Auntie Mame Page 18

  “Very pretty,” I said colorlessly, thinking of Mr. Babcock and the Knickerbocker Trust Company.

  “Well, we all ready fa the big beeh picnic?”

  I had anticipated that question and had arrived supplied with the answer—a package of bologna sandwiches and a case of cold Ballantine’s from the delicatessen.

  “But, jeest, honey,” Bubbles whined, “whenna we gonna see the collitch kids?”

  Our picnic was something less than a succès fou. Bubbles sat on an anthill and, having neglected to bring an opener, I cut my mouth pretty badly trying to drink from the broken neck of a beer bottle. But by regatta time there was no holding Bubbles.

  “But I wanna see the boat races,” she kept saying.

  I was helpless. There wasn’t a hope of rain. I purposely drove over a broken bottle, but nothing happened to the tires. We reached the banks of the river just as the crowd was at its thickest. The squirt gun was a popular innovation that year, and Bubbles was both loud and outspoken in voicing her opinion of certain prankish gamins from Wellesley and Vassar who ruined her dress—my dress, really—during the first half hour.

  In her dripping green organdie, Bubbles looked disdainfully at the girls she longed to emulate—they wore sweaters and skirts, dirndls and blouses, blue jeans and sweat shirts. “Not very chick, are they?” she sniffed. “Lookee, let’s go down there. That looks like a nice crowd.”

  My eye followed her pointing finger and landed on Biff and Bill and Jack jovially swilling beer with a bevy of pretty Bennington girls. “Oh, you wouldn’t want to meet them,” I said hastily. “Bunch of meat balls. Besides, I know a place where you can get a much better view of the race.”

  “The beginning or the end?”

  “The beginning—much more interesting.”

  “Who wantsta see a race staht?”

  “Well, you can see the finish, too. Come on.” I grabbed her arm and headed away from the crowds. At that moment the blue Lincoln-Zephyr that was Alex’s pride and joy shot past. There was a regular barrage of squirt guns and Bubbles and I were caught square in the middle. The car shot out of sight, but not before I heard a silvery voice cry, “Oh, but darling, this is absolutely the maddest! I feel like a child!”

  I stopped dead in my tracks. “No. Impossible,” the voice of reason told me.

  “Did you see that snotty, Pock Avnyou bitch practic’lly empty the watahwukks on me? Goddamn her, I’d like ta …”

  “Come on,” I said, propelling her out of sight, “we’ll miss the race.”

  The night of the big dance was white with moonlight when I called for Bubbles. She wasn’t quite dressed and I sat in the parlor of Maison Hooper stiff and uncomfortable in my evening clothes. A couple of freshmen rang the bell and asked if Mavis was in.

  “Not tonight, boys,” Mrs. Hooper said jovially.

  One of them caught sight of me through the screen door. “Got a job playing piano here, Dennis?” he shouted. I winced.

  “Teh, them kids,” Mrs. Hooper chortled. “Boys will be boys, like the fella says. Laws, I can remember when you was comin’ here regular, too.”

  After a long, long time, Bubbles appeared. If she had stood out among the rosy college girls that afternoon, she now shone like a searchlight. She wore tight-fitting gold lamé slashed with red velvet, and her arms were weighted with glassy, brassy bracelets. Her throat was compressed into a dog collar of soiled pearls, and her hair was swept up into a towering pompadour that laughed at any law of gravity. Her use of cosmetics had been generous to a fault.

  “You likee?” she said.

  “Here, Bubbles,” Mrs. Hooper said, shuffling into the room in her carpet slippers. “I been keepin’ your corsaj in the fridge.”

  Daintily, Bubbles pinned a yard-long chain of purple orchids down the front of her already startling costume. At the end of the month I discovered that they—fifty-six dollars’ worth—had been charged to me by the most expensive florist in town. Bubbles flung her white fox jacket over her shoulders and picked up a tarnished sequin evening bag. “Okey-dokey, honey, there’ll be a hot time in the ole town tonight. Where’ll we eat, baby? The Inn?”

  I wouldn’t have gone within a mile of the Inn that night for a million dollars, cash. “Oh, no, Bubbles, not that old dump. The food’s enough to kill an elephant.”

  “Yer a cahd!” she screamed.

  “I thought we’d drive out to a little French place I know. Very intimate, awfully good food.” The little French place was a shoddy roadhouse about fifteen miles out of town—a good safe distance. The cuisine was appalling, but they did use some few Gallic terms on the menu like Potatoes Lyonnaise, Soup du Jour, Filet Mignon aux Champignons, and the place was called Louie’s. It was mercifully empty when we got there.

  I ordered six sidecars right off the bat, chose everything that was cooked in wine, and kept champagne flowing through the entire meal. It was my wan hope that Bubbles, whose capacity for liquor had never been large, might soon be in such condition as to be entirely indifferent—if not oblivious—to the Junior Prom. But Bubbles drank her way through dinner with a grim determination, and even called for a third bottle of champagne. “Jeest, honey,” she said, “this is the life, although between you an’ I, that steak cou’nt be cut with a battle-ax. C’mawn, baby, it’s gettin’ real late. We gotta get ta the dance.”

  “Oh, take your time. Nobody ever shows up before midnight.”

  “But, honey, it’s ha’pas’ ten right now, an’ they got Glen Gray an’ his Casa Loma band. I seen it in the noosepaypah.”

  “Oh, the night is young,” I said halfheartedly. “Eat your tortoni. It’s a very famous old French dish.”

  “French, my ass. I happena know the two Greeks that make it in Newark, an’ if you was ever ta see the inside of that factory like I done, you woun’t recommen’ it to a dog.”

  “Well, at least have a good glass of cognac.”

  Try as I would, I couldn’t get her drunk. The Prom was paramount in her mind.

  “Honey, c’mawn!” she kept whining.

  It was nearly twelve when we arrived at the dance. I walked slightly behind Bubbles in hopes that no one would think we were together.

  “Parm me a sec, honey, I gotta put some maw lacka on my cough-your.”

  I hurried into the men’s can and took a big swig out of my hip flask, then another and another and another. Bubbles, in her barbaric glory, was impatiently tapping her foot. “Jeest, honey, I thoughtcha fell in. Whatcha wearin’ them dark glasses faw?”

  “Eyestrain,” I muttered.

  Once in the ballroom, Bubbles made an instantaneous sensation. I tried to dance as far away from the stag line as possible, but the stag line gave every appearance of following us. There were low, lascivious whistles, but they sounded derisive rather than appreciative.

  “I’ll bet you five bucks it is Pat Dennis,” I heard someone say, and I spun Bubbles into the center of the throng. Against the floating white and pastel summer evening dresses of the girls at the dance, Bubbles’ costume looked like something left over from the wardrobe department at Minsky’s.

  “Kinda plain-lookin’ cloze they’re all wearin’,” Bubbles sniffed. “But if you ast me, there’s nothin’ like a really stylish evening gownd.”

  The room was pleasantly dark through my sunglasses and my head was spinning slightly.

  After a couple of turns around the floor I felt a hand tap my shoulder. I turned around and there was Repulsive Remington, the richest boy at school. “May I?” he said smoothly.

  “A pleasure,” I said.

  “See yuh, honey,” Bubbles squealed, and they danced away.

  Once free of Bubbles, I removed my sunglasses and took a good look at the ballroom. It was really mobbed. From the safety of the stag line, I gave the place full and careful scrutiny. Bubbles may have looked like the whore of Babylon, but she was going over tremendously with a certai
n raffish element of the student body. Except for a lamentable turn of phrase and an occasional shrill scream, Bubbles was holding up all right and, as I said, she was getting an appreciable amount of amused attention.

  A hand jostled my elbow. It was a freshman squirt who’d been trying his damnedest to break into the Fred Astaire crowd.

  “Hi,” I said flatly.

  “Hi,” he said. “Pretty good brawl, eh?”

  “Fair,” I agreed coldly.

  “Listen,” he piped, “you know everybody here. Tell me, who’s the snake who’s getting the big rush?”

  I felt myself go hot. “You mean in the red and gold?”

  “Hell, no, not that tramp. The mystery woman over there in the filmy black stuff.”

  I looked in the direction of a thick throng of eager young men and at the belle who was flirting and simpering in their midst. “My God,” I whispered. It was Auntie Mame, in a strapless evening dress, a fan, and every diamond she owned.

  “Who is she?” he urged. “She came with that friend of yours, Alex. She’s been all over this place ever since yesterday, and the cops said if she didn’t lay off with her squirt gun they’d clap her into the cooler. Some dish, eh! What’s her name?”

  “I swear to you before God,” I said evenly, “that I’ve never laid eyes on her before in my life.”

  Now I was desperate. I had to get hold of Bubbles and get her out—and fast. I put on my sunglasses and stumbled across the floor. Bubbles, by this time, had become a household word with the Old Jock Strap and Sweat Socks Set. Half the unshowered bodies in the athletic department had been pressed against her red and cold façade and they were back clamoring for more. Repulsive Remington was dancing with her again. I cut in briskly.

  “Come on, Bubbles,” I said, “we’ve got to get going.”

  “Fer Chrissakes, why?” she screamed.

  “Don’t ask a lot of questions, now. Come on.”

  “In a pig’s ass I will. Here I been mopin’ aroun’ this Gawdfarsaken town all week an’ now when I begin enjerrin’ myself, you wanna drag me away. Well, I won’t. I won’t. I won’t, I won’t!” She was drunk as a fiddler’s bitch by this time and screaming at the top of her lungs. A little cluster of interested young bloods had gathered around us.

  “Bubbles, you either come with me now—this minute—or else.”

  “Or else what? You ast me down to this big collitch affair, an’ what happens? I ain’t been within spittin’ distance of the place. I don’t meet no socialites, no tawchlight purade, no club dinnah dance, no cocktail potties. I ain’t even wore half my onsombuls. Well, now I’m havin’ fun and you ain’t gonna bully me inta nothin’. If you wanna go, you can go. I’m stayin’. Mr. Remington will look after me like a real gennlemun. Wonchew?”

  “You bet your life, baby,” he said, giving her hip a squeeze.

  “You really mean that, Bubbles? Forever?” I said, trying to fight down a look of relief.

  “Yer goddamn right I do!”

  “Then this is good-by?”

  “Good-by ferevah, shawt-spawt.” She whirled off with Repulsive Remington.

  Feeling like a man reprieved from the electric chair, I left the dance.

  I was a free man. Bubbles had said good-by, forever. No one had seen me with her, and my reputation for being suave, debonair, Astaire, was still safe. With happy heart I decided to go straight back to my room and spend a long time in my own bed. My clothes at the tourist cabin could wait. Of course there was the question of why Auntie Mame had been at the dance, but, I told myself, there was obviously a simple explanation to that. She’d undoubtedly stopped in to chaperone with some professor and his wife. She certainly hadn’t seen me, or Bubbles. That was the important thing.

  Still a little bit drunk, I got back to my room, locked the door, and undressed. Morgan House was silent. I snapped off the lights and, with the voice of our idol singing “The Way You Look Tonight,” and thinking happily of my new freedom now that Bubbles had Repulsive Remington to pay her bills, I drifted off to the sleep of the just.

  At half past four I was roused from my dreams by an urgent rapping at the door.

  “Who is it?” I mumbled.

  “Let me in, let me in. Quick!” an urgent female voice whispered desperately through the thin panels.

  “You and I are through, Bubbles,” I said in a thick, sleep-clogged voice. “Don’t try to come crawling back now. You’ve hurt me too much.”

  “My God, open the door! It’s Auntie Mame! Let me in!”

  I jumped up, knocking over a chair, switched on the lights, and stumbled to the door, blinking owlishly. I opened the door and Auntie Mame tumbled in, still in full evening dress with an ermine cape thrown crookedly around her shoulders. “Thank God,” she breathed, and slumped back against the closed door. “Lock it, please,” she panted. “I don’t suppose you have anything to drink in here?”

  “Why, Auntie Mame,” I said thickly, “what in the name of God are you doing here?”

  “Don’t ask me to explain anything until I’ve had a drink. Quick. Anything will do.”

  I poured her a stiff tumbler of Scotch as she collapsed onto the sofa. “Thank you, my little love, such a comfort to me. I never thought you’d be back from Philadelphia—it was Philadelphia you said?—so soon. I merely assumed your door would be unlocked and I could hide out in here for a little while.”

  “Hide?” I said, brushing the hair out of my eyes, “hide from what?” I was beginning to regain consciousness. I looked long and hard at her and she seemed to be avoiding my eyes. “Say, what are you doing here, anyhow? Reading Marcel Proust?”

  For the first time in all the years I’d known her, Auntie Mame appeared to be really embarrassed. “This is such a nice room for a college boy, darling. So restful.”

  “You’ve been in it a hundred times before. Surely you didn’t come all the way down here in that get-up for the therapeutic values of my color scheme. What I said was, just what in the hell are you doing here, now, in that outfit?”

  Auntie Mame writhed uncomfortably and avoided my eyes, but she still had a speck of the old fire-eater left. “Well, now that we’re playing twenty questions, I might quite fittingly remark that this sordid little dormitory room hardly looks like the City of Brotherly Love. I suppose you call that wilting elephant plant Rittenhouse Square?”

  “I came back earlier than I expected,” I said with complete honesty. “And now, at the risk of being tiresomely repetitious, may I ask once more what you’re doing here?”

  “Well, if that’s all the welcome I’m to get from my only kinsman,” she said rising haughtily, “perhaps I’d better go.”

  “Very well,” I said, striding toward the door, “good night.”

  “Oh, please, no!” she whimpered, cowering onto the sofa.

  There was a terrible commotion out in the corridor, and I could hear heavy feet clumping up and down the stairway, and the fumbling sound of a passkey rattling in the locks of faraway doors.

  I stared at her coldly. I was fully awake now and quite, quite sober. I began to piece together little fragments of the mosaic of the last three days—Auntie Mame’s mysterious phone call, the voice behind the squirt gun in Alex’s car, the “mystery woman in filmy black” who was getting the big rush at the dance. “And now,” I said levelly, “perhaps you will be good enough to answer, when I ask for the fourth time, exactly what you happen to be doing in full battle dress, in a men’s dormitory, at half past four in the morning on Prom Week End, in the Year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Forty.”

  “I … I—do give me another drink, darling.”

  “After you’ve explained yourself,” I said. “Now, get on with it. What are you doing here?”

  “Well, if you must know,” she blurted, “I just happened to be up in Alex’s room listening to some records, when there was this terrible ruckus and it seems that the whole
night-watchman squad was racing around searching the dormitory …”

  “What were they searching for, the Lost Chord?”

  “If you’ll only let me explain, I’m sure I can do so to your complete satisfaction.”

  “I’m certain you can. Go on.”

  “It seems that this terrible slut—oh, really, the commonest-looking thing all in red and gold like a Woolworth’s—got into the dormitory with some disgusting boy.” My heart suddenly skipped a beat. “And, well, God only knows what they were doing, but you can imagine. And then there were these terrible screams and a lot of really unbelievable language and then I heard all these night watchmen absolutely raiding the place.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, I certainly didn’t want to get caught in Alex’s room at this hour of the …”

  “Certainly you didn’t,” I said icily.

  “So I just slipped in here to wait until it was all over. I knew—at least I thought—the room would be vacant. Now give me a drink, there’s a dear.”

  “You haven’t quite yet explained your presence to my full satisfaction. What are you doing here? In this dress, in this college, in this town, in this state? You, who were going to pass a lonely week end with a good book.”

  “Why—why, darling, at the very last moment I was invited to stay with Professor Townsend and his wife and I just …”

  “You just happened to end up at the Junior Prom with a boy who could very easily be your son.”

  “That’s not true, unless you’re referring to some unhappy prank of nature like that little girl down in Peru. After all, I’m not so very much older than you!”

  “Only about twenty or thirty years!” I yelled. “Just what the hell kind of trick do you think you’re playing, Grandma Moses?”

  “Stop it!”

  “I will not stop it! Not until I get the whole story; every word of it, my College Widow. Now, begin at the beginning. The only reason you telephoned me Thursday was to find out whether I’d really be here to discover you cavorting around with a bunch of boys half your age. Right?”