Mark Dunn - We Five

“You’lldofine. Come on. This porchtoocrowded.” The equally inebriated Pat Harrison squinted at the porch’s other occupants, all coupled up, clinging to one another like human barnacles. “Lesstroll. I’ll carry you if I have to.”

“You’ll carry me where?”

“To my car.” Correcting himself: “To my friend Jerry’s car. He won’t mind. And I know he ain’t using it ’cuz I can see him standing right there at the door. Upsy-daisy.”

Molly allowed Pat to raise her up onto her wobbly legs and then to walk her off the porch.

They did this under the nervous, watchful gaze of Carrie and Ruth, who stood at the front picture window.

“Where’s he taking her?” asked Ruth, her voice registering alarm.

Carrie grimaced. “Right down the sidewalk and right past that awful Mrs. Littlejohn’s house, and you better believe our neighborhood busybody is going to have volumes to say about this to my mother in the morning.”

Ruth exchanged a worried look with Carrie. “Molly’s drunk,” she said. “She doesn’t know what she’s doing. Carrie, somebody needs to stop that boy before he gets her into his car. You know what happens when boys get girls into cars at parties like these. Now it was your idea we come here tonight, so you’re responsible.”

“I merely suggested it, Ruth. It was Jane who put it all together.”

“Well, I don’t know where Jane is right now, so it’s up to you, since it was your neighbor Bella who invited that baby sheik and his fellow frat-house muckers to this party.”

Carrie’s eyes grew large. “You’re asking me to wrest her away from him?”

“To preserve her virtue and her good reputation while there’s still time, yes, indeed. Don’t worry. I’ll be right there next to you, lending moral support.”

Carrie stared at Ruth. “You sound as potted as Molly. It looks to me like we’re all doing a good job of making total nits out of ourselves tonight.”

Ruth ignored this. She gave her friend a tug, though Carrie’s feet were set in place by something akin to abject fear. Confrontation was not one of Carrie Hale’s strong suits.

Cain Pardlow, having successfully threaded his way through a room filled with slightly-squiffed to sloppily-stinko one-steppers, each attempting to foxtrot to Ted Lewis’s effervescent rendition of “Runnin’ Wild,” reached his intended: Misses Thrasher and Hale, the two highballs held protectively above his head relatively intact.

“Why the worried pusses, ladies?”

Carrie replied: “It looks like our circle-sister Molly is being dragged right off to the lion’s den.”

“ Wolf’s den would be a better description,” put in Ruth, peering into the semi-darkness beyond the Prowses’ front lawn. “Or from all appearances, the wolf’s Ford Roadster. That is the car he came in, isn’t it?”

Cain nodded. He pushed the two highball glasses at the two women, some of the gin sloshing out. “Can’t have that. No sirree.” And then with a second, more deferential nod: “If you’ll excuse me—”

Cain did a quick about-face and left the way he came, crossing once more the crowded, tangle-legged parlor floor and stepping on one of Bella Prowse’s slippered feet in the process (though the tipsy-topsy flapper didn’t even seem to register the injury). Reaching the front vestibule, Cain was about to make his hurried exit to introduce chivalry and male gallantry into the demonstrably un chivalrous and un gallant 1920s, when his arm was roughly seized by Jerry Castle, who had been poking his head out the front door in search of the currently elusive Maggie Barton.

“Where are you going, pardner?”

“To your car. To rescue a damsel in distress.”

Jerry lowered his voice, though it wasn’t entirely necessary with the sound of music and the clamor of human merriment dinning all ears. “You can’t change the rules in midstream, Pardlow, even if Master Paddy does appear to be putting himself several furlongs ahead.”

Cain tried to shake Jerry off, without success. “Pat isn’t going to make any kind of conquest tonight, Castle — and especially not with those two looking on in horror.” He nodded in the direction of Carrie and Ruth, who remained at the window, effecting a tableau of “nail-nibbling apprehension” that even Cecil B. DeMille would have approvingly put to celluloid.

Jerry tightened his vise grip on Cain’s arm. “To my knowledge we’ve placed no restrictions on the means and manner of conquest, Pardlow, so back the hell off and let nature take its course. I, for one, think the young lady will come quickly to her senses and put a stop to things before he gets too far. At least that’s what I hope. I’d hate to think bootleg booze and dumb luck are going to win the whole shebang for our little Baby Skeezix.”

Jerry and Cain discovered in that next moment they weren’t alone. Will Holborne had dropped in to make his own observation. “Gentlemen, you forget that the winner isn’t the one who rounds all the bases first. It’s he who slides into home with all the pennants flying. And I, for one, see little brilliance or panache in Patty Cake’s playing five-and-dime Casanova in the dusty backseat of a broken-down 1917 Lizzie. Been done far too many times before.”

“Then how about I go and tell him he’s wasting his time?” sought Cain.

Jerry grinned. “Say, maybe Paddy isn’t even thinking about the game. Maybe he actually does like her. There’s that possibility too, you know.”

“How about I go talk to him and find out?” Cain persisted, finally freeing himself from Jerry Castle’s meat hooks.

“Suit yourself,” said Jerry, “but if Pat isn’t jake, you mind your business and keep right on walking.” Holborne concurred with a nod.

“Since when do you give a rat’s rump about Pat Harrison?” Cain tossed to Jerry on his way out the door.

“Since you turned Paddy into the little brother you never had,” responded Jerry with a half sneer/half grin.

“Among other things,” added Will, pregnantly.

Lover-boy was preoccupied. “Castle — he always leaves his keys in the car for a quick getaway, but damned if I can find where he’s gone and stashed ’em.”

Molly made a baby face. “We can’t cuddle and coo right here in the moonlight?”

Pat shook his head. “Nothing doing. I got a much better spot in mind — nice little hidey-hole sort of joint on the other side of town where the darkies go. They got hot jazz and all the liquor you can hold and there’s dark little booths in the back where nobody’ll come poking their heads into your business.”

As if to prove his point, Pat nudged Molly’s attention in the direction of the man now standing just outside the car on Molly’s side. Molly turned and started.

“What the hell are you doing poking your head in my business, Pardlow?” barked Pat (the bark being more pinnipedian than canine).

“I just came to tell Miss Osborne that her friends are asking for her.”

Molly smiled. “They are ? Oh, they worry too much. Tell them I’m perfectly fine. Mr. Harrison and me are going for a nye-slettle-drive.” Then, her hand cupped as if to deliver a secret — this particular secret broadcast with enough volume to cause at least one neighborhood dog to start sentry-yapping: “He’s taking me to a speakeasy — my veerfirst.”

Cain responded by shaking his head and opening the passenger door. He had to seize Molly to keep her from tumbling out onto the grass between the curb and the sidewalk. “First, Miss Osborne, I’d like to draw your attention to the fact that Mr. Harrison doesn’t actually know of any speakeasies — or at least where they are , although I don’t doubt he’s heard the rest of us talking about them. Second, Mr. Harrison is in no condition to drive. Third, this isn’t even his car, and the gentleman whose car this is isn’t going to take too kindly to the two of you joyriding around in it, sideswiping mailboxes and mowing down fire hydrants, all in a fruitless quest for some blind pig that — even if you should get so lucky as to find it — probably won’t admit you because you both happen to look twelve.”