The Last Night at the Ritz (Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries) by Savage Elizabeth

Author:Savage, Elizabeth [Savage, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: AmazonEncore
Published: 2012-10-02T04:00:00+00:00

15

Oh.

Gay went into the bathroom and while she was gone, I had just a small bit of the Jack Daniels. When she came out she said, “I like our dresses. Don’t you like our dresses?” And then she said, “You know that Len loves Charley. It’s just that he doesn’t understand.”

She turned on the lamps.

That’s not it, I thought. It’s not that he doesn’t understand. He just doesn’t remember.

In our Junior year, Len and Gay broke up.

It was that God-awful period in late February when the drama of exams is over, the all-night sessions and the gone-in-the-stomach, over-the-top feeling that comes when they distribute the blue-books and close the doors and the professor chalks the time upon the board. I’ve asked around and haven’t found a B.A. yet who doesn’t still have nightmares (and I don’t speak figuratively) about not being able to find the room where the exam is to be given or about realizing at the last moment that he has not once attended the course. My own version of this general trauma is that the course that I have not once attended has something to do with history and that since I am a very fast reader, if I could only get hold of the text I might be able to pull it off. With the help of Clio.

Anyway, after exams everyone is surly.

And in late February spring vacation seems light-years away, the weather is mean, coats steam unpleasantly in the vestibule and snow gets into your overshoes; you are sick to death of coffee and of everyone in the smoking room, the movies are all second-run and there is no place else to go.

Except Louie’s.

Louie’s was the one beer joint where everyone went, always had, probably do now. It was a sprawling, murky place with a long bare bar and time-blackened booths carved with initials and class numerals. At Homecoming and reunions the elderly flocked to Louie’s; at other times there was no one there but students.

The factory hands had their own place down by the river where you were supposed to be able to pick up the town girls, though about that, I’m sure I can’t say. And the grand place in town was the Seagull Room at the hotel where, we understood, the cloths were linen, the waitresses on their toes, and where on Saturday nights there was a man who sort of played on the piano.

We certainly couldn’t afford that kind of thing. So where we went was Louie’s.

At Louie’s there was a jukebox and the waiters were burly, but for the most part Louie did his own bouncing. The rules were simple: no charging and no disturbances. Once you were bounced you did not get back in. The place was usually decorous because nobody wanted to take the chance: Louie’s was the only place where they didn’t ask your age. There was a rumor that Louie had some arrangement with the police. I don’t know—maybe it was so. We certainly had an

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