The Missus enjoyed it just as much as me. She tried to pretend at first, and when she got floored she’d give a squeal that was supposed to mean heavenly bliss. But after she’d been bruised from head to feet and her hair looked and felt like spinach with French dressin’, and she’d drank all she could hold o’ the Gulf Stream, she didn’t resist none when I drug her in to shore and staggered with her up to our private rooms at five a week per each.
Without consultin’ her, I went to the desk at the Casino and told ’em they could have them rooms back.
“All right,” says the clerk, and turned our keys over to the next in line.
“How about a refund?” I ast him; but he was waitin’ on somebody else.
After that we done our bathin’ in the tub. But we was down to the beach every morning at eleven-thirty to watch the rest o’ them get batted round.
And at half past twelve every day we’d follow the crowd to the Breakers’ porch and dance together, the Missus and I. Then it’d be back to the other hostelry, sometimes limpin’ and sometimes in an Afromobile, and a drink or two in the Palm Garden before lunch. And after lunch we’d lay down; or we’d pay some Eph two or three dollars to pedal us through the windin’ jungle trail, that was every bit as wild as the Art Institute; or we’d ferry acrost Lake Worth to West Palm Beach and take in a movie, or we’d stand in front o’ the portable Fifth Avenue stores w’ile the Missus wished she could have this dress or that hat, or somethin’ else that she wouldn’t of looked at if she’d been home and in her right mind. But always at half past four we had to live up to the rules and be in the Coconut Grove for tea and some more foxy trottin’. And then it was dress for dinner, eat dinner, watch the parade and wind up the glorious day with more dancin’.
I bet you any amount you name that the Castles in their whole life haven’t danced together as much as I and the Missus did at Palm Beach. I’d of gave five dollars if even one o’ the waiters had took her offen my hands for one dance. But I knowed that if I made the offer public they’d of been a really serious quarrel between us instead o’ just the minor brawls occasioned by steppin’ on each other’s feet.
She made a discovery one night. She found out that they was a place called the Beach Club where most o’ the real people disappeared to every evenin’ after dinner. She says we would have to go there too.
“But I ain’t a member,” I says.
“Then find out how you get to be one,” she says.
So to the Beach Club I went and made inquiries.
“You’ll have to be introduced by a guy that already belongs,” says the man at the door.
“Who belongs?” I ast him.
“Hundreds o’ people,” he says. “Who do you know?”
“Two waiters, two barkeepers and one elevator boy,” I says.
He laughed, but his laugh didn’t get me no membership card and I had to dance three or four extra times the next day to square myself with the Missus.
She made another discovery and it cost me six bucks. She found out that, though the meals in the regular dinin’ room was included in the triflin’ rates per day, the real people had at least two o’ their meals in the garden grill and paid extra for ’em. We tried it for one meal and I must say I enjoyed it—all but the check.
“We can’t keep up that clip,” I says to her.
“We could,” says she, “if you wasn’t spendin’ so much on your locker.”
“The locker’s a matter o’ life and death,” I says. “They ain’t no man in the world that could dance as much with their own wife as I do and live without liquid stimulus.”
When we’d been there four days she got to be on speakin’ terms with the ladies’ maid that hung round the lobby and helped put the costumes back on when they slipped off. From this here maid the Missus learned who was who, and the information was relayed to me as soon as they was a chance. We’d be settin’ on the porch when I’d feel an elbow in my ribs all of a sudden. I’d look up at who was passin’ and then try and pretend I was excited.
“Who is it?” I’d whisper.
“That’s Mrs. Vandeventer,” the Wife’d say. “Her husband’s the biggest streetcar conductor in Philadelphia.”
Or somebody’d set beside us at the beach or in the Palm Garden and my ribs would be all battered up before the Missus was calm enough to tip me off.
“The Vincents,” she’d say; “the canned prune people.”
It was a little bit thrillin’ at first to be rubbin’ elbows with all them celeb’s; but it got so finally that I could walk out o’ the dinin’ room right behind Scotti, the opera singer, without forgettin’ that my feet hurt.
The Washington’s Birthday Ball brought ’em all together at once, and the Missus pointed out eight and nine at a time and got me so mixed up that I didn’t know Pat Vanderbilt from Maggie Rockefeller. The only one you couldn’t make no mistake about was a Russian count that you couldn’t pronounce. He was buyin’ bay mules or somethin’ for the Russian government, and he was in ambush.
“They say he can’t hardly speak a word of English,” says the Missus.
“If I knowed the word for barber shop in Russia,” says I, “I’d tell him they was one in this hotel.”
V
In our mail
