Pity Is Akin—
Mr. and Mrs. Henry Spalding, of Toledo, dressed for the evening, were admitted without question into the Cozy Club, which had lately become one of the most popular night clubs in New York’s Fifties, owing to the engagement of Marian Moore as hostess. It was early, only a few minutes after twelve, and more than half the tables were unoccupied, but “Reserved” signs were displayed on the vacant ones.
“I guess we’re out of luck,” said Henry, and he and his wife were surprised when a smiling head waiter removed the sign from a table in the second row off the dance floor and seated them there.
“Well,” said Henry, “I didn’t order this. He either thinks we’re somebody else or we look like live ones.”
Mrs. Spalding laughed a little stock laugh, her usual response to remarks by her husband. She was not loquacious as a rule, save on the subject of children, and more often than not, she paid no attention to other people’s talk.
The head waiter brought two menu cards and stood at attention. The sight of a menu, especially an expensive one, always enhanced Mrs. Spalding’s gift of silence and she would pretend not to hear Henry the first five or six times he urged her to order; then, when he began to get cross, she would name viands she had no more taste for than she had for the flu. On this occasion she chose, or was driven to choose, brook trout meunière, broccoli and baked Alaska. The head waiter observed that the baked Alaska would take quite a while.
“We’re in no hurry,” said Henry. “But you can send us a drink.”
“We serve only soft drinks—ginger ale, orangeade—”
Henry handed him two one-dollar bills. “I guess you don’t remember me,” he said.
“I do recall your face, but I see so many people that I forget some of their names.”
“We’d like a couple of dry Martinis,” said Henry.
“I’m sorry, but we only serve Scotch or rye or gin or wine, and all by the bottle.”
“Well, fetch a pint of rye and a bottle of ginger ale.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mrs. Spalding’s first highball led her to wonder out loud whether Betty, their three-year-old, was lonely without them.
“She don’t even know we’re gone,” said Henry.
“She may not know you’re gone.”
“Anyway, she ain’t missing us now, because she’s asleep.”
“Lots of times she’s wokened up in the night and called me.”
“I must have been away.”
“No, you were there, but you sleep so sound that you’d sleep through Judgment Day.”
“I hope so,” said Henry. “Let me pour you another libation. We’ve got a long ways to go.”
“Not as much as you gave me before. It might not be good stuff.”
“They’re careful what they serve in a high-class place like this. Besides, I don’t get fooled. I can tell good liquor from bad liquor almost by looking at it. There’d be no deaths from wood alcohol if—”
“Look! Here’s the orchestra!”
It was a “hot” orchestra composed of twelve negro musicians who had made records the previous morning and practiced between afternoon and evening performances at the Palace. But they were still “hot” and the small dance floor was soon jammed, for patrons of the “club” had been arriving in droves and all the “reservations” were taken up.
“I’d ask you to dance,” said Henry to his wife, “only it’s so crowded it wouldn’t be any fun.” They both knew it wouldn’t be any fun anyway. No one had ever nicknamed them Moss and Fontana.
A good-looking young man in a Bunny Granville getup sang a song dealing with the different kinds of treatment one receives from young ladies in London, Paris, Port Said, Stockholm, Yokohama and Bombay. He was assisted by a dancing chorus of pretty girls, almost entirely dismantled.
The customers, by insistent pounding of small mallets on the tables, made them do it over. It was better the first time. A negro tap-dancer of real merit responded to one encore and could have had many more, but it’s tiresome work.
Just as Mrs. Spalding was finishing her baked Alaska and thinking how much better it would have tasted without the prologue of rye, the customers burst into wild applause and Miss Moore, followed at a distance by her personal pianist, walked smilingly into the glare of the spot. The smile was a little crooked, giving her face a childish appearance, though she could have voted for Hughes. The face was queerly pale, looking (so Henry whispered) as if she were hopped up. It was not a beautiful face, but it had, in repose, the woebegone, pity-me quality that never fails to appeal to sob-loving New York.
Evenings (and two matinées a week) she played a leading part and sang the hit song—“Where Is My Man Gone?”—in the current musical smash, the producer having
