John Steinbeck - Sweet Thursday

In the darkening laboratory Doc and Old Jay went softly into the third bottle of Old Tennis Shoes.

“You’ve had the bed long enough,” Doc said. “I want it now.”

“All right. As I grow older I expect less and less—and get nothing, even from my so-called friends.”

“Look here! You’ve eaten and spoiled my first dinner, stuffed my second, swilled my beer, taken two drinks for one of the whisky, appropriated my bed, broken two phonograph records, and I saw you put my fountain pen in your pocket. And how you razzle-dazzled the Patrón out of twenty-five dollars I don’t know. You shouldn’t have told him that under certain circumstances a knight can jump three squares in one direction—that’s not honest.”

“I know,” said Old Jingleballicks. He patted the pillow lovingly. “Now you lie down here and get comfortable. I’ll bring you a drink. Feel better now?”

“Oh, I’m all right,” said Doc.

“Say, is that place across the street still running?”

A jagged rage whipped Doc upright. “You stay out of there!” he said. “You old fool! Lie down and go to sleep.”

“Why shouldn’t I go? Am I to deny myself the loveliness of women if the price is right? I can hear the tinkle of their sweet voices and see the heaving of their white roundness—”

“Oh, shut up!” Doc said.

“What’s the matter, dear friend? I don’t remember that you ever starved for love even when it was less near and less reasonable.”

“You go to hell,” said Doc. “But you go to hell here.”

At the very moment Doc and Old Jingleballicks were quarreling over a matter neither of them understood, Mack was sitting, body comfortable but spirit disturbed, in Fauna’s office bedroom. In his hand he held a Venetian glass bud vase of whisky. He was pouring out to Fauna a problem that had not come up in his life for many years.

“Don’t think that there ain’t been parties before at the Palace, and fights,” he said. “Why, when the news come that Gay had went to his reward we give a memorial shindig that they don’t hardly do no better at the Salinas Rodeo. [97] Salinas Rodeo: The California Rodeo has taken place each summer at the Salinas Rodeo Grounds since 1911. Gay would of been proud of it—if he could of got in.”

Fauna said, “There’s talk around that three mourners went to join Gay before nightfall next day.”

“Well, you got to expect a certain amount of accidents,” said Mack modestly. “That was all fine. But this here’s something special. Not only are loyal hearts framing their dear friend for a hunk of charity, but we got a double-header. Right in the Palace Flop house the holy bounds of matrimony got its spikes dug in on the starting line. This here’s a halcyon brawl. I and the boys got real delicate feelings about it.”

“But no clothes,” said Fauna.

“Right! We think somebody got to set a standard. If the loyal friends look like mugs, what’ll the mugs look like?”

Fauna nodded. “I see what you mean. How far you want to go—monkeysuits?”

“God no!” Mack said. “Just pants and coats made out of the same stuff and nobody gets in without he’s got a necktie on, and none of them bow ties that light up neither. This is a goddam solemn moment, Fauna.”

She scratched her scalp with her pencil.

Mack went on, “I ain’t as young as I was. I don’t know how many more parties I can take.”

“Don’t none of us get no younger,” said Fauna. She tapped her teeth with the pencil. As it happened, she also had a problem, and she intended to ask Mack’s advice. Now, suddenly, the two problems crashed together and a solution for both was born. Into Fauna’s eyes came the light of triumph as she murmured, “I got it!”

“Give it to me gentle,” said Mack. “I didn’t get much sleep today.”

Fauna got up and found the stick with which she directed astrological traffic or whacked a protruding piece of bad posture. She talked better with the wand in her hand. “This here calls for a drink,” she said, and she poured it.

Mack turned the stem of the bud vase in his fingers and sighted through his drink. The red glass made the brown whisky look green.

Fauna said, “There was a queen a long time ago and she was loaded. Didn’t think nothing of paying a couple hundred bucks for a house dress. Got so many bracelets she couldn’t bend her arms. You know what she done when she had a birthday or a hanging or something?”

“Overalls,” said Mack.

“No, but you’re close. Dressed like she’s a milkmaid. They’d wash up a cow and the queen’d sit on a gold stool and take a whang at milking. And there’s another old dame. Just the top cream of the top cream. Gives them parties can’t nobody get in. She wears a head rag. Done it for years. If you look over the crowd and don’t see a head rag—she ain’t there.”

Mack’s hand shook as he raised the bud vase to his lips. “Is it what I think?”

“Masquerade!” cried Fauna. “There’s only two kinds of people in the world gives a masquerade—people who got too much and people who ain’t got nothing.”

Mack smiled inwardly to himself. “Can I have a freshener?” he asked.

“Help yourself,” said Fauna. “Masquerade has got other things too. People get kind of bored with who they are. Makes them something else for a while.”

Mack spoke with reverence. “They used to say, if you got something you can’t figure out, give it to Mack. Fauna, it’s your dice. You’re a bull-bitch idear dame. God te-tum-tum His wonders to perform.”

“Like it?”

“Like it! Fauna, this here’s one Life [98] Life: In 1936, under new owner Henry Luce, Life (which began in 1883 as a humor magazine) became the first all-photography news-magazine in the United States. At its most popular, it sold more than thirteen million copies per week. It published a regular feature, “ Life Goes to a Party.” magazine would give its ass for an invite.”

“We got to have a theme.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, we can’t let people just run wild. You don’t know what kind of stuff they’d wear. I don’t want no tramp and gunnysack party.”

“I guess you’re right. You got any idears?”

“How about ‘At the court of the Fairy Queen’?”

“No,” said Mack. “First place, we got no right to hurt Joe Elegant’s feelings; second place, the cops—”

“Well, how about then ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’?”

“I seen the picture,” [99] the picture: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, a 1937 Walt Disney Productions movie, was the first animated film made in Technicolor. said Mack. “I think you got something. Some of them dwarfs looked like mugs. I can’t see Hazel as no fairy, but he’d do fine as a great big overgrowed dwarf.”

“That’s what’s nice about it,” said Fauna. “Gives you some leeway.”

“Do you think this might call for a drink?”

“I sure as hell do! You spread the word, Mack, will you? You come either as a dwarf, a prince, or a princess, or you damn well don’t get in. Hold that vase steady.”

“But not Doc,” said Mack.

“You know,” said Fauna, “five’ll get you seven Doc wears a tie.”

The communications system on Cannery Row is mysterious to the point of magic and rapid to the speed of light. Fauna and Mack came to the decision that the party should be a masquerade on Friday evening at 9:11½. By 9:12 the magic had started, and by 9:30 everyone who was not asleep, drunk, or away, knew about it. One particularly mean woman who hadn’t had a man for a long time commented, “How will you know whether they’re in costume or not?”—a statement clearly drawn from her own state of misery. But mainly the news was received with wonder and joy. Mack’s tom-wallager had achieved the stature of a bull-bitch tom-wallager.