Dorothy Parker Drank Here (11 page)

D
ust. Darkness. Clutter. It meant nothing to Dorothy Parker. All she had to do was relax into her formless state and let her particles settle where she wished. Finding the right carton had taken her almost no time at all.

Of course, she wasn't going to tell Norah that, as the ambitious young woman would want to pack up and head right back to the city. That bottle of wine and the deck overlooking the Long Island Sound presented a rare opportunity for Dorothy Parker, and she wasn't about to give it up.

And so she hovered in the attic, letting the clock run out. Meanwhile, she found something even better than the Bordeaux—a dusty bottle of aged Glenfarclas Scotch that had probably been long forgotten. No doubt it was quite valuable—a rare treat.

When she heard Norah leave to buy batteries or some such nonsense, she let her particles settle into corporeal form. Then she hid the carton that was labeled
LITTON PRESS/1979–1981
by simply pushing it to the other side of the attic, so that it was grouped with the boxes Norah had already looked at. She would wait until morning
to tell Norah it was there. Meanwhile, she carried the Scotch and the tote bag out of the attic.

Dorothy Parker found a bar glass in the kitchen cabinet and ice cubes in the freezer. Perfect. She brought her glass and the bottle of Scotch out onto the deck, where she eased herself into a wooden Adirondack chair overlooking the Sound. She took a small sip of the drink. It was like nuts and honey and something she couldn't place. The last time she had tasted such exquisite Scotch was during Prohibition. She was in a terrible depression—over a man, of course—and had been thinking about a quick solution involving razor blades and a bathtub. Then Mr. Benchley showed up at her door with a bottle of Scotch—the real stuff. It was dearer than gold in those days, and he wanted her to have it. She had never known anyone so caring and loyal. Dear Mr. Benchley. She took another sip and realized what else it tasted like. Friendship.

She looked across the dark water, aware that the Gold Coast of Long Island was out there on the opposite side, invisible but stolid, the old estates crumbling or fortified, razed or rebuilt. After decades of eavesdropping on conversations at the Algonquin, she had learned that the nouveaux riche were still drawn there, taken in by the promise of buying their way into a place at the table of American royalty, a class that invented itself when the nation was so young it was possible for a man to build an empire on nothing but ruthless ambition and audacity.

She had amused herself at those great estates, spending drunken weekends at lavish parties. It was all such a blur, though she was pretty sure the wild affairs at the Swopes' estate had inspired Scott to write that Gatsby book. She didn't remember it the way he did, of course. Mostly she recalled avoiding the bacchanalia by sitting at the driveway with a drink while waiting for other guests to arrive. Then there were those awful dinners, where she was expected to entertain
the luminaries. She was dutiful, of course—it was the rent she paid for her room and board. Once, she was seated between Albert Ritchie, governor of Maryland, and a boorish pal of Swope's—a newspaperman who couldn't hold his liquor. In the middle of dinner the reporter emitted a loud and ghastly belch. The table went quiet for a moment and she seized the opportunity by turning to the governor. “You will, I trust, grant him a pardon.”

She probably wouldn't have remembered the incident if not for the way it had been quoted for the rest of the miserable weekend.

Still, she almost never turned down an invitation to those parties. After all, the food and drinks were free. But regret often bore down on her the moment she arrived. Woollcott was usually the ringleader, finding friends with obscene wealth who would entertain them for days at a time. One such horse's ass was a banker with a massive estate in Cold Spring Harbor. When she arrived, everyone was in such good cheer she wanted to spit. She could barely wait for a kindred spirit to arrive, and at last someone did. It was Mr. Benchley. “I knew it would be terrible,” she said as he got out of the car, “but I didn't know it would be as bad as this. This isn't just plain terrible. This is fancy terrible. This is terrible with raisins in it.”

God, how she missed him. He was one of the only true friends she'd ever had. She would go into the white light in a second if she thought she would get to be with him. But no, he was traveling in his own circle, and that didn't include her.

Dorothy Parker polished off the Scotch in her glass and poured another.

N
orah pulled into the driveway, ready to get right back to work and find that carton with Ted's manuscripts. She rushed into the house with the flashlights and the extra batteries she had just bought, and saw Mrs. Parker out on the deck, relaxing. Damn her. Didn't she understand they still had work to do? Norah dropped her package on the counter and went outside, armed with indignation.

When she got close, however, she saw that Dorothy Parker's eyes were barely open and her face wet with tears.

“Are you okay?”

“Pardon?”

Norah glanced down and saw the half-empty bottle of Scotch on the side table. “Seriously?” she said, picking it up. “You drank this whole thing?”

Dorothy Parker tilted her head back to look at the bottle. “Not yet.”

“We're supposed to be looking for something.”

Mrs. Parker held her hands toward the expanse of water. “Can't we just appreciate what we have?”

“Thanks a lot for the
help.
”

“You need to have more fun, dear. Pour yourself a tall one.”

“Where did you get this, anyway?” Norah said, examining the bottle. “It looks expensive.”

“I should think so, yes. Terribly expensive.”

“You can't just take something like this. They might have been saving it.”

“Save? One should
save
money perhaps, but not Scotch. Of course, I've never done either. But if I were rich, I'd spend all my money on expensive liquor and share it with my friends. Yes, that is precisely what I would do.”

“I'm getting back to work.”

Mrs. Parker stared at the horizon and sighed. “I would have made a darling millionaire.”

Norah headed back toward the house and hesitated, wondering if she should close the Algonquin guest book. When she opened it again, Mrs. Parker would be sober and able to help her search the attic. She glanced back at her drunken accomplice, and saw her staring across the water, weeping. She decided to leave her alone with her memories, and went upstairs to search on her own.

It took several hours to examine all the other cartons, as Norah had to take frequent breaks to clear her throat. At last, she had to admit defeat. There simply was no box of manuscripts from 1981. The trip had been for nothing.

Tired, hungry, and dirty, she closed the attic door and went out onto the deck to check on Dorothy Parker, who was snoring softly. She wished she could sleep, too, but it didn't seem right. Despondent as she was, Norah wanted to return the car, as she had promised.

She went into the kitchen and made herself some coffee so she could stay awake for the drive home. It did nothing for her spirits, but she managed to tidy the house so that it looked as clean as it had when they arrived. She splashed some water in her face and went out on the deck again. Dorothy Parker was still asleep.

“Mrs. Parker,” Norah said, shaking her shoulder. “Mrs. Parker?”

Norah knew that all she had to do was close the book and open it again, and Mrs. Parker would make a sober companion. But she decided she was in no mood for company, anyway. She would drive home in silence, a closed guest book on the seat beside her.

Shortly after she hit the road, Norah's bladder reminded her about that coffee she'd had before leaving, and so she found a gas station with a restroom. She needed to fill up the tank, anyway.

Afterward, she hesitated before pulling back onto the highway, wondering if conversation would help her stay awake and focused. But was she really in the mood to talk?

The driver behind Norah honked.

“Okay, okay,” she said, and merged into traffic. She drove on in silence, but after a while, the steady
thump, thump
of tires on pavement became hypnotic, and she realized a distraction would probably do her some good. She opened the book on the passenger seat, and Mrs. Parker's form took shape right on top of it.

“Where are we going dear?” she asked.

“Back to the city.”

“Thank goodness.”

Norah glanced at her. “You seem recovered.”

“Quite.”

“You looked so melancholy out there. At first I thought it was just the Scotch, but then I realized you were probably reminiscing about the good old days.”

“Hardly. To quote Franklin Pierce Adams, ‘Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad old memory.'”

“Sorry to hear that,” Norah said. “I thought you might share some happy stories to cheer me up.”

“Why do you need cheering up? Didn't you find the carton you were looking for?”

“Why would you assume that?”

“Because we're heading back.”

“It wasn't there.”

“It most certainly was,” Mrs. Parker said.

“I looked everywhere.”

“My dear, I saw it. I know precisely where it is. Now turn this automobile around.”

—

H
alf an hour later they were back in the attic, and Dorothy Parker showed Norah where the carton was.

“How did I miss this?” Norah said, dragging it to the ladder.

“I'm sure I have no idea.”

Norah carried the carton to the kitchen, going over it in her mind. She had carefully read the labels on every box. There just didn't seem to be any way she could have missed it.

She dropped the carton on the countertop and looked around for a pair of scissors to cut through the tape. Unable to find one, she pulled a long chef's knife from the block on the counter. She stared at the reflection of her eyes in the blade, wondering how she had missed seeing the carton when she had read the label on
every
box she pushed aside. There was only one way that particular carton could have wound up in that spot—Dorothy Parker put it there.

And she knew why.

“It was you!” she said to Dorothy Parker as she held up the knife. “You hid it from me so you could drink that Scotch.”

“You don't have to get touchy about it,” Mrs. Parker said.

“I think you're confusing me with Audrey Hudson,” Norah said. “But that doesn't mean I'm not furious.”

“If you hadn't closed the book, I would have told you.”

Norah was in no mood to argue. She needed to see what was inside that carton. She carefully sliced through the tape that was
holding it shut, and took a deep breath. “If you believe in prayer, now would be a good time.”

“I believe a lot of things—that true love is impossible, that no person in the history of the world ever had a happy ending, that the only cure for a hangover is another hangover. But I do not believe in prayer.”

“Suit yourself,” Norah said, and closed her eyes for a moment to ask her mother—or whatever guiding spirit might be watching over her—to please make sure both versions of Ted's
Settlers Ridge
manuscript would be found inside this box.

She opened the top flaps of the carton, and there were indeed typed pages inside. But the manuscript on top was
Good-bye, Hollywood
by Marilyn McIntyre. Norah's heart beat faster. It
had
to be in here. It just had to.

She lifted the manuscript, which had been bound in a rubber band that had long ago disintegrated, and carefully set it aside. And there, underneath, she saw it—a title page typed in old-fashioned Courier font:

SETTLERS RIDGE

by Ted Shriver

Final Draft

A chill traveled down Norah's back. “God,” she whispered.

Dorothy Parker looked over her shoulder. “Is that it?”

Norah gripped the manuscript like she was lifting a sacred relic. Beneath it was another copy with the same title page, but a handwritten note on a narrow slip of yellow paper was clipped to the top. It read:
Aviva, here's the final version of Ted's latest. Please discard previous.—Audrey.

Norah looked straight up and whispered, “Thank you.” Then she
laid both manuscripts side by side. Each bore a stamp in the lower right-hand corner. The first manuscript was stamped
RECEIVED JAN 7 1981
and the one with Audrey's note was stamped
RECEIVED JAN 8 1981
.

Norah began turning over the pages, comparing the different versions. The one on the right, with the yellow note, was on the slick, chemically treated paper of an old-fashioned photocopy. Norah continued flipping pages, looking from left to right. This went on for several minutes until she reached a page in the photocopied version that appeared to be on typing paper.

“Look,” Norah said. “She retyped a whole chapter.”

And there it was—the page that contained the three paragraphs that were not in the original.

Norah sat down to take it all in. Here was absolute proof of Audrey's culpability, and she knew exactly how she would use it to reel Ted in. This could change everything.