[Dorothy Parker 03] - Mystic Mah Jong

by Agata Stanford

  “Just a romp through a traffic jam; so close and yet so far . . . .” said Mr. Benchley.

  “Mr. Benchley is a humorist, don’t you know?”

  “Mrs. Parker rarely laughs at my jokes.”

  “Shall we begin?” asked Madame Olenska, more a command than a question. “Rabindranath, the lights, please.”

  The Indian circled the room, turning off lights, and then went to stand stiffly, hands behind his back, against the wall.

  “Caroline, light the candles, my dear.”

  How romantic, I thought; I look good in candlelight.

  We were off to a good start, for when Lord Wildly glanced in my direction, an admiring smile on his face, thick eyelashes casting shadows on the high planes of his cheeks, Madame Olenska instructed us to hold the hands of the persons to our right and left.

  And to think I tried my best to get out of coming here tonight!

  Lord Wildly offered his hand, and I, a coy smile on my lips as I caught his eye, shyly but eagerly complied. Sadly, we had to place our hands in sight of the others, upon the table’s surface, for all to see.

  There was an uncomfortable grip on my left palm, and then my fingers were squeezed so hard that I nearly cried out. I glared at the knucklebreaker.

  Mr. Benchley met my inquiry with a great big smile. “Just making sure you’re paying attention,” he said pleasantly.

  “If everyone will close their eyes and concentrate, the energy of our circle will serve as conduit from the spirit world,” said Madame Olenska in a singsong voice.

  We sat for God knows how long—five minutes, ten? I was sleepy from too much hooch earlier in the evening, and I would have dozed off, contentedly, my right hand pleasantly in the care of Lord Wildly.

  “We are waiting to hear from you,” rang out the Madame’s voice, a couple of octaves too high and startling me awake as she broke the prolonged silence. “Is there anyone here wishing to communicate with anyone in our circle?”

  From under heavy eyelids I peeked out at the others, and caught the eye of Herr Siegfried, who wore a bored expression.

  “We call to the spirits!” droned-on Madame Olenska, in a most unnaturally high-pitched, singsong tone; you’d think she was suffering. “We anxiously await your appearance!”

  I peeked at Mr. Benchley, whose head had drooped to his chest. The stinker was snoozing! I squeezed his hand hard, and he snorted on an inhaled breath: “Whadja do that for?” he hissed.

  “Just making sure you’re paying attention,” I growled in his ear.

  “What was that?” said a woman’s nasally voice. I turned to face Bette Booth.

  I started to say it was Mr. Benchley’s snorting snore, but Herr Franken cut in: “So sorry, sauerbraten for dinner.”

  “More tea, Vicar?” Lord Wildly chuckled at Franken.

  Tea? Vicar?

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, the spirits must have our full attention!”

  “That’s what I was saying,” I said in aside to Mr. B.

  “Shush!” said multiple voices from around the table.

  All right, I thought sullenly, I’ll behave . . . .

  A couple minutes later, there was a soft rumbling, and then tremors vibrated along the surface of the table. I opened my eyes. Everybody seemed to be looking at me.

  “I’m not doing anything,” I said, like a naughty child.

  The table was starting to shift under our hands, and a force pushed back against our weight.

  “Holy crap!”

  Lord Wildly held on firmly against my squirming fingers; Mr. Benchley did, too, but probably from fear. I clung to both men as the table began to rise up off the floor.

  “Who is it that wishes to speak with us?” pleaded Madame O.

  Suddenly, as if in response, the oak table rose up a foot off the floor and teetered in a gravity-defying hover. We all leaped up, our chairs thrown back, and we stood trapped by the cages formed by the chair legs strewn between us and blocking our advance out of the room.

  “Is this a bad dream,” asked Mr. Benchley, “or a bad batch of gin?”

  The table landed on the floor with a great thud. The men righted the tossed chairs, and then we all reluctantly resumed our places.

  Madame Olenska, who had remained seated during the aerobatics, began to sway from side to side in her chair. Low, mournful, guttural moans vibrated from deep in her throat. A gust of wind swept through the room, though the windows were latched, and all of the candles in the candelabra on the sideboard flickered and went out, sending the room into pitch blackness.

  Caroline struck a match, lit a candlestick, and placed it on the table; the flame wavered before a pale glow crawled across the table and crept up, ghoulishly, over our features.

  Rumbling noises rolled out from within the Madame, until, without a pause for breath, modulated in pitch into a wispy, whispering voice, feminine in nature, and childlike:

  “Betrayed . . .”

  “Tell us who you are, Spirit,” asked Caroline. “What is your name?”

  “. . . Betrayed . . .”

  “By whom?”

  “. . . Betrayed . . .”

  “Tell us who you are, Spirit, so we can understand.”

  “He wants to speak, but I am speaking now.”

  “Who wants to speak, Spirit?”

  “. . . He does . . .”

  “Who does?”

  “. . . He does . . .”

  “Who he?”

  Awww, for cryinoutloud!

  “Does he have a name?”

  “I know not what he is called, but I will speak first.”

  “Tell us your name, Spirit!”

  “. . . Betrayed . . .”

  “Hand that ghost a thesaurus would ya?” I mumbled under my breath to Mr. Benchley. Were we going to go on like this all night?

  The Madame coughed and gagged and clutched boney hands at her throat. She emitted a death-rattling gasp, and her eyelids flew open into a watery, bovine stare. In a violent gesture, she thrust out her arms to assume the rigid pose of the crucified. And then, a deep, rumbling sound—a man’s voice—spurted out from the scarlet, blubbery lips with accusatory vehemence:

  “That one did it!”

  A shrill scraping, like fingernails clawing at the window, sounded behind me, and I turned to see a silver goblet skid across the sideboard, rise up against the wall, and then hurtle itself across the room and into the large ornate mirror above the buffet.

  The impact startled us, and with shrieks and shouts we jumped from our seats.

  “Please, everyone, sit down,” pleaded Caroline. “Madame Olenska is in trance. We must not break the energy of the circle.”

  But Madame appeared to be passed out in her chair, and I watched with fascination as she sat like a lump, the bottom of her several chins resting on her chest, her shoulders and arms lax. I’d seen this condition before. It was reminiscent of a drunken stupor: a common speakeasy pose.

  “Don’t believe the lies, because it was the evil one did it!” spewed the masculine voice from out the medium’s mouth.

  “Who?” asked Caroline.

  “There!”

  “Of whom do you speak?”

  “There!”

  “Name the person!”

  “There is the evil one!”

  Awww, shit! Are we going to play that game again?

  “Cut the crap and state your business,” I yelled, impatiently.

  Bette Booth started to shake and whimper. A wild, feral expression flashed from her eyes, and then everyone, except the unconscious Madame O, followed her terrified gaze to the shattered mirror.

  A greenish light began to emanate from the spider-like crack in the glass, growing brighter as it rolled beckoningly, teasingly along in the fashion of a languid curl of cigarette smoke, like a seductive vapor of desire. I could feel the hairs rising on the back of my neck; a trickle of cold sweat ran down my spine and a bone-chilling dampness permeated the flesh on my arms. A profound silence hung heavily
around us while we held our collective breath. Mesmerized, we watched our fractured features staring back at us as the weird phosphorescent glow circled around our distorted reflections.

  The green snake oozed and then morphed into something really frightening—an entity of sorts, something with intent, a thing composed of iniquity, with malevolent purpose behind its firm grip on our attention. It was shifting its shape to form a disembodied hand, with index finger pointing. Eerily, the hand undulated as it slowly swept over our mirrored images, all of us aware that the finger would eventually settle in pointed accusation at one of the reflections.

  But before the specter could send down its indictment, Bette Booth let out a howling scream and then fell from her chair in a faint.

  Benny leaped to his wife’s side, while Siegfried Franken rushed to the sideboard, opening the cabinet’s doors in search of cognac. The rest of the party rose from their seats awaiting direction: What was the appropriate etiquette for séance mishaps?

  Benny lifted his wife into his arms. Frances Franken ran to open the pocket doors, as he carried his wife in through to the drawing room and laid her down on a divan.

  Madame Olenska revived with a cough. Caroline knelt at the Madame’s side, rubbing the old woman’s hands as she gradually came out of her trance; Mr. Benchley found the light switch, and the room was instantly flooded with harsh, electric illumination; Donald Brent embraced his terrified wife, Maggie; Benny Booth stood over his prostrate wife with an odd, glazed-over look in his eyes; Lord Wildly remained at his place, scrutinizing the medium’s return to this world.

  I watched the commotion from my place at the table where I was afforded a straight-through view of the drawing room.

  The Indian, Rabindranath, suddenly appeared, rushing in through the door leading from the butler’s pantry. Caroline gave him instructions and he departed to the kitchen.

  Donald Brent led Maggie to an upholstered chair by the fire.

  Madame returned to the land of the living, and Caroline, with the assistance of Lord Wildly, assisted the wobbly medium into the drawing room.

  So, too, had Bette revived, no doubt restored by the brandy—do you have to collapse in a dead heap to get a drink around here?—and her husband’s solicitousness. The Frankens stood in attendance by Benny’s side, aloof observers. The siblings seemed strangely unaffected by the events of the past few minutes.

  Mr. Benchley and I joined the others and were followed in by the returning Rabindranath, once again offering beverages from the copper pot. The brew wafted steamily and unpleasantly in my direction, and I declined his offer.

  “Forgive me, but I must rest now, after the ordeal,” said Madame Olenska, her skin pale and papery under stark, orangey rouge and caking face powder. She appeared to have aged a decade in the hour since we met. “Caroline will see me to my room, now. Goodnight.”

  The company was hushed as we watched her ascend the grand staircase. And then, patience exhausted, I broke the silence: “I’ll have what she’s having,” I said to Rabindranath, pointing to Bette Booth, sipping her brandy.

  He nodded and crossed to a cabinet on the fireplace wall, lifted the top panel, and then opened the side ones to reveal a stocked bar, from which he took out tumblers and placed several bottles on display from which to choose our poison. Mr. Benchley bowed his thanks and proceeded to tend bar. Rabindranath took a seat in a chair by the window.

  I inquired after Bette, as Mr. Benchley poured a round of drinks for everyone. She smiled wistfully at me from her place on the divan.

  “It isn’t every day the Finger of Fate wags its nasty green pointer in one’s face,” I said. A moment after I’d said it, I regretted it.

  “Oh!” yelped the nearly restored Bette Booth. “It wasn’t pointing at me!” she said, throwing a glance at her husband.

  Anyone would think I had just slapped her in the face!

  “Of course not,” I said, to reassure her that I hadn’t meant to imply that she was the intended target of the strange specter we’d all witnessed. But then, I thought, why the quick jump to defend the absolutely ridiculous notion that a green light emanating from a mirror was anything more than a clever magic trick?

  “Why, it wasn’t pointing at anyone at all. It was all a cunning little trick. I wonder how she pulled it off?” I asked.

  Benny Booth flashed me a warning look.

  Awww, give me a break! I mumbled as I turned away, directing my comment of disgust into the tumbler. I took a hearty gulp. These nincompoops actually believe that a malevolent spirit oozed out through a broken mirror in the form of gaseous bile!

  I had to admit, to myself, that is, that for moments at a time during the séance I suffered a creepy apprehension and irrational fear. But irrational it was.

  If anyone could explain how it was done, it would surely be Lord Wildly. He could reassure the addle-minded company that Madame Olenska had taken us for a ride. But, he wasn’t to be found, not in the drawing room, nor back in the dining room. I asked the Indian, Rabindranath, where he’d gone, and was told that Lord Tristan Wildly had departed.

  This fellow was following horse traffic on Fifth Avenue and 24th Street back when I was a child.

  Madame Annabelle Olenska—in better days

  Chapter Two

  My rude awakening occurred at the ungodly hour of nine-fifteen the following morning with a repetitive rapping at the door.

  Woodrow Wilson heralded the arrival of the intruder to my dreams with unrelenting barks, the rhythm of which would have provided a metronome accompaniment for an old Joplin ragtime tune.

  As I pushed back my eyeshades and stumbled from the bedcovers, the telephone joined in with a persistent jangle. I cursed all that is holy, but the cacophony continued as I stood rocking in the middle of the room, trying to get my bearings and trying to decide which call to answer first. The call of nature was most urgent, but put on hold, as I unlocked the door and then unhooked the candlestick.

  A gaggle of words gushed out of the device, and after a few seconds I recognized Jane’s voice spouting something about being too sick to audition the tarot card reader at eleven this morning, and would I “please, please, please” go in her place.

  I’d uttered not a word in reply—she had not given me a chance; and as I unlocked the door, Mr. Benchley rushed in, his arms loaded with a stack of morning papers.

  I whined a reluctant consent to Jane, who blessed me right and left as I put up the receiver.

  “I know you are bursting with some tidbit of news, you old gossip, but I’m bursting, too. Sit yourself down or make yourself useful. Call down for some coffee, would ya?” I said, as I headed for the bathroom.

  A couple minutes later, face washed, hair combed, and wrapped in my kimono, I staggered to the sofa where coffee and sweet rolls awaited me on a tray. The hamburger patty was for Woodrow.

  “Room service was fast.”

  “I ordered before I came up.”

  “Dat’s a smart boy.”

  He let me take a sip of coffee, and solicitously lit my cigarette, before dropping the Daily News like a bomb on my lap.

  I stared down at the headline. It took a minute to sink in. Mr. Benchley’s exasperation showed when he said, “Well?”

  I read out loud: “Spiritualist Murdered,” and then my eyes dropped to the photo centered between the columns of news copy.

  Madame Olenska, in a photo taken a couple of decades earlier, stared up at me, striking a dramatic wide-eyed pose depicting an orgasmic psychic reverie, as she clutched, as if overwhelmed, a drapery panel.

  “To make a short story shorter,” said Mr. Benchley, whisking away the paper, “The Madame was found this morning, dead, shot in her bed by her assistant, Caroline.”

  “How do they know she did it?”

  “How do they know she did what?”

  “That Caroline shot her?”

  “What?”

  “You just said, ‘The Madame was found this morning, dead, shot in her bed by
her assistant, Caroline.’”

  “That’s right, her assistant, Caroline, found her. She was dead—”

  “Shot.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do.”

  “Is there any more?”

  “More of what?”

  “About the murder?”

  “Just that she was found this morning, dead, shot in her bed by her assistant, Caroline.”

  “I suppose with the proper punctuation, Caroline could be cleared of the heinous act,” I said, giving up. I had a hangover from last night’s liberal libations, and he wasn’t helping any.

  Mr. Benchley’s eyes widened with revelation. “Might it be that someone from last night’s supernatural event is the culprit?”

  “Might be.”

  “Might not.”

  “Mightn’t it?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Probably is.”

  “Probably so!”

  “Could it be?”

  “Couldn’t.”

  “Couldn’t it?

  “It could!”

  “I suppose it might be, and probably is . . . .”

  “Might probably be . . . what?”

  “I really don’t know . . . .”

  “That’s what I thought you said.”

  Woodrow Wilson put an end to the madness with a whine and a scratch at the door.

  “Ohhhhshit!” I said, rising to my feet.

  ‘I’ll take him for his stroll.”

  “Yes, thanks, that’s swell of you, Fred. I just remembered that that was Jane on the telephone, with a bad cold added to last night’s migraine, wanting me to fill in for her by auditioning another one of the spiritualists on her list.”

  “I suppose since Madame Olenska’s been eliminated . . .”

  “You mean from Jane’s list?”

  “Well, yes, from Jane’s list, too . . .”

  “You busy this morning? Want to come along?”

  “After a stop at The New Yorker. Have to drop off a piece I finished for Ross.”

  “I’ll get dressed and meet you in the lobby,” I said, handing him Woodrow’s leash.

  We left the magazine’s offices and were in a cab heading uptown, Woodrow Wilson on my lap. His muscular little body straining in my arms, nose aimed out the window, he was sniffing anxiously as the wind cooled his face and dried his wet nose. As we stopped when the light tower operator signaled red on Fifth Avenue, traffic and pedestrians paraded past the cab’s windscreen. Lots of people were out, enjoying the sunshine and balmy air that was blessing the city after the previous evening’s downpour.