New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Television game show hosts -- Fiction
"Can I not? Lennox. Mason and Dixon. Mason and Slidell. Lewis. Clark.
But above all, Lennox. Lennox is the man. He pulls the strings. He
controls the Eastern Cell."
"Cell!" the gentleman exclaimed.
"Indeed yes. The movement is beautifully organized ... from here
through Washington, London, Paris, Rome ... straight up to our central
headquarters--"
A pair of hands blindfolded him. "Guess who," Olga said.
"Goody Twoshoes," Lennox answered. He removed her hands from his eyes
and continued. "Our headquarters on Mars. We're all Martians. We're
going to--"
He stopped. The strange gentleman had already removed himself, Lennox
searched dazedly and saw him in a corner, unaccountably scribbling in
a notebook. He shrugged, flexed his right arm to feel for his own
gimmick book, then contemplated Olga. She had, in truth, poured herself
into an evening gown; or better still, someone had painted it on her
body and only given it one coat. Lennox handed her a 75.
"What's this?" she asked.
"Paint remover," he said.
She drank it cautiously, finished it with appreciation and held out her
glass for more. They emptied the pitcher and went over to Beekman Place
to look in on a party thrown by one of Olga's friends. It was in a
square apartment house, in a square apartment, and it turned out to be
a Square party ... the men in one room telling dirty jokes, the women
in another room shrieking with laughter and pulling up their skirts as
they loaded up on martinis.
"This is from hunger," Lennox muttered to Olga. "Leave us blow."
"We'd better," she giggled. "It's the wrong apartment."
So it was. They went downstairs to the right apartment which was
identically square. The party was also identically Square.
"I liked the first one better," Lennox said.
They left and went uptown to the West side where Johnny Plummer owned
a house opposite the Museum of Natural History. His party was more
party-line than anything else. They were required to pay five dollars
each as they entered ... in aid of some nebulous cause. No scotch was
served in order to boycott Great Britain. Everyone sat around in tweeds
and dirndls and sang the songs of the People to the accompaniment of an
accordion and a mandolin. Lennox tried to drink up his five dollars in
straight gin, but Olga gave him the out sign within half an hour.
"My turn now," she said and took him to the East side and a
cosmopolitan-type party conducted in French, Dutch, Italian, Flemish
and Swedish. This one, Lennox loved. He ate lobster stewed in absinthe,
drank aquavit, learned Swedish massage, how to cut diamonds, when to
hear an opera entitled "Teresa's Teats," where Kafka was buried, who
was whose mistress at the party, and the particular sexual foibles
of each of the guests. But Olga was party-hopping and impatient. She
dragged him out.
"I liked it there," he complained.
"Too respectable. Where next?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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