[Dorothy Parker 02] - Chasing the Devil

by Agata Stanford

  The dressing tables were sparkling, the smudges of greasepaint and clouds of powder washed away off the surfaces of mirrors, chairs, floor; screens uncluttered of last night’s tossed costumes, the floral arrangements whisked off to various hospitals, the congratulatory telegrams posted neatly on corkboard, wardrobes sponged, pressed, and hanging in order of wear, hats on hat forms, shoes polished and ready, personal props at the ready to be retrieved, the pancake makeup, liners, rouges, clown white, and makeup brushes washed and lined up on each table. The mirror lights brought cheer to an otherwise dreary room walled with brick and topped with ceiling pipes.

  “This is going to be a challenge,” said Groucho with nervous relish.

  He ordered us to remove our hats and coats and then lined us up like troops. He told us to stand straight, shoulders back, chest out, and nodded up to Edna. She rolled her eyes, and he backed off. Scrutinizing each of us, he duck-walked a zigzag between and around us, pinched Jane in the ass, and at her cry of surprise, clapped his hands for our attention.

  “All right!” he shouted, and then he assigned each of us to one of the three costume racks. “Chico!” he pointed to Jane. “Harpo!” he pointed to me! And to Edna, “Zeppo!”

  “And I’ll be Groucho!” said Groucho.

  For the next twenty or so minutes we dressed accordingly. I donned Harpo’s fright-wig, the strawberry-blond curls giving me pause—perhaps I’d bleach my hair one day. Jane’s hair was shorter than Chico’s, but his pointed, dark-green felt cap gave the right impression. A subtle touch of greasepaint, fake eyebrows trimmed to size, face putty to thicken my nose, and we possessed the appearance of the Brothers’ far-distant relatives.

  Edna was told to brilliantine her short bob and comb it straight back.

  “What about my makeup?” she asked, her face clear of cosmetics.

  “You don’t need any,” said Groucho. “Just put on Zeppo’s double-breasted suit, and you’ll look more like him than he does.”

  At the face she pulled he added, “If it makes you feel any better, throw on that fedora. There! Now you look more like a man than Zeppo!”

  From the words she spat out telling Groucho precisely into which orifice he should stick the fedora, I was surprised that she didn’t just walk out of the theatre, leaving us to fend for ourselves.

  “She needs a moustache, Groucho,” I said, “or she’ll be mistaken for George Sand or some other cross-dressing woman.”

  “I’m the only one wears a moustache around here!” he said, as if it were some great badge of honor. “But, all right, if you insist,” he said, trimming one from his enormous supply into a pencil-thin lip-liner. A bit of spirit gum to glue the piece in place, then the fedora, and she was set.

  The plaid pants, the vests, the neckties, the jackets were too big for me and Jane and had to be pinned in places. Suspenders helped keep the pants up, but Edna wore the suit quite well (after we ladies banded her breasts, that is).

  “Groucho, you don’t look like yourself,” I said, when we checked our appearance in the mirrors.

  “Almost forgot,” he said, and started adding the heavy brows and iconic moustache that was his trademark. He frizzled his hair to stick up and out at the sides, after parting it in the middle. The addition of the glassless spectacles, oversized cutaways, off-kilter bowtie, and a cigar completed the look of sheer lunacy.

  “Ready, boys?” he asked as we continued to adjust our clothing.

  “We’ll never get past the gatekeeper,” I said.

  “The Marx Brothers are welcomed anywhere,” and in an aside, “and if we’re not welcomed, we go anyway, and if that doesn’t work, we go anywhere else.”

  “There’s no arguing with that kind of logic, I’d say!”

  “There’s no arguing from you, period! You say nothing at all. Remember: You are Harpo onstage and mute.”

  Edna chuckled, “This will be a day to remember, the shutting of the meanest mouth in town.”

  “You!” said Groucho to Edna. “Do nothing but nod when spoken to. Keep your hat down over your eyes.”

  “What about me?” asked Jane, the little Chico. “Any pointers?”

  “Don’t keep looking at your fingernails, keep your hands in your pockets, jiggle your keys, thumb your suspenders, spread your legs when you stand and uncross them when you sit, but most important of all, try not to look like a fairy. It’ll get in the papers and ruin a good man’s reputation. Best yet, stay out of sight, and when you can’t do that, wedge yourself between Harpo and Zeppo and maybe no one will notice you.” He handed me Harpo’s bicycle horn. “Here, Dottie, if you must speak, beep!”

  We were off and running now, like fools rushing in where angels fear to tread. And when our taxi pulled up at the main entrance of the University Club, I felt the flutter of fear in my belly. They weren’t butterflies, no! More as if very wise angels were thumping and batting their wings in wild warning through my innards.

  With Groucho in the lead I tried to remember the tips he’d given us to help make our disguises believable: (1) Harpo and Chico were always in motion. (2) We were not to prance around like Chaplin, but to scoot around like spinning dreidels, skipping occasionally to regain balance. (3) Edna as Zeppo was to do nothing but stand beside Groucho and appear as manly as possible.

  Jane and I scooted to the door of Stanford White’s Italian Renaissance palazzo-style mansion on the northwest corner of 54th Street at Fifth Avenue, our trousers threatening to fall or to trip us up in our oversized shoes that were stuffed with newspaper. Passersby slowed to stare at the motley crew, and at one point, a woman and child stopped dead in their tracks, blocking my path. I beeped my horn in the woman’s face, and she moved on quickly, clearing the way.

  The uniformed doorman looked at Groucho with trepidation as our intrepid leader sidled up to the fellow and looked him up and down. Straightening his epaulettes and playing with the bullion fringe, Groucho then saluted as he passed through the entrance. He didn’t get very far before the befringed captain of the guards caught the tail of Groucho’s cutaway.

  “If you like my suit so much, there’s this guy on Tenth Avenue can get you one from a guy on Seventh Avenue, who knows this tailor on Third . . . .” He flicked his cigar and turned to enter the door.

  “Sorry, Sir, but this is a members-only club.”

  “And how do you know I’m not a member of this club?”

  “Ah, well, I don’t—”

  “Do you have any reason to believe I am not a member of this highfalutin’ institution?”

  “Well—”

  “I didn’t think so!” said Groucho as he opened the door himself and held it for his “Brothers” to enter. He saluted: “Give my regards to General Pershing. Tell him I’ll meet him at the Russian Front at eight P.M. That’s the restaurant next to Carnegie Hall on Fifty-seventh.”

  Groucho broke through and rushed forward into the magnificent, green-marble-columned reception lobby. The place reeked of money, from the great expanse of marble under our oversized shoes to the impressively gilded vaulted ceilings soaring several stories over my curly blond wig.

  By now we’d attracted some attention.

  A smattering of a dozen or so young men appeared from various corners to watch the amusement. And within moments a stiff-collared man of forty-something, trim and elegant in a dark gray vested wool suit, on whose lapel was pinned a Phi Beta Kappa key, approached us with the attitude of a southern belle protecting her virtue. He sported a neat, if substantial, black moustache and had wavy dark hair softened with streaks of gray at the temple. When he opened his mouth to speak the space between his front teeth lent a whistling sound to his speech: Here was the gatekeeper.

  “May I help you gentlemen?” he asked with a curling lip and a slight hesitation on the word “gentlemen.”

  “P-r-r-r-ofessor Beaur-r-r-regard Shrimpleton Schlepper-er-er,” said Groucho, rolling every r while shaking the man’s hand violently. “That’s quite enough, my man, you’ll throw
out my back before you get the chance to throw out the rest of me. Now!”

  He wasn’t going to give the man a chance to speak; before the fellow could recoup, Groucho charged ahead: “My sons and I are seeking membership in your vastly overrated inner sanctimonious. We Schlepper-er-ers are graduates from the most contentious and pretentious halls of academe, holding degrees in Parasitical Psychology, Adenoidal Anatomy, and Convoluted Geometry.”

  “Sir—”

  “Doctor! Call me Doctor Schlepper-er-er! That’s a schlepp with three errrrrs after it. I hold a PhD in High Colonic Physics, as well as a master’s degree in Scientific Absurdity and an MOC!”

  “MOC?”

  “Master of Ceremonies!”

  By now we’d attracted quite a crowd of young men who knew exactly who we were, or thought they did: the Four Marx Brothers. And by the sound of the laughter, we were a hit!

  I beeped my horn.

  “What is it my boy?” asked Groucho.

  I beeped again.

  Groucho nodded, and turned to the gentleman for directions to the men’s room. Once directed, I nodded in response, uncrossed my quivering legs, and with a beep of thanks, snuck off in the direction of the lavatory. But rather than follow on from the directions, I walked to the open door to my right.

  I peeked in, and knew I was at the entrance to the famous reading room that faced Fifth Avenue.

  I’d often walked past its street-level windows facing the Avenue. If one looked up, one could see between the parted draperies wingchairs in which sat rather stodgy-looking old fellows, doing whatever stodgy old fellows do in private clubs. I had wondered about such places, envied, even, the idea of their masculine camaraderie. But, hadn’t I’d found my own little place among men in my seat at the Round Table? I suspect that together we do most of the things that go on in such formal clubs: We eat, drink, play games, talk politics, tell dirty jokes, and promote each others’ careers. We, too, have a closed, exclusive club. Our requirements are rigid: smart, sassy, savvy, members only. Be boring and you are out on your ass, banished from the table. Of course, we are Hottentots compared to these pillars of society. As long as he had a university degree and six letters of recommendation for membership from other members, a gentleman could play in the library, dine in the dining room, swim in the pool, and keep rooms in residence at the University Club. Oh, you didn’t have to be rich, necessarily, to qualify, but it didn’t hurt.

  As I looked around admiringly at the masculine opulence, at the graceful swags of hundreds of yards of spun-gold fabric lining those draperies and glistening in the cheery winter sunshine, my curiosity of many years was sated. I knew, now, what lay within the glorious rooms that I had merely glimpsed from the street, and it was spectacular.

  And on the wall, Gilbert Stuart’s George Washington stared down at me, his lips a tight, straight line of disapproval set over wooden teeth.

  I knew I wasn’t inconspicuous, not in what I was wearing, but if I could place myself in hiding I might be able to see or hear something that could lead to the capture of the New Man, whoever he was. All I had to go on was a voice. He sounded a lot like Scott Fitzgerald: cultured, slightly affected, belying traces of America’s Heartland. But his was a warmer-sounding, deep, resonant voice, not boyish or buoyant in tone like Scott’s, and to hear him speak, you’d never guess the real character of the man was imbued with the hatred of racial prejudice. Prejudice transcends ignorance, I suppose; I’ve never understood it, really. I’ve always seen people in terms of their talents, their wit, their accomplishments, the quality of their characters. This hatred is based in fear, though people like these would be loath to admit it, even to themselves. Their hatred is self-justified, I think; much of it is not born of simple ignorance, and then cultivated and bred. You don’t always see it flagrantly displayed here as you do in the South, with lynchings and cruel segregation. It is like a banked fire: silent, smoldering beneath the ashes, but hot and ready to burst into destructive flames when stirred up. Am I naïve to think that after sixty years people would have seen the injustice of slavery? That the Klan would have been laughed out of town? But, of course, the South didn’t willingly give up slavery, did they? It had to be wrenched out of their grip. And there are always little people who feel better about themselves and their condition when they can feel superior to others and have something or someone to hate and look down upon.

  There was nowhere for me to hide. The palms in the corners wouldn’t shield me; the various chairs scattered about the richly paneled and carpeted room wouldn’t do, either. I caught an alarmed eye behind the pince-nez of an elderly fellow who’d looked up from his newspaper. He did a double-take, his glasses fell to his lap, and then he shook his head, poor thing, disbelieving what he was seeing as if his eyes were deceiving him.

  The old man made a little choking sound, which caught the attention of an attendant, another guardian of the gate ready to serve the members and ready to call in troops of bouncers to throw out the riff-raff.

  The only thing I could do was walk in boldly. Perhaps the attention I could draw in this hushed place might prove useful in my search. So I came in blasting. My bicycle horn, that is.

  Startled, frowning faces looked up from their books, and there was a string of hurrumps thrown my way and a couple of clutched chests, and within seconds I was corralled on either side, at each elbow, by two attendants who lifted me straight up off my feet and carried me vertically out of the room, my big shoes dangling. I was carried in this way into the front lobby and toward the entry door, having to pass the commotion of youthful members ignoring the protestations of the more elderly staff and membership, as Groucho distributed complimentary tickets to the evening’s performance of The Cocoanuts.

  “Put Harpo down right here,” directed Groucho when he saw me floating between the men. “I see you’ve found a new means of transportation.”

  They stopped in their tracks, looked over at the Gatekeeper, who nodded, and lowered me to my feet. I squeezed the horn.

  Everybody below the age of thirty laughed and then cheered. I took a bow and beeped three or four more times until Groucho said, “Stop the yakking, Son.” And to the crowd that had gathered: “Once he gets started, you can’t shut him up.”

  And through the laughter and excitement at meeting the Four Marx Brothers came a familiar voice.

  Before me stood the indomitable Mr. Benchley!

  He adjusted my crushed-down top hat, pressing down hard, sending my curly wig to meet my glued-on bushy brows. “You’re attractive as a blond, dear, but you must do something about those eyebrows.”

  I beeped at him, straightened my wig, and pulled up my pants.

  And then, appearing at his side was a familiar face. The handsome fellow we’d encountered at the opening-night party for Noel Coward’s new play, Hay Fever—the man, Pinny Somethingorother, who’d offered his car to take a distraught Aleck home . . . the beautiful town car . . the creamy-yellow Duesenberg!

  He was about to speak, but when he looked at me he must have seen the light dawn in my face through my ridiculous disguise, for in the instant that our eyes locked I remembered the Midwestern, cultured, if slightly affected tones of his voice, similar to Scott Fitzgerald’s—the same inflections, the flat vowels—and I knew that he and the New Man were one and the same. And through the makeup, wig, bushy eyebrows, and all he must have seen the recognition in my face, for he turned on his heel, found an opening in the throng of men, and bolted through.

  “You see,” babbled on Mr. Benchley, unaware of my discovery, “you scare off lots of rich, eligible bachelors with those brows, not to mention the nose hair, Mrs. Park—Hey! Where’re you going?”

  I beeped my horn repeatedly as I gave chase after the assassin while tugging up my trousers. He was headed for the entry doors, but just as he was about to make it to freedom, blue coats, brass buttons, and visor caps, the uniforms of New York’s Finest, were piling out of a paddy wagon and running past the doorman for the
lobby.

  The crown of Pinny’s light-auburn hair shifted, and I followed him toward the rear of the building. Elevator doors closed before I could catch up to him.

  There had to be stairs, I thought, and turned to see the sheets of wide, white marble and white wrought-iron railings.

  I tripped and fell to the floor, and Mr. Benchley was at my side helping me up to my feet. I kicked off my shoes—they were only slowing me down—and retied the sash that served as a belt to hold up the trousers. I told Mr. Benchley of my discovery, and then took off up the stairs, beeping my horn all the way, hoping the policemen would follow me up. Whistles rang out, and there were shouts to “follow that man!” A score of clicking heels, like castanets, sounded on the marble steps behind me.

  Logic told me that Pinny knew quite well the layout of the club. He could be anywhere. If he had a room at the club, he might have retreated there. There was no way I’d be able to find him if he’d sheltered himself behind one of the scores of doors on the residential floor. With no idea on which floor he’d gotten off the elevator, when I reached the landing I looked at the elevator’s floor indicator, which had stopped at the number four.

  Onward I trudged up the steps, my trousers proving troublesome. At one point they fell to the floor, and the only thing I could do to carry on was to step out of them. The shirt I wore came to my knees, and anyway, I didn’t care much about modesty at a time like this.

  I reached the fourth floor and had to make a decision. The elevator was on its way up to the seventh floor. Straight ahead was the library, and I figured there’d be lots of places for him to hide if he had in fact gotten off on this floor.

  I entered and hid between the door and the wall as the herd of charging policemen and curious members thundered up the stairs to the floor above.

  Once out of their reach, I turned to see the wonder of gilded columns supporting a series of arches that ran the expanse of the remarkable library, the H. Siddons Mowbray ceiling murals, painted in rich, warm, deep blues, greens, and fiery reds. I raced through the room, peeking around the corners created by each arch, and saw no one but a few gents reading at tables.