Park Avenue Tramp

by Flora, Fletcher

  A few minutes after Oliver had gone, Edith knocked on the door and asked through it if Madam was dining in, and Charity replied that she was not dining in or out or anywhere, not dining at all, and Edith said, “Very well, Madam,” and went off. After that, Charity began to think about how much she hated Edith and to wonder what she could possibly do to make Edith suffer in some way, but there didn’t seem to be anything possible that wouldn’t take far too much effort.

  Thinking of Edith made her feel hot and angry, and feeling hot and angry made her feel thirsty. She wanted another Martini, which surely wouldn’t hurt her, and so she got up and went into the bathroom and got the bottles and shaker out of the tub and carried them into the bedroom and set them on the table beside her bed. She had no ice, however, and if she didn’t want to drink her Martini warm, which she didn’t, it would be necessary to go again to the kitchen for ice. She stood looking at the bottles and shaker, considering the problem, and she decided that it was just as well that she had to go to the kitchen anyhow, for she was simply going to have to eat something, in spite of what she’d told Edith, if she expected to continue having Martinis without unfortunate results, or results even more unfortunate than she frequently had.

  Carrying the shaker, she went to the kitchen softly, without encountering Edith. She set the shaker on a table and opened the refrigerator, but there wasn’t a thing to eat there that appealed to her, and after considering several things and rejecting them, she got some ice and put it in the shaker and closed the refrigerator door. What she wanted, she thought, was something quite salty. Not caviar; caviar was salty enough, but she didn’t much care for it otherwise. Something more like anchovies was what she wanted. Yes, anchovies were just right. They were extremely salty and had, unlike caviar, no objectionable quality besides.

  She found a can of anchovies and opened it with difficulty and put the anchovies on a small plate. Then she found a box of cocktail crackers and put several of them on the small plate beside the anchovies. Carrying the shaker in one hand and the plate in the other, she returned to her room, still without encountering Edith. There, she ate one of the anchovies on one of the crackers and then mixed three more Martinis in the shaker and poured one of them into her glass.

  This is all, she thought This is absolutely all. I’ll drink these three Martinis slowly during the entire evening, and when they’re gone I’ll not drink another single one, not even a very last one the last thing before sleeping.

  She sipped the first one while she ate all the salty anchovies on the little crackers, after which she began a difficult period of resolutely refusing to drink the second one too soon. Refusing would have been much easier if only she had had something to do to occupy her mind and time, but there wasn’t anything she wanted to do, and as a matter of fact almost everything she thought of was something she positively didn’t want to do. Television was depressing, and listening to hi-fi would have necessitated leaving her own room, and reading was something she hadn’t done for such a long time that it didn’t really occur to her as a serious possibility. One of her big problems was occupying her mind and time when she didn’t have anywhere to go. Once she had thought that she would occupy herself at such times by writing down her personal story, but she had learned in thinking about it that there was hardly a thing she had ever done for which she could give a credible reason, and it would be incredible to write about herself doing all those things for no reasons at all.

  • • •

  She wished she could dress and go out, but she didn’t think it would be wise in the situation that had developed. Not that she was given to doing what was wise in most situations, but sometimes, as now, she was compelled to do what would have been wise if she had done it a little sooner. Anyhow, though she couldn’t go, she could at least think about where she would go if it were possible, and the moment she began to think along this line, the place she wanted to go was Duo’s, and the reason she wanted to go there was to see Joe Doyle. It had been about twenty hours since she had first seen him, and only about eight since she had last seen him, and now she actually wanted to see him again already, instead of never wanting to see him again, as was usual regarding men in such cases, and this was disturbing. Especially in the situation as it had developed.

  How had Oliver learned about last night? And how long, if there were to be another night, would it take him to learn about it too? Her rational mind insisted that he had been informed by a spy, either a hired professional or someone who had seen her and followed her and told Oliver out of pure malice, but she couldn’t lose the irrational feeling that there was something super-normal about it, the employment by him of some frightening ability to know things that an ordinary person couldn’t possibly know. More disturbing still, now that his information had been secured by whatever means, how many other instances did he know about? How many times, when she had thought him deceived, had he known everything all along? And why had be never before said anything or done anything to her directly?

  This line of thinking took her inevitably to the men who had been mysteriously beaten, which was a direction she didn’t want to go, and she decided that enough time had lapsed since the last Martini to justify another. She poured it and drank half of it too fast and went on wanting to see Joe Doyle. She didn’t want to want to, for she didn’t want, incidentally, to get him into trouble and herself into more trouble than she was already in, but the knowledge that it was perilous and unwise to see him again actually made her desire it all the more. Finishing more slowly the second half of the second Martini, she began to see him again with remarkable clarity as she had seen him in various situations from the beginning to the end of their experience, and she was just counting his true ribs when Edith interrupted by knocking on the door.

  She wished Edith would go away, and she remained silent in the hope that Edith would, but after a few moments Edith knocked again and called through the door, and Charity went across to the door and opened it. Edith was standing with the expression on her face that managed to be poisonously insulting by being so carefully courteous, and the instant Charity saw her, she began to feel angry and compelled to say something that would make a scene.

  “What do you want?” she said.

  “Do you have any further use for me, Madam?” Edith said. “If not, I’d like to retire.”

  “Certainly I have no further use for you, Edith,” Charity said. “Surely it’s always been perfectly clear that I’ve never had any use whatever for you at any time.”

  “Yes, Madam. I understand.”

  “Furthermore, now that you’ve brought it up, Edith, why is it that you always retire and never simply go to bed? What, precisely, is the difference between retiring and going to bed? Is there something vulgar in going to bed, Edith? Is it somehow more proper to retire?”

  “I’m sorry, Madam. I didn’t mean to offend you. May I go to bed?”

  “No. I think you’d better retire, after all. Now that you’ve said it, I can see that going to bed doesn’t suit you in the least. I am more the type who goes to bed. Isn’t that so, Edith?”

  “If you say so, Madam.”

  “Yes. I was sure you’d agree with me. I simply can’t imagine your going to bed, no matter how hard I try, but you, on the other hand, certainly have no difficulty in imagining it of me.”

  “I have never thought about it at all, Madam.”

  “Oh, nonsense, Edith. There’s no use in trying to be deceitful. You not only have thought of it, but have made innumerable points of suggesting it to my husband. Isn’t it true that you discuss such matters with my husband?”

  “No, Madam.”

  “Well, you’re a dreadful liar, of course, and I didn’t expect you to admit it. Tell me, Edith, how long has my husband been having me followed?” “I don’t know what you mean, Madam.”

  “Of course you know what I mean. I have no doubt at all that you are somehow mixed up in it.”

  “I never discuss your personal affairs wit
h your husband, Madam.”

  “Really? That’s very honorable of you, Edith. I’m convinced that you’re the most honorable spy and liar and bitch alive.”

  “Thank you, Madam.”

  “Not at all. I’m very happy to tell you.”

  “May I retire now, Madam?”

  “Certainly. Retire, Edith. Please do. Perhaps you will never wake up.”

  • • •

  Well, she had made another scene, as she had known she would, but this time she did not feel bad about it, not at all ashamed and degraded, and as a matter of fact she felt rather exhilarated. Closing the door, she went back and stood looking at the shaker. She wished that there were something left in it, or at least that she had not resolved to mix no more Martinis tonight, not even a last one before sleeping. It disturbed her when she broke resolutions almost immediately after making them, which she almost always did, and now she tried to think back to what the resolution had been exactly, if it had not possibly been just a random thought instead of a genuine resolution, and while she was thinking she mixed a last, large Martini just in case she was enabled to drink it by finding a loophole in the resolution. The resolution seemed to be impregnable, however, and so she finally acknowledged that she had trapped herself in another unpleasant commitment and would have to avoid it simply by ignoring it. Pouring what she could of the large Martini into her glass, she left the glass sitting on the table beside her bed while she took off her robe and turned out the lights, and then she sat down and picked up the glass and emptied it slowly and lay back on the bed and tried to go to sleep.

  Sleeping was always made difficult by thinking. She had often tried to discover a way of making her mind a perfect blank, and she had been told once by a strange little man at a cocktail party that this was actually possible if you could only learn the trick, but he had been unable to tell her how to learn it, although he claimed to know it himself, and she had had no success in discovering it by her own methods or in finding anyone else who knew it and could explain it more clearly than the strange little man. Another thing she had tried was thinking only of pleasant things, and once in a while she was able to accomplish this, but unfortunately thinking was a matter of association, and every pleasant thing she could think of was associated in some way with unpleasant things, or was both pleasant and unpleasant in itself.

  Tonight she tried to think of her father, which was something wholly pleasant, except when it came to the time when he had died, and then, to avoid most of everything that had happened since his dying, she jumped all the way in her mind to Joe Doyle, and she still wanted to see him and be with him again, but she couldn’t think of him without thinking of Oliver in association, and that was bad. She tried, however; she lay quietly trying for more than an hour before she finally decided that she would absolutely have to have two or three sleeping pills after all. But while she was getting up to go after the pills, she remembered the part of the large Martini that hadn’t fitted into the glass, and she thought that maybe it would be just the right amount more to get her to sleep with the soporifics.

  She poured it and drank it and tried the sleeping again for a whole half hour, but it was no use. This time she got the pills from the bathroom and swallowed them on top of the Martinis, and eventually, because of one or the other or both, she went to sleep and slept fairly well until after noon of the next day.

  • • •

  She thought instantly of Joe Doyle. His name and image were waiting patiently in her mind for the return of her consciousness, as one might wait all night in a dark room for the coming of light, and it seemed only last night that she had been with him, instead of the night before, as if the time between had never been, although the things that had happened were remembered and real. Considering all the gin and soporifics, she felt remarkably good. She even felt moderately hungry and capable of thinking seriously of food, and she decided that she would dress and go out somewhere for lunch.

  She went into the bathroom and bathed and returned to the bedroom and dressed, and then, as she brushed her hair and fixed her face, she tried to decide if it would be a good idea to find someone to go to lunch with, but she came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t. It would be too much trouble and take too much time, and it might interfere with what she had better do afterward, which was to go to Bernardine DeWitt’s apartment on MacDougal Street and tell her that it would be unnecessary, after all, to lie about the night before last, which seemed like last night. Having arranged these details, she finished her face and called the garage on the telephone.

  “This is Mrs. Oliver Alton Farnese,” she said crisply. “Have my car brought around immediately. The Jaguar, please.”

  After saying this, she wondered if the Jaguar was the car she had recently left somewhere that she couldn’t recall, but apparently it either wasn’t or had been returned by someone, for the attendant in the garage said he would have it taken around right away, and when she got downstairs it was waiting for her. She drove to a restaurant on Fifth Avenue and had most of a large salad for lunch, and it wasn’t until after she had finished eating that she had a Martini. This was not a record or anything like that, but at least it was unusual and indicated that this might turn out to be one of her moderate days. She didn’t make any resolution concerning it, however.

  After drinking the Martini, she left the restaurant and drove to Bernardine’s on MacDougal Street, and the day began at once to be less moderate than she had thought it might. It was about three o’clock when she got there, and several people were drinking cocktails and talking in groups of two or three about various things, and it had the feel to Charity of something that had just begun and would go on for a long time and become quite a lot bigger. Bernardine was being vivacious with a blond young man with an incredibly perfect profile, and she smiled across the room at Charity and lifted a hand with a glass in it, and Charity went to find a glass of her own, which she found on a tray in the hands of a maid. What she intended to do was have one cocktail, or possibly two, and talk with Bernardine and go home, and so, with this intention in mind, she went over to where Bernardine was talking vivaciously to the profile, and it was apparent that Bernardine didn’t particularly like it.

  “Hello, darling,” Bernardine said. “Do you know Perry Humferdill? I’ve only just met him myself, to tell the truth. Someone brought him. Perry, this is Charity Farnese.”

  Perry Humferdill took Charity’s free hand and held it and exposed a great many teeth that had the perfection of plates. The day had obviously not been moderate in his case for several hours at least. His full face wasn’t as good as his profile, but it was superior, nevertheless, if you cared for beautiful men, which Charity didn’t especially, unless they were beautiful by being exceptionally ugly.

  “Really?” she said. “Is your name really Humferdill?”

  He released her hand and covered his teeth.

  “Yes,” he said. “Perry Humferdill. From Dallas.”

  “Well,” she said. “Imagine.”

  “Never mind Charity,” Bernardine said. “She is almost always insulting until after the third or fourth Martini, and then it’s simply amazing how friendly she becomes with almost anyone. Darling, have you taken any more piano lessons lately?”

  “No,” Charity said. “I’ve decided to give up the piano, as a matter of fact, and I merely dropped in to tell you that it won’t be necessary for you to do what we arranged yesterday. I didn’t know, of course, that you were having a party.”

  “Well, I didn’t know it myself, actually, but it seems that I am. It’s just something that got started as a result of several people coming at almost the same time, and apparently they have been calling other people, who will also call other people, and I’m sure there’s no way in the world to stop it even if I wanted to.”

  “I know. It’s remarkable how something can simply get started and keep going and going. It’s happened to me a number of times. I’m sure it will be a very good party, anyhow, and I wi
sh I could stay, but I can’t. I’ll just have one more Martini, if you don’t mind, before I go.”

  Bernardine said she didn’t mind, and Charity smiled at Perry Humferdill from Dallas as if she didn’t quite believe in either one, and Perry Humferdill uncovered his teeth again and said that it had been a pleasure meeting her, which she knew wasn’t true. Moving away, Charity was still feeling fairly resolute and still intended to leave after one more Martini, but the party was growing quite rapidly, and she kept meeting someone else she knew with whom she was compelled to have a cocktail out of politeness, and somehow or other it got to be six o’clock in the sudden way that time has, and at six o’clock she saw Milton Crawford, who had not yet seen her and who was certain to be sullen and difficult about her having deserted him. She didn’t feel like making up any lies to explain why she had done it, and so she decided that she had definitely better leave, but it was a little too late and far too early to return home.

  She began to think of other places to go, and all the time she knew perfectly well that the only place she wanted to go and was certainly going was the little bar near Sheridan Square in which Joe Doyle played the piano.

  CHAPTER 10

  Charity crawled onto a stool in the bar near Sheridan Square. “Well,” said Yancy, the superior bartender.

  “You remember me,” she said, and smiled with delight. “I was afraid you wouldn’t.”

  “Oh, I remember you, all right,” Yancy said.

  “You can’t imagine how pleased I am. Do you customarily remember all your customers?” “Just the opposite, as a matter of fact. I customarily forget them.” “Really? That makes me rather special, doesn’t it?” “Special’s the word, lady.”