The taxi took us back to the hotel to meet ‘Dottie’ for the 2 o’clock matinee of ‘Good News.’ She was waiting in her typical wide-brimmed antiquated straw hat and slightly conservative wool skirt, with lots of her signature Cyphre perfume. She was very pretty. I forgot how short and petite she was. The kids greeted her with a peck on the cheek, her perfume strong.
“Lo, Dottie!” I said casually, smiling.
“My, aren’t we playing the Sheik today?” she admonished me for my overly familiar tone.
“Aww…just kidding - sorry - I should have said ‘Hello!’ properly.”
“Well… you’re forgiven,” she said smiling.
“It really is an honor….” I said earnestly.
“Rubbish! You’re amusing and I’m just bored to tears with the same crowd… come on, let’s walk!” she said briskly.
She set a fast pace, and she asked me, how was my wife?
“She’s wonderful, a Director of Sales… in radio, mainly South America and Mexico, so she travels a lot.”
“Really?” said Dottie with interest. “I like that, an independent woman. That’s why you’re here, not with her then?”
“Something like that…but mainly to show my grandkids New York and the wider world.”
“We’re from the future!” Jonathan jumped in with a grin.
Lauren nodded, smiling.
“Really? So when in the future did you come from?” Dottie asked playfully.
“2011!” Jonathan said as I glared at him.
“And what’s the future like then?” she asked indulgently.
“It’s great, we have TV, DVDs and iPods for music and we can fly in jet planes anywhere and they have the space shuttle … ”
“Tee Vee, Deeveedee, Eye-pods?” she asked.
“He has a great imagination,” I said trying to save the situation, “You know, like H.G. Wells (the famous science fiction writer)?”
“Hmm, yes,” she said with a puzzled look. “What’s Tee Vee, Jonathan?” she asked.
“Its Television, a hundred channels… ” he said excitedly.
“Oh yes, moving pictures over the airwaves, I’ve heard about that. I’m sure by 1960 everybody will have one, as well as a car and an airplane? The way things are going I dare say by the end of the century we’ll have colonies on Mars,” she said laughing.
“Well, it’s not that good,” I said, winking, as if I was playing along with the game, “I’m trying to write a story about the future.”
“Oh no!” Dottie said skeptically, “Not ANOTHER budding author?… At least TRY to be original…”
I continued. “In it we WILL make staggering technological progress: super-highways, all-metal pressurized jet planes….”
“Jet planes?” Dottie asked.
“Yeah, instead of propellers, turbines powered by kerosene.”
“Oh..like the liners..gotcha!”
“Anyway,” I continued, “They’ll carry hundreds of people flying the oceans at 600 mph, rockets to the moon by 1969. A small lump of Uranium, like Radium, called atomic power, can light a city or power a ship across the ocean or can wipe out a city like New York with a single bomb.”
“Uh-huh, go on,” she said.
“Sure, by the end of the century, machines called computers will revolutionize communications. You’ll be able to shop and bank from home and communicate, even chat, with people all over the world from a lighted screen using a network called the internet as well as write documents and letters electronically with automatic spell- correction. There will be cigarette-pack-sized music players with thousands of songs and videos and movies; pocket-size portable wireless phones, including ‘smart’ phones that can do all that, take pictures and access the internet as well. Lasers, like light rays, will read and ‘burn’ disks that can hold mountains of data, movies, music and pictures. There will even be a device the size of your pinkie that can store all that too that you just plug into your computer.”
“Hmmm,” Dottie said unimpressed. “Technological progress. Imagine, a self-correcting typewriter, I mean, a what did you call it, a computer?” She smiled at that. “All very fine - but how does the world improve in your little fantasy? I’d imagine in such a world where people can talk to each other in different countries, war would be a thing of the past?”
“You would think,” I replied.
“We use computers, Dottie…” Lauren said quietly.
“So in your story about the future, I suppose we’ll have colonies in space, on Mars and all that?” Dottie said. “The same old tiresome, wildly optimistic Jules Verne- or Edgar Rice Burroughs-style predictions?”
“Well, after a few moon landings, space exploration will stop, just un-manned probes and robot cameras sent to Mars and to explore the stars…”
“You can’t be serious? You couldn’t ask anyone to believe that after landing on the moon, when did you say, 1969? They wouldn’t try to go to Mars a few years later? Exploration just stop because of money? Mind you…..wouldn’t be a bit surprised myself,” Dottie said smiling slyly, “Sounds like the usual government half-baked efforts - too realistic by half! Still, that doesn’t make for much of a story…I hope you don’t plan to try and get that published. No one would believe progress would just stop!”
“Well, it’s expensive and the government is tight with money….” I said.
“Ha!” she said. “You’ll have a hard time convincing anyone we’d have ANOTHER president as narrow-minded as Coolidge!” Dottie said beginning to smile.
“He’s not so bad,” I said thinking about George W.
“I’m beginning to think that you are more of a realist than you pretend.”
“Right,” I said. “People don’t change that much - that’s the problem with predictions about the future,” I explained. “You can bet that good-old economics and greed will work against the advancement of mankind and the old prejudices and hatreds will see to it that poverty and ignorance will only gradually be defeated. There will be great leaders, and Blacks, I mean, Negroes will get their equal rights by the ’60’s, but, sadly, Americans will continue to celebrate the mediocre and all too often elect morons to public office.”
“Ah, something of a cynic after all, Mr. Mayer…?” she said.
“No, I’m actually a wide-eyed optimist and no claims to fame distinguish me, my talents are not many…” paraphrasing her 1921 poem about her dog.
She cracked a smile: “Hmm… a cynic and a smart-ass….”
“Jonathan brought his iPod with him Lito…” Lauren chimed in. Dottie looked at her laughing.
“I love these kids, such imagination,” she said. Thankfully, we soon arrived at the theater and Dottie proffered her passes.
“We’re giving the show the acid test,” she quipped to the usher as he showed us to the box seats.
“Here you go, Mrs. Parker!” he said cheerfully.
Two well dressed older ladies standing outside their box gave Dottie a long look, and one, peering at her through her hand-held lorgnette asked her, “Excuse me, but aren’t you THE Dorothy Parker?”
“Yes… do you mind?!” Dottie replied a little irritated, rolling her eyes at us.
The lady turned away in a huff. “Well… I never!”
Jonathan snickered.
The show was a wow! Lots of great 1920’s music, a large chorus, lots of dancing, songs like ‘Button up Your Overcoat,’ ‘The Best Things in Life are Free’ and the immortal ‘Varsity Drag.’
The story was a reliable college scenario where the football hero has to pass exams to play in the big game and while he has his pick of girls on campus, he falls for the, at first, mousy student librarian who has to be his tutor. The show ran for two years and became one of the most popular hits on Broadway.
The kids grew bored and a bit cranky but sat through the show. I bought them snacks at intermission. Lauren admired the ladies’ costumes and so did Jonathan.
“Dottie, is this what it’s like in college here?” Jonathan asked.
