A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

“When did you meet her?”

“Last night.”

“And when did you marry her?”

“Last night.”

She stood up and went to the window. “What are you anyway,” she said, “one of these minute men?” She walked back to the table and rested her hands upon it, leaning forward. “Where have you left her?”

“At the Plaza.”

“On what?” Her voice rose incredulously.

The crisis. “That,” he said, “is what I’ve come to talk to you about.”

She smiled. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m not in a position to—” She held her peach-colored nails close to her face and studied them. “You see, you never came to me for advice.”

“Oh, I understand,” he said politely.

“Won’t you have more breakfast?” she urged. “I love to watch young men eat; they do it with such native enjoyment.”

“Thank you, no,” he admitted. “You’ve taken my appetite away.”

“Naturally you won’t go back to college?”

“Hardly, under the circumstances.”

“Well, is there anything you can do? Anything you think you can do?”

“Last summer I organized a jazz band among some of the fellows and we got a season’s engagement at an amusement park. We made out very nicely—”

“Would you be willing to go ahead with that sort of thing?”

“Why not?”

“I may be able to help you,” she said. “I had a letter from a friend of mine in Florida—”

Each afternoon at cocktail time Mrs. Harry Werner sighed a sigh, batted an eye at the gaslight-blue Florida seas, and got up from her beach chair.

“Time to get dressed,” said Mrs. Harry Werner, emptying her cheeks of smoke.

A colored man, whose people had been in the country two hundred odd years before Mrs. Werner’s, folded her peppermint-striped umbrella for her and picked up the book she had recklessly thrown away.

“Never mind,” said Mrs. Werner. “It has no pictures.”

“Yes’m,” said the colored man, showing his teeth delightedly. Most of them were porcelain but some were gold. All were horrible.

Mrs. Harry Werner moved toward her hotel with great deliberation, sowing seeds of envy as she progressed. Her Lido pajamas fluttered about her like tattered rags, which was precisely what they were meant to do. As she walked along with the colored man at her heels, the Albuquerque Playa loomed in sight like a cliff of sandstone. It had six hundred and twenty- five windows overlooking the sea and a fountain with goldfish in the patio. Mrs. Harry Werner was not interested in goldfish, though. Neither was she interested in the sea. The sea was no affair of hers, she felt. It could take care of itself as far as she was concerned. Indeed there was only one thing that mattered very greatly to Mrs. H.W. and that was herself.

As the tea hour lengthened to a close, she made her appearance in the pavilion, escorted by two chevaliers of the five to seven. She, as the wife of a very wealthy man, felt herself to be above suspicion. Consequently she courted it at almost every turn. Playing with fire was one of her chief characteristics, and Phoenix-like she rose from the ashes of each disappointment with renewed confidence in her own loyalty. Mrs. Harry Werner, choosing a table close beside the dancing space, put out the coral taffeta light and said “Bitters.” By way of afterthought she added “Orange bitters.” She put a finger to the end of each eye. “I am so tired,” she said. Then she said: “I wonder what makes me so tired.” She waited a little while and observed, “Oh, it’s you, you people make me tired!”, at which they both laughed engagingly like sleek tomcats with collars around their necks.

The sea was deserted. From blue it had become green and from green grayish-yellow. In a short while it would turn purple and then black. But no one was at all interested. They were not down here to study nature. Instead they were studying Mrs. Harry Werner a considerable part of the time.

Mrs. Werner got up to dance with one of her friends. “I see they have a new orchestra down here this year.”

“They’ve been here ever since the holidays,” he informed her.

“I don’t think much of their playing, do you?”

Now anyone who knew anything at all about Mrs. Harry Werner would have known that to run anything down in an effort to distract her attention was the most fatal thing imaginable. Mrs. Harry Werner was stubborn and used to having her own way too much for that sort of thing to be at all successful.

“Why, I don’t see how you can say such a thing!” she exclaimed at once. “I like their playing very well.”

“Everyone’s taste is different,” murmured her partner.

“In that case you have a great deal to account for,” said she. When they sat down, she looked out at the obscured sea for a long while and her well-etched brown eyes seemed a thousand miles off. Then all at once she came to life again, borrowed a pencil from the waiter, and wrote a few words on the back of a card. This she wrapped in something crisp and yellow below the level of the table and passed it to the waiter, folding her small hand over his.

“A new leader,” she murmured into her cigarette. “How challenging!”