The Loving Couple Page 20

  Actually, it was a fair restaurant.

  And because this was a sunny Saturday, Tradition House was jammed today. Six hired limousines stood in the driveway and the parking area was thronged with cars, some bearing license plates from as far away as Arizona—a mute testament to the genius of Tradition House's allure.

  A soignée, although somewhat high-rumped, hostess greeted them in the hall with her traditional welcome, delivered in a cordial, school-of-the-drama voice: "Gud ahftah-nyoon." Pause. Breathe. Size up clothes. "I'm afraid there will be a shawt wait for tables." Smile. Pause. Breathe. "But if you'd like to wait in the Abigail Adams Parloor, or see our unique collection of oh-thentic Rrrev-o-lyutioneddy min-ee-a-tyuahs in the John Jay Ryoom . . .”

  "Where's the bar?" Fran said flatly.

  The hostess was a little startled. She usually liked to work up through the delights of the Molly Pitcher Gift Shoppe and the Priscilla Mullins Terrace before she got to the hard core of Tradition House's sensational profits; alcohol. And she considered herself sufficiently awesome—not without some reason—for guests to wait politely until she had finished her pitch.

  'The Hessian Top Ryoom is to yaw left, but waon't you sign our guest book first? We have maw than hoff a million signatyuahs, representing guests from all fawty-eight states and ovah fifty foreign countries, including thrrree behind the I-ron Curtain and. . ."

  "Sure," Fran snapped, "give me the pen." In her large, sprawling hand she hastily scrawled "Elsie Dinsmore" and jammed the foot-long quill back into the inkwell.

  "And waon't yew sign, tew?" the hostess said with a horrid smile.

  "I've been here before and signed before," Mary said, indicating the morocco-bound guest book with a nod. "Wouldn't that rather throw your records off?"

  The hostess knew when she was licked. She really only enjoyed her work when she could patronize the patrons good and proper. Nothing made her happier than to get a couple of little Bronx hausfraus, out for a lark, and pulverize them with her own grandeur. She had all kinds of cute tricks she could play on them, things like picking up one of their fabric gloves from the floor, holding it at arm's length like a dead rat and saying, "Did you drop this, um, ma-damn?" Or she would pretend that she owned the place, instead of Mr. Pulakos. Or she might just leave them twiddling their thumbs in the Abigail Adams Parlor for as long as an hour while flossier guests were seated immediately.

  However, these two bitches were solid class. The minor bitch, for example, looked like a lady—with expensive clothes, a magnificent hat and genuine alligator pumps and bag. That meant a lot. The major bitch may have looked like a tart, but the hostess hadn't seen such a mink coat since the late Gertrude Lawrence lunched at Tradition House and if those rocks weren't real, she'd eat them. No, these babies could cool off in the bar for the space of one drink. Then they'd have another drink at the table, a tab that would come to about fourteen bucks and maybe a pair of stingers afterward. Oh, certainly stingers.

  "Step this way, pleeze," she said and sashayed elegantly to the Hessian Tap Room.

  "Makes you want to goose her with a lightning rod," Fran bellowed in a sententious whisper.

  Because of the lateness of the hour, there were plenty of vacant tables in the Hessian Tap Room, but Fran headed straight for the bar.

  "Shouldn't we take a table, Fran?" Mary asked. She still had a kind of repression about unaccompanied women sitting at bars. Yet, Fran had certainly been around. Just look at the way she'd fixed that poor, pretentious hostess.

  "Don't be a chump. Why should we make this nice bartender walk all the way across the room?" The barkeep, a towering young Irishman, had caught Fran's eye the second she entered the room. He certainly was a looker, although a number of disappointing experiences had made Fran quite certain that the nocturnal companionship of Italians and Greeks was far more stimulating. There was something so repressed about the Irish. "You don't mind if we sit here at the bar, do you, Mickey?" Fran asked, reading the name embroidered on the front of his jacket.

  "Not at all, miss," the man blushed, "what'll it be?"

  "A double Haig and Haig on the rocks for me," Fran boomed. "What about you?"

  The thought of another drink actually frightened Mary. Here it was almost two o'clock and she still hadn't had a mouthful of food all day. Well, she might as well taper off with an old fashioned. At least she could eat the fruit. That would be something. "An old fashioned, I guess, Fran."

  "Yes, Mickey, and a double bourbon old fashioned. And leave out the garbage."

  As though by magic, their table was ready at the exact moment she emptied her drink. She had purposely dawdled with it, giving Fran time to have two doubles and a rather too-intimate conversation with the bartender, whose responses were little more than polite. This last drink had decidedly put her over the edge. The Toby jugs, the pewter mugs, the prints and muskets that adorned the room spun about her head in the dim glow of artificial candle light. She was a little pleased—and even more surprised—to find herself walking in a straight line, but she didn't really care. She was also surprised to see Fran giving her card to the bartender. In her haze she felt that this was an example of democracy at work and it pleased her. Good old Fran!

  Tradition House had a number of irritating traditions of its own. For example, its pre-Revolutionary War fireplace and its post-Korean War air conditioning system were both kept going full blast, thus giving the customers the charm of an open fire without roasting them to death. There were no menus. Instead, a snowy-haired old Negro in knee britches came around with a gigantic slate and read aloud what you might or might not care to eat. Muffins, cornbread and popovers were served by a lovable old mammy wearing a bandana and such a benign smile that nobody, except the rest of the staff, could possibly realize that for the past twenty years she had been County Secretary of the American Communist Party.

  "This is a kitschy dump, isn't it," Fran said, lighting a cigarette.

  "De s'rimp jambolaya bery good, ma'm," the headwaiter was crooning. "Oh maybe you ladies rodda hab ouah famous Tradition House Philadelphia scrapple, oh de Maine lobstah . . ."

  "Bring up two steak sandwiches—rare—a double old fashioned and a double Haig and Haig over ice," Fran snapped.

  The colorful old servitor gave her a scathing look, wondered about chuckling endearingly, thought better of it, and shuffled off. Like the hostess, he was accustomed to having his big soliloquy reverently attended and enthusiastically applauded. But also like the hostess, he knew when he was being upstaged by a great star.

  "Fran! I can't have another drink. I haven't even had breakfast!" Actually Mary had rather had her taste buds set for a plate of scrapple. It seemed to her now that since her husband had achieved his exalted new station she had eaten nothing but heroic cuts of raw beef in expensive restaurants with expensive people. Still, she was mutely grateful for any hope of food.

  "Who eats breakfast?" Fran asked, grinding out her cigarette in a pat of Tradition House Old Style Home Churned Sweet Creamery Butter. It made an oleaginous little hiss. "Ah, here come the reinforcements. Thank God!"

  A harried-looking waitress scuttled in with their drinks. The word had got around the pantry of Tradition House that a couple of tough customers were at Table Number One in the Nancy Hanks Room. Service would be fast, efficient and totally devoid of any of the quaint nuances which had endeared Tradition House to hordes of weekend gourmets.

  "Well," Fran said, lifting her glass with a practiced hand, "here's to hell with that cheap, social-climbing, two-bit whore, Adele Hennessey. The tramp!" She threw her head back and emptied half the glass.

  To Fran, being the grand-daughter of a man who had amassed millions through the most questionable business practices gave her free license to live as amorally as she pleased. Born in a feudal age, Fran would have been wanton in a big way, fearing only pregnancy and banishment by the monarch. (But of course Fran would have been the monarch's mistress.)

  Even in the Twentieth Century, Fran had
a feudal mind and a feudal soul. Fran didn't recognize the Double Standard; she rather favored a triple standard—separate codes of behavior for men, for women and for Fran herself. Therefore, Fran kept a close watch on the mores and morals of those women she considered her inferiors, and that encompassed all of womankind. Fran could snatch a busboy, a brigadier and a broker simultaneously into the bushes and it was to be considered—if, indeed, it was to be considered at all—a kind of droit de seigneur, because Fran, after all, was Fran. But let some young housewife drink an extra cocktail or dance twice with the same partner, let some woman show her too much or—worse—not enough deference, and Fran became Carrie Nation, Cotton Mather and Savonarola rolled into one. "Tramp" was her favorite epithet.

  Mary thought, a little desperately, since she could hardly think at all, that Fran was being patently unfair to poor Mrs. Hennessey. Actually, she didn't like Adele Hennessey. Adele was vulgar and garrulous and pretentious and practically illiterate. Adele was a social climber. And yet brassy as she was, Adele was a good sort at heart. Mary'd defended Adele and defended Adele without even caring whether Adele lived or died. (Oh, but her head was spinning!) And now Fran had to start in on poor, dumb, common Adele. She really must say something decent about Adele, No. She was tired of defending Adele, In fact, she was tired of everything that smacked of Riveredge. "To hell with Adele," she said and she giggled at the poetry of her toast. She took a rather large peg of her drink and a feeling of perfect euphoria swept over her. Good old Fran, she thought.

  "Now, suppose you tell Mother all about you and that beast," Fran said hypnotically.

  "Fran, I'll tell you what . . ."

  "What?"

  "Let's not talk about him or Adele Hennessey or about anything that has anything to do with Riverish—I mean Liver-edge." She looked up and saw that food was on its way. Relief was in sight.

  "Then what will we talk about?" Fran asked, a little irritably.

  "Let's talk about . . . Life."

  Five

  She turned the big car off the West Side Highway with consummate skill and steered painlessly through the tortuous streets of Greenwich Village. She felt fine and she'd never driven better—not a bit nervous.

  Lunch had sobered her. She had eaten a great deal, just as she always did. She could never understand those poor women who had to diet. She could sit down and eat like a stevedore, with lots of sauces and bread and butter and potatoes and gooey desserts and never gain an ounce. In fact her figure hadn't varied a millimeter—except when she was expecting the baby—since the day she graduated from Baldwin. Whereas Fran, who had hardly touched her lunch . . . Oh, there she went again, having a long Think all by herself. It was almost as rude as reading when you were with somebody else. She often had one of her self-analyzing Thinks when she'd had a bit too much to drink.

  "Too many drinks,

  Too many Thinks,"

  she thought and giggled.

  "What the hell's so funny?" Fran asked crossly.

  "Nothing, Fran, except that I believe we're lost."

  "Well, I don't wonder in this lousy Greenwich Village place. How anybody in his right mind could live down here is beyond me."

  "But, Fran, where else would Lisa live and who ever said she was in her right mind?" She stopped the car. "Now let's see. Here's Eighth Avenue and there's Jane Street. If Jane comes, can Jennifer be far behind?" My, but wasn't she being witty!

  "Only a little behind Horatio and Minetta Lane and McDougal Alley and Washington Mews and all the rest of these lousy gussied-up cowpaths down here. Look out! Bank Street is one-way!"

  Mary backed up and then headed into Fourth Street. One thing that made her uneasy about the Village was the inconsiderate way Fourth Street had of crossing both Tenth and Eleventh streets. What did it think it was, an avenue?

  Actually, she hadn't meant to come to Lisa's party at all, but Fran had almost kidnapped her—and in her own car, or his own car in her own name.

  She'd been a little startled when she'd had to pay the whole luncheon check, but then Fran had steered her into the bar and insisted on buying her not one, but two stingers. And they had had a sobering effect. They tasted so clean.

  She'd had a wonderful talk with Fran, too. It was amazing the way you could always be so frightened of—well, not exactly frightened of, but awed by—someone and then have that someone turn out to be the most lovable, most understanding, most sympathetic old pal. And she'd been perfectly fair in everything she had said about him.

  Fran had asked a lot of funny questions about sex and that sort of thing. That had made her a little nervous. She didn't really know very much about sex or even think about it. Sex was just something that two people who loved each other shared naturally together. She always hated to talk about it because it seemed as natural—and as boring a subject of conversation—as respiration or digestion or elimination.

  But Fran had asked different questions and Fran had seemed so pleased by her answers that she had felt rather proud and happy—like a tongue-tied Ph.D. candidate who has just passed a tough session of Orals. Yet Fran had been married more than once, so Fran undoubtedly had more grounds for comparison.

  And Fran had also given her a wonderful piece of advice: When she'd told Fran that she didn't think she'd drive into New York for Lisa's party, Fran looked her square in the eye and said, "Don't be such a chump, you chump. Show him you can lead a life of your own. Besides we're practically half-way to New York now."

  True-blue old Fran! Fran wasn't going to let her sit home alone feeling sorry for herself.

  "Oh, dear," she said, stopping to squint at the signs at a place where three streets converged and came out as five streets.

  "My God," Fran snarled, scraping her cigarette out into the dashboard ashtray with a fine shower of glowing coals, "We've been around this dreary block a thousand times. Are we lost again?"

  "I'm awfully afraid we are, Fran. As long as I've lived in New York I've never been able to find my way around the Village—not even the nice, straightforward Streets like Eighth and Bleecker. And when it comes to hunting out a place like Jennifer Street all by myself, I can't. . ."

  "Lisa! Lisa and Brad! What a perfect brace of jerks. If they want to hide away down in this hell hole like a couple of hermits, why don't they act like hermits and not drag everybody and his brother down here to their silly parties? If I hadn't told Fletch to meet me here, I'd say to hell with Brad and Lisa and . . . Whoa! This is it, I think—that secret passage between the opium den and the knocking shop."

  Jennifer Street was a twisting, gaslit cul-de-sac lined with houses said to date back to the Revolution. It had been painstakingly restored, at vast expense, by a group of arty residents who called themselves the Jennifer Street Alliance and who were allied in nothing except the feeling that Jennifer Street must be kept picturesque, recherché and invisible.

  Groups of matronly sightseers who happened, quite by accident, into the labyrinth of Jennifer Street invariably shrieked "Cute . . . sweet . . . darling . . . adorable!" upon glimpsing the tiny houses, the gas lights, the doors painted fuchsia, turquoise and lemon. The hitching posts, the window boxes, the antique knockers always got them.

  But it wasn't long before the cobblestones began to hurt their feet, before the flickering gaslight began to hurt their eyes. They were shocked at the curses of cab drivers and delivery men who backed and filled in the narrow courtyard, crumpling their fenders on mounting blocks and hitching posts. Soot from the neighboring plastic novelties factory rained down into Jennifer Street, as did cigarette butts from the modern apartment house to the north and garbage from the old law tenement to the south.

  If the lady sightseers got out of Jennifer Street unscathed, unsullied and uninsulted they were damned lucky and they rapidly began to agree among themselves that while the idea of Jennifer Street was cute, sweet, darling and adorable, it was perhaps just a little too cute, sweet, darling and adorable to be quite suited to contemporary metropolitan living.<
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  "Arty-farty little dump, isn't it?" Fran asked, straggling out of the parked car. "Who'd Lisa say this shindig was for?"

  "P-Pericles Insofaras," Mary said a little nervously.

  "What's that, a social disease?"

  "No, it's a Greek tenor—or maybe a baritone. Brad and Lisa met him on the boat coming back from Europe."

  "Well, come on," Fran said, picking her way across the cobblestones. "We might as well get it over with."

  For a moment Mary hung back. This was the first time she'd gone to a party alone since—well since the night she had met John, and that had been right here at Lisa's house in Jennifer Street. Now instead of feeling gay and reckless and independent, she felt frightened and insecure. What if he should be here and . . .

  "Come on," Fran began, "I told Fletch to meet me at five-thirty sharp."

  She looked up at Fran, striding toward Lisa's magenta door and took heart. Good old Fran with her diamonds and her magnificent mink coat and her sort of coltish style. Fran would protect her.

  Fran stumbled on the doorstep, said a coarse word and then thumped at the Randalls' antique brass knocker.

  The door was opened by the hostess herself, an overweight young woman in her late twenties. "Darling!" Lisa screamed, embracing her.

  "My God, what are you got up as this time?" Fran moaned.

  It was a good question. Lisa was dressed in a gay peasant skirt, so full that it made her bottom look as big as a washtub. She wore a white muslin blouse—jingling with florins and riotous with peasant embroidery—that exposed her plump shoulders as well as a safety pin and a strap of the slip she was wearing. Her fat little feet were thrust into thong sandals and her fairish hair caught up in a fillet. The costume was completed by a clattering array of beaten silver bracelets, a pair of dangling silver earrings so heavy that they pulled Lisa's earlobes down to her jawline, and a huge silver Greek Orthodox cross, encrusted with semi-precious stones, which swung like a hanged man from an ornate silver chain around Lisa's neck.