defy you to prove different. Every season like clockwork, I get one crackpot who expects me to be Santa Claus and haul his clothing up to the North Pole or someplace. My motto is live and let live, which it certainly is not this Rose Finkel’s to go around destroying people’s confidence in their dry cleaner. Who is she, anyway? I had one of these experts working for me already, in 1951, that nearly put me in the hands of the receivers. She told a good customer of ours, an artist who brought in some hand-painted ties to be rainproofed, to save his money and throw them in the Harlem River. To a client that showed her a dinner dress with a smear on the waist, she recommends the woman should go buy a bib. I am surprised that you, a high-school graduate, a man that pretends to be intelligent, would listen to such poison. But in this business you meet all kinds. Regards to the Mrs.

Yours truly,
S. M
ERLIN

Gay Head, Mass.,

July 25

D
EAR
M
R.
M
ERLIN:

While I’m altogether sympathetic to your plight and fully aware that your shop’s an inferno at the moment—I myself am wearing an imported cashmere sweater as I write—I must say you misinterpreted my letter. My only motive in relaying Miss Stricture’s finkels (excuse me, the strictures of Miss Finkel) on the subject of proper cold storage was concern for a favorite garment. I was not accusing you of duplicity, and I refuse to share the opinion, widespread among persons who deal with them frequently, that most dry cleaners are crooks. It is understandably somewhat off-putting to hear that my suit arrived at your establishment in ruinous condition, and, to be devastatingly candid, I wonder whether your boy may not have collided with a soup kitchen in transit. But each of us must answer to his own conscience, Merlin, and I am ready, if less than overjoyed, to regard yours as immaculate.

Answering your question about Miss Finkel’s identity, I have never laid eyes on her, needless to say, though reason dictates that if a distinguished newspaper like the
Times
publishes her counsel, she must be an authority. Furthermore, if the practice of withholding clothes from cold storage were uncommon, why would she have broached the subject at all? No, my friend, it is both useless and ungenerous of you to attempt to undermine Miss Finkel. From the way you lashed out at her, I deduce that she touched you on the raw, in a most vulnerable area of our relationship, and that brings me to the core of this communication.

Nowhere in your letter is there any direct assertion that you
did
send my valuable solari suit to storage, or, correlatively, that you are
not
hiding it in the back of the store. I treasure my peace of mind too much to sit up here gnawed by anxiety. I must therefore demand from you a categorical statement by return airmail special delivery. Is this garment in your possession or not? Unless a definite answer is forthcoming within forty-eight hours, I shall be forced to take action.