2. 'Half-Cut'
Half-Cut, adj: 1. To be happily intoxicated. See also: pie-eyed, oiled, plastered.
After the long wail of the saxophone and the dark, muddy chords of the piano had finally slowed their sensual rhythm, Mary and Richard reluctantly broke apart as quiet descended on the room and the band took a short break. They returned to their fashionable group at the corner table, with proper introductions all around this time, though Mary had the feeling Richard and Reggie would continue to be "old pal" to each other for the rest of the evening after their inauspicious first meeting on the dance floor.
When the waiter approached with another tray of gimlets, Louise finally pushed the young man away and turned her attention to the drink and her tablemates. "Cheers," she said, raising her glass, "to Connecticut roadhouses!" It was a toast they could all drink to, happily ensconced in the ramshackle Victorian inn, the perfect hideaway for Louise and her friends and the perfect rescue for Mary, Richard and the Isotta.
"Are you on your way to Newport as well?" Richard asked the group.
"Oh yes, it might as well be mandatory," Ella replied, her bright voice fighting to sound perpetually bored. "Long Island for the first half of the summer, Newport for the second, and so it goes in endless repetition until you're so weary you can't stand to look at yourself in the mirror for fear of glimpsing the boring old grummy you've become."
"It's more of a sleepy seaside town than a social destination?"
"There are parties," she sighed, "but it's all the same places and the same people, everywhere you go."
"Like that's different from New York!" Louise chimed in. "Manhattan's the same old people too."
"It just seems like there's more variety, somehow."
"Not like London," Louise recalled nostalgically. "A girl can keep secrets there." Mary snorted in response, though she quickly took a sip of her drink to hide the gesture, hoping no one noticed. "In London," the girl continued, "you never meet everybody."
"Until you do." Mary objected. "And you suddenly realize the backlog of gossip you know about complete strangers, and they know about you."
Richard chuckled in agreement. "Word spreads faster than introductions can keep pace with, so even if you don't know everyone personally you know them by reputation."
"With you, I can never tell if you know them by reputation, or if you create their reputation," Mary said.
"I never create," he replied in mock defensiveness. "I report."
"Is that the case in New York?" she asked the others. "Are all the gossipmongers vicious and utterly unscrupulous?" She kept the corner of her eye on Richard to see if he appreciated the backhanded compliment; his smirk told her he did.
"If they were, then you would have heard about me being fast and loose all the way over in England!" Louise exclaimed, taking pride too in the pejorative terms. Reggie, who had seemed previously unconcerned with small talk, was suddenly alert.
"These days, fast and loose is the only way to be respectable." He pronounced with the upturned chin of a philosopher. But the pose did not last long, the table's laughter at this strange reversal rather deflating the seriousness of his verdict. He looked between Louise and Ella, and added, "And you two are vying for who is the most respectable of them all!" At this Louise gave him a playful slap on the shoulder, which turned into a caress down his arm, and soon the make-out session was back in full swing.
Ella rolled her eyes and turned to Mary, asking, "Was she like this when she visited you in London?"
"Not exactly," Mary allowed, "though she was on the daring side. I remember plotting with her to outsmart the chaperones at a tea dance, when she wanted to waltz with the same man twice. So she bribed the orchestra with cakes and asked them to play the same song again, so she could claim that it was not in fact a second dance, but a repeat of the first."
"Sounds about right," Ella commented with a soprano laugh that Mary could only describe as adorable.
"It all sounds so innocent now," she said, "a world away."
"Not such a bad thing," Richard said. "I'd rather have jazz and gin than Strauss and scones."
"And a toast to that!" Louise cried from Reggie's lap. They all raised their now half-empty glasses, except Reggie, who hit his palm on the table with a bang to halt the others.
"Knock it off, dumbdora! You can't toast with a half empty glass," he stated emphatically, "or we'll be cursed for seven years straight."
"That's twice the penalty for walking under a ladder," Ella said, egging him on. "With no chance of parole."
"If I'm a dumbdora then you're all dumbbells. It's double the bad luck to let a toast go unfinished than to toast with half a glass."
"Applesauce," Reggie replied dismissively, "I've never heard that before."
As they bickered amongst themselves, Mary noticed the waiter battling through the crowd with another tray of drinks. Drinks that, curiously, she did not remember any of them actually ordering. "I believe the solution to our problem is on its way," she said, indicating the reinforcements about to appear.
"If there's one thing we can all agree on," Louise said, "it's that leaving half-finished drinks on the table during the arrival of new drinks is the worst luck of all." Everyone regarded each other for a beat, then quickly grabbed their glasses and threw back the rest of their gimlets in one sip, eager to make the liquor disappear before the waiter reached the table.
Richard caught Mary's eye, amused at the face she was making in response to the strength of the gin, and she raised her empty glass to his in a toast to adventure.
They had not expected an introduction to Newport society here beside a dusty highway in Connecticut, but that was exactly what they were getting. As the bar filled up with more and more people, their table felt like a department store counter at Christmas, with an endless stream of patrons stopping by to peruse the display before busily moving on.
There was Mrs. Cecelia Chester, with her French poodle and her Italian lover, both flaunted like summer's most fashionable accessories. Her corpulent figure and her Victorian hairstyle notwithstanding, the woman obviously placed a high emphasis on the stylishness of her companions. The lover was built like a Greek god, evident through the thin cotton shirt he wore this night – probably every night, Mary concluded – and after talking to him for two minutes, she realized he had the brains of Greek yoghurt. After sharing this observation with Richard, he pointed out that Mrs. Chester did not seem to mind.
There was Mr. Anthony Bloom, the recent Princeton graduate and do-nothing heir to a tinned cookie fortune, and his beautiful wife Mirabelle, two obvious aficionados of the new sport of sunbathing – when Ella's arm brushed against Mrs. Bloom's as they both reached for their drinks, the difference in pallor was as dramatic as a chess board. The couple had become so idle on Long Island, they explained, that they desperately needed a change from a sleepy beach town, which is why they were decamping to Newport to escape the crushing boredom of endless sun. When the season was through, they would then head to the South of France, followed by the holidays in Palm Beach.
There was Miss Edna Eubanks, a glamorous woman in her late 30s who, by way of greeting, performed a handstand on the floor in front of them – her signature move, Mary found out later. Miss Eubanks, however, did not stay long, for the handsome man she had kicked on her way down had gone from supreme irritation to delighted fascination by the time she was upright and smiling apologetically in his direction.
"Perhaps Newport won't be as dull and tedious as we thought," Mary whispered to Richard as the Miss Eubanks departed on the arm of her new gentleman to make way for the next customer, a pudgy man with spectacles as shiny as the bald top of his head.
"Dull and tedious are two very different things, my darling," he joked, "Newport might not be the former, but given the evidence, the latter is still very much a possibility."
Mary tried to hide her mirth from the others, but was not terribly successful. "Would you like to share your joke with the rest of the class, young lady?" the new guest beside her comically admonished.
"I wouldn't want to offend your delicate sensibilities," she replied to the table.
"Oh Dr. Tejay!" Ella scolded as she threaded her arm through his. "They're on their honeymoon, let them have their private moments."
"I wasn't born yesterday, you know," he said, "Everyone here is on their 'honeymoon,' at least they are when they come to me for prescriptions."
The man could only be described as round – his face was round, his cheeks were round, the gleaming top of his head was round, his spectacles were round. "Naughty, naughty, doctor," Ella said as she pulled him up in the direction of the dance floor. Or so Mary thought, until she watched them saunter off, arm in arm, into the inn's hallway. Now that was the oddest pairing she had seen so far, the tall, lithe vamp in all black with the short, stout doctor in a pink bowtie.
"I want another dance," Louise declared when they had gone and the band struck up a fresh note. Reggie moved to stand up, and she brushed right past him to offer her hand to Richard, who took it graciously, all the while sharing a look with Mary that said he would rather be dancing with her.
Reggie let a peevish expression mold his features into a frown for the briefest of moments, before a slight tilt of his head to the side cleared the slate and he smiled in Mary's direction. "Looks like it's you and me, kid," he said as he held out his hand.
His dexterous footwork continued to impress as his unappealing grip continued to annoy, but Mary had to admit she was having fun as they spun around and bumped into people. And she was starting to believe the gin was greatly improving her own footwork, as she managed to step on his toes only once.
When the music ended she noticed Ella had returned, whispering something in Louise's ear. "Come on," Louise called, taking Mary's elbow and tugging her out into the hall, "I've got to powder my nose." They treaded down the threadbare red carpet that lined the public parts of the old inn, walking past the pretty but faded French toile wallpaper that repeated all the way to the end of the building. Upon closer inspection, Mary saw that the delicate pink pattern was not in fact an ox in a charming French field in front of a Roman ruin, but a bucking bronco in an Old West rodeo ring populated by cowboys.
All three of them crammed into one of the tiny bathrooms, Mary assumed for the kind of gossip session she was so familiar with in the women's lounges during grand society balls. She always hated the giggling and whispered secrets, finding the whole thing profoundly silly and so interchangeable: she knew the same girls would be in the same powder room the next week, gushing over every detail of some new beau who had the same dreamy eyes as the last.
But no one attempted to gush about their boyfriends now, though the girl talk did turn to the usual sniping as they mutually agreed that Mirabelle Bloom's brown and green dress was hideous. Louise launched into a detailed analysis of its faults, as Ella pulled a tiny red metal pill box from her purse and placed it on the counter, scooped out some white powder with a miniature matching spoon and held it to her nose to inhale. "Dr. Tejay comes through again, the darling," Louise stopped her monologue to say.
"What is that?" Mary asked; it looked like white snuff, but she could not imagine anything so old-fashioned as that.
"It's a kind of nerve tonic," Ella replied, "called cocaine. My mother used it for years, and it really helped her anxiety."
"One of those cure-all things," Louise said as she reached for her own scoop. "It gives you the energy to dance all night long! And if you think you were half-cut with the gin…"
"Glad you're taking mine, sweetie, but I got some for everybody," Ella said, producing two additional pill boxes and handing them to each girl. "The doc said they're going to make it illegal soon, and we should stock up while we can."
"Fiddlesticks – they used to put this stuff in soda pop. He just wants you to buy more. But thanks all the same. Aren't you going to have some, cousin Mary?" Louise asked at her hesitation. "You must be awfully tired from your long walk down the highway. And it makes everything so much fun!"
"Well," she replied doubtfully, "if it's from a doctor…" She opened the box Ella had given her. "You just…?"
"Sniff!" Ella said behind her sunny smile. Scooping out only about half of what the other girls took, Mary gave a mental shrug, and followed the instructions.
Whatever it was, it hit her almost immediately, a kind of vitality coursing through her veins to the point that her nails pressed little crescents into her palm as she tried to constrain any indication of the effects showing to the outside world. Back at the table, Louise and Ella were chatting a mile a minute, all kinds of ebullient nonsense, and Mary struggled to follow the conversation and keep herself under control at the same time. This strange artificial energy seemed to draw the girls out even further, each utterly unselfconscious as they bombarded the table with the force of their personalities and conversation, but Mary found the opposite for herself – she was suddenly intensely aware of her own appearance, terribly concerned to seem normal and to look exceedingly interested in whatever they were saying.
"Are you alright?" Richard asked, leaning close to her. She turned to focus her attention on him, nodding too many times in rapt response, as an audience member caught up in the music might nod along to particularly rousing symphony.
His eyebrows knitted together in perplexity; the band struck up the notes of a familiar piece; "I love this song!" cried Louise and everyone seemed to jump up at once to descend on the dance floor.
It was a showcase for the trumpeter, who took the chance to show off his virtuosity to the lightening tempo while the piano crescendo up and down the bass scale and anchored the wail in a steady beat. The drummer just brushed the symbols – any more would be too much – and everyone seemed to be dancing like mad. Richard's deft hands on hers kept Mary from spinning too far off in any wrong direction, and she thought for a moment how ridiculous they all must look as the dancers broke apart and crashed back together in dizzying twirls. But keeping pace with the rhythm quickly consumed her reflections, and she danced, determined to stay with the beat.
She felt perilously free – a liberation she thought she might never know, back home in England; the pleasure in this was off-set by her anxiety at such a prospect. Whether this tightening in her throat, a kind of trepidation that mitigated her joy, was an effect of the powder or her own practiced restraint she could not tell, but, while she was enjoying herself, she could not do so with the complete abandon of Louise and her compatriots, who embraced the sultry air and the sliding repetition of the trumpet with such gusto. They were all dazzle and light, even through the haze of the room, utterly embedded in the moment in a way Mary could not even conceive. But she continued the fancy footwork with enthusiasm up until the very last note, when all the musicians came together in a warbling finale.
Most of the couples broke apart but she held Richard closer, even though she was sure he could hear the inhuman racing of her heart. With the music briefly paused and the previous song still ringing in her ears, she quickly found the silence too loud, the dim lights too bright; "Let's get some fresh air," she said and led him through to the center hallway, beyond the tatty screen door and out to the back porch.
It was tranquil on this side of the inn, the veranda that stretched the length of the building deserted. The land behind dropped off gently down to a grove of trees that banked a rocky creek; it was difficult to make out in the darkness but the sound of babbling water was unmistakable. The picture was serene but Mary was not as she leaned against the railing, her eyes darting quickly from the leaves of the wispy maple trees to the fireflies that sparked across the unkempt grass, to the stars in the sky and the dirt on the planked floor, trying to take in every detail and memorize it as if she would forget – she was suddenly very worried she would forget.
"It's so hard to hold on to every moment," she said as she leaned further against the banister and searched the night for any part of the tableaux she might have missed.
Richard stood behind her and placed a gentle hand at the small of her back. "I don't think you can," he said. "And anyone would be a fool to try."
She turned to look up at his eyes through the blackness, and she opened her mouth to tell him that was exactly what Louise and her friends were trying to do, to wring every last drop of life from every tangible moment, in a way that she was somehow unable to do herself. But the protest died on her lips as she thought that maybe he was right and moments were meant to pass, pleasantly undistinguished in time's march, and the ones that really mattered would live on in memory regardless of how hard one tried to grasp them or not.
"Are you alright?" he asked again, his forehead creasing in concern.
The creak of metal against wood caught her ear amid the sound of the crickets and the frogs, and she looked abruptly over his shoulder to see a porch swing at the end of the veranda rocking pleasantly with the breeze, and it looked so appealing in its simplicity and quiet. She walked in the direction of the inviting bench and sat down, letting her feet swing delightfully back and forth as they dangled above the weathered floorboards; when Richard joined her she rested her head on his shoulder and tried to still her restless movements with little success.
"If this is the cure for anxiety," she said as her heart continued to race, "then I know why the sanitariums are so full."
"The gin?" he asked.
"Not that," she shook her head in reply. "Ella had this powder, a nerve tonic to keep you dancing."
Richard paused for a moment. "Oh," he said, drawing the word out into a chuckle of realization, "cocaine?" She nodded. "Thank god. I thought for a minute you were cracking up on me."
"Can't both be true?" She asked, her eyes alternating from intense fixation on one thing to searching frantically for the next on the blackened horizon.
His arm was around her shoulder and he stroked his fingers down her arm in a comforting caress. "Let me guess: Dr. Tejay."
Her newspaperman did not miss much. She nodded again. "It makes everything very… intense." She pulled the red tin from the pocket of her coral suit ensemble, where it had been safely tucked it away. "And, according to the girls, fun. Apparently." Though she was not so sure. "Would you like some?"
"After your ringing endorsement?" he asked with a skeptical grin. Mary realized she was chewing on her fingernails, a habit she thought she had kicked many years before after her mother told her it made her look unsure of herself. "Thanks," Richard said in refusal, "but it never really agreed with me."
"You've heard of it then?" she asked, halfway through the question chastising herself for putting her sheltered life on display.
"It's popular in the newspaper business. My night editor swears by it, he says it keeps him up and writing copy until dawn. I've tried it occasionally but found that, while the quantity of my work improved, the quality dropped off significantly."
Mary laughed, an edgy laugh she could not regulate. "Did it make you nervous?"
"No," he shook his head, "I would feel… utterly infallible, free to do anything I wanted." She was going to joke that this was not very different than normal, before she thought how curious it was that they both found the freedom the substance offered worrying, in different ways. "That's dangerous," he continued. "When you think you can do no wrong is exactly when you do."
"I don't think I'm suited to it," she commented wryly. "I keep thinking that I'm doing everything wrong. Though maybe I just don't equate freedom with loss of control."
"You'll feel better in about twenty minutes," Richard said, "just about the time Louise and Ella will want another dose."
"No thank you!" she laughed again, "I'm far too jittery as it is." Her intense gaze fixed back on her husband; he looked relaxed in a way she envied at that particular moment. The nervous energy was still there and she wanted to wring her hands or tap her foot or do something. But at least some of her self-consciousness had subsided, alone with him in this darkened corner.
No, she did not like this particular medicine, she concluded. Though if Ella's mother took it for many years, it may well confirm the rumors about the woman's erratic behavior. "I don't know," she said, still clutching the box, "if it's better to be with someone calm and collected in this strange anxiety, or with someone equally irrational," she hinted. Richard's composed demeanor, which should be a comfort, was only agitating her further – while she wanted the drug's effects to end, in the meantime, she wanted someone to share the experience with so she did not feel quite so alone. If she was going to lose control, she figured, better to bring someone along with her.
He really did not miss much, she thought again as he took the box gently from her hand and pinched some powder on to the base of his thumb. Richard sniffed it then licked his fingers; he had done this before. "Happy now?" he asked as Mary watched him lay his head back against the bench, entranced by the roll of his throat.
She took the red box and heaved it out into the darkness, content to not encounter the white powdery substance for quite some time. "Better," she replied, moving up to kiss him, and they spent most of the next hour channeling the chemical vivacity into a petting party of their own.
