Part 1 (2/2)
Her college was so fas.h.i.+on conscious, she said, that all the girls had pocketbook covers made out of the same material as their dresses, so each time they changed their clothes they had a matching pocketbook. This kind of detail impressed me. It suggested a whole life of marvelous, elaborate decadence that attracted me like a magnet.
The only thing Doreen ever bawled me out about was bothering to get my a.s.signments in by a deadline.
”What are you sweating over that for?” Doreen lounged on my bed in a peach silk dressing gown, filing her long, nicotine-yellow nails with an emery board, while I typed up the draft of an interview with a best-selling novelist.
That was another thing--the rest of us had starched cotton summer nighties and quilted housecoats, or maybe terry-cloth robes that doubled as beachcoats, but Doreen wore these full-length nylon and lace jobs you could half see through, and dressing gowns the color: of skin, that stuck to her by some kind of electricity.She had an interesting, slightly sweaty smell that reminded me of those scallopy leaves of sweet fern you break off and crush between your fingers for the musk of them.
”You know old Jay Cee won't give a d.a.m.n if that story's in tomorrow or Monday.” Doreen lit a cigarette and let the smoke flare slowly from her nostrils so her eyes were veiled. ”Jay Cee's ugly as sin,” Doreen went on coolly. ”I bet that old husband of hers turns out all the lights before he gets near her or he'd puke otherwise.”
Jay Cee was my boss, and I liked her a lot, in spite of what Doreen said. She wasn't one of the fas.h.i.+on magazine gushers with fake eyelashes and giddy jewelry.Jay Cee had brains, so her plug-ugly looks didn't seem to matter. She read a couple of languages and knew all the quality writers in the business.
I tried to imagine Jay Cee out of her strict office suit and luncheon-duty hat and in bed with her fat husband, but I just couldn't do it. I always had a terribly hard time trying to imagine people in bed together.
Jay Cee wanted to teach me something, all the old ladies I ever knew wanted to teach me something, but I suddenly didn't think they had anything to teach me. I fitted the lid on my typewriter and clicked it shut.
Doreen grinned. ”Smart girl.”
Somebody tapped at the door.
”Who is it?” I didn't bother to get up.
”It's me, Betsy. Are you coming to the party?”
”I guess so.” I still didn't go to the door.
They imported Betsy straight from Kansas with her bouncing blonde ponytail and Sweetheart-of-Sigma-Chi smile. I remember once the two of us were called over to the office of some blue-chinned TV producer in a pin-stripe suit to see if we had any angles he could build up fur a program, and Betsy started to tell about the male and female corn in Kansas. She got so excited about that d.a.m.n corn even the producer had tears in his eyes, only he couldn't use any of it, unfortunately, he said.
Later on, the Beauty Editor persuaded Betsy to cut her hair and made a cover girl out of her, and I still see her face now and then, smiling out of those ”P.Q.'s wife wears B.H. Wragge” ads.
Betsy was always asking me to do things with her and the other girls as if she were trying to save me in some way. She never asked Doreen. In private, Doreen called her Pollyanna Cowgirl.
”Do you want to come in our cab?” Betsy said through the door.
Doreen shook her head.
”That's all right, Betsy,” I said. ”I'm going with Doreen.”
”Okay.” I could hear Betsy padding off down the hall.
”We'll just go till we get sick of it,” Doreen told me, stubbing out her cigarette in the base of my bedside reading lamp, ”then we'll go out on the town. Those parties they stage here remind me of the old dances in the school gym. Why do they always round up Yalies? They're so stoo stoopit!”
Buddy Willard went to Yale, but now I thought of it, what was wrong with him was that he was stupid. Oh, he'd managed to get good marks all right, and to have an affair with some awful waitress on the Cape by the name of Gladys, but he didn't have one speck of intuition. Doreen had intuition. Everything she said was like a secret voice speaking straight out of my own bones. Buddy Willard went to Yale, but now I thought of it, what was wrong with him was that he was stupid. Oh, he'd managed to get good marks all right, and to have an affair with some awful waitress on the Cape by the name of Gladys, but he didn't have one speck of intuition. Doreen had intuition. Everything she said was like a secret voice speaking straight out of my own bones.
We were stuck in the theater-hour rush. Our cab sat wedged in back of Betsy's cab and in front of a cab with four of the other girls, and nothing moved.
Doreen looked terrific. She was wearing a strapless white lace dress zipped up over a snug corset affair that curved her in at the middle and bulged her out again spectacularly above and below, and her skin had a bronzy polish under the pale dusting powder. She smelled strong as a whole perfume store.
I wore a black shantung sheath that cost me forty dollars. It was part of a buying spree I had with some of my scholars.h.i.+p money when I heard I was one of the lucky ones going to New York. This dress was cut so queerly I couldn't wear any sort of a bra under it, but that didn't matter much as I was skinny as a boy and barely rippled, and I liked feeling almost naked on the hot summer nights.
The city had faded my tan, though. I looked yellow as a Chinaman. Ordinarily, I would have been nervous about my dress and my odd color, but being with Doreen made me forget my worries. I felt wise and cynical as all h.e.l.l.
When the man in the blue lumber s.h.i.+rt and black chinos and tooled leather cowboy boots started to stroll over to us from under the striped awning of the bar where he'd been eyeing our cab, I couldn't have any illusions. I knew perfectly well he'd come for Doreen. He threaded his way out between the stopped cars and leaned engagingly on the sill of our open window.
” And what, may I ask, are two nice girls like you doing all alone in a cab on a nice night like this?”
He had a big, wide, white toothpaste-ad smile.
”We're on our way to a party,” I blurted, since Doreen had gone suddenly dumb as a post and was fiddling in a blase way with her white lace pocketbook cover.
”That sounds boring,” the man said. ”Whyn't you both join me for a couple of drinks in that bar over there? I've some friends waiting as well.”
He nodded in the direction of several informally dressed men slouching around under the awning. They had been following him with their eyes, and when he glanced back at them, they burst out laughing.
The laughter should have warned me. It was a kind of low, know-it-all snicker, but the traffic showed signs of moving again, and I knew that if I sat tight, in two seconds I'd be wis.h.i.+ng I'd taken this gift of a chance to see something of New York besides what the people on the magazine had planned out for us so carefully.
”How about it, Doreen?” I said.
”How about it, Doreen?” the man said, smiling his big smile. To this day I can't remember what he looked like when he wasn't smiling. I think he must have been smiling the whole time. It must have been natural for him, smiling like that.
”Well, all right,” Doreen said to me. I opened the door, and we stepped out of the cab just as it was edging ahead again and started to walk over to the bar.
There was a terrible shriek of brakes followed by a dull thump-thump.
”Hey you!” Our cabby was craning out of his window with a furious, purple expression. ”Waddaya think you're doin'?”
He had stopped the cab so abruptly that the cab behind b.u.mped smack into him, and we could see the four girls inside waving and struggling and scrambling up off the floor.
The man laughed and left us on the curb and went back and handed a bill to the driver in the middle of a great honking and some yelling, and then we saw the girls from the magazine moving off in a row, one cab after another, like a wedding party with nothing but bridesmaids.
”Come on, Frankie,” the man said to one of his friends in the group, and a short, scrunty fellow detached himself and came into the bar with us.
He was the type of fellow I can't stand. I'm five feet ten in my stocking feet, and when I am with little men I stoop over a bit and slouch my hips, one up and one down, so I'll look shorter, and I feel gawky and morbid as somebody in a sideshow.
For a minute I had a wild hope we might pair off according to size, which would line me up with the man who had spoken to us in the first place, and he cleared a good six feet, but he went ahead with Doreen and didn't give me a second look. I tried to pretend I didn't see Frankie d.o.g.g.i.ng along at my elbow and sat close by Doreen at the table.
It was so dark in the bar I could hardly make out anything except Doreen. With her white hair and white dress she was so white she looked silver. I think she must have reflected the neons over the bar. I felt myself melting into the shadows like the negative of a person I'd never seen before in my life.
”Well, what'll we have?” the man asked with a large smile.
”I think I'll have an old-fas.h.i.+oned,” Doreen said to me.
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