Not a Hair of Their Heads

A Happy Pair Postpone Their Trip to Europe—For Slightly Bitter Reasons

MARGARET CASE MORGAN

SCENE I: A boudoir, frail as a meringue, around whose walls of soft chartreuse a dragon-fly; is hovering in loafs and semicircles of noisy despair. The morning sun, slanting through ofen windows, dwells in calm, amber fools upon its opalescent wings as, nervously, it flies from picture frame to portiere, to an Innovation trunk standing half-open in o?ie corner, and finally, in sharpening terror, to a patent leather hat box frothed with lingerie on the bed, whither it is pursued by DOROTHY in embroidered Chinese pajamas. She holds an empty teacup in one hand, a copy of the A merican Mercury in the other.

GEORGE, indulgent in grey funnels, stands in the doorway.

GEORGE: You'll never catch it with the American Mercury, darling. Nobody ever caught a bug with the American Mercury. (He looks critically at the dragon-flyt which shies azeay in an iridescent curve to a bowl of y llozv tulips.) Try Snappy Stories. The creature wears a leer.

DOROTHY: (Panicky, in a bar of sunlight) There! He's flown onto the curtain. Now if I can only creep up on him. . . . (She claps the teacup over the unhappy insect and taps confidently on the other side of the curtain.) Now he'll have to walk into the cup and then I will imprison hir.. there with the American Mercury and put him nicely out of the window. Then he can go home and wear a pith helmet and tell about his travels, just like Professor Beebe or whoever it was.

Her voice trails off abstractedly as she raises the teacup a hair's breadth and peers anxiously within. The dragon-fly, an opportunist, emerges brilliantly and soars to the ceiling.

GEORGE: (Seizing a tennis racquet from a chair) Here, I'll smash the blighter! You go and get dressed, dearest.

DOROTHY: (Pale with horror, as she wrests the tennis racquet from him) George! Don't do that with your eyebrows—you look just like Attila,thc Hun. Getaway from that dragon-fly—

She captures it in the teacup, places the A merican Mercury firmly on top and darts to the window.

GEORGE: Really, Do, I adore your tender heart, and if it weren't for those pajamas you'd look just like a ministering nun or something . . . but we've got to make that boat at livethirty, my sweet, and you always wait until just the last minute and then find some bug that's got to be rescued or a goldfish that has to be fed. . .

DOROTHY: The goldfish! (Stricken, she deposits the incarcerated dragon-fly, like a kind of monument, on a small green lacquer table and flies to another table, of gold lacquer, where tzco goldfish drowse in a crystal bowl.) The darlings—see them standing on their tails, George! (Her face, szveet, transfigured as in a dream, becomes suddenly alert.) Send Madeleine in to me, George, please, and wait somewhere while I dress. Then you can come with me while I take the fish to the theatre—but first, Wu h,as to have his talcum powder bath. (She lifts a bluntand stolid Pekinese from a gold cushion on the floor.) I use the same powder on him that the high-brown ladies in Harlem use, sort of ochre you know, and really, it gives him the loveliest tawnv look. Doesn't it, my sweet? Just like a tiger he is, all yaller. . . . (She rattles the senseless creature in an ecstasy of endearment.) Now run along George, I'll be ready in ten minutes and then we can take the fish to the theatre. GEORGE: Take the fish to the theatre! Dorothy, will you get your clothes on and your trunks packed and come at once to the pier with me? It's never too easy to get away calmly, and we've still got a visa to get, remember. Ship captains may be very jolly fellows at a concert, but they arc adamant about sailing on time. Come on, now!

DOROTHY: George, please don't just ignore everything I want to do, that way. I've got to take the fish to the theatre, and even if it wasn't such an important thing in itself, I should think you'd want me to do it just as much for your own sake as for my own, if you looked at it in a logical way. I mean logically, George darling, if I don't take the fish to the theatre I'll worry about them all the way over and all the time in Paris, and I'll make horrible scenes from morning till night, and cry and whimper and ruin your fun and make myself sick. I will, George! And anyway, I've got to do it, so you might just as well stop standing there and smiling into your collar, and send Madeleine in here to me as I asked you to, because I don't care to have any discussion about it whatsoever. (GEORGE turns to go.) Will you wait and go with me?

GEORGE: I will not.

DOROTHY: Please George! I'll explain about it in the taxi. . . .

GEORGE: NO.

DOROTHY: Very well, then.

GEORGE goes from the room. DOROTHY, returning, recalls the teacup, still mutely pinned to the table by the American Mercury. With a little cry, she lifts the magazine. . . . A las! that people do not drain their cups. In a shallow, a, shall we say, negligible pool of cold tea, the dragon-fly lies inert upon its back. It is dead. Its pastel wings are drowned, ingloriously, in cold tea. . . . Tzco limpid tears lisp through channels of Chanel pozeder upon DOROTHY'S cheeks as she lowers the dragon-fly into the waste-basket and instructs MADELEINE to bring the Vionnet blue creped e-chine.

II

SCENE: A taxi. DOROTHY, a little pale in cloud-blue and pearls, clasps a goldfish bowl in beige-gloved hands. GEORGE smokes a cigarette with restraint. He has decided that surrender is, after all, the nobler gesture. In the crystal bozel, a goldfish eyes its mate.

DOROTHY: DO tell him to drive more carefully, George. These fish jump about so, and if we ever lost one under this rubber matting, we'd never get him out.

GEORGE: (When he has admonished the driver) Would you mind telling me now, just in a casual wav, why you are taking the goldfish to the pictures? I don't think they'll like the film at this theatre—its called Hearts Aflame or something, and from all I have heard, I am led to believe that the goldfish, as a vertebrate, has little or no passion. (He taps an ash onto the floor.)

DOROTHY: Don't be absurd, George. I told you I would explain. . . . You see, I was at the movies the other day, at this same theatre.

GEORGE: With the fish?

DOROTHY: NO, with Nannie Evcrton. And you know that beautiful big pool they have in the foyer, George, with rocks and castles and fountains playing and little Chinese men going in and out?

GEORGE: Married men?

DOROTHY: Why, I don't know, George. What a silly question anyway.

GEORGE: (Musingly) I was just thinking they'd probably go out much more than they went in. . . . Now, Dodie, if you cry again.

DOROTHY'S silver voice is, for the moment, stilled in silent, exquisite pain, her eyes, like a hurt gazelle's, seekGFORCE'Suntil in utter self-reproach, he takes her hand and pats it.

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DOROTHY: (Her eyes brightening to a turquoise dawn) Well, and so I thought as long as I'n. going abroad with YOU, how much happier Hart and Sehaffner—

GEORGE: The fish? Where's Marx?

DOROTHY: Marx . . . died, George. . . . (Again the deluge threatens, a mist of perfect tears from the depths of a remembered woe. She controls herself and continues bravely) Well, I thought how much happier Hart and Sehaffner would be there in the theatre than sticking at home with no one to look after them properly, because they might die just like . . . the dragon-fly ... (A sweet, scented tear trembles upon her lashes.GEORGE wipes it away with his handkerchief )

. . . the dragon-fly did, so I asked the manager, and George, he wore a derby hat and was very sympathetic and said I could leave Hart and Sehaffner there until I got back. And he said the fish were fed twice a day by a maid specially dressed in a Geisha costume.

The taxi goes over a bump, throwing Hart and Sehaffner against the side of the bowl in little sparkling vsaves.DOROTHY pales and clasps them tighter.

GEORGE: I can't be cross with you, darling. You're the sweetest, gentlest, most tender-heartest little fool in the whole world, and I don't believe vou ever hurt anything in your life. (He kisses her.)

DOROTHY:(hesitating) Yes,

George, I did. I killed three mosquitoes once, all at the same time— and oh, brutally, George.

GEORGE: My God!

DOROTHY: (pleading, with azure eyes) They were biting Wu.

With a final lurch, the taxi arrives at the theatre. Here, a red-and-yellow banner, limp against the facade, announces: "PersonalAppearance of Pansy Utter, Idol of the Screen", and from a cerulean Rolls-Royce poised in disdain against the curb, MlSS UTTER,a curving fantasy of topaz lace and picoted shoes, enhanced at neck and shoulder by a swirl of dyed amethyst fox and topped by a slightly soiled white Leghorn hat, is descending in the very flesh. A Pekinese, like a warped waffle, lifts its nose from the shelter of her fanciful muff.

DOROTHY: (setting patent leather heels like exclamation points upon the pavement) George, go and tell that woman to stop carrying that Pekinese in her muff. It's stifling.

GEORGE : (trying to pull her away from the crowd rapidly gathering around Miss Utter) "Take that Pekinese out of your muff", my darling, is not a salutation to be employed toward strange ladies unless one is a headwaiter.

The swelling crowd is now split in twain by blue policemen andPANSY UTTERis swept through the aisle. A spacious beldame in a hat swollen with buttercups claws the air and totters againstDOROTHY,still clasping, a little desperately, the bowl of goldfish. Amid small shrieks Hart and Sehaffner are all but undone. AndDOROTHY,torn between the welfare of her personal fish and that of a dog who is, although one of God's creatures, nevertheless a stranger, wears a hunted look. The ghost of a furrow indents her exquisite brow.

GEORGE:(a little bored) Well, let's either go home or get out of this. It's two o'clock now, and the boat, Dodie, dear—

He pushes her through the gesturing crowd into the lobby of the theatre, wherePANSY UTTER, arriving a moment before them, is being pursued, a pink sea shell tossed by angry waves, into the dim corridors beyond.

DOROTHY: George, you take the goldfish and find the manager—he has a derby hat and an impediment in his speech—and then wait until I come. I want to speak to this woman—

She pierces the crowd like a spear and arrives with both small feet in the little sacred circle which detaches the Idol of the Screen from the less indomitable of her admirers.

DOROTHY: Miss Utter, will you kindly take that Pekinese out of your muff?

PANSY UTTER:(extending pale hands, kid-gloved, to a henchman in a daffodil overcoat) Benny, will you please tell this lady that Wan-Sin simply cannot spare any more hairs for memory-books? (She explains to DOROTHY,in high, exquisitely cultured tones) He's practically bald now, the poor darling, and the last lady who wanted a hair breathed on him, and he caught the most awful cold . ..

DOROTHY: I don't want a hair. I want you to take him out of your muff because it's Cruelty to Animals to keep him in there. He's stifling, and it's no place for a dog. You're a cruel, wicked wont an if you keep him in there!

PANSY UTTER : (shrilly) Well, really, madam, live and let live is what I always say, and I will thank you to keep out of my affairs. If you want Wan-Sin out of the muff, suppose you take him out, and see what that gets you! (The atavism

of Miss Utter at this moment is startling to behold.)

Benny drags her away, and the procession continues, leavingDOROTHY to droop upon its fringe. GEORGE returns briskly, bearing the goldfish bowl.

GEORGE: NOW then, darling, it's all over. Now for the love of Pete, let's get away from here!

DOROTHY perceives the goldfishbowl, as bland, as empty as a tear.

DOROTHY:George!Where are my fish?

GEORGE: The manager put them in the pool, and they're fairly wallowing all over it. Look, the other fish are simply green with jealousy . . . see that short one sneering over there in the corner? The manager says they'll all be the greatest pals by dusk. He says that goldfish are at their best socially in the evening, after everyone's gone to bed . . . ^GEORGEis really very winning).

DOROTHY: (peering frantically, at the edge of the pool) / don't see them. Oh, George, why do you always have to do everything just wrong? I told you I wanted to put them in myself . . .

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GEORGE: "Find the manager" were your words.

DOROTHY: Well, I don't believe they're in there at all! He's probably lost them somewhere . . .

GEORGE: Don't be an idiot. I'm going home and get the luggage.

DOROTHY:(sitting down on the edge of the fool and bursting into fresh tears) Never mind the luggage! I can't find my fish, and I'm simply positive they're impaled on something or under the rug ... or if they are in there, maybe they don't like it at all. If I could just see them for a minute I could tell!

George: (wearily) Well, they're right in front of you—those two whooping it up on that rock there.

DOROTHY: Thoseskinny things? You're crazy! (in a fleeting hofe, she bends one swimming eye on the rock, then bows again to desfair).

Life's cruelties are too much for DOROTHY.She seems very small and fate, asGEORGE,forcibly, leads her from the theatre.

Ill

SCENE: DOROTHY'Sboudoir. The trunks have been sent away, the last hat box dribbles its final ribbon. MADELEINE, with one eye on the clock, handsDOROTHY a fowder fuff and jresh gloves and flies for her own neat hat and coat.GEORGE, with the tickets in his hand, waits nervously in the doorway. The boat sails in twentyfive minutes.

DOROTHY:(fowdering)I just know I won't be able to get Hart and Schaffner out of my mind. It doesn't seem mubh to ask that two little fish should be happy when there's so much pain and cruelty in the world, does it, George? It takes so little to make a fish happy. (Her nose, grotesque in its sudden mask of fowder, melts, as she fats it, into a masterfiece of delightful art).

GEORGE: Well, think about it in the taxi. We've got just twenty-five minutes to make that boat. . . .

Below, a door bangs sharfly.DOROTHY tilts her hat and af flies foffyred to delicately arched lifs.

GEORGE : Please,Dodie . . .

From the library, a fistol shot is heard, its echo winging in a white fanic through the house. There is a scream, a fause, andMADELEINErushes into the room.

Madeleine: Madame—madame— they found this in his hand. . . . (She collafses, weef ing).

Slowly,DOROTHY unfolds the fiece of fafer and reads: "My darling: I hey tell me that you are going abroad with George, and after three years of strange resignation, I find this suddenly top much. Do not blame yourself for what I have done —you couldn't help it. And if you love George, marry him. But I wouldn't try Paris at this time of year, sweetheart, it's so frightfully crowded. May I suggest the Brittany coast? You will find the shrimps there so very pathetic.

Your ever-loving Husband."

In a ringing silence,GEORGE glances instinctively at the clock. 'They have missed their boat, but he feels that it would ferhafs be a trifle indelicate to sfeak of that just now).