Serenade - James M. Cain [68]
When we got in there, the worst drag was going on you ever saw in your life. A whole mob of them was in there, girls in men's evening clothes tailored for them, with shingle haircuts and blue make-up in their eyes, dancing with other girls dressed the same way, young guys with lipstick on, and mascara eyelashes, dancing with each other too, and at least three girls in full evening dress, that you had to look at twice to make sure they weren't girls at all. Pudinsky was at the piano, but he wasn't playing Brahms. He was playing jazz. The whole thing made me sick to my stomach as soon as I looked at it, but I swallowed hard and tried to act like I was glad to be there.
Winston had on a purple velvet dinner coat with a silk sash knotted around it, and he brought us in like it was all for us. He introduced us, and got us drinks, and Pudinsky slammed into the Pagliacci Prologue, and I stepped up and sang it, and clowned it with as good a grin as I could get on my face. While they were still clapping, Winston turned around and began to throw the show to Juana. She still hadn't taken off the cape, and he lifted it off her shoulders, and began going into a spasm about it. They all crowded up to look, and when he found out it was a real bullfighter's cape, nothing would suit him but that she had to tell them all about the fine points of bullfighting. I sat down, and got this feeling it wasn't on the up-and-up, that something was coming. I thought of Chadwick, and wondered if this was another play to show her up. But that wasn't it. Except that Winston would put his arm around Pudinsky every time he saw me looking at him, he didn't pull anything. He put her in the spot, and made her explain the whole routine of bullfighting, and she took the cape to show them, and she was pretty funny, and so was he. Nobody could make a woman look good better than Winston, when he wanted to. Pretty soon somebody yelled out: "How the hell does a man study to be a bullfighter, that's what I want to know."
Winston went down on his knees in front of Juana.
"Yes, will you tell us that? Just what are the practice exercises for a bullfighter?"
"Oh, I explain you."
They all sat down, and Winston squatted at her feet.
"First, the little boy, he wants to be a bullfighter, yes? All little boy want to be bullfighter."
"I always did. I do still."
"So, I tell you how you do. You find nice burro, you know what is burro?"
"A little jackass, something like that?"
"Yes. You get little jackass, you cut two big maguey leaf, you know maguey, yes? Have big leaf, much thick, much sharp--?"
"Century plant?"
"Yes. Tie leaf on head of little jackass, make big horn, like bull--"
"Wait a minute."
Some woman dug up a ribbon, and Winston broke off fronds from a fern, and with the ribbon and the fern leaves, he stuck the horns on his head. Then he got down on his hands and knees in front of Juana. "Go on."
"Yes, just so. You look much like little jackass."
That got a shout. Winston looked up, kicked his heels, and let out a jackass bellow. It was a little funnier than it sounds.
"Then you get little stick, for espada, and little red rag, for muleta, and practice with little jackass." Somebody dug up a silver-headed cane, and she took it, and the cape, and the two of them began doing a bullfight act in the middle of the floor. The rest of them were screeching and yelling by that time, and I was sitting there, wondering what the hell was up. The buzzer sounded. Somebody went to the door, came back, and touched me on the arm. "Telegram for you, Mr. Sharp."
I went out in the hall.
Harry, one of the bellboys, was out there, and shoved a telegram at me. I opened it. It was nothing but a blank form shoved in an envelope. "Is the messenger still there? He's given you nothing but a blank."
Harry