The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [16]
For some reason that did it. That absolutely clinched it. If I didn’t even want to be reminded of Teddy, I certainly didn’t want Teddy. That was logic.
“Oh gosh,” I said in English, leaping to my feet. “Just look at the time. I’ve got to get back. G’by, Judy. G’by—oh— Enchanté, Monsieur.…”
“Tonnard,” he supplied, rising quickly, “Claude Tonnard. Alors une autre fois, je peux espérer? Je peux vous donner un coup de téléphone? Vous habitez ce quartier?”
“Oui, je suis au même hôtel que Mile Galache. Au revoir.” And I fled.
I went back to the hotel and had a bath.
As I lay there, washing myself, the mirror covering the wall around the tub began to steam up. I remembered how I used to count the times I’d been to bed with Teddy on it, keeping score like in a game of bridge: one, two, three, four upright sticks and a diagonal slash for five. And so on.…
I find I always have to write something on a steamed mirror. Only this time, I couldn’t think of anything to write.
So I just wrote my own name, over and over again.
THREE
AT ELEVEN O’CLOCK that night, in one of my dangerous moods—midnight-black, excited and deeply dreading (as opposed to one of my beautiful midnight-blue ones, calm but deeply excited), my nerves strung taut to singing, I arrived alone at the Ritz, only to discover all over again what a difficult thing this was to do. I tended to lose my balance at the exact moment that the doorman opened the cab door and stood by in his respectful attitude of “waiting.” I have even been known to fall out of the cab by reaching and pushing against the handle at the same time that he did. But this time, however, I had disciplined myself to remain quite, quite still, sitting on my hands until the door was opened for me. Then, burrowing into my handbag, which suddenly looked like the Black Hole of Calcutta, to find the fare, I discovered that I needed a light. A light was switched on. I needed more than a light, I needed a match or a flashlight or special glasses, for I simply couldn’t find my change purse, and when I did (lipstick rolling on the floor, compact open and everything spilled—passport, mirror, the works) I couldn’t find the right change. We were now all three of us, driver, doorman and I, waiting to see what I was going to do next. I took out some bills, counted them three times in the dark until I was absolutely certain that I had double the amount necessary, and then pressed it on the driver, eagerly apologizing for overtipping. Overcome with shyness I nodded briefly in the direction of the doorman and raced him to the entrance. I just won. Panting and by now in an absolute ecstasy of panic I flung myself at the revolving doors and let them spin me through. Thus I gained access to the Ritz. I had once seen a man in the taxi in front of mine jump out and with a lordly wave at the doorman say something like, “Pay him for me, Guillaume, my good man,” and stroll inside. I have never arrived there alone since, without devoutly wishing I was sharing that cab.
Inside, confronting the long vista, at the end of which bellboys in the lobby began to reshape themselves, I paused to recover. On my right was the small bar, I think it has some special pet name like the Club Bar, or the Bar Bar, something like that but I can’t remember, where the men habitues, ex-kings and things, and brokers and bankers and art dealers, whiled away their hours gambling for drinks with those dice in sort of hourglass cages, sometimes with one another, sometimes with the waiters, the whole atmosphere exuding that special phony bonhomie of men among men among waiters. This, it occurred to me, was probably what Larry would have called the real bar. It had no interest for me whatever.
But just across the way was the large regular bar and that was décidément autre chose. Here all was laughter and confusion. Here beautiful women, their hair dyed gorgeous