Dorothy Parker Drank Here (17 page)

“I want to see those manuscripts you found.”

“Why?”

“Just humor me.”

“You don't believe me?” she asked.

“You can't take everything so personally.”

“Just to be clear,” she said, “if I show you those manuscripts, you'll sign the contract?”

“I'll sign the contract.”

“Right away?”

“Right away.”

“You promise?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

She studied his expression to be sure he wasn't making a joke. His brow was low and serious.

She held up her wineglass for a toast. “To
Simon Janey Live
, then.”

A
fter dinner, they rode the elevator together and Norah got out on her floor, telling him she would fetch the manuscripts and bring them right to his room.

“I'll be up in just a couple of minutes,” she said.

Norah smiled as she floated down the hallway toward her room. It had really happened—she and Ted Shriver had become friends. In his own obstreperous way, he had been kind to her. And there was a genuine connection there. She could feel it in every cell.

Not only that, but she was only minutes away from having a signed contract.
Simon Janey Live
would stay on the air. And she had done it all on her own!

Norah slipped the key card into her door and opened it. She couldn't wait to tell Dorothy Parker the great news. She even thought there was a good chance she could get him to sign the guest book.

She opened the book and called Dorothy Parker's name. “I need to talk to you,” she added. “I just had dinner with Ted Shriver.”

She clicked on a table lamp and saw the dust particles settling themselves onto the side chair. Within moments, there she was.

Dorothy Parker looked straight at her. “Did he use a knife and fork, or just put his face into the food?”

“He was a perfect gentleman,” Norah said.

“Where's the fun in that?”

“Listen to me. He's going to do the show. He's—”

“You seem tipsy,” Mrs. Parker said. “Did he get you drunk?”

“I had three glasses of wine with dinner, so I may be a bit . . . relaxed. But I'm sober enough to know what I'm talking about. My plan worked. Audrey went to see him and things must have gone really well, because he's almost happy.”

“I was almost happy once. Then we ran out of gin.”

“What about all those times you fell in love?” Norah asked.

“Yet another form of intoxication.”

“Well, I guess that's what Audrey does to Ted,” Norah said, “because the transformation was dramatic.”

“I hardly think so.”

“You don't believe he's in love with her?”

“I believe he feels a bewildering sense of obligation.”

“Isn't that love?” Norah pulled off her heels and dropped into a chair.

“If it were, we would all be running off with the tax collector.”

“In any case,” she said, “seeing her buoyed his spirits.”

Mrs. Parker studied her nails. “And I suppose she's doing the story about the guest book, now that she saw me?”

“I know you're angry about that, but there was no other way. Can you forgive me?”

“Unlikely.”

“What would you have done in my shoes?” Norah asked.

Mrs. Parker picked up her cigarettes from the dresser and lit one. “The same thing, I should think. That doesn't make it right.”

“I'll find some way to make it up to you.”

“You can give me that darling puppy, for a start.”

Norah sucked air. “About that—”

“Oh, my dear. You didn't give him to that horrid woman, did you?”

“I think they'll be good for each other.”

Mrs. Parker took a drag of her cigarette and flicked the ashes. “Well, she certainly has it all now, hasn't she?”

“Here's the good news. I think I can get Ted to sign the book. He was very . . . open.”

Mrs. Parker's brow tightened. “That doesn't sound like Ted.”

“You should have seen him. He showered and shaved.” Norah bent over to open the room safe, where the two copies of the
Settlers Ridge
manuscript were stored.

“What are you doing?” Mrs. Parker asked.

“He wants to see these,” Norah said. “It's his one condition. Then he'll sign the contract to do the show.”

“Why is he so insistent?”

“He needs to see for himself that we have real evidence.”

“He doesn't trust you?”

“He's being cautious. I can understand that.”

Dorothy Parker looked dubious. “Trustworthy people tend to be trusting. Untrustworthy people—”

“He wouldn't lie about this.”

“Why not?”

“Because he knows how important this is to me.”

“My dear—”

“I'm not as naive as you think I am. This is real. Ted Shriver and I connected tonight, and he's going to do what he promised.” Even as she said it, Norah knew she sounded like a gullible ingenue, but if Dorothy Parker had only been there to see his face and hear his voice.

Mrs. Parker said nothing. She took a long drag on her cigarette and exhaled in Norah's direction.

“That smoke went right in my eyes,” Norah said.

Dorothy Parker crushed out her cigarette. “Exactly what I'm afraid of.”

—

N
orah held the two heavy manuscripts and the antique guest book as she knocked on the door to Ted's room. She waited a few moments and knocked again. C'mon, she thought, before my arms break.

At last he pulled open the door. “Come in,” he said without looking at her. He seemed drowsy and distant—dramatically worse than he had just a short while ago.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Dandy.”

“You look—”

“I was lying down. You want to put those on the table?”

As she followed him into the room, Norah noticed that he wouldn't make eye contact now. Did the simple act of going out to dinner exhaust him that much? He lowered himself into the side chair against the wall.

“Thanks again for dinner,” she said as she arranged the two stacks side by side on the table in front of him. There was a breeze blowing in from the open window, and she had to move them to one corner to be out of the crosscurrent.

“You sure you're all right?” she asked.

“Never better.”

Norah went to the dresser and picked up the contract papers so she could get a quick signature and leave him alone to rest.

“Well, here they are,” she said, indicating the manuscripts. “Did you want to take a look before signing the contracts?”

Ted leaned forward. “Move them closer to me.”

“There's a breeze,” she said.

“Fuck the breeze. They're not going anywhere.”

Norah hesitated a moment, but she didn't want to do anything that might set him off, and so she did as he asked and pushed the two piles closer to him. He put a protective hand on each, and she relaxed. He was going to keep his promise.

Ted looked from one manuscript to the other. At last he picked up the photocopied version and put it on his lap. He sat back in the chair and began going through the pages one by one. Every so often he tsked and shook his head, as if he didn't like what he was reading.

She stood on the other side of the table, watching. When was he going to say something? She folded her arms. She unfolded them. At last she broke the silence, just to remind him she was there.

“I always wondered how writers—”

“Quiet,” he said. “I'm concentrating.”

“Are you looking for something in particular?”

“This!” he said, holding up the page with the plagiarized paragraphs. He straightened his arm until the page was right in front of the open window.

Norah felt herself go ice-cold. He wouldn't, would he?

What happened next seemed to unfold in slow motion. He looked at her, and there was something in his eyes that made her believe he wasn't going to do it. He would simply put the page down and apologize for what he had been contemplating. But then he looked away and she knew it was over. He opened his hand and released the page.

“Ted, no!” she cried, reaching for his arm, but it was too late. The breeze carried the evidence out the twelfth-floor window of the Algonquin Hotel.

Norah couldn't speak. She couldn't do anything but stare, hyperventilating, and it was as if reality had crashed so hard into her hopes and dreams that she was forced from her own body. Everything seemed unreal.

Ted rose slowly from the chair, holding the rest of the thick
manuscript in his hands. He turned his back to her and released the pages. They flew up and out, sailing through Manhattan like a flock of white birds on their way home.

Norah still couldn't move as she tried to make sense of what she had just witnessed. She felt a tug, and realized he was pulling the contracts from her hand. He held them in front of her face, ripped them in half, and threw those out the window, too.

“Thanks for stopping by,” he said, and lay down on the bed to sleep.

N
orah sat on the edge of her bed, numb. She replayed the scene in Ted's room over and over, trying to make sense of it, trying to understand where she had gone wrong. And every time she went through it, she got to a point where her thinking hit a dull black wall that led her back to the beginning. As confused as she was, Norah knew that if she could penetrate that blackness, it would all start to make sense.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” Dorothy Parker asked. “Or are we going to play charades?”

“He wouldn't betray me,” Norah said softly.

“What did he do, dear?”

“He wouldn't.”

“I presume that he did. Now take a deep breath and tell me what happened.”

Norah looked up at her and realized the room was spinning. “I'm dizzy,” she said.

“Nonsense,” Mrs. Parker said. “You simply need a stiff drink.”

Norah lay down on the bed. “I just don't understand.”

Dorothy Parker sat down next to her and took her hand. “Let's go through this, shall we? You brought the manuscripts to his room. What happened next?”

“Happened?”

“Yes, dear. You went up there with two manuscripts and came back with one. What happened to the other one?”

“Gone.”

“Gone where?”

Norah closed her eyes and saw the white birds flying through the night sky. “Everywhere.”

“Concentrate, Norah. Where is the other manuscript?”

“Out the window.”

“Ted threw it out the window?”

Oh, God
, Norah thought.
He really did it
. “It's gone,” she whispered, and realized tears were spilling down her face into the pillow. “The contracts, too.”

Dorothy Parker stood and paced the room. “Lousy son of a bitch,” she said.

Norah propped herself on her elbows. “How could he do that? We connected. He liked me—it felt so real.”

“You knew he was a horse's ass. You can't honestly say you're surprised, can you?”

“We had dinner. We were
friends
.”

“No, my dear. You were never friends. It was all a ploy.”

Norah thought back to that day at her mother's funeral, when she had made the decision to be strong. She never regretted it until this moment. Now she wished she could be like Audrey—a delicate flower who drew heroes and rescuers like an open bloom.

“Ted tricked me,” Norah said. It was as if she had been sliced by a blade so sharp she didn't even feel it at first. But now she was starting to bleed and there was no way to stop it.

Mrs. Parker sat on the bed again. “I'm afraid so.”

Norah looked into the writer's soft, dark eyes. She had never noticed how sad they were.

“I trusted him.”

“That's the part I don't quite understand,” Dorothy Parker said. “You're an intelligent woman. You know
exactly
what kind of man he is. What made you let your guard down so completely?”

“I
had
to,” Norah said. “I just had to believe he wouldn't betray me.”

“But why?”

Norah sat up, feeling feverish. Her face burned hot and she reached for the water glass at her bedside. There was almost nothing in it. She spilled the last two drops on her tongue and stared into the empty glass. The dream was gone forever, and suddenly, after all these years, her secret felt hollow.

Norah coughed into her hand and looked up at Dorothy Parker.

“Because he's my father,” she said.