The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [61]
I’d stopped fighting it by now and was rolling with the punch.
The cabaret had finally started. It was quite desperately bad. It was all so puzzling. It was as though they were deliberately setting out to debase themselves. I saw that Rollo, whose mood had been getting steadily worse, was now drunk as well. A man, more or less dressed as a woman, did a hula dance, the effect of which was impossible to describe. It couldn’t strictly be called “funny” because he was trying so tragically hard, and yet for the life of me, I couldn’t get away from the feeling that basically he was meaning to be funny after all—or horrifying—or, oh hell, I don’t know.
“It isn’t Tulip again—oh no!” groaned Rollo very loudly. “That damn Dutch queen is in every night club I go into——”
“I told you to stop calling him Tulip. His name’s Derek and you know it,” said his Australian friend, no longer suave but full of menace and very red in the face.
Rollo turned on him, speaking carefully with slow, cold contempt. “I’ll call him Tulip if I like. I think he is a tulip. I think he’s a whole bunch of tulips. Don’t try to get tough with me, Kangaroo. I’ll send you right back where you came from and don’t think I can’t do it.” He picked up one of the glasses and deliberately smashed it on the floor.
“Hey, Tulip,” he called out, “where’d you get that necklace? Avec ce bijou-là tu a l’air tout à fait lesbien.” Everyone laughed.
The hula dancer, Derek, motioned for the music to stop and came down-stage toward us. He was very frightened. “I am sorry you do not care for my dancing, Monsieur Rollo——”
“You’re damn right I don’t. Get off the stage. How dare you presume to be on it?” And he smashed another glass. The princes roared with laughter. They were enjoying themselves hugely.
“I wonder if we have anyone in common,” said Boofie trying me again. “Do you know Cecil——”
“I don’t know any Cecils.”
“She doesn’t know any Cecils,” he said wonderingly, and looked around the table for someone to share his pity.
“How many Cecils do you know?” he asked Larry, and without waiting for a reply started to play what was obviously one of his favorite games. “Let’s see, there’s Cecil Beaton, Cecil Day Lewis, Cecil Woodham-Smith.”
They were all listening to him, idly waiting, after the incident of the smashed glasses, for the next distraction.
“Cecil Rhodes,” said someone.
“Oh really—the dead ones don’t count.”
“David Cecil.”
“Groucho Cecil,” said Rollo, and made as if to stand up, but the next minute he crumpled abruptly, his head falling to the table, and passed out.
Everybody was enjoying themselves. Everyone but me and the King, who had turned quite black with melancholy.
A jazz trio started playing and one of the princes asked me to dance. Boy, Crazy Eyes had nothing on this kid! Put them in the ring together and I wouldn’t know who to place my money on. Served me right of course for even thinking these two baby gangsters might be queer.
I returned to the table black and blue, two buttons ripped off my blouse and mad as a wet hen. I confronted Larry. “Good-by,” I said. “Go to hell and take this whole bunch with you. Do you know what I think? I think they should be driven into the sea with pitchforks, like a horde of great crab things.” I gesticulated