Fillmore tries to whisper a few words in my ear. «An actress… a movie star… some guy jilted her and she can’t get over it… I’m going to get her cockeyed…»
«I’ll clear out then,» I was saying, when the princess interrupted us with a shout. «Why do you whisper like that?» she cried, stamping her foot. «Don’t you know that’s not polite? And you, I thought you were going to take me out? I must get drunk tonight, I have told you that already.»
«Yes, yes,» said Fillmore, «we’re going in a minute. I just want another drink.»
«You’re a pig!» she yelled. «But you’re a nice boy too. Only you’re loud. You have no manners.» She turned to me. «Can I trust him to behave himself? I must get drunk tonight but I don’t want him to disgrace me. Maybe I will come back here afterward. I would like to talk to you. You seem more intelligent.»
As they were leaving the princess shook my hand cordially and promised to come for dinner some evening — «when I will be sober,» she said.
«Fine!» I said. «Bring another princess along — or a countess, at least. We change the sheets every Saturday.»
About three in the morning Fillmore staggers in… alone. Lit up like an ocean liner, and making a noise like a blind man with his cracked cane. Tap, tap, tap, down the weary lane… «Going straight to bed,» he says, as he marches past me. «Tell you all about it tomorrow.» He goes inside to his room and throws back the covers. I hear him groaning — «what a woman! what a woman!» In a second he’s out again, with his hat on and the cracked cane in his hand. «I knew something like that was going to happen. She’s crazy!»
He rummages around in the kitchen a while and then cames back to the studio with a bottle of Anjou. I have to sit up and down a glass with him.
As far as I can piece the story together the whole thing started at the Rond-Point des Champs Elysées where he had dropped off for a drink on his way home. As usual at that hour the terrasse was crowded with buzzards. This one was sitting right on the aisle with a pile of saucers in front of her; she was getting drunk quietly all by herself when Fillmore happened along and caught her eye. «I’m drunk,» she giggled, «won’t you sit down?» And then, as though it were the most natural thing in the world to do, she began right off the bat with the yarn about her movie director, how he had given her the go-by and how she had thrown herself in the Seine and so forth and so on. She couldn’t remember any more which bridge it was, only that there was a crowd around when they fished her out of the water. Besides, she didn’t see what difference it made which bridge she threw herself from — why did he ask such questions? She was laughing hysterically about it, and then suddenly she had a desire to be off — she wanted to dance. Seeing him hesitate she opens her bag impulsively and pulls out a hundred franc note. The next moment, however, she decided that a hundred francs wouldn’t go very far. «Haven’t you any money at all?» she said. No, he hadn’t very much in his pocket, but he had a checkbook at home. So they made a dash for the checkbook and then, of course, I had to happen in just as he was explaining to her the «No tickee, no shirtee» business.
On the way home they had stopped off at the Poisson d’Or for a little snack which she had washed down with a few vodkas. She was in her element there with everyone kissing her hand and murmuring Princesse, Princesse. Drunk as she was, she managed to collect her dignity. «Don’t wiggle your behind like that!» she kept saying, as they danced.
It was Fillmore’s idea, when he brought her back to the studio, to stay there. But, since she was such an intelligent girl and so erratic, he had decided to put up with her whims and postpone the grand event. He had even visualized the prospect of running across another princess and bringing the two of them back. When they started out for the evening, therefore, he was in a good humor and prepared, if necessary, to spend a few hundred francs on her. After all, one doesn’t run across a princess every day.
This time she dragged him to another place, a place where she was still better known and where there would be no trouble in cashing a check, as she said. Everybody was in evening clothes and there was more spine-breaking, hand-kissing nonsense as the waiter escorted them to a table.
In the middle of a dance she suddenly walks off the floor, with tears in her eyes. «What’s the matter?» he said, «what did I do this time?» And instinctively he put his hand to his backside, as though perhaps it might still be wiggling. «It’s nothing,» she said. «You didn’t do anything. Come, you’re a nice boy,» and with that she drags him on to the floor again and begins to. dance with abandon. «But what’s the matter with you?» he murmured. «It’s nothing,» she repeated. «I saw somebody, that’s all.» And then, with a sudden spurt of anger — «why do you get me drunk? Don’t you know it makes me crazy?»
«Have you got a check?» she says. «We must get out of here.» She called the waiter over and whispered to him in Russian. «Is it a good check?» she asked, when the waiter had disappeared. And then, impulsively: «Wait for me downstairs in the cloakroom. I must telephone somebody.»
After the waiter had brought the change Fillmore sauntered leisurely downstairs to the cloakroom to wait for her. He strode up and down, humming and whistling softly, and smacking his lips in anticipation of the caviar to come. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. Still whistling softly. When twenty minutes had gone by and still no princess he at last grew suspicious. The cloakroom attendant said that she had left long ago. He dashed outside. There was a nigger in livery standing there with a big grin on his face. Did the nigger know where she had breezed to? Nigger grins. Nigger says: «Ah heerd Coupole, dassall sir!»
At the Coupole, downstairs, he finds her sitting in front of a cocktail with a dreamy, trancelike expression on her face. She smiles when she sees him.
«Was that a decent thing to do,» he says, «to run away like that? You might have told me that you didn’t like me…»
She flared up at this, got theatrical about it. And after a lot of gushing she commenced to whine and slobber. «I’m crazy,» she blubbered. «And you’re crazy too. You want me to sleep with you, and I don’t want to sleep with you.» And then she began to rave about her lover, the movie director whom she had seen on the dance floor. That’s why she had to run away from the place. That’s why she took drugs and got drunk every night. That’s why she threw herself in the Seine. She babbled on this way about how crazy she was and then suddenly she had an idea. «Let’s go to Bricktop’s!» There was a man there whom she knew… he had promised her a job once. She was certain he would help her.
«What’s it going to cost?» asked Fillmore cautiously.
It would cost a lot, she let him know that immediately. «But listen, if you take me to Bricktop’s, I promise to go home with you.» She was honest enough to add that it might cost him five or six hundred francs. «But I’m worth it! You don’t know what a woman I am. There isn’t another woman like me in all Paris… «
«That’s what you think!» His Yankee blood was coming to the fore. «But I don’t see it. I don’t see that you’re worth anything. You’re just a poor crazy son-of-a-bitch. Frankly, I’d rather give fifty francs to some poor French girl; at least they give you something in return.»
She hit the ceiling when he mentioned the French girls. «Don’t talk to me about those women! I hate them! They’re stupid… they’re ugly… they’re mercenary. Stop it, I tell you!»
In a moment she had subsided again. She was on a new tack. «Darling,» she murmured, «you don’t know what I look like when I’m undressed. I’m beautiful!» And she held her breasts with her two hands.
But Fillmore remained unimpressed. «You’re a bitch!» he said coldly. «I wouldn’t mind spending a few hundred francs on you, but you’re crazy. You haven’t even washed your face. Your breath stinks. I don’t give a damn whether you’re a princess or not… I don’t want any of your high-assed Russian variety.
