Marjorie Morningstar

  The cocktails came. She picked up her shallow brimming glass, and a little champagne spilled coldly over her fingers. “Well, here’s to the Masked Marvel, on his way to the top at last,” she said. “I wish you every success, Noel. I always will.”

  “Well, let me drink to the one shining deed in my disorderly little life,” Noel said. “To Marjorie, loveliest of the lovely, sweetest of the sweet. God bless her. And let her thank her lucky stars I was such a bastard to her.”

  Marjorie muttered, “Well, I don’t know about all that. Let’s drink.”

  She hadn’t had champagne since the breakup with Noel. Morris habitually ordered scotch for both of them. The yeasty bubbling on her tongue reeled time backward half a year. “You vile dog, who and what are you laughing at?”

  “Was I laughing?”

  “I don’t know what else you call baring those fangs at me. They certainly look white in that face of yours. You’re black.”

  “Well, two weeks ago, dear, I was climbing pyramids in Yucatan. How much time left? Two minutes?”

  “Don’t be funny. If I gulp it I’ll get hiccups. Don’t remind me how late I am.”

  “I like the way you’re wearing your hair.”

  “Oh, is it different? I don’t remember.”

  “Marjorie, it’s very pleasant seeing you, honestly it is.”

  “Well, it’s nice to see you in such good spirits, Noel. Last time I saw you, you looked like the devil. I really thought you might be heading for a nervous breakdown.”

  “And so you decided to help a man in distress, by knocking his teeth down his throat.”

  He said it with good humor, but her nerves stung. She drained the glass and picked up her purse. “Well, let’s let sleeping dogs lie, shall we? This has been fun, and I guess—”

  “Margie, look at the time. You’re hopelessly late for a six o’clock date. Make a phone call and have a cigarette and one more drink with me.”

  “Oh no, you fiend, none of that. You swore, five minutes and you’d vanish, remember? Don’t add perjury to your crimes.”

  “I’ll keep my promise, but I think you’re making a mistake. You’ve been haunting me, and if I haven’t been haunting you I’d be surprised. Melodramatic breakoffs are no good, Marge. They’re like dominant seventh chords. If they’re not resolved they hang on and on in the mind, for years, for decades—”

  Marjorie said, “What on earth do you want? You’re leaving in a couple of hours, and I have a date—”

  “Postpone it for an hour or so and have dinner with me.” He overrode her protesting gesture. “Good Lord, don’t you know this is the end? Before I’m bald and you’re gray? I’m never going to telephone you. I know you don’t want me to. As long as we’re run into each other like this we ought to talk a bit, and part friends. My teeth still hurt.”

  “I’m very sorry, it’s a dinner date—”

  The waiter brought change. Noel helped her into her coat, saying cheerfully, “Well, okay. This glimpse of you has been something, anyway.”

  Walking out, Marjorie saw that the bar clock stood at almost twenty-five past six. It was too late now to help with the buffet. A cab straight to the hospital wouldn’t get her there much before seven. There were plenty of other girls to attend to the food; no great harm had been done. But there was no longer any real need to rush. Morris was tending bar until nine. She couldn’t eat with him before then; and eating and drinking by herself in a mill of gay interns and nurses was not an inviting prospect. Morris would probably be so busy, serving out liquor to that hard-drinking crowd, that he would hardly notice her if she did come before nine. Granted that she would have to apologize for not helping with the food, did it much matter if she dined first with Noel? He could not possibly keep her longer than another hour, since his plane was leaving at nine.

  She stopped at a telephone booth in the lobby and called the hospital. The switchboard took a long time to answer. The operator was a new girl, irritable and clumsy. Marjorie very explicitly gave her this message for Dr. Shapiro: Sorry I’m late. I’ll be there about eight-thirty or nine and I’ll explain then. There were continual loud buzzes in the background, and voices breaking in on the line. The operator said nervously that she would deliver the message as soon as she could get the switchboard clear.

  Noel, lounging against the wall with his coat over his arm, said, “Well? Is he in a flaming rage?”

  “Just your dumb luck, if you call this lucky,” Marjorie said. “If you really want to feed me, you can do it. Providing you’re quick about it.”

  His eyes narrowed. “And you were in such an all-fired hurry—Margie, the date wouldn’t have been a fiction to get away from Jack the Ripper, would it? And this phone call a dainty covering gesture?”

  “Noel, you’d just as soon lie as breathe, but everyone isn’t like you. I was supposed to help prepare the food for a buffet supper. You fixed that, all right. Now it doesn’t matter if—” She broke off because he was laughing.

  “Margie, turn off the lovely frown, or I’ll fall in love again. I never knew one like you for rising to the bait.”

  “Oh, shut up. I think I’ll go home.”

  “Not a chance. I’d throw myself under the wheels of your cab. Come along.”

  Despite herself, she was impressed at walking through the lush Waldorf lobby with a man who was actually registered there. He picked up his key and some letters at the desk, and glanced at the envelopes. “I think the best idea is for me to bang out a letter or two and pack, and check out. Then we can have our dinner in peace. Will you trust yourself in Bluebeard’s chamber? I’ll be ten, fifteen minutes.”

  “I—well, I guess I’ll come up. I’ve never seen a Waldorf room.”

  It was a two-room suite. The sitting room had heavy pink drapes, curlicued gilt furniture, and pretty Watteau-like paintings. A black portable typewriter stood open on a frail gilt table, flanked by overflowing ashtrays and piles of yellow paper. “Relax,” Noel said, tossing his coat on a chair. She heard him snapping luggage and sliding drawers in the bedroom. She picked up a couple of magazines printed in heavy black type, on stock almost as coarse as paper towels. “Good heavens, the New Masses,” she called into the bedroom. “Don’t tell me you’re turning communist now, just when you’re starting to make money.”

  Noel came out in his shirtsleeves, laughing. He picked up books, manila envelopes, ties, and shirts scattered around the room, and carried them into the bedroom as he talked. “Phil Yates, this sculptor I was travelling with, was a communist. Some of his junk accumulated in my bags. Boring as hell. We had some gala arguments over communism. Phil’s a slow-thinking sort, so I usually tied him up. He’s one of the few communists I’ve ever been able to stand. They’re like the abolitionists. Their cause may be just, but their personalities are repulsive. I don’t really know whether they’re right or not, and I don’t care. Economics puts me to sleep. All I care about is my own few years above the ground. I’d rather spend them with the pleasant doomed people than with the seedy squawking heroes of the future. Which makes me, in the jargon, an anarcho-cynical deviate of the lackey intelligentsia. A louse, that is.” He dropped into a chair by the typewriter. “Guess I’ll bang out those letters.”

  “Noel, whatever happened to that Hits theory of yours? Did you ever write it up?”

  “If you love me, Margie, no more of that. Every man’s entitled to his fantasies, especially when he’s fighting off nervous collapse.” He typed for a while, rapidly and smoothly, then glanced at her. “I want to tell you, though, that while it lasted, I really thought I’d stumbled on the greatest thing since the Sermon on the Mount…. Sit down, for heaven’s sake, stop pacing. You give me the willies.”

  “I’m just looking at your suite. It’s lovely.”

  “Made for sinning in, isn’t it? A pity you’re so virtuous and I’m so busy.” He resumed his swift rattling at the machine.

  When he paused again she said, “I half expect to see Imogene pop out of
a closet.”

  An extremely startled look passed over his face. He stared at her, ripped the sheet out of the typewriter and rolled in another, frowning blackly.

  “What on earth’s the matter?” Marjorie said.

  “You surprise me a bit, that’s all.” His voice was very flat.

  “For heaven’s sake, you’re always saying the most outrageous things to me. What makes you so sensitive, suddenly? All I said—”

  “It’s a question of taste, I guess. Forget it, please.” He typed for a few moments, then turned to her. “It just occurs to me—is it possible you don’t know about Imogene?”

  “What about her?”

  “Why, it was smeared all over the papers. This was way back in July. Imogene is dead.”

  “Dead!”

  “How is it possible you don’t know? She got involved with some wretched son of a bitch of a model’s agent, named Weedie, something like that—man in his fifties, with a wife and four kids in New Rochelle, if you please. She jumped out of a window.”

  “My God…”

  “It’s true. It was a drunk scene in a hotel room, tears and threats and gallons of booze, three o’clock in the morning, and Imogene finally went and did what the girls are always saying they’ll do. Opened the window and dived. This fellow told the cops he sat in an armchair looking at her, not believing his eyes. Just sat and watched her disappear.—Imogene, the carefree cow, to whom sex meant no more than a highball.” He put a hand over his eyes. “You know, I’ve never really thought about it—I mean as a real thing, Margie—until this second? That poor dumb girl fluttering down past one window after another, all legs and arms and flapping skirts—” He slammed the typewriter shut. “I’ll pack later. For God’s sake let’s go down and get a drink and have some food.”

  Neither of them wanted more champagne. They had martinis, and Noel ordered the dinner. For a while they sat without talking, in a far dim corner of the spacious dining room, watching well-dressed couples dancing to the sedate Waldorf music. “Tell me something,” Noel said. “Is the date this evening with Dr. Shapiro?” She paused so long that he turned and looked at her, nodding. “I see. He isn’t a myth, then. I half thought he might be. An obscure joke, or a feminine needle, or whatever.”

  “Morris is no myth.”

  “Do you mind telling me about him? I grant you it’s none of my business.”

  Marjorie hesitated. The Imogene story had thrown a pall over her. Noel seemed less menacing and his charm dimmer; their bygone romance was trivial rather than tragic. She gave him a matter-of-fact account of Morris Shapiro.

  Noel said, staring at his martini, twisting the stem in his long brown fingers, “Sounds like quite a fellow. Makes me seem a bit lightweight, no doubt, a bit lacking in specific gravity.”

  “Well, you’re as different as day and night, I’ll say that.”

  “You sound as though you could fall in love with him, but haven’t yet.”

  “You’re getting slightly personal.”

  “What’s the difference? How long will any of us live? It’s amazing, Margie, how unimportant all our hot little maneuvers are. Let’s you and me make a pact. Let’s always speak truthfully with each other, if our paths do cross once every ten years or so. It’ll be something to look forward to.”

  “I haven’t known Morris too long. One thing’s sure, he’s helped me get over our—our mess faster than I ever thought I would. I’m not the least bit angry with you any more.” The martini was loosening her nerves. “If it doesn’t offend you, the fact is you seem like a friend of college days at this point—dashing, and good-looking, and all that, but it’s perfectly okay, if you know what I mean.”

  “Indeed I do. Clipped claws and drawn fangs.”

  “If you want to put it that way.”

  “Well, darling, the tubby señoritas in Mexico didn’t do as much for me, I’m sorry to report. But I don’t mind. You and I did the only sensible thing. Sentimental regret’s a pleasant enough mood. Wouldn’t you like to dance?”

  She said, after they had moved silently among the couples on the floor, “I’d forgotten how well you dance.”

  “It helps to feel you’re holding a flower in your arms, not a girl.”

  She sensed a blush rise from her neck to her cheeks. She glanced at her watch. “Don’t you think we’d better eat our dinner?”

  “I’d rather finish the dance and skip a course or the whole damned dinner, if it doesn’t make too much difference to you.”

  “Suit yourself, Noel. It’s your little party.”

  He held her hand, walking back to the table when the music ended. “Do you know something? You’re still Marjorie, for my money. I’m relieved. It does me good to know that last spring I wasn’t in some queer state over an ordinary West End Avenue prig.”

  “You have an unfortunate way of putting things, Noel. ‘An ordinary West End Avenue prig’…”

  “But that’s just what you’re not. You’re a dryad who’s assumed that disguise for some evil reason. Probably to destroy me.”

  The waiter served duck and wild rice, and a red wine. She looked at her watch again. “What’s happened to the time? It’s after eight. You can’t eat. Your plane’s at nine and you still haven’t packed. You have to run this minute.”

  “I can gobble down a few bites.” He picked up his knife and fork, unhurried.

  “Noel, you’ll get indigestion, and you’ll miss your plane.”

  He grinned. “Well, time to confess, no doubt. My plane leaves at midnight.”

  After the moment of astonishment she didn’t know whether to laugh or get angry. “You hound, is there a truthful bone in your body? Are you taking a plane at all? Are you going to Hollywood?”

  “I’m going to Hollywood, all right. And at midnight. Margie, stop beetling your lovely brows. You’re getting to an age where you have to start thinking about the lines in your face. Hell’s bells, you looked like such a scared rabbit when I first got into the cab with you, I thought it would reassure you to say I was leaving town at nine. It wasn’t a lie. I was shading the truth by three hours. Isn’t it better this way? We can take our time.” He sipped the wine. “Try your burgundy. It’s superb.”

  Marjorie said, “At exactly twenty minutes to nine I am getting up and leaving this table. Just remember that.”

  As they ate, he told her about restaurants in Mexico City; about palatial hotels in primitive mountain country, which served vintage wines and the choicest food. He set her giggling and shivering with stories of a maniacal multimillionaire from Oklahoma, with whom he and the sculptor had roared around the countryside in a black Cadillac limousine for a week, living like princes.

  The musicians took their places again, and began to play Old Moon Face. Marjorie and Noel looked at each other; Marjorie pointed to her watch. “Too late. Twenty-three to nine.”

  Noel said, “Woman, you practically wrote this song. Your spirit guided my hand.”

  “I don’t see myself getting any royalties.”

  “Dance with me, and I’ll split them with you.”

  She laughed.

  The song had been giving Marjorie chills for months. Now, dancing to it with Noel, there was only a pleasant floating languor. The light in the room was a strange dusty pink. She closed her eyes. The music modulated to It’s Raining Kisses. “That’s getting to be the standard arrangement,” he said. “The Airman medley.”

  After a moment Marjorie murmured, “Thank God they don’t know the South Wind Waltz too.”

  “Margie, it was all fun, wasn’t it? Even South Wind?”

  “It was fun, Noel.”

  “There always has to be an admission price, you know. Except you pay when you get out, the way they do on the Mexican busses. I think we got out cheap.”

  “I’m not complaining.”

  “Marge, I hope you’ll be the happiest woman in New York, or the suburbs, or wherever. I won’t forget you. I have no regrets, except that I’m made a bit too crooke
d for you. And that’s an old story.”

  To break the welling of tears to her eyes she said, “I must leave.”

  It was seven minutes of nine when he kissed her cheek and put her in the cab. “Have fun in Hollywood,” she managed to say as the cab drove off.

  Not thinking clearly, she went home and changed her clothes. Then she had trouble getting another cab; she had to walk to Broadway. Then the cab scraped fenders with a truck, halfway to the hospital, and ten more minutes elapsed while the drivers argued and exchanged license numbers. It was five minutes to ten when she arrived at the hospital. She met Morris Shapiro in the lobby; he was walking out in his overcoat, and the gray hat which always looked too round and too big. His shoulders were stooped. “Morris!”

  He glanced at her. “Oh, hello.”

  “Good Lord, were you leaving here without me? Standing me up?”

  “I thought something had happened and you weren’t coming. It was quite all right, but—”

  “Morris, I phoned two hours ago. Didn’t you get my message?”

  “What message? No. No message. What’s the difference? I was going to a movie. Want to come? Or do something else?”

  “I swear to God I telephoned, Morris. That new idiot on the switchboard—I’ll strangle her—I left a message—”

  He said very little in the cab. He answered her questions about the party pleasantly and he brushed aside her apologies. They went to a garish Hawaiian-decorated grill near the Waldorf. After they had danced a couple of lifeless dances and were sitting and smoking at the table, Morris said, “Marjorie, were you with Noel, by any chance?”

  Stunned, she nodded.