We Five by Mark Dunn

Author:Mark Dunn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dzanc Books

The music was louder now, the partiers singing along with the record, “I’m Just Wild About Harry,” except that William Holborne was putting it a bit differently. “I’m Just Wild About Carrie” was what he warbled right into the ear of its most appropriate recipient, in the process spraying one side of Carrie’s face with atomized droplets of gin-scented saliva.

“You, sir, are absolutely disgusting!” she cried, locking arms with Ruth, who was still looking out the window, still waiting for the denouement to the little drama being played out a half block away. “And it’s time for us to go. Let’s gather up the girls, Ruth, before Deloria Littlejohn or my mother or someone on this block who values their sleep ’phones the police.”

“Yet the evening is young and you are—I do not exaggerate, madam—the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met!” Will said all this without slurring a single word. He was soon joined by Jerry Castle and Tom Catts.

“They’re leaving,” announced Will with a display of exaggerated dejection. “The evening has hardly gotten started and these choir babies are ‘much skidoo about nothing’—nothing at all.”

“Well, we can’t have that!” boomed Jerry thickly. “Not to mention that, practically speaking, we seem to have lost all trace of Miss Barton.”

Carrie and Ruth looked about the room in hopes of proving Jerry wrong.

Jerry cheerfully elaborated: “We were having ourselves a nice cozy gas in the kitchen while I was helping the little lady prowl around for something ice-cold and zero-proof, and in marches this flannel-tongued hunkie or—or wop or some such species of Ellis Island gorilla, who starts to muscle in on my territory, and while I’m fending him off, I got a couple of thirsty professorial Yid butt-inskies stealing in behind me from the back porch, and now they’re buzz-buzzing around the flame of luscious Lady M, and before I can get her hustled away to safety, two la-di-dah lizzie boys with The-da Bara eye-paint flounce in and give me the puke-belly from the stinking reality of their very existence, and while I’m contemplating which of these disturbers of my very own peace is going to get the knuckle sandwich, I see my Lady Fair duck out and disappear into the night, and now I feel cheated and wholly maligned by cruel circumstance.”

Will grinned. “You could have spared us the silly-quee, Jerry. She just walked in. See her over there by the clodhopper in the glee-club boater? Go tell her goodnight.”

Jerry stiff-armed his way across the crowded dance floor to reintroduce himself to Maggie, as if such a thing were necessary. At the same time, Maggie was swimming in a different direction, over to Bella Prowse, who lay sprawled upon the carpet next to the Victrola, surrounded by a cluttered imbrication of phonograph records from the Prowses’ prodigious music collection. Reaching Bella, Maggie went down on her knees to put herself at eye level with her hostess.

“Hey, you,” said Jerry, now towering over Maggie. “Do you remember me?”

“Of course I remember

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