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Tales of the Jazz Age

F >> F. Scott Fitzgerald >> Tales of the Jazz Age




Gus Rose, sober but a little dazed, must be classed as one of the drab
figures. How he had got himself from Forty-fourth Street to
Fifty-ninth Street after the riot was only a hazy half-memory. He had
seen the body of Carrol Key put in an ambulance and driven off, and
then he had started up town with two or three soldiers. Somewhere
between Forty-fourth Street and Fifty-ninth Street the other soldiers
had met some women and disappeared. Rose had wandered to Columbus
Circle and chosen the gleaming lights of Childs' to minister to his
craving for coffee and doughnuts. He walked in and sat down.

All around him floated airy, inconsequential chatter and high-pitched
laughter. At first he failed to understand, but after a puzzled five
minutes he realized that this was the aftermath of some gay party.
Here and there a restless, hilarious young man wandered fraternally
and familiarly between the tables, shaking hands indiscriminately and
pausing occasionally for a facetious chat, while excited waiters,
bearing cakes and eggs aloft, swore at him silently, and bumped him
out of the way. To Rose, seated at the most inconspicuous and least
crowded table, the whole scene was a colorful circus of beauty and
riotous pleasure.

He became gradually aware, after a few moments, that the couple seated
diagonally across from him with their backs to the crowd, were not the
least interesting pair in the room. The man was drunk. He wore a
dinner coat with a dishevelled tie and shirt swollen by spillings of
water and wine. His eyes, dim and blood-shot, roved unnaturally from
side to side. His breath came short between his lips.

"He's been on a spree!" thought Rose.

The woman was almost if not quite sober. She was pretty, with dark
eyes and feverish high color, and she kept her active eyes fixed on
her companion with the alertness of a hawk. From time to time she
would lean and whisper intently to him, and he would answer by
inclining his head heavily or by a particularly ghoulish and repellent
wink.

Rose scrutinized them dumbly for some minutes until the woman gave him
a quick, resentful look; then he shifted his gaze to two of the most
conspicuously hilarious of the promenaders who were on a protracted
circuit of the tables. To his surprise he recognized in one of them
the young man by whom he had been so ludicrously entertained at
Delmonico's. This started him thinking of Key with a vague
sentimentality, not unmixed with awe. Key was dead. He had fallen
thirty-five feet and split his skull like a cracked cocoa-nut.

"He was a darn good guy," thought Rose mournfully. "He was a darn good
guy, o'right. That was awful hard luck about him."

The two promenaders approached and started down between Rose's table
and the next, addressing friends and strangers alike with jovial
familiarity. Suddenly Rose saw the fair-haired one with the prominent
teeth stop, look unsteadily at the man and girl opposite, and then
begin to move his head disapprovingly from side to side.

The man with the blood-shot eyes looked up.

"Gordy," said the promenader with the prominent teeth, "Gordy."

"Hello," said the man with the stained shirt thickly.

Prominent teeth shook his finger pessimistically at the pair, giving
the woman a glance of aloof condemnation.

"What'd I tell you Gordy?"

Gordon stirred in his seat.

"Go to hell!" he said.

Dean continued to stand there shaking his finger. The woman began to
get angry,

"You go way!" she cried fiercely. "You're drunk, that's what you are!"

"So's he," suggested Dean, staying the motion of his finger and
pointing it at Gordon.

Peter Himmel ambled up, owlish now and oratorically inclined.

"Here now," he began as if called upon to deal with some petty dispute
between children. "Wha's all trouble?"

"You take your friend away," said Jewel tartly. "He's bothering us."

"What's at?"

"You heard me!" she said shrilly. "I said to take your drunken friend
away."

Her rising voice rang out above the clatter of the restaurant and a
waiter came hurrying up.

"You gotta be more quiet!"

"That fella's drunk," she cried. "He's insulting us."

"Ah-ha, Gordy," persisted the accused. "What'd I tell you." He turned
to the waiter. "Gordy an' I friends. Been tryin' help him, haven't I,
Gordy?"

Gordy looked up.

"Help me? Hell, no!"

Jewel rose suddenly, and seizing Gordon's arm assisted him to his
feet.

"Come on, Gordy!" she said, leaning toward him and speaking in a half
whisper. "Let's us get out of here. This fella's got a mean drunk on."

Gordon allowed himself to be urged to his feet and started toward the
door. Jewel turned for a second and addressed the provoker of their
flight.

"I know all about _you_!" she said fiercely. "Nice friend, you
are, I'll say. He told me about you."

Then she seized Gordon's arm, and together they made their way through
the curious crowd, paid their check, and went out.

"You'll have to sit down," said the waiter to Peter after they had
gone.

"What's 'at? Sit down?"

"Yes--or get out."

Peter turned to Dean.

"Come on," he suggested. "Let's beat up this waiter."

"All right."

They advanced toward him, their faces grown stern. The waiter
retreated.

Peter suddenly reached over to a plate on the table beside him and
picking up a handful of hash tossed it into the air. It descended as a
languid parabola in snowflake effect on the heads of those near by.

"Hey! Ease up!"

"Put him out!"

"Sit down, Peter!"

"Cut out that stuff!"

Peter laughed and bowed.

"Thank you for your kind applause, ladies and gents. If some one will
lend me some more hash and a tall hat we will go on with the act."

The bouncer bustled up.

"You've gotta get out!" he said to Peter.

"Hell, no!"

"He's my friend!" put in Dean indignantly.

A crowd of waiters were gathering. "Put him out!"

"Better go, Peter."

There was a short, struggle and the two were edged and pushed toward
the door.

"I got a hat and a coat here!" cried Peter.

"Well, go get 'em and be spry about it!"

The bouncer released his hold on Peter, who, adopting a ludicrous air
of extreme cunning, rushed immediately around to the other table,
where he burst into derisive laughter and thumbed his nose at the
exasperated waiters.

"Think I just better wait a l'il longer," he announced.

The chase began. Four waiters were sent around one way and four
another. Dean caught hold of two of them by the coat, and another
struggle took place before the pursuit of Peter could be resumed; he
was finally pinioned after overturning a sugar-bowl and several cups
of coffee. A fresh argument ensued at the cashier's desk, where Peter
attempted to buy another dish of hash to take with him and throw at
policemen.

But the commotion upon his exit proper was dwarfed by another
phenomenon which drew admiring glances and a prolonged involuntary
"Oh-h-h!" from every person in the restaurant.

The great plate-glass front had turned to a deep blue, the color of a
Maxfield Parrish moonlight--a blue that seemed to press close upon the
pane as if to crowd its way into the restaurant. Dawn had come up in
Columbus Circle, magical, breathless dawn, silhouetting the great
statue of the immortal Christopher, and mingling in a curious and
uncanny manner with the fading yellow electric light inside.


X

Mr. In and Mr. Out are not listed by the census-taker. You will search
for them in vain through the social register or the births, marriages,
and deaths, or the grocer's credit list. Oblivion has swallowed them
and the testimony that they ever existed at all is vague and shadowy,
and inadmissible in a court of law. Yet I have it upon the best
authority that for a brief space Mr. In and Mr. Out lived, breathed,
answered to their names and radiated vivid personalities of their own.

During the brief span of their lives they walked in their native
garments down the great highway of a great nation; were laughed at,
sworn at, chased, and fled from. Then they passed and were heard of no
more.

They were already taking form dimly, when a taxi cab with the top open
breezed down Broadway in the faintest glimmer of May dawn. In this car
sat the souls of Mr. In and Mr. Out discussing with amazement the blue
light that had so precipitately colored the sky behind the statue of
Christopher Columbus, discussing with bewilderment the old, gray faces
of the early risers which skimmed palely along the street like blown
bits of paper on a gray lake. They were agreed on all things, from the
absurdity of the bouncer in Childs' to the absurdity of the business
of life. They were dizzy with the extreme maudlin happiness that the
morning had awakened in their glowing souls. Indeed, so fresh and
vigorous was their pleasure in living that they felt it should be
expressed by loud cries.

"Ye-ow-ow!" hooted Peter, making a megaphone with his hands--and Dean
joined in with a call that, though equally significant and symbolic,
derived its resonance from its very inarticulateness.

"Yo-ho! Yea! Yoho! Yo-buba!"

Fifty-third Street was a bus with a dark, bobbed-hair beauty atop;
Fifty-second was a street cleaner who dodged, escaped, and sent up a
yell of, "Look where you're aimin'!" in a pained and grieved voice. At
Fiftieth Street a group of men on a very white sidewalk in front of a
very white building turned to stare after them, and shouted:

"Some party, boys!"

At Forty-ninth Street Peter turned to Dean. "Beautiful morning," he
said gravely, squinting up his owlish eyes.

"Probably is."

"Go get some breakfast, hey?"

Dean agreed--with additions.

"Breakfast and liquor."

"Breakfast and liquor," repeated Peter, and they looked at each other,
nodding. "That's logical,"

Then they both burst into loud laughter.

"Breakfast and liquor! Oh, gosh!"

"No such thing," announced Peter.

"Don't serve it? Ne'mind. We force 'em serve it Bring pressure bear."

"Bring logic bear."

The taxi cut suddenly off Broadway, sailed along a cross street, and
stopped in front of a heavy tomb-like building in Fifth Avenue.

"What's idea?"

The taxi-driver informed them that this was Delmonico's.

This was somewhat puzzling. They were forced to devote several minutes
to intense concentration, for if such an order had been given there
must have been a reason for it.

"Somep'm 'bouta coat," suggested the taxi-man.

That was it. Peter's overcoat and hat. He had left them at
Delmonico's. Having decided this, they disembarked from the taxi and
strolled toward the entrance arm in arm.

"Hey!" said the taxi-driver.

"Huh?"

"You better pay me."

They shook their heads in shocked negation.

"Later, not now--we give orders, you wait."

The taxi-driver objected; he wanted his money now. With the scornful
condescension of men exercising tremendous self-control they paid him.

Inside Peter groped in vain through a dim, deserted check-room in
search of his coat and derby.

"Gone, I guess. Somebody stole it."

"Some Sheff student."

"All probability."

"Never mind," said Dean, nobly. "I'll leave mine here too--then we'll
both be dressed the same."

He removed his overcoat and hat and was hanging them up when his
roving glance was caught and held magnetically by two large squares of
cardboard tacked to the two coat-room doors. The one on the left-hand
door bore the word "In" in big black letters, and the one on the
right-hand door flaunted the equally emphatic word "Out."

"Look!" he exclaimed happily---

Peter's eyes followed his pointing finger.

"What?"

"Look at the signs. Let's take 'em."

"Good idea."

"Probably pair very rare an' valuable signs. Probably come in handy."

Peter removed the left-hand sign from the door and endeavored to
conceal it about his person. The sign being of considerable
proportions, this was a matter of some difficulty. An idea flung
itself at him, and with an air of dignified mystery he turned his
back. After an instant he wheeled dramatically around, and stretching
out his arms displayed himself to the admiring Dean. He had inserted
the sign in his vest, completely covering his shirt front. In effect,
the word "In" had been painted upon his shirt in large black letters.

"Yoho!" cheered Dean. "Mister In."

He inserted his own sign in like manner.

"Mister Out!" he announced triumphantly. "Mr. In meet Mr. Out."

They advanced and shook hands. Again laughter overcame them and they
rocked in a shaken spasm of mirth.

"Yoho!"

"We probably get a flock of breakfast."

"We'll go--go to the Commodore."

Arm in arm they sallied out the door, and turning east in Forty-fourth
Street set out for the Commodore.

As they came out a short dark soldier, very pale and tired, who had
been wandering listlessly along the sidewalk, turned to look at them.

He started over as though to address them, but as they immediately
bent on him glances of withering unrecognition, he waited until they
had started unsteadily down the street, and then followed at about
forty paces, chuckling to himself and saying, "Oh, boy!" over and over
under his breath, in delighted, anticipatory tones.

Mr. In and Mr. Out were meanwhile exchanging pleasantries concerning
their future plans.

"We want liquor; we want breakfast. Neither without the other. One and
indivisible."

"We want both 'em!"

"Both 'em!"

It was quite light now, and passers-by began to bend curious eyes on
the pair. Obviously they were engaged in a discussion, which afforded
each of them intense amusement, for occasionally a fit of laughter
would seize upon them so violently that, still with their arms
interlocked, they would bend nearly double.

Reaching the Commodore, they exchanged a few spicy epigrams with the
sleepy-eyed doorman, navigated the revolving door with some
difficulty, and then made their way through a thinly populated but
startled lobby to the dining-room, where a puzzled waiter showed them
an obscure table in a corner. They studied the bill of fare
helplessly, telling over the items to each other in puzzled mumbles.

"Don't see any liquor here," said Peter reproachfully.

The waiter became audible but unintelligible.

"Repeat," continued Peter, with patient tolerance, "that there seems
to be unexplained and quite distasteful lack of liquor upon bill of
fare."

"Here!" said Dean confidently, "let me handle him." He turned to the
waiter--"Bring us--bring us--" he scanned the bill of fare anxiously.
"Bring us a quart of champagne and a--a--probably ham sandwich."

The waiter looked doubtful.

"Bring it!" roared Mr. In and Mr. Out in chorus.

The waiter coughed and disappeared. There was a short wait during
which they were subjected without their knowledge to a careful
scrutiny by the head-waiter. Then the champagne arrived, and at the
sight of it Mr. In and Mr. Out became jubilant.

"Imagine their objecting to us having, champagne for breakfast--jus'
imagine."

They both concentrated upon the vision of such an awesome possibility,
but the feat was too much for them. It was impossible for their joint
imaginations to conjure up a world where any one might object any one
else having champagne for breakfast. The waiter drew the cork with an
enormous _pop_ and their glasses immediately foamed with pale
yellow froth.

"Here's health, Mr. In."

"Here's same to you, Mr. Out."

The waiter withdrew; the minutes passed; the champagne became low in
the bottle.

"It's--it's mortifying," said Dean suddenly.

"Wha's mortifying?"

"The idea their objecting us having champagne breakfast."

"Mortifying?" Peter considered. "Yes, tha's word--mortifying."

Again they collapsed into laughter, howled, swayed, rocked back and
forth in their chairs, repeating the word "mortifying" over and over
to each other--each repetition seeming to make it only more
brilliantly absurd.

After a few more gorgeous minutes they decided on another quart. Their
anxious waiter consulted his immediate superior, and this discreet
person gave implicit instructions that no more champagne should be
served. Their check was brought.

Five minutes later, arm in arm, they left the Commodore and made their
way through a curious, staring crowd along Forty-second Street, and up
Vanderbilt Avenue to the Biltmore. There, with sudden cunning, they
rose to the occasion and traversed the lobby, walking fast and
standing unnaturally erect.

Once in the dining-room they repeated their performance. They were
torn between intermittent convulsive laughter and sudden spasmodic
discussions of politics, college, and the sunny state of their
dispositions. Their watches told them that it was now nine o'clock,
and a dim idea was born in them that they were on a memorable party,
something that they would remember always. They lingered over the
second bottle. Either of them had only to mention the word
"mortifying" to send them both into riotous gasps. The dining-room was
whirring and shifting now; a curious lightness permeated and rarefied
the heavy air.

They paid their check and walked out into the lobby.

It was at this moment that the exterior doors revolved for the
thousandth time that morning, and admitted into the lobby a very pale
young beauty with dark circles under her eyes, attired in a
much-rumpled evening dress. She was accompanied by a plain stout man,
obviously not an appropriate escort.

At the top of the stairs this couple encountered Mr. In and Mr. Out.

"Edith," began Mr. In, stepping toward her hilariously and making a
sweeping bow, "darling, good morning."

The stout man glanced questioningly at Edith, as if merely asking her
permission to throw this man summarily out of the way.

"'Scuse familiarity," added Peter, as an afterthought. "Edith,
good-morning."

He seized Dean's elbow and impelled him into the foreground.

"Meet Mr. In, Edith, my bes' frien'. Inseparable. Mr. In and Mr. Out."

Mr. Out advanced and bowed; in fact, he advanced so far and bowed so
low that he tipped slightly forward and only kept his balance by
placing a hand lightly on Edith's shoulder.

"I'm Mr. Out, Edith," he mumbled pleasantly. "S'misterin Misterout."

"'Smisterinanout," said Peter proudly.

But Edith stared straight by them, her eyes fixed on some infinite
speck in the gallery above her. She nodded slightly to the stout man,
who advanced bull-like and with a sturdy brisk gesture pushed Mr. In
and Mr. Out to either side. Through this alley he and Edith walked.

But ten paces farther on Edith stopped again--stopped and pointed to a
short, dark soldier who was eying the crowd in general, and the
tableau of Mr. In and Mr. Out in particular, with a sort of puzzled,
spell-bound awe.

"There," cried Edith. "See there!"

Her voice rose, became somewhat shrill. Her pointing finger shook
slightly.

"There's the soldier who broke my brother's leg."

There were a dozen exclamations; a man in a cutaway coat left his
place near the desk and advanced alertly; the stout person made a sort
of lightning-like spring toward the short, dark soldier, and then the
lobby closed around the little group and blotted them from the sight
of Mr. In and Mr. Out.

But to Mr. In and Mr. Out this event was merely a particolored
iridescent segment of a whirring, spinning world.

They heard loud voices; they saw the stout man spring; the picture
suddenly blurred.

Then they were in an elevator bound skyward.

"What floor, please?" said the elevator man.

"Any floor," said Mr. In.

"Top floor," said Mr. Out.

"This is the top floor," said the elevator man.

"Have another floor put on," said Mr. Out.

"Higher," said Mr. In.

"Heaven," said Mr. Out.


XI

In a bedroom of a small hotel just off Sixth Avenue Gordon Sterrett
awoke with a pain in the back of his head and a sick throbbing in all
his veins. He looked at the dusky gray shadows in the corners of the
room and at a raw place on a large leather chair in the corner where
it had long been in use. He saw clothes, dishevelled, rumpled clothes
on the floor and he smelt stale cigarette smoke and stale liquor. The
windows were tight shut. Outside the bright sunlight had thrown a
dust-filled beam across the sill--a beam broken by the head of the
wide wooden bed in which he had slept. He lay very quiet--comatose,
drugged, his eyes wide, his mind clicking wildly like an unoiled
machine.

It must have been thirty seconds after he perceived the sunbeam with
the dust on it and the rip on the large leather chair that he had the
sense of life close beside him, and it was another thirty seconds
after that before that he realized that he was irrevocably married to
Jewel Hudson.

He went out half an hour later and bought a revolver at a sporting
goods store. Then he took a took a taxi to the room where he had been
living on East Twenty-seventh Street, and, leaning across the table
that held his drawing materials, fired a cartridge into his head just
behind the temple.




PORCELAIN AND PINK


_room in the down-stairs of a summer cottage. High around the wall
runs an art frieze of a fisherman with a pile of nets at his feet and
a ship on a crimson ocean, a fisherman with a pile of nets at his feet
and a ship on a crimson ocean, a fisherman with a pile of nets at his
feet and so on. In one place on the frieze there is an overlapping--here
we have half a fisherman with half a pile of nets at his foot,
crowded damply against half a ship on half a crimson ocean.
The frieze is not in the plot, but frankly it fascinates me. I could
continue indefinitely, but I am distracted by one of the two objects
in the room--a blue porcelain bath-tub. It has character, this
bath-tub. It is not one of the new racing bodies, but is small with a
high tonneau and looks as if it were going to jump; discouraged,
however, by the shortness of its legs, it has submitted to its
environment and to its coat of sky-blue paint. But it grumpily refuses
to allow any patron completely to stretch his legs--which brings us
neatly to the second object in the room:_

_is a girl--clearly an appendage to the bath-tub, only her head and
throat--beautiful girls have throats instead of necks--and a
suggestion of shoulder appearing above the side. For the first ten
minutes of the play the audience is engrossed in wondering if she
really is playing the game fairly and hasn't any clothes on or whether
it is being cheated and she is dressed._

_The girl's name is_ JULIE MARVIS. _From the proud way she sits
up in the bath-tub we deduce that she is not very tall and that she
carries herself well. When she smiles, her upper tip rolls a little
and reminds you of an Easter Bunny, She is within whispering distance
of twenty years old._

_One thing more--above and to the right of the bath-tub is a window.
It is narrow and has a wide sill; it lets in much sunshine, but
effectually prevents any one who looks in from seeing the bath-tub.
You begin to suspect the plot?_

_We open, conventionally enough, with a song, but, as the startled
gasp of the audience quite drowns out the first half, we will give
only the last of it:_

JULIE: (_In an airy sophrano--enthusiastico_)

When Caesar did the Chicago
He was a graceful child,
Those sacred chickens
Just raised the dickens
The Vestal Virgins went wild.
Whenever the Nervii got nervy
He gave them an awful razz
They shook is their shoes
With the Consular blues
The Imperial Roman Jazz

(_During the wild applause that follows_ JULIE _modestly moves
her arms and makes waves on the surface of the water--at least we
suppose she does. Then the door on the left opens and_ LOIS MARVIS
_enters, dressed but carrying garments and towels._ LOIS _is a
year older than_ JULIE _and is nearly her double in face and
voice, but in her clothes and expression are the marks of the
conservative. Yes, you've guessed it. Mistaken identity is the old
rusty pivot upon which the plot turns._)

LOIS: (_Starting_) Oh, 'scuse me. I didn't know you were here.

JULIE: Oh, hello. I'm giving a little concert--

LOIS: (_Interrupting_) Why didn't you lock the door?

JULIE: Didn't I?

LOIS: Of course you didn't. Do you think I just walked through it?

JULIE: I thought you picked the lock, dearest.

LOIS: You're _so_ careless.

JULIE: No. I'm happy as a garbage-man's dog and I'm giving a little
concert.

LOIS: (_Severely_) Grow up!

JULIE: (_Waving a pink arm around the room_) The walls reflect
the sound, you see. That's why there's something very beautiful about
singing in a bath-tub. It gives an effect of surpassing loveliness.
Can I render you a selection?

LOIS: I wish you'd hurry out of the tub.

JULIE: (_Shaking her head thoughtfully_) Can't be hurried. This
is my kingdom at present, Godliness.

LOIS: Why the mellow name?

JULIE: Because you're next to Cleanliness. Don't throw anything
please!

LOIS: How long will you be?

JULIE: (_After some consideration_) Not less than fifteen nor
more than twenty-five minutes.

LOIS: As a favor to me will you make it ten?

JULIE: (_Reminiscing_) Oh, Godliness, do you remember a day in
the chill of last January when one Julie, famous for her Easter-rabbit
smile, was going out and there was scarcely any hot water and young
Julie had just filled the tub for her own little self when the wicked
sister came and did bathe herself therein, forcing the young Julie to
perform her ablutions with cold cream--which is expensive and a darn
lot of troubles?

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