The Long-Winded Lady Read online

  AUGUST 6, 1966

  A Busload of Scolds

  MANY of those huge buses that bring people from out of town into the city for a few hours’ visit seem to deposit their passengers on the side streets off Sixth Avenue near Radio City. One Saturday afternoon recently, I was walking past one of those parked buses when I found myself caught in the middle of a crowd of indignant women in little summer hats who were scolding the driver because he had not brought them to the spot where they had expected to be. They had been told, or they had understood, that their ride would end at a point along the river where they could board the boat that goes around Manhattan, and instead they were on the corner of Forty-ninth Street and Sixth Avenue, and by the time they found their own way over to the river, they said, the boat would have left. The driver, who looked tortured, was trying to gain time for himself by carefully examining every one of the tickets that were being waved in his face, and I pushed my way out of the crowd without waiting to hear what explanation he would find for his passengers. All the same, I could not help smiling to think how respectfully all those women must have sat behind him as he drove them in — you know how omnipotent those long-distance drivers look, enthroned alone up high in their front place — and how quickly they had turned on him when they discovered that instead of shepherding them he had led them astray, and was going to have to leave them astray, wandering in the city, and was going to have to force himself to climb back up there in front of them later on and listen to their complaints and recriminations during the long drive home. I was sorry for them all, but I thought they ought to be congratulating themselves on the coolness of the day. I had been thinking about the pleasures of cool weather as I walked up Sixth, which was full of travelers who had come to New York for the day or for the weekend, all of them walking steadily along as though they had been told that they had the whole length of the island to go before they found the way out, or the road home, or the sight they had come to see. The day was not truly cool — there was heat somewhere in the air and no mistaking that it was midsummer — but it was nice out.

  After leaving the bus driver and his problems, I walked into Le Steak de Paris, which was where I had been headed for, and I observed with approval that they had noted the temperature of the day and had left the air-conditioning off and the door open. I usually sit at a small table facing the bar, but it was occupied, and I walked back and sat down to an unfamiliar view; instead of looking at the bar, with its mirrors and clocks and bottles and distillery souvenirs, I was looking along the whole length of the bar and past it at the big front restaurant window and at the street outside. Out there were some more of the people I had seen walking along Sixth Avenue; now they were going to and from Broadway. The window encloses the whole square front of the restaurant, but it is curtained across the top and at the sides, so that only a small rectangle of glass is left uncovered, above a tall old radiator that hides the hips and legs of the bodies walking by outside. I watched the crowd, and once I saw two round heads covered with light fuzz go bobbing past, and I knew that two small boys had just gone by. Inside, the restaurant was quiet — too quiet for the proprietor, who had taken charge of the bar himself for the slow afternoon and stood bowed moodily over his newspaper nearly all the time I was there. The restaurant is cheerful, with a hammered-tin ceiling and an assortment of wallpapers — red brick wallpaper, gray brick wallpaper, gay Parisian wallpaper — on different walls. Over the corner where the coat-check girl stands in wintertime there is a small square canopy, striped in brown and white. In the summertime, since there are fewer customers and no coats, the check girl goes away somewhere. When I had nearly finished lunch, a serious-looking young couple, a man and a girl, came in and sat up at the bar and ordered a drink. Then they changed their minds and carried their drinks to the table next to mine. As he was fitting her chair in under her, the man said, evidently continuing their conversation, “All right, if you must have a definition, I am a Socialist who is interested in lust.” I was fascinated, but he sat down and his voice dropped with him, and I heard nothing more from him until their lunch had been served, and then he said, in a loud voice, as though he were astonished, “The potatoes are very good here.” Another disappointing man, I thought, remembering the bus driver.

  When I left the restaurant, the day had grown much darker. I was only a few steps along Sixth Avenue when some very large drops of rain fell loudly around me and on me, and they were followed at once by a panicky downpour that cleared the sidewalks immediately. All the people had squeezed themselves in against the buildings and into doorways, and I started to squeeze myself into a doorway, too, but I was already wet, so I thought I would hurry over to Fifth Avenue and go along home. I got soaked, but it didn’t matter, I was going home, and as I splashed along I thought once again of the bus driver, and I hoped for his sake that all those angry ladies in their summer clothes were safe under cover somewhere.

  AUGUST 19, 1961

  Movie Stars at Large

  ONE night about ten years ago, very late at night, I was sitting in the big, square bar of the Jumble Shop when Jean Gabin walked in and sat down at a corner table. Six years or so ago, I was having tea in Rosemarie de Paris — the branch near Fifty-fourth Street — and found that Marlene Dietrich was sitting at the table next to me. I saw Judy Holliday strolling around the main floor of Lord & Taylor one afternoon, maybe five years ago, and about the same time, or perhaps a little earlier that year, I was standing in an elevator that had stopped at the fourth floor of Lord & Taylor, and Paulette Goddard stepped in, wearing a yellow dress. It must have been summertime, because of the yellow dress. Judy Holliday was in heavy clothes. I think I saw her in Lord & Taylor around Christmastime that year. As a matter of fact, I’m sure it was Christmastime, because I never walk around the main floor of any department store except at Christmastime, when I am looking for the kind of present you give to people who get scented sachets and Pullman slippers and feminine-looking billfolds and things like that. I like seeing movie stars as I go on my way around the city. I like recognizing them and knowing who they are and knowing that by just being where I am they make me invisible — a face in the crowd, another pair of staring eyes. I never jostle movie stars, or ask them for autographs, or try to snip locks of their hair, but I do stare. I feel that by recognizing them I have earned the right to stare, and I also feel that they do not really mind. It is different if you are not a movie star. One time I was mistaken for a movie star. Then, when the mistake had been cleared up, I was stared at for not being a movie star.

  It was about fourteen years ago. I was sitting in the back room of the Minetta Tavern, and I had just finished dinner. I was waiting for my coffee. Suddenly a very small girl pressed herself against me and put an open autograph book on the table in front of me. I stared down at her and she stared up at me. We did not smile. Then a woman — her mother, I suppose — was over me.

  The woman said, “Oh, Miss Astor, won’t you give Rosalie your autograph? We’ve been watching you since we came in. I told her she’d see movie stars here.”

  I said, “But I am not Miss Astor.”

  The woman said, “Aren’t you Mary Astor?”

  I said, “No, of course not.”

  The woman said, “Well, you certainly do look like her.”

  I said to the little girl, “I’m terribly sorry. I can’t write in your book.”

  The little girl put out her hand and laid it on the book.

  The woman said, “Well, this is a disappointment. Can’t you write your name anyway?” Then she said, very quickly, “Go ahead. Put ‘Mary Astor.’ Just write something. She won’t know the difference.”

  I said, “No, I won’t.”

  The woman grabbed the child and the autograph book angrily, and they went back to their table. I did not watch them go. I felt ashamed. After a while, I glanced across at their table. The child looked downcast and reproachful. She was watching me, and her autograph book dangled from her hands. The woman was s
taring at me. I thought she looked contemptuous. I felt even more ashamed. By walking into the Minetta Tavern when I was there, they had made me into an impostor. It was all my fault. I had been anybody, but now I was only not somebody. I left the restaurant in a hurry, without having any coffee.

  Now I am coming to the point of my story. Since my return to the city after my long sojourn in the country, I have been staying around in different hotels in different neighborhoods searching for the place where I would really like to settle down. A while ago, I left the small hotel in the Village where I always used to stay, and moved to a hotel on East Eighty-sixth Street, just across from Central Park. One night — a Monday — I was going into the hotel about nine o’clock when I noticed a commotion and a lot of very bright lights, floodlights, on the corner of Eighty-sixth and Fifth, directly across the street. I asked the doorman what it was all about. “They’re making some movie,” he said. I went into the hotel and asked the girl in the elevator about the movie that was being made. “It’s Butterfield 8,” she said. “Elizabeth Taylor is out there. And Laurence Harvey.”

  It was threatening rain that night, and it was cold. I put on a large felt hat and a raincoat, and I went down and out and stood near the corner, watching the scene across the street. The scene in and around the ring of floodlights and cameras might have been roped or walled off, it was so well protected by an army of policemen and other people in authority, who were all kept busy easing the traffic out of the way, and then easing it on its way, and encouraging motorists to keep moving, and even persuading Fifth Avenue bus drivers into a pleasing show of docility. I stood watching, to see what would happen. A few people stood near me, and all the people walking their dogs paused to watch a minute. It was really much too cold and windy to stand still for long. Across the street, a tiny bright red car was parked at the curb on the Fifth Avenue side of the big apartment house that is on that corner. The car started suddenly backward and shot around the corner and a short way along Eighty-sixth, stopping just across from the entrance to my hotel. Elizabeth Taylor was at the wheel, and Laurence Harvey sat beside her. During the pause before she started the car again, Elizabeth Taylor glanced into the rear-view mirror and pushed idly at her dark hair, which was tousled, using her left hand. Laurence Harvey looked more closely into the rear-view mirror and, using both hands, combed his hair with a comb. At a signal that I did not notice, Miss Taylor shot the car forward and around the corner, and stopped it where it had originally been standing, just short of the apartment-house marquee. Mr. Harvey climbed unsteadily out of the car. He was wearing a topcoat. He staggered. A doorman in uniform rushed forward to support him. And so on. They went through their scene several times — many times — racing the car backward, stopping, and racing it forward again. It was really a very cold night. People kept coming to watch and then drifting away. At one point, a policeman came and put up a barrier in front of me. I looked around. I was the only person behind the barrier.

  Now I have a dream. In my dream, it is about two o’clock in the morning and it is terribly cold. I am standing on the corner of Eighty-sixth and Fifth, and across the street, on the opposite corner, Greta Garbo is standing, surrounded by bright lights and big cameras. She is wearing an enormous fur hat that does not hide her splendid face. Where I am, it is dark. Across Fifth, the trees and grass and paths of Central Park have vanished into the night. There is no traffic of any kind. A policeman comes and puts up a barrier in front of me. I look around. I am alone. I am all the crowd there is. I am the crowd. I watch Greta Garbo, and I roar like a crowd. My enthusiasm gets the better of me and I howl. In a matter of minutes, I am a mob. I press forward to get a better view of Miss Garbo, and then I make a wild surge. The barrier comes down with a crash. Policemen arrive and form a cordon to hold me back. Two policemen get hold of the barrier and try to stand it up while all the other policemen dig in their heels and almost sit flat on the pavement in their determination to keep me within limits. I begin to cheer. I am almost out of control. I seem to be turning into a riot, but reinforcements of police arrive and I quiet down. Soon I am back behind the barrier. The policemen vanish. I continue to watch Greta Garbo. Suddenly out of the shadows, Jean Gabin appears. He is wearing the uniform of an officer in the French Army in the war of 1914. M. Gabin says, “I’ve been watching you for some time. Haven’t we met someplace? I’m sure I know you.” I say, “No, I don’t think so.” He says, “You look very familiar. I’m sure I’ve seen you before.” I say, “I really don’t think we’ve met, but I can tell you one thing. I’m not Mary Astor. I don’t even look like her.” M. Gabin replies, “Of course you’re not Mary Astor. There’s no resemblance at all. How could there be? You are invisible. Anybody can see that.” He vanishes in the shrouded direction of Central Park. I stand behind my barrier and I continue to watch Greta Garbo.

  So much for my dream, but, in fact, this is a wonderful city. It is always giving me something to think about. Now I am thinking of Madison Avenue. The best bus ride in the city is along there, but tonight I think I will walk up Madison Avenue on my way home. I have never been invisible on Madison Avenue, but perhaps after the walk that I will take between ten minutes after six and twenty-five minutes to seven this evening there will be a different story to tell. Maybe Alec Guinness will be the one who will not see me.

  DECEMBER 3, 1960

  Faraway Places Near Here

  I FIND the world noisy and intrusive in the summertime, and in the hot months I am always too conscious of the rooms I am living in and impatient with them, thinking of smothering, and for that reason, when the summer weather in New York City begins to reach its height, I am subject to powerful gusts of memory from other summers and other rooms in the different places in the city where I used to live. The summer on Sullivan Street was minute and hot and quiet, like the room I had, which measured about ten feet by twelve and had an enormous fireplace and no closet. Outside there was a little court with a fountain that never played, but the superintendent had a small boy, and the boy had a kitten, and they both enjoyed the court very much. On Hudson Street the room was larger and had an enormous fireplace and no kitchen, and the newspaper-and-soda shop on the ground floor next door had a jukebox that played “You Always Hurt the One You Love” all summer long with great beat and volume. I was on the third floor there, and the lady on the fourth floor got my check for the rent in her mailbox by mistake, and the landlady, who lived in suspicion on the first floor, kept asking me about the check, and finally I had to give her another check and stop payment on the first check, and then the fourth-floor tenant turned up with the original check and everybody seemed perfectly content that I was out the two dollars I had to give the bank for the stop payment. Next I moved to an enormous room on Tenth Street that had windows straight across the front, giving me a fine view of rooftops and sky, and I had a tiny fireplace that didn’t work and two big closets. I was six flights up, and the ceiling was low and the flat roof above me was tarred, and the heat was intense, but all the same it was a lovely room, except when I was trying to pull myself together to go out. One Saturday night, I spent about two hours making myself presentable in the five-hundred-degree heat up in that room, and when I was ready to leave I was late and I ran down the six flights and did very well till I reached the top of the last flight, and there I tripped and tumbled head over heels down to the bottom. My arms were dirty and my white gloves were ruined and my hair was down and I thought of myself living in that hot, dirty house, and I sat on the floor in the hall and cried with rage.