Bob at the Plaza (19 page)

Chapter 16

The Game’s Afoot

Even at that midnight hour, the doorman had no difficulty summoning a cab. “Where to, miss?” he asked me politely as he summoned the first car in a queue down the block.

“The Algonquin,” I responded.

“Sure, no problem,” he said, as he simultaneously held my door open, relayed my destination to the cab driver, and unobtrusively collected his tip. We sped downtown to the hotel, streets empty of the day’s hustle. I fidgeted with the ring in my purse, knowing I had to put it on in a few minutes but worried about how sick it would make me. Feeling sheepish, I peeled open the Dramamine patch I’d planted in my purse before leaving home and pressed it under my collar. Maybe it would help a little.

“Can you wait for me for a few minutes?” I asked my turbaned driver as we pulled up to the hotel.

“Lady, as long as the meter’s running, I can wait for you all night,” he responded calmly, picking up his newspaper from the passenger seat and making himself comfortable.

“I’ll just be a few minutes while I check and see if my friend’s inside.” He nodded absently, already deep into the sports page.

Taking a breath, I walked into the revolving door to the lobby, putting my ring on as the door swung into motion. Sort of a stupid idea, actually, making yourself nauseated while going in a circle, but I didn’t have a lot of options since I didn’t want to pop into existence in the middle of a crowded lobby. So when the doors stopped spinning, I wobbled out of them and into the lobby from the Twenties, replete with the night manager snoozing at the check-in counter. I stumbled over, fighting nausea with each step. The Dramamine helped, but not much. The manager woke up, startled and disoriented. “Can I help you sir, errrr, ma’am?” he asked, confused by the sight of a woman dressed in slacks.

I grabbed the edge of the counter and steadied myself. Taking deep breaths, I ground out between gritted jaws, “The Round Table, are they here tonight? Could you point me in their direction?”

He looked puzzled. “It’s April, sir, errr, ma’am. They’re out at the park.”

The ridiculous idea of those ultimate city-dwellers hanging out in nature snapped me out of my misery for a second. “The park?
Central
Park? What on earth would they be doing at the park? Especially at this hour?”

“All I can tell you, lady, is that they were here a few hours earlier but then I heard one of them say, ‘We could get in a quick one.’ They vanished, and I haven’t seen anybody since. As you can see, we’re pretty quiet tonight.”

I scanned the room. He was right―the lobby was as empty as I’d ever seen it.  Throwing a quick ‘thanks’ over my shoulder, I wobbled back to the revolving doors.

Relieved, I pulled off the ring. Once again, the nausea vanished immediately. Quite a system for visiting the afterworld, as long as you didn’t mind being sick as a dog while you were there. Settling into the cab, I directed the driver back the way we’d just come. He rolled his eyes, but a quick look at the ticking meter reassured him he wasn’t wasting his time. We rolled up Madison and then cut over toward Fifty-seventh and Fifth, the southeast corner of that huge recreation area. I planned to start hunting for Bob in the more populated section of the park. With luck, the park in the 1920s would be safer and better lit than it was now.

After paying the cabbie and walking into the shadows by the entrance, I put on the ring. Maybe the Dramamine had kicked in a little more because, even though my stomach roiled, it didn’t seem to be quite as bad as before.  After a minute or two the nausea went down a couple of notches. Still there, but at least I could function.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a man standing by the row of Model T Fords positioned by the park’s entrance. The cars gleamed in the overhead streetlights, but I couldn’t take my eyes off his stealthy movements as he slipped behind one of them and jimmied the spare tire from the rear. After a few quick minutes he’d wrestled off the tire and bounced it to the ground, where he proceeded to pull the rubber wheel from the wooden spokes. No way would I interrupt this thief in the middle of his robbery, but he’d stolen such a bizarre item that I couldn’t look away.

To make matters worse, the thief seemed familiar. I studied the man from my position in the shadows and finally realized that I was looking at Harpo Marx, wigless and dressed in normal street clothing. Why on earth would he be stripping the tire from a car? What the heck? But maybe at least I could persuade him to lead me to the other Round Table members. After all, he had spoken up for me the last time we’d met. I decided to take a chance.

“Ummm . . .” I cleared my throat as I stepped out of the shadows.

Harpo glanced up from slicing the tire in two horizontally, calm as could be.

“Is that you, Rosie?” he asked nonchalantly. “Bob said you might show up. Did you come to watch the game?” Now that the tire had been sawed in two, like a doughnut broken into two half circles, Harpo (I know I should be calling him Adolph, his given name, or Arthur, the moniker he preferred, but he’ll always be Harpo to me. By the way, I’m translating his accent for you. I couldn’t transcribe his New York Lower East Side vernacular to save my life) stood up and hefted one half circle over his shoulder, leaving the other half on the ground. Following my confused gaze, he barked out a laugh. “Don’t worry―it’s my car, and my tire. I’ll explain later. We’ve got to hurry. Charlie can’t keep stalling them forever.”

He grabbed my elbow to help me navigate the rough turf and the remnants of my nausea vanished. Deeper and deeper, we walked into the park, Harpo whistling tunelessly as he chewed over something in his mind. “I’m working on my strategy,” he tossed out, baffling me even more.

Off in the distance I started to hear a plocking sound, as if flamingoes called each other. Muffled shouts leaked out and, even from a distance, I could hear people fighting. This night became more confusing with each passing moment.

A man focused on his mission, Harpo didn’t offer me any clarification. He strode into a clearing lit in strategic corners by overhead lights. “I’m here, Charlie. Ready to go!” he yelled. Before running off to the group of people standing and gesturing wildly in the center of what looked like some kind of playing field, Harpo paused just long enough to point out Bob, stretched on top of a large boulder on the side.

“We asked him to play with us tonight,” Harpo said, “but he said he didn’t want to get involved in a bloodbath. Coward. He’ll tell you what’s going on.” Harpo released my elbow and gave me a gentle nudge. Stumbling a bit with the nausea, I made my way over to Bob’s boulder.

He stretched out a hand. “Plenty of room up here for two, Rosie. I thought you might show up.”

“Why aren’t you guys at the Algonquin? What the heck is going on here?” I asked, breathless as I tried to scale the boulder to Bob’s side. Finally he simply hoisted me up―a pretty impressive feat. I squiggled into an almost comfortable position next to him and, for once, when he offered me his flask, I took him up on it. Amazing how a slug or two of rye makes even sitting on a large rock more comfortable.

Once in place, I scanned the clearing. Trees and rocks dotted the field, which had been decorated with short wooden posts bearing red, blue, yellow, and black bands of color. A handful of men and women stood in the middle of the clearing in evening dress, dangling wooden mallets bearing similar colors casually over their shoulders or leaning lightly on them. Now that Harpo had shown up, the fighting had calmed down.

Bystanders rested on top of nearby boulders and I recognized my nemesis, Dottie, fortunately a few hundred feet away. Glittering diamonds glinted from the ears and cuffs of lounging ghosts, draped comfortably on their boulders since they weren’t hampered by minor inconveniences like flesh and bones. Attired in tuxedos, fur stoles, and slinky evening dresses, perhaps they’d voyaged to the park after a night at a Broadway show. Maybe they’d ducked out during intermission. Oversized Aleck Woollcott, who was impossible to not recognize even decked out in a tuxedo, top hat and cape, gesticulated wildly at another large, shaggy man.

“I recognize Woollcott, but who’s the other guy?” I asked Bob as I tried to decipher the scene around me.

“We call them the Katzenjammer Kids. They’re always fighting―Aleck and Herbert Bayard Swope. I stay out of it.”

“This is croquet, isn’t it? I played it a couple of times when I was a kid, with my grandmother. I thought it was a game for children and old people.”

Bob snorted. “Not the way these guys play it. They’re nuts about the game. Addicted. Aleck got everyone started last year out on Neshobe, the little island he owns in Vermont where they all go for the summer, and now they’re hooked. They even petitioned the city for a special permit to play croquet here in Central Park. I forgot it was April and they’d be out here instead of at the hotel. Sorry about that.” He turned and refocused on the game.

By this point, Aleck had noticed the half-circle of rubber tire on Harpo’s shoulder. He strode belligerently toward him, yelling, “What do you think you’re doing there, buck-o? We’ve been waiting for you to take your shot for half an hour!” Harpo ignored him and instead paced the ground around a small boulder.

“Come on, Aleck,” a skinny man protested loudly. “You know the rules. There’s no time limit on impossible shots.”

“Why is it an impossible shot?” I turned to Bob, and he explained the play to me. “Harpo and Charlie, the skinny man who just yelled at Aleck, are partners. It’s Harp’s turn and he’s trying to get in position to make his next wicket. But he’s dead on Charlie so he can’t use Charlie’s ball to help. Anyway, Charlie’s ball is pretty far away. If you look closely”—we both bent over the side of our boulder to see the details of play yards away. Even with a car’s headlights augmenting the overhead lamps, it was tricky to see the shadowy balls—“you’ll see that the only ball even close to Harp’s is Aleck’s, but it’s on the far side of the rock Harp’s stuck against. Harp’s in a bind―there’s nothing nearby that he can use to carom his ball off and get it to Aleck’s side of the boulder.”

The situation appeared impossible to me, but Harpo didn’t seem daunted. Whistling tunelessly, he positioned his half-doughnut rubber tire around the base of the boulder in question.

Bob started laughing silently at my side, and I heard vague chuckles rising from the throats of the ghosts now watching attentively from the tops of their boulders. “See what Harp’s doing?” Bob asked, pointing. At the negative shake of my head, he continued, “He’s making a perfectly banked tunnel, one that will lead directly from his ball to Aleck’s. If he gets this right, he can knock Aleck right out of the game.”

Even the whispers of wind quieted as Harpo teed up. Miles away, traffic noise faded and nothing remained in the world but this quiet glade and a handful of vigilant croquet nuts. Aleck stared at Harpo, incredulous, his circular spectacles glinting as the car headlight behind him outlined his blimp-like silhouette. Harpo drew back with a mighty swing and let fly. His ball caromed perfectly through the rubber tire tunnel he’d created and smashed into Aleck’s ball with a resounding
thwak
―a direct hit.

Laughter and applause gusted through the group, and I joined in. Persnickety Alexander Woollcott had met his match on the croquet field. Aleck, however, was not amused. He threw his mallet into the dark woods on the edge of the field, screamed, “You win, you horse’s ass,” and stormed off the field, only to pause at the edge of our vision and yell again, “Correction! Not ‘horse’s.’
Faun’s
ass!”

We laughed even harder then, and watched him stomp away.

Eventually we spectators slipped down from the tops of our boulders (some more gracefully than others. Thank goodness I’d worn slacks) and gathered below to pull out the wickets and stakes and save them for another game. I made sure I avoided Dottie―after the day I’d had, I didn’t have the energy left to deal with her.

“You’re not going back to the hotel now, are you?” Bob asked as we joined the ghostly crowd streaming out of the park. Several ghosts nodded at me, and lifted their hands in half waves, always locating Dottie before they risked acknowledging me. “You should join us for drinks―it’s still early.”

“You’re kidding, aren’t you? It’s 2 a.m. Sheesh, Bob, this has been a very long day. I’m dead on my feet.”

“Yeah, but how often can you carouse with us? I didn’t give you a hard time when you went to the opera but, for Pete’s sake, Roz, you’re always so serious. Some days you’re this close”—Bob held up his forefinger and thumb an inch apart—“to being tedious. Can’t you just play a little for once?”

“Insulting me is not the best way to get me to spend more time with you, Sparky,” I shot back.

Bob sighed, and put on a martyred expression. “Sorry. But really, how much could one drink hurt? Just think how much you’d learn about everybody. It’s a lot more fun than reading about us, Roz.”

Against my better judgment, I let him talk me into joining the spectral group for another drink. In retrospect, I wish I hadn’t.

The night degenerated from there. Each bar we visited was seedier, and stickier, than the last. The confessions got sloppier and, frankly, more pathetic. The fabled wit of the Round Table boiled down to sniping gossip and barbed zings at virtually everyone, including me. After a while, the jokes about my hick life in the boonies stopped being funny and finally, at five in the morning, I called it quits. Bob more closely resembled the drooling mess he’d been the last time I’d seen him at the Table than he’d been since. I honestly didn’t think these people, with their sniping, witty, nasty ways, did much good for him. I don’t care how brilliant they were.

Finally I pushed away from the latest gummy bar. “I’m heading back, Bob. I need to check out of my room by eleven, and it feels like weeks since I’ve had any sleep. I’ve got a long drive later.”

“Just a little more,” he slurred, finishing his martini and beckoning the bartender for another. “Wanna see my friends?”

“You do that.” I straightened my wrinkled clothing, which had become glued to my body over the past few hours. “Stop by and see me sometime at the lake when you’re done here.”

“You got it, Rosie,” he mumbled, turning to nearby Harpo.

Harpo, a non-drinker who had nursed a club soda through the long night, winked at me and mouthed, “Don’t worry, Roz. I’ll watch him.”

I shook my head in resignation and left, taking off the ring as soon as I was out of sight. I made my way to the Knickerbocker in the feeble dawn light, pushing through the doorway just as the sun crested the nearest skyscraper. Thank goodness no one from Knobox waited in the lobby for an early morning flight as I passed through, bedraggled from my long night.