Mark Dunn - We Five

Molly laughed noisily and gustily. “You’re a funny one, Mr. Parloom. Pat, your friend Mr. Pardrew is a very funny man. I like him.”

Pat stared straight ahead, chewing his lower lip with unmitigated anger.

“And fourth—”

“There’s a fourth ?” Pat snarled.

Reason Number Four was delivered in a whisper for Molly’s consumption only.

“Have you given any thought, Miss Osborne, to what Sister Lydia will say — let alone do —were she to find out how one of her choir girls spent the latter part of this evening?”

A look of terror suddenly overspread Molly’s face. “Oh no!” she exclaimed. “She wouldn’t be very pleased at all, would she?” Tears sprang to Molly’s rheumy eyes. “Oh, what will she say to what I’ve done already ? I’ve danced like a wicked wild woman and said things I shouldn’t have said and I’ve drunk things I’ve had no business drinking and, and—”

Words suddenly failed Molly, to be replaced by an aberrant bodily function, which carried an equivalent amount of information. Cain assisted her as best he could by holding her head while removing his patent leathers from the vicinity of deposit, as Pat huffed and snorted and flung daggers of hatred at his friend for the crime of his intrusion.

“It’s for your own good, Pat,” Cain calmly explained, his look lovingly placatory. “In terms of our game, this stunt wouldn’t have even won you the consolation prize.”

“I had plans for something much more adventurish than simple vee — vehicular petting !” delivered the petulant baby sheik through partially gritted teeth.

“The word is adventur ous , Paddy, and if your idea of adventurous seduction is to drive this poor girl to a speakeasy and drink until the two of you pass out under the table, then you have no business playing the game. You’ll know where to find me tomorrow when you want to thank me.”

Cain took out his handkerchief, wiped some of the sick from Molly’s lips, set her aright in her seat and started off. A moment later he stopped, wheeled himself around and returned to the car, this time putting himself on the driver’s side. “This performance of yours, Pat, makes your Puck in our little Shakespeare festival look like Hamlet by comparison. You’re far better than this.” Cain held his gaze for a moment longer than he could have gotten away with if Pat had been sober. With tender fingers he brushed back a lock of tumbled hair from Pat’s forehead, then left.

The music was louder now, the partiers singing along with the record, “I’m Just Wild About Harry,” except that William Holborne was putting it a bit differently. “I’m Just Wild About Carrie ” was what he warbled right into the ear of its most appropriate recipient, in the process spraying one side of Carrie’s face with atomized droplets of gin-scented saliva.

“You, sir, are absolutely disgusting !” she cried, locking arms with Ruth, who was still looking out the window, still waiting for the denouement to the little drama being played out a half block away. “And it’s time for us to go. Let’s gather up the girls, Ruth, before Deloria Littlejohn or my mother or someone on this block who values their sleep ’phones the police.”

“Yet the evening is young and you are — I do not exaggerate, madam — the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met!” Will said all this without slurring a single word. He was soon joined by Jerry Castle and Tom Catts.

“They’re leaving,” announced Will with a display of exaggerated dejection. “The evening has hardly gotten started and these choir babies are ‘much skidoo about nothing’—nothing at all.”

“Well, we can’t have that !” boomed Jerry thickly. “Not to mention that, practically speaking, we seem to have lost all trace of Miss Barton.”

Carrie and Ruth looked about the room in hopes of proving Jerry wrong.

Jerry cheerfully elaborated: “We were having ourselves a nice cozy gas in the kitchen while I was helping the little lady prowl around for something ice-cold and zero-proof, and in marches this flannel-tongued hunkie or — or wop or some such species of Ellis Island gorilla, who starts to muscle in on my territory, and while I’m fending him off, I got a couple of thirsty professorial Yid butt-inskies stealing in behind me from the back porch, and now they’re buzz-buzzing around the flame of luscious Lady M, and before I can get her hustled away to safety, two la-di-dah lizzie boys with The-da Bara eye-paint flounce in and give me the puke-belly from the stinking reality of their very existence , and while I’m contemplating which of these disturbers of my very own peace is going to get the knuckle sandwich, I see my Lady Fair duck out and disappear into the night, and now I feel cheated and wholly maligned by cruel circumstance.”

Will grinned. “You could have spared us the silly-quee, Jerry. She just walked in. See her over there by the clodhopper in the glee-club boater? Go tell her goodnight.”

Jerry stiff-armed his way across the crowded dance floor to reintroduce himself to Maggie, as if such a thing were necessary. At the same time, Maggie was swimming in a different direction, over to Bella Prowse, who lay sprawled upon the carpet next to the Victrola, surrounded by a cluttered imbrication of phonograph records from the Prowses’ prodigious music collection. Reaching Bella, Maggie went down on her knees to put herself at eye level with her hostess.

“Hey, you ,” said Jerry, now towering over Maggie. “Do you remember me?”

“Of course I remember you,” replied Maggie, looking up for an eye-blink and then returning her attention to the record she’d casually plucked up to inspect.

“ Struttin’ the Blues Away ,” offered the blissfully bleary-eyed Bella Prowse. “That’s one of Reggie’s favorites.” (Not that Bella’s husband Professor Reginald Prowse would be in any condition to enjoy the selection. He had, quite some time earlier, entered alcohol-abetted dreamland in his favorite easy chair in a relatively isolated corner of the room.) “I love that one too. It’s the Atlantic Dance Orchestra. Do you know them?” The question was directed to Maggie, though it was repeated for Jerry’s benefit. “Do you know them?”

“I don’t know nothing except that I have to see this chickie”—pointing at Maggie—“before she flies the coop.”

“See me about what? Am I leaving?” Maggie looked up to see Ruth and Carrie, with Molly propped unsteadily between them, stationed near the front door. Ruth and Carrie were nodding exaggeratedly and making broad hand gestures indicative of departure.

“There’s something I want to give you — in parting,” said Jerry. His voice now sounded poised and friendly, although there was the hint of something else there: a childlike wishfulness, which couldn’t be easily dismissed.

Maggie’s resistance dissolved. “I’ll take it. What is it?” Maggie held out her hand, palm up. The hand wobbled.

“Not here. In private.”

Maggie was now sitting with her legs tucked delicately beneath her like a sleepy fawn in a glade. She gave Jerry her hand. He lifted her gently to her feet.

He led her to one of the bedrooms. He flung open the door. Inside was a young woman and man in a bunny hug, she seated in his lap on a chair.

“Beat it!” Jerry rumbled.

The command was speedily obeyed, the door slammed shut upon exit. And then, without a moment’s hesitation, Jerry Castle bestowed his “gift”: a kiss for Maggie to remember him by.

“You drive me wild. I gotta have you,” he said, after their lips had parted.

“I–I’m flattered you need me,” inhaled Maggie, while trying to catch her breath, “but I hardly know you.”