She felt her mouth tremble. She looked away as her vision blurred.
“Are those tears?” he asked. “Aren’t you used to my teasing by now?”
She felt his hard, callused hand fall onto hers and she turned. “You hurt my feelings, Albert.”
“Oh posh. You’re too sensitive.”
She swiveled away from him and watched the orchestra’s handsome crooner hold on to the microphone and face her with a smile as he sang “What’ll I Do.”
August was the month when women retailers from cities like Utica, Ithaca, and Binghamton visited Manhattan for a first look at the fall fashions and to fill out order sheets, a job that Judd Gray generally put off until the morning after he’d affably dined with them and escorted them to hit movies like Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush or revues like The Garrick Gaieties and then on to nightclubs like the Monte Carlo and Frivolity Club in Manhattan. Benjamin & Johnes even got him a room in the tony Waldorf-Astoria, just a block away on Fifth Avenue and 33rd Street, so he would have the freedom of entertaining without having to deal with railway schedules and his wife’s worries about his drinking.
On Saturday, August 8th, Judd would be treating a gang of Pennsylvania buyers to a fashion show and gala called Très Parisien, featuring the clothing designs of Jean Patou and Coco Chanel, but on that Friday night he was just going to have room service and finish reading P. C. Wren’s Beau Geste. But there was a note for him at the Waldorf’s front desk:
I’m footing the bill for some friends at Zari’s. Will you join us? Informal, of course. Harry Folsom
Despite his weariness, Judd changed into a fresh shirt and gray flannel suit and took the Waldorf’s elevator down. Adventuring, he thought.
Zari’s restaurant was filled when he got there at eight. Electric fans whirred in slow semiarcs as he handed his fedora to the hat-check girl. All the wooden pillars and floor and furniture in Zari’s were cherry. At the far end was a stage with a twelve-instrument orchestra playing jazz above wide round dining tables that held parties of eight and a gleaming dance floor that was gradually gaining post-dinner couples trying out the fox-trot. Rectangular tables with white linens, rose electric candles, and chairs jacketed in red chintz were under overhanging mezzanine galleries on three sides of the great room, each gallery with more round dining tables and railings hung with cascades of ivy. And it was up there that Judd saw a grinning Harry Folsom wildly swinging his right arm to get his attention and probably yelling his name out over the music.
Judd took the circular staircase up and was introduced to Harry’s dinner party of two fat older men who seemed to be Rochester retailers in silks and hosiery; their female companions, whose day jobs were in Harry’s Madison Avenue shop; Harry’s homely wife, who glared at Judd as if he’d done something wrong; and Mrs. Albert E. Snyder in white pearls and an Alice-blue frock, prettily sitting with her elbows on the white linen and her fingers interlaced under her chin. She was still tan from her Shelter Island vacation and scented with Le Lilas perfume.
As Judd was shaking hands with the diners, Harry said, “We’ve already eaten, but I’ll get you a menu. We’re drinking screwdrivers.” He whistled to a waiter and ordered for his friend a menu and a highball glass of orange juice and cracked ice.
The orchestra began playing “It Had to Be You,” and one of the girls said, “Oh, I love this song! Can’t we dance, please, Harry?”
“Excellent idea,” Harry’s wife said, getting up just as Judd was sitting. And after Harry handed on his flask, the whole dinner party, except for Mrs. Snyder, hurried downstairs.
“I seem to have occasioned a stampede,” Judd said.
“Well, I hate to eat and run, myself.”
Lacking a rejoinder, Judd dully asked, “How are you?”
She grinned. “I’m paralyzed with happiness.” And she indeed looked at him as if there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see.
“You’re a very pleasant surprise for me, too. Harry’s note didn’t mention you.”
“Well, he’s not a detail kind of guy.”
“Your mother. She liked the Grecian-Treco corset?”
“Oh, I don’t know. We don’t chat about our underthings like we should. But thank you for the gift.”
“Anytime,” he said, and found he meant it.
A highball glass half-filled with orange juice was delivered and Judd stirred in vodka from Harry’s hammered silver flask as he ordered a Shrimp Louie salad for his dinner.
Ruth’s golden hair was equal to the fiery chandelier hanging near them, and her stunning, ice-blue eyes were checkered with its light. He felt he would have been content to just fill the night gazing at her, but in the practiced way of a lady’s escort, he peppered her with questions about her upbringing.
She said she was born in a four-room apartment on Morning-side Avenue and 125th Street in New York City. Her father, Harry Sorenson, adopted the last name Brown when he emigrated from a fishing village in Norway. Josephine met him on Coney Island. Harry was a sailor then but became a carpenter who was often out of work because of a host of illnesses and epilepsy, so Josephine supported them as a practical nurse. Really a part-time housekeeper and sickroom attendant. Ruth graduated from Public School 11 at age thirteen and soon was hired by the New York Telephone Company as a relief operator. She was too young for the j
ob but the guy in charge became enchanted by her voice. She went to night school at the Berg Business Institute on 149th Street. She was certified as a stenographer and could type sixty-five words a minute, some of them not misspelled. “You can’t really be interested in all this.”
“But I am,” Judd said. “It’s fascinating.” A line from Laurence Sterne came to him: Courtship consists in a number of quiet attentions, not so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as not to be understood. His highball glass was again half-filled with orange juice by the waiter and Judd completed it with vodka. “Say, I’m having a capital time,” he said.
“Me too. You’re a good listener.”
“Would you like a drink?”