Complete Stories by Dorothy Parker

Author:Dorothy Parker
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Published: 2002-12-31T05:00:00+00:00

Harper’s Bazaar, September 1933

Cousin Larry

The young woman in the crepe de Chine dress printed all over with little pagodas set amid giant cornflowers flung one knee atop the other and surveyed, with an enviable contentment, the tip of her scrolled green sandal. Then, in a like happy calm, she inspected her finger nails of so thick and glistening a red that it seemed as if she but recently had completed tearing an ox apart with her naked hands. Then she dropped her chin abruptly to her chest and busied herself among the man-made curls, sharp and dry as shavings, along the back of her neck; and again she appeared to be wrapped in cozy satisfaction. Then she lighted a fresh cigarette and seemed to find it, like all about her, good. Then she went right on with all she had been saying before.

“No, but really,” she said. “Honestly. I get so darn sick of all this talk about Lila—‘Oh, poor Lila’ this, and ‘Oh, the poor thing’ that. If they want to be sorry for her—well, it’s a free country, I suppose, but all I can say is I think they’re crazy. I think they’re absolutely cock-eyed wild. If they want to be sorry for anybody, go be sorry for Cousin Larry, why don’t they? Then they’d be making some sense, for a change. Listen, nobody has to be sorry for Lila. She has a marvelous time; she never does one solitary thing she doesn’t want to do. She has the best time of anybody I know. And anyway, it’s all her own fault, anyway. It’s just the way she is; it’s her rotten, vile disposition. Well, you can’t be expected to feel sorry for anybody when it’s their own fault, can you? Does that make any sense? Now I ask you!

“Listen. I know Lila. I’ve known her for years. I’ve seen her practically day in, day out. Well, you know how often I’ve visited them, down in the country. You know how well you know a person after you’ve visited them; well, that’s the way I know Lila. And I like her. Honestly I do. I like Lila all right when she’s decent. It’s only when she starts feeling sorry for herself and begins whining and asking questions and spoiling everybody’s fun that she makes me throw up. A lot of the time she’s perfectly all right. Only she’s selfish, that’s all. She’s just a rotten, selfish woman. And then the way people talk about Larry for staying in town and going around places without her! Listen to me, she stays home because she wants to. She’d rather go to bed early. I’ve seen her do it night after night, when I’ve been down there visiting. I know her like a book. Catch that one doing anything she doesn’t feel like doing!

“Honestly. It just makes me boil to hear anyone say anything against Larry. Just let them try criticizing him to me, that’s all. Why, that man’s a living saint, that’s what he is.

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