Pallas Athene was probably one of the best arguments for homosexuality that J. Arthur would ever uncover, Purcell thought, even if she was all frightened doe, womanly as hell, with him. She bossed everyone but J. Arthur around like a sergeant-major. “Her voice!” Purcell said aloud. “My God, her voice!”
It would be hell this week. The Lyric Women would be all over the place. They would want more hot water. They would want ice. They would arrive for breakfast at a quarter of seven in dinner dresses. They would order quarts of orange juice because they thought oranges were cheap in Florida and refuse to pay the menu price. They would have letters of confirmation quoting twenty-dollar rooms at seven-fifty. They would demand service extraordinary and give ten-cent tips. A couple of them would get tight before dinner and flirt with one of the bartenders and complain to the management when he made a polite pass at them. They would want stone crabs for luncheon when only crayfish would straighten out his food costs, and on an all-expense tour there wouldn’t be a cracker left over. Purcell would remind them of their sons or their grand-nephews. He always did. They would give him souvenir coconuts and plug the washbowls with the strange, exotic remains of strange, exotic marine life. One of the old ones would have a heart attack or a sun stroke and there was usually a youngish epileptic to be seduced by one of the bellmen.
It was a hell of a life, Purcell thought, and he promised himself a drink, a double Scotch, as soon as the Old Man got through with him. In the first place, the house count would be ‘way off. As far as the Old Man was concerned, the house count was always off, even with top prices at the height of the season and it would be Purcell’s fault, or it would be the fault of the night clerk. The night clerks he had hired and fired for the Old Man! Maybe it was his fault, he didn’t know, but the hotel was a very moral hotel; Mr. Wenton was hysterical over any mixture of the sexes, and he tried to see that the house rules were kept—except in private, of course.
But even the Old Man ought to know that if a night clerk was any good, he didn’t stay a night clerk. Night clerks were either pushy youngsters or deaf old men, and only the deaf old men stayed. After sixty-five to a hundred years, a deaf old man was willing to stay up all night seven nights a week, providing he wasn’t bothered too much, but the young fellows wouldn’t do it unless they could get a hand in the till.
Purcell didn’t blame either of them. He had been a night clerk himself once, too.
He waved to Dukemer. She wasn’t a bad kid, pretty regular in fact, even if she did have a double-edged tongue and could be as bitchy as the Old Man in heat when it suited her. He didn’t blame her. Let her grouse if it made her feel any better. Dukemer wasn’t as young as she looked and time didn’t seem to improve anybody’s disposition. Not till they were licked, anyhow.
The Cage
“Purcell isn’t a bad guy,” Dukemer told herself. He drank too much of course, but it was probably the only way that anyone could stand Mr. Wenton. She supposed that she drank too much herself, but not on duty, she thought virtuously, not in the morning. Dukemer had been up since five-thirty, and she considered what she would do when she got off at three, if she balanced. She crossed herself and said “Olav Hasholem.” Dukemer was a Presbyterian as much as she was anything and she didn’t know what Olav Hasholem meant, but it sounded the way that she felt about balancing.
Dukemer had an apartment—one room and a sink—and she would go home and take off her shoes and then she would make herself a drink. There was usually one drink, sometimes nearer a pint, left from the night before. Drinking didn’t cost Dukemer much because someone was always coming to see her and leaving what was left of the bottle, and on the infrequent occasions when she bought a bottle herself, she could feel that she was paying the world back; giving as good as she got. Dukemer was lordly with her own whiskey and mixed a very stiff drink, the kind she liked herself, for all comers, but what she really preferred was to get a little drunk all by herself and go to bed.
She checked out a couple who had come to town to sell their orange grove and go back North where they belonged, took in three Room Service checks, gave the bar cashier fifty dollars in small change from her bank and the old eye to a new guy who was registering in. She gave him the old eye from force of habit, without interest. He was probably married, a good Catholic, and had seven children back in Plainfield, N. J. Dukemer was still tired from last night. She didn’t want a date but her attitude was detached, professional. She liked to keep her hand in, feel that she still had that thing. She would give him the eye, then he would leave the Registration Desk and after he had given her the old magoo, she could say No.
Dukemer could say No to any proposition, any blandishment. She loved to say No. The answer to everything was No. She wanted to get home, take off her shoes and have a drink by herself, but she exulted in the act of negation. She had been civil to so many people, said sir so long, seen so many phonies, that Dukemer hated the world. She would go home, take a nap, make a salad, cook a chop, wash her underwear, order some beer and be back in bed again by eleven. The early shift took everything out of her.
Next week she would sleep, she told herself. She would draw the blinds and sleep until twelve o’clock, she would eat a magnificent breakfast, take a swim every day. She cashed a check with the funny, wiggly P on it that meant that Purcell had okayed it, shorted a guy a buck because he bit his fingernails, and left a dollar on the desk so that it wouldn’t interfere with her balance.
Dukemer hated everyone. “People!” she snorted to herself. The dollar would go to the Franciscan Home for Crippled Children. Over a period of time, she had been able to give them a respectable amount. When Dukemer had a good chance to short a dope and didn’t, her conscience hurt her. She regretted it, worried about it, felt that she wasn’t taking full advantage of her opportunities, was acting like a dope herself.
The one that she regretted the most was a B. O. A. C. from Byington-sur-Thames, for God’s sake. Pronounced Chumley, she supposed. She had stood there like a damned fool and given him the right change, practically had to make him take it, and her conscience had been hurting her ever since.
That was the worst because Dukemer hated the British anyhow. She hated the British, the French, the Italians, the Russians, the Germans. What frigid tenderness she had, she reserved for the little people, the Dutch, the Finns, the Swedes, the Greeks, the Norwegians, the Danes. She felt about all the little struggling countries as she did about the crippled children, that they were precociously decent, waging their own battles, paying their own bills, and that all the big, robber nations were international thieves, ancient in dishonor. “Finest country in Europe,” she would say about each of the little fellows in turn. “Most corrupt people in the world,” about each of the powers.
The new guy finished registering and came over to her window, asking her if she sold stamps, if 223 was a good room, what time she went off duty. She dimpled, twinkled up at him and replied demurely, “At eight.” He asked her if she worked all the time, if she liked seafood, where the bar was, where he could get a good seafood dinner, if she could meet him at eight for dinner, drinks. Dukemer said No with considerable satisfaction. She had another date, she said, and gave him the old eye so that he wouldn’t quit trying.
She was almost thirty-one even if she could pass for twenty-four, on a dark night, she added, and it was fun to say No. It was a damned sight more fun to say No than it was to go out with most of these guys, she thought. Me, I’ve heard everything. Every once in a while she got lonesome or restless or something and went out and got plastered with the first guy that asked her, but it was never very satisfactory. “Still looking for Mr. Right, I suppose,” she told herself acidly, “even after Harry.” Sometimes she thought that there weren’t any nice guys in the world, the more harmless they seemed to be, the quicker they made a pass at you.
Dukemer craned her neck, leaning over the desk to the little wicket of her cage, and regarded the great golden clock intently. She wished . . . she d
idn’t know what. Of course she wished it was three o’clock instead of only ten-thirty, but when she looked at the clock, she wished all sorts of things, things like she was rich and young and in love with a guy who was in love with her. The clock made her feel funny.
801-2-3-4
In the living room of one of the large suites on the eighth floor, Gracia and Alicia Mellott eyed one another coldly over a can of crabmeat. Chiang had refused it, and both Gracia and Alicia felt that the other was at fault. Both Gracia and Alicia respected Chiang above themselves, honored his royal Siamese blood, enjoyed their association on terms almost of equality with an aristocrat. Chiang sniffed delicately, licked his immaculate forepaws, and stalked away.
They remembered too well their own escutcheon, that label. Mellott’s Mulled Malt the label said from a green and gule shield, a bottle of Mellott’s ale rampant on an argent field. It was actually a good label; it stood for More, like before, but Alicia and Gracia had spent their lives trying to get away from it, were embarrassed by it, apologized for it, even though they owed all they had, their comfortable amenities and annuities, even Chiang himself, to Mellott’s.
Chiang was their life, their darling. He was ten years old and as fat as lobster and fancy white tuna could make him. He was old and fat, but he was still their baby. His intestinal upsets were the occasion for their complete hysteria. When Chiang was ill, Alicia cooked chicken livers in butter over a grill on the grand piano. She sometimes put a towel under the grill, but it was politic to keep a large vase of flowers on that end of the piano. Hotel managers were barbarians; they didn’t seem to care about Chiang, if he was happy or not. Their old furniture, that was all they cared about!
Gracia stroked Chiang, ran her hand lovingly along the knot in his tail as he stalked past. “He wud a mudder’s baby,” she said. Gracia was the elder and she had certain rights and privileges for that reason. She permitted Alicia to cook chicken livers for Chiang, but it was an act of deliberate bounty. Gracia was just, though, even to herself. When Chiang missed his sand pan, made a mess in the bathroom, Gracia stood on her seniority. “A doot, booful darling,” Gracia would say happily from her hands and knees. “A poor, sick baby boy.”
He was so beautiful, Gracia told herself, transcending with his garnet eyes the ephemera of sex. And he was so sweet when his food pleased him, his emasculated rumble echoing through the big rooms. Privately, Gracia admitted to herself that Chiang preferred her to Alicia. The way he rubbed his back against her leg. The way he huddled, mewing, against her for protection when a room-service boy entered the room could hardly be misinterpreted. It was all so plain that sometimes she felt a little sorry for Alicia.
She fondled the deep scratches on her forearm tenderly, as a martyr might touch his wounds or a happy bride her bruised lips. “He wud a mudder’s booful boy,” she said. “See what a ole mudder’s boy do to he mudder,” she patronized Alicia, exhibiting a recent gash with proud satisfaction. Alicia hardly had a mark on her! “He wud a baddy boy,” she admonished Chiang with a reproving forefinger.
Chiang circled the room, pausing occasionally to sharpen his claws on petit-point chairs. “Come to he mudder,” she said. “A big, booful ole baby boy come to he mudder,” she purred. Chiang sprang, knocking over a lamp, and with a sheathed paw took little practice swings at the spotted breast of Gracia’s dressing gown.
“I shink at shing what I always do shink about he,” she crooned. “I shink he wud a booflat. I shink he wud nicest most booful ole baby boy what I ever did see in whole nassy ole world.” Chiang acknowledged these blandishments. “I shink he wud a sweet ole babykins what he mudder could eat up,” Gracia said as she buried her face in his soft underbody, reveling in the sudden, swift slice of his claws, giving him a scarred thumb to chew.
“Do you suppose we could get him to eat some salmon?” Alicia interjected anxiously. The sisters discussed it at length in conspiratorial whispers, friends again. It was true that Chiang sometimes ate salmon when he wouldn’t eat anything else. It was his one common taste, his one low habit. They regretted it, tempted him with smoked turkey, with boned chicken, with snaky little curls of anchovy, but Chiang was adamant. He sometimes preferred salmon. They accepted it between themselves as they had, perforce, accepted the Mellott label and other scapegrace family derelictions but they wouldn’t admit it, except to each other.
“I could order a salmon sandwich,” Alicia said tentatively, anxiously. “No one would know. We could throw the bread to the birds. We could flush it down . . .”
Gracia considered. “Did a mudder’s baby what she did love want nassy ole salmon samwich?” she asked. The answer, to her ears, was in the affirmative. Chiang mewed plaintively and Alicia crossed the room with an air of great resolution to the phone.
“This is Miss Mellott in 801-2-3 and 4,” she told Room Service. “Send me a salmon sandwich. No pickle,” she added severely. “Did a mudder’s baby want nassy ole salmon sam-wich?” she asked Chiang indulgently. She seized the cat jealously from Gracia and draped him, clawing and spitting, around her neck. “I shink he wud a dreat big booful baby-doll cat-boy,” she chanted, quite mad in the benison of Gracia’s approval.
“Alicia!” Gracia said with considerable dignity. “I’m the one who says shink to Chiang.” There was an uncomfortable silence and Chiang stole away from Alicia, posted himself by the door.
The sisters had hot words and Alicia was in the bathroom in tears when the room-service boy knocked. He wheeled the cart in, removed the cover from the sandwich with a flourish, and waited for his tip. Gracia couldn’t find her purse. It was certainly funny the way Alicia disappeared when there was tipping to be done. “Pay waiter ten cents, Gracia P. Mellott,” she wrote in a small, firm hand far down at the bottom on the waiter’s stub.
Miz Dukemer would give him fits, Ernie figured unhappily, havink to copy all that stuff off of the check and write him an OK. He hated to put Miz Dukemer to exter trouble, but he just couldn’t ask old Miz Gracie Mellott to sign the check again, farther up. She was a Tartar, he told himself, and no mistake.
Chiang’s fear, his hatred of the uncastrated male, prompted him to bolt. He prowled the corridor, aloofly investigating this and that distraction. An open door intrigued him.
“Here, kitty-kitty-kitty—” little Jane Jeremy called. Chiang advanced, feinted, sprang, permitted himself a savage nibble of her outstretched palm, inflicted a long, red gash on little Jane’s arm.
“He wud a mudder’s baby!” Miss Gracia cried, entering the room breathlessly, her face working as she gathered Chiang up into her arms. “He wud a baddy boy what he mudder did love.
“Scat!” she said to the child.
The Lobby
Mr. Mather had been sitting in the lobby waiting for the dining room to open at eight, when Dukemer came in, and he had thought then that she was a very pretty girl. The women that he saw all about him in the hotel had frightened him. Their skins were coarse. It had seemed to Mr. Mather that there was something wrong with the color of their hair, and their eyes had reminded him of Violet.
He was particularly afraid of the Social Hostess, Miss Furman. He ignored the invitation in her flecked, hazel eyes, rejected politely but resolutely, her efforts to drag him off on beach parties and bus rides and fishing cruises. Mr. Mather was lonely, of course, but he was wary of Miss Furman’s wealthy widows, her gay divorcees, her youngish bachelor girls. He was particularly wary of Miss Furman. He was forty-seven, he told himself, not a child in a paa-a-k to be taken here and there and returned by Nurse at stated intervals. Not at all.
He liked, on the contrary, Dukemer’s crisp bearing as she rounded the cigar stand, found her studied incivility as she gave change for five wholly admirable. She looked tired, he told himself, but she looked nice, too, and Mr. Mather for all that he was short and portly, for all his long submission to Violet’s stern embrace and his duties as Treasurer, had had his own rosy daydreams of gaiety and good fun with a nice girl.
It was, really, why he had come to Florida, although he had been able to present a reasonable show of business necessity. Mr. Mather wanted one last, delicious fling before he settled back for the rest of a gray lifetime, and in just a few years he might be too late. It might already be too late. The Tartar hordes were swarming again on their shaggy ponies and there was not even a Pax Romana to keep the peace. He would go down unrealized with Violet and civilization.
Oh, he was fond enough of Violet and Violetta. But Violet was a little trying at her time of life; not that it was her fault, but it was hard on him. And Violetta would be a nice enough girl if she weren’t, quite so consciously, an Artiste.
The Artiste part, though, had been Violet’s doing. Violet had determined, before Violetta had been conceived, before he and Violet had been so much as properly married, that she would have a beautiful daughter with golden hair, and that the daughter would be a great virtuosa on the sackbut and the viola.
Mr. Mather had never understood just how Violet had hit on the great virtuosa part unless it was because it was so unreasonable. Neither he nor Violet had any taste or talent for music, but that had only been a fillip to Violet’s noisy determination. Even when Violetta arrived at last, Violet had not been daunted. Violetta had been a colicky baby and, in spite of Mr. Mather’s natural affection for her, an unprepossessing child, with lank brown hair and gray, uneven teeth that had had a distressing tendency to decay.
But Violet had changed all that, and there Mr. Mather could only feel an uneasy admiration for her. He had paid the bills, of course, but it was Violet who had made Violetta into a great beauty as well as a great virtuosa.
The Pink Hotel Page 4