And I thought oh my God—because Dottie’s become such a lush, you never know when her face is going to land in the soup. But I rang up Dottie and she said oh she’d be thrilled to come. She thought Monty was the most beautiful young man she’d ever seen. ‘But I can’t,’ she said, ‘because I’ve already promised to have dinner with Tallulah that evening. And you know how she is: she’d ride me on a rail if I begged off.’ So I said listen, Dottie, let me handle this: I’ll call Tallulah and invite her, too. And that’s what happened. Tallulah said she’d love to come, d-d-darling, except for one thing—she’d already invited Estelle Winwood, and could she bring Estelle?”
It was a heady notion, the thought of these three formidable ladies all in one room: Bankhead, Dorothy Parker, and Estelle Winwood. Boaty’s invitation was for seven-thirty, allowing an hour for cocktails before dinner, which he had prepared himself—Senegalese soup, a casserole, salad, assorted cheeses, and a lemon soufflé. I arrived somewhat early to see if I could be of any help, but Boaty, wearing an olive velvet jacket, was calm, everything was in order, there was nothing left to do except light the candles.
The host poured each of us one of his “special” martinis—gin of zero temperature to which a drop of Pernod had been added. “No vermouth. Just a touch of Pernod. An old trick I learned from Virgil Thompson.”
Seven-thirty became eight; by the time we had our second drink the other guests were more than an hour late, and Boaty’s sleekly knitted composure began to unravel; he started nibbling at his fingernails, a most uncharacteristic indulgence. At nine he exploded: “My God, do you realize what I’ve done? I don’t know about Estelle, but the other three are all drunks. I’ve invited three alcoholics to dinner! One is bad enough. But three. They’ll never show up.”
The doorbell rang.
“D-d-darling …” It was Miss Bankhead, gyrating inside a mink coat the color of her long, loosely waved hair. “I’m so sorry. It was all the taxi-driver’s fault. He took us to the wrong address. Some wretched apartment house on the West Side.”
Miss Parker said: “Benjamin Katz. That was his name. The taxi-driver.”
“You’re wrong, Dottie,” Miss Winwood corrected her as the ladies discarded their coats and were escorted by Boaty into his dark Victorian parlor, where logs were cheerfully crunching inside a marble fireplace. “His name was Kevin O’Leary. Badly suffering from the Irish virus. That’s why he didn’t know where he was going.”
“Irish virus?” said Miss Bankhead.
“Booze, dear,” said Miss Winwood.
“Ah, booze,” sighed Miss Parker. “That’s exactly what I need,” though a slight sway in her walk suggested that another drink was exactly what she didn’t need. Miss Bankhead ordered: “A bourbon and branch. And don’t be stingy.” Miss Parker, complaining of a certain crise de foie, at first declined, then said: “Well, perhaps a glass of wine.”
Miss Bankhead, spying me where I stood by the fireplace, swooped forward; she was a small woman, but, because of her growling voice and unconquerable vitality, seemed Amazonian. “And,” she said, blink-blinking her near-sighted eyes, “is this Mr. Clift, our great new star?”
I told her no, that my name was P. B. Jones. “I’m nobody. Just a friend of Mr. Boatwright’s.”
“Not one of his ‘nephews’?”
“No. I’m a writer, or want to be.”
“Boaty has so many nephews. I wonder where he finds them all. Damn it, Boaty, where’s my bourbon?”
As the guests settled among Boaty’s horsehair settees, I decided that of the three, Estelle Winwood, an actress then in her early sixties, was the most striking. Parker—she looked like the sort of woman to whom one would instantly relinquish a subway seat, a vulnerable, deceptively incapable child who had gone to sleep and awakened forty years later with puffy eyes, false teeth, and whiskey on her breath.
And Bankhead—her head was too large for her body, her feet too small; and anyway, her presence was too strong for a room to contain: it needed an auditorium. But Miss Winwood was an exotic creature—snake-slim, erect as a headmistress, she wore a huge broad-brimmed black straw hat which she never removed the entire evening; that hat’s brim shadowed the pearl-pallor of her haughty face, and concealed, though not too successfully, the mischief faintly firing her lavender eyes. She was smoking a cigarette, and it developed that she was a chain-smoker, as was Miss Bankhead; Miss Parker, too.
Miss Bankhead lit one cigarette from another, and announced: “I had a strange dream last night. I dreamt I was at the Savoy in London. Dancing with Jock Whitney. Now there was an attractive man. Those big red ears, those dimples.”
Miss Parker said: “Well? And what was so strange about that?”
“Nothing. Except that I haven’t thought about Jock in twenty years. And then this very afternoon I saw him. He was crossing 57th Street in one direction, and I was going in the other. He hadn’t changed much—a little heavier, a bit jowly. God, the great times we had together. He used to take me to the ball games; and the races. But it was never any good in bed. The same old story. I once went to an analyst and wasted fifty dollars an hour trying to figure out why I can never make it work with any man I really love, am really mad about. While some stagehand, somebody I don’t give a damn about, can leave me limp.”
Boaty appeared with the drinks; Miss Parker emptied her glass with one swift swallow, then said: “Why don’t you just bring the bottle and leave it on the table?”
Boaty said: “I can’t understand what’s happened to Monty. At least he could have called.”
“Meeow! Meeow.” The cat-wail was accompanied by the sound of fingernails scratching against the front door. “Meeow!”
“Pardonnez-moi, señor,” said young Mr. Clift, as he fell into the room and supported himself by hugging Boaty. “I’ve been sleeping off a hangover.” Offhand, I would have said he hadn’t slept it off sufficiently. When Boaty offered him a martini, I noticed that his hands trembled as he struggled to hold it.
Underneath a rumpled raincoat, he wore grey flannel slacks and a grey turtle-neck sweater; he was also wearing argyle socks and a pair of loafers. He kicked off the shoes and squatted at Miss Parker’s feet.
“The story of yours I like, I like the one about the woman who keeps waiting for the telephone to ring. Waiting for a guy who’s trying to give her the brush. And she keeps making up reasons why he doesn’t call, and pleading with herself not to call him. I know all about that. I’ve lived through it. And that other story—“Big Blonde”—where the woman swallows all those pills, only she doesn’t die, she wakes up and has to go on living. Wow, I’d hate to have that happen. Did you ever know anyone that happened to?”
Miss Bankhead laughed. “Of course she does. Dottie’s always gulping pills or cutting her wrists. I remember going to see her in the hospital once, she had her wrists bandaged with pink ribbon with cute little pink ribbon bows. Bob Benchley said: ‘If she doesn’t stop doing that, Dottie’s going to hurt herself one of these days.’ ”
Miss Parker complained: “Benchley didn’t say that. I did. I said: ‘If I don’t stop doing this, someday I’m going to hurt myself.’ ”
For the next hour Boaty waddled between the kitchen and the parlor, fetching drinks and more drinks, and grieving over his dinner, particularly the casserole, which was drying out. It was after ten before he persuaded the others to arrange themselves around the dining-room table, and I helped by pouring the wine, the only nourishment that seemed to interest anyone, anyway: Clift dropped a cigarette into his untouched bowl of Senegalese soup, and stared inertly into space, as if he were enacting a shell-shocked soldier. His companions pretended not to notice, and Miss Bankhead continued a meandering anecdote (“It was when I had a house in the country, and Estelle was staying with me, and we were stretched out on the lawn listening to the radio. It was a portable radio, one of the first ever made.
Suddenly a newscaster broke in; he said to stand by for an important announcement. It turned out to be about the Lindbergh kidnapping. How someone had used a ladder to climb into a bedroom and steal the baby. When it was over, Estelle yawned and said: ‘Well, we’re well out of that one, Tallulah!’ ”). While she talked, Miss Parker did something so curious it attracted everyone’s attention; it even silenced Miss Bankhead. With tears in her eyes, Miss Parker was touching Clift’s hypnotized face, her stubby fingers tenderly brushing his brow, his cheekbones, his lips, chin.
Miss Bankhead said: “Damn it, Dottie. Who do you think you are? Helen Keller?”
“He’s so beautiful,” murmured Miss Parker. “Sensitive. So finely made. The most beautiful young man I’ve ever seen. What a pity he’s a cocksucker.” Then, sweetly, wide-eyed with little girl naïveté, she said: “Oh. Oh dear. Have I said something wrong? I mean, he is a cocksucker, isn’t he, Tallulah?”
Miss Bankhead said: “Well, d-d-darling, I r-r-really wouldn’t know. He’s never sucked my cock.”
I COULDN’T KEEP MY EYES open; it was very boring, Red River, and the odor of latrine disinfectant was chloroforming me. I needed a drink, and I found one in an Irish bar at 38th Street and Eighth Avenue. It
