straight at Cuddles. “The ‘monk’ at the Cloisters. Remember?”
Newman lit a cigarette and glanced at the clock. He was thinking how much simpler things would be if he were just starting another “Bachelor’s Life” column: “When You Take Your Girl to the Automat.”
“Are you running late?” asked Becky.
“The opposite,” said Newman. “I’ve got another hour to kill before I’m supposed to present myself at the Plaza.”
“Try not to bring Il Duce back to the premises until after four,” Cuddles instructed Newman. “And make sure he’s well oiled.”
“So he won’t notice you’ve gone to the ‘home office’?” asked Becky, using Houlihan’s term for his couch over in Brooklyn. “Nothingdoing. Not after I hauled you back up over the rail yesterday.” Putting on her scarf, she took a look at Stuart’s handsome hollowed eyes and wondered how long it would be before someone had to throw him a life preserver, too.
14
“Yessir,” said Harris. “He may be late, but there he is.” He directed Rosemary LaRoche’s attention to George M. Cohan, now sitting down at his regular corner table in the Oak Room.
“Yeah,” said the film star, peeking through the smilax-wrapped trellis that shielded her from too much public view. “Give
my
regards to Broadway.
Fuck
Broadway,” she declared, before putting a last bite of strip steak into her mouth.
Disappointed at the failure of what he had hoped would seem an authentic New York treat to this sun-bronzed captive of the film colony, Harris tried soothing her. “Of course,” he said, recalling a fragment of autobiography she’d imparted during the soup course. “You’re remembering those shortsighted rejections when you were trying to get started here.” He sympathetically imagined the scene. “A beautiful girl being mistreated by those Broadway wolves.”
“Wolves?” cried Miss LaRoche, tossing her napkin onto the remains of the steak. “In the whole six months I was up here, I never met
one
who wasn’t a nellie. I practically shoved my melons into their kissers, but you’da thought they was live grenades the way those guys would flinch. Here,” she said, extracting for a third time the small silver flask she kept in her garter. “You’re still not completely thawed.”
After his enforced walk from the office, and having puffed hisway past the skaters near the fountain, Harris had arrived at the hotel exhausted. He now accepted a little dividend in what he and Rosemary and the waiter were pretending was his water glass. Her Hollywood hooch was a lot better than what he got from the countess back at the office, and when Rosemary swung her legs out from under the table to replace the flask inside her garter, there was the visual bonus of her splendid right thigh.
“Bingo,” she said, upon accomplishing the storage. Once more Harris was face-to-face with her blond bob, stratospheric cheekbones, and blazing green eyes, which were bordered by the faintest tracery of wrinkles. He was more smitten than he had imagined, or Betty had feared. For the past hour and a half, the more profane this siren got, the more courtly and avuncular he’d found himself becoming.
“Terrible, isn’t it?” he said, raising his glass. “The lengths the law makes us go to to disguise a civilized habit.”
“Sounds like you’re hoping for another flash,” said Rosemary, snapping her garter.
“No, no,” said Harris, innocently wounded. “I’m just remembering a time when you could see men come in here holding tumblers of whiskey, not pieces of ticker tape, when they sat down to their lunch.” It would soon be a decade since the adjoining Oak Bar had been turned into an E.F. Hutton office.
“Don’t knock the market,” said Rosemary. “The week I dumped that no-good-nellie husband of mine I found out that his money-man had quadrupled everything he’d been holding in the space of a month. Half and half? Hell, we split it double and
Newman lit a cigarette and glanced at the clock. He was thinking how much simpler things would be if he were just starting another “Bachelor’s Life” column: “When You Take Your Girl to the Automat.”
“Are you running late?” asked Becky.
“The opposite,” said Newman. “I’ve got another hour to kill before I’m supposed to present myself at the Plaza.”
“Try not to bring Il Duce back to the premises until after four,” Cuddles instructed Newman. “And make sure he’s well oiled.”
“So he won’t notice you’ve gone to the ‘home office’?” asked Becky, using Houlihan’s term for his couch over in Brooklyn. “Nothingdoing. Not after I hauled you back up over the rail yesterday.” Putting on her scarf, she took a look at Stuart’s handsome hollowed eyes and wondered how long it would be before someone had to throw him a life preserver, too.
14
“Yessir,” said Harris. “He may be late, but there he is.” He directed Rosemary LaRoche’s attention to George M. Cohan, now sitting down at his regular corner table in the Oak Room.
“Yeah,” said the film star, peeking through the smilax-wrapped trellis that shielded her from too much public view. “Give
my
regards to Broadway.
Fuck
Broadway,” she declared, before putting a last bite of strip steak into her mouth.
Disappointed at the failure of what he had hoped would seem an authentic New York treat to this sun-bronzed captive of the film colony, Harris tried soothing her. “Of course,” he said, recalling a fragment of autobiography she’d imparted during the soup course. “You’re remembering those shortsighted rejections when you were trying to get started here.” He sympathetically imagined the scene. “A beautiful girl being mistreated by those Broadway wolves.”
“Wolves?” cried Miss LaRoche, tossing her napkin onto the remains of the steak. “In the whole six months I was up here, I never met
one
who wasn’t a nellie. I practically shoved my melons into their kissers, but you’da thought they was live grenades the way those guys would flinch. Here,” she said, extracting for a third time the small silver flask she kept in her garter. “You’re still not completely thawed.”
After his enforced walk from the office, and having puffed hisway past the skaters near the fountain, Harris had arrived at the hotel exhausted. He now accepted a little dividend in what he and Rosemary and the waiter were pretending was his water glass. Her Hollywood hooch was a lot better than what he got from the countess back at the office, and when Rosemary swung her legs out from under the table to replace the flask inside her garter, there was the visual bonus of her splendid right thigh.
“Bingo,” she said, upon accomplishing the storage. Once more Harris was face-to-face with her blond bob, stratospheric cheekbones, and blazing green eyes, which were bordered by the faintest tracery of wrinkles. He was more smitten than he had imagined, or Betty had feared. For the past hour and a half, the more profane this siren got, the more courtly and avuncular he’d found himself becoming.
“Terrible, isn’t it?” he said, raising his glass. “The lengths the law makes us go to to disguise a civilized habit.”
“Sounds like you’re hoping for another flash,” said Rosemary, snapping her garter.
“No, no,” said Harris, innocently wounded. “I’m just remembering a time when you could see men come in here holding tumblers of whiskey, not pieces of ticker tape, when they sat down to their lunch.” It would soon be a decade since the adjoining Oak Bar had been turned into an E.F. Hutton office.
“Don’t knock the market,” said Rosemary. “The week I dumped that no-good-nellie husband of mine I found out that his money-man had quadrupled everything he’d been holding in the space of a month. Half and half? Hell, we split it double and
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