Nathanael West - The Day of the Locust [7]
None of the girls lived on the premises. You telephoned and she sent a girl over. The charge was thirty dollars for a single night of sport and Mrs. Jenning kept fifteen of it. Some people might think that fifty per cent is a high brokerage fee, but she really earned every cent of it. There was a big overhead. She maintained a beautiful house for the girls to wait in and a car and a chauffeur to deliver them to the clients.
Then, too, she had to move in the kind of society where she could make the right contacts. After all, not every man can afford thirty dollars. She permitted her girls to service only men of wealth and position, not to say taste and discretion. She was so particular that she insisted on meeting the prospective sportsman before servicing him. She had often said, and truthfully, that she would not let a girl of hers go to a man with whom she herself would not be willing to sleep.
And she was really cultured. All the most distinguished visitors considered it quite a lark to meet her. They were disappointed, however, when they discovered how refined she was. They wanted to talk about certain lively matters of universal interest, but she insisted on discussing Gertrude Stein and Juan Gris. No matter how hard the distinguished visitor tried, and some had been known to go to really great lengths, he could never find a flaw in her refinement or make a breach in her culture.
Claude was still using his peculiar rhetoric on Mrs. Jenning when she came to the door of her house to greet them.
“It’s so nice to see you again,” she said. “I was telling Mrs. Prince at tea only yesterday—the Estees are my favorite couple.”
She was a handsome woman, smooth and buttery, with fair hair and a red complexion.
She led them into a small drawing room whose color scheme was violet, gray and rose. The Venetian blinds were rose, as was the ceiling, and the walls were covered with a pale gray paper that had a tiny, widely spaced flower design in violet. On one wall hung a silver screen, the kind that rolls up, and against the opposite wall, on each side of a cherrywood table, was a row of chairs covered with rose and gray, glazed chintz bound in violet piping. There was a small projection machine on the table and a young man in evening dress was fumbling with it.
She waved them to their seats. A waiter then came in and asked what they wanted to drink. When their orders had been taken and filled, she flipped the light switch and the young man started his machine. It whirred merrily, but he had trouble in getting it focused.
“What are we going to see first?” Mrs. Schwartzen asked. “Le Predicament de Marie.”
“That sounds ducky.”
“It’s charming, utterly charming,” said Mrs. Jenning. “Yes,” said the cameraman, who was still having trouble. “I love Le Predicament de Marie. It has a marvelous quality that is too exciting.”
There was a long delay, during which he fussed desperately with his machine. Mrs. Schwartzen started to whistle and stamp her feet and the others joined in. They imitated a rowdy audience in the days of the nickelodeon.
“Get a move on, slow poke.”
“What’s your hurry? Here’s your hat.”
“Get a horse!”
“Get out and get under!”
The young man finally found the screen with his light beam and the film began.
LE PREDICAMENT DE MARIE ou LA BONNE DISTRAITE
Marie, the “bonne,” was a buxom young girl in a tight-fitting black silk uniform with very short skirts. On her head was a tiny lace cap. In the first scene, she was shown serving dinner to a middle-class family in an oak-paneled dining room full of heavy, carved furniture. The family was very respectable and consisted