It reminded me of when Sleazy offered to force-feed me the ball of bread or poke out my eyes with the nail in the movies. 'No thanks,' I said.
'Chicken shit,' she said, and belched sharply. 'Kids today have no spunk.' Then she slammed me to her chest and hugged me to her body, hard as a man's but with her breasts sliding between us like two fresh-caught fish in loose bags; her tongue lolled along my jawline before skidding into my ear. 'You squirrel dink,' she whispered, then pushed me from her.
She fell in the slush near the delivery entrance, but when I helped her to her feet, she shoved me into the trash barrels and walked into the darkness of Elliot Park, unassisted. I waited for her to pass out of the darkness and into the pale lamplight from the single streetlight, and then pass into the darkness again; when she came briefly under the light, I called to her.
'Good night, Mrs. Wales, and thank you for the music!' She gave me the finger, slipped, almost fell again, and lurched out of the light -- cursing at something, or someone, she encountered there. 'What the fuck?' she said. 'Cram it, will you?'
I turned away from the light and threw up in the emptiest trash barrel. When I looked back at the streetlight again, a figure was just veering under it, and I thought it was Doris Wales, returning to abuse me. But it was someone from another New Year's Eve party, for whom home was in another direction. It was a man, or a reasonably grown-up teen-ager, and although he was weaving under the spell of alcohol, he maintained slightly better footing in the slush than Doris Wales.
'Cram it yourself, lady!' he cried into the darkness.
'Chicken shit!' called Doris, from the dark and far away.
'Whore!' the man yelled, then lost his balance and sat down in the slush. 'Shit,' he said, to no one in particular; he couldn't see me.
It was then that I noticed how he was dressed. Black slacks and shoes, black cummerbund and bow tie -- and a white dinner jacket. Of course I knew he was not the man in the white dinner jacket; he was lacking the necessary dignity, and whatever voyage he was on, or interrupting, it was not an exotic voyage. Also, it was New Year's Eve, and not the season -- in New England -- for white dinner jackets. The man was inappropriately dressed, and I knew this was no eccentric habit of distinction. In Dairy, New Hampshire, it could only mean that the moron had gone to the rental tuxedo shop after all the black jackets had been taken. Or else he didn't know the difference between summer and winter formal dress in our town; he was either a young clod coming from a high school dance or an older clod coming from an older dance (which had been no less sad and wasteful than anything a high school could engender). He was not our man in the white dinner jacket, but he reminded me of him.
Then I noticed that the man had stretched out in the slush under the streetlight and had gone to sleep there. The temperature was right around freezing.
I felt, at last, that New Year's Eve had come to something: there seemed to be a purpose for my having taken part in it at all -- a purpose beyond the simultaneously vague and concrete sensations of lust. I lifted the man in the white dinner jacket and carried him to the lobby of the Hotel New Hampshire; he was easier to carry than Bitty Tuck's luggage; he didn't weigh much, although he was a man, not a teen-ager -- in fact, he looked older than my father, to me. And when I searched him for some identification, I found I had been right about the rental clothes. PROPERTY OF CHESTER'S MEN'S STORE, said the label in the white dinner jacket. The man, although he looked reasonably distinguished -- at least for Dairy, New Hampshire -- carried no wallet, but he had a silver comb.
Perhaps Doris Wales had mugged him in the dark, and that was what they'd been yelling about. But no, I thought: Doris would have taken the silver comb, too.
It seemed a good trick, to me, to arrange the man in the white dinner jacket on the couch in the lobby of the Hotel New Hampshire -- so that early in the morning I might be able to surprise Father and Mother. I could say, 'There's someone who came for the last dance -- last night -- but he was too late. He's waiting to see you, in the lobby.'
I thought that was a terrific idea, but I felt -- since I had been drinking -- that I should really wake up Franny and show her the man in the white dinner jacket, who was peacefully passed out on the couch; Franny would inform me if she thought this was a bad idea. She would like it, too, I was sure.
I straightened the black bow tie of the man in the white dinner jacket and folded his hands upon his chest; I buttoned the waist button of his jacket, and straightened his cummerbund, so that he wouldn't look sloppy. The only thing missing was the tan, and the black cigarette box -- and the white sloop outside the Arbuthnot-by-the-Sea.
That was not the sound of the sea outside the Hotel New Hampshire, I knew; it was the sound of the slush in Elliot Park, freezing and thawing and refreezing; and those were not the gulls calling, but dogs -- alley dogs, ripping into the trash, which was everywhere. I hadn't noticed, until I arranged the man in the white dinner jacket on the couch, how shabby our lobby was -- how the presence of an all-girls' school had never left the building: the ostracism, the anxiety of being considered (sexually) second-best, the too-early marriages, and other disappointments, that waited ahead. The almost elegant man in the white dinner jacket looked -- in the Hotel New Hampshire -- like someone from another planet, and I suddenly didn't want my father to see him.
I ran into the restaurant for some cold water; Doris Wales had broken a glass at the bar, and Ronda Ray's oddly sexless working shoes were scuffed under a table, where she must have kicked them -- when she started dancing, and making her move for Junior Jones.
If I woke up Franny, I thought, Franny might catch on that Junior was with Ronda, and wouldn't that hurt her?
I listened at the stairwell and felt a flash of interest in Bitty Tuck returning to me -- the thought of seeing her, asleep -- but when I listened to her on the intercom, she was snoring (as deep and wallowing a sound as a pig in mud). The book of reservations hadn't a single name marked down; there was nothing until the summer, when the circus called Fritz's Act would arrive and (no doubt) appall us all. The petty-cash box, at the reception desk, wasn't even locked -- and Frank, in his boredom during phone duty, had used the sharp end of the bottle opener to gouge his name into the armrest of the chair.
In the grey, after-the-party stench of New Year's Day, I felt that I should spare my father the vision of the man in the white dinner jacket. I thought that, if I could wake the man, I could employ Junior Jones to scare the man away, but I would have been embarrassed to disturb Junior with Ronda Ray.
'Hey, get up!' I hissed at the man in the white dinner jacket.
'Snorf!' he shouted, in his sleep. 'Ack! A whore!'
'Be quiet!' I whispered fiercely to him.
'Gick?' he said. I seized him around the chest and squeezed him. 'Fuh!' he moaned. 'God help me.'
'You're all right,' I said. 'But you have to leave.'
He opened his eyes and sat up on the couch.
'A young thug,' he said. 'Where have you taken me?'
'You passed out, outside,' I said. 'I brought you in so you wouldn't freeze. Now you have to leave.'
'I have to use the bathroom,' he said, with dignity.
'Go outside,' I said. 'Can you walk?'