Chapter 20. A Date
At the hotel salon, she had just enough time for a wash and set. She refused to let them cut her hair so Angelique swept it up into a stiff French roll that Scarlet knew would showcase her new dangly jet earrings to perfection. Angelique didn’t want money either; just her room number.
“This is almost too wonderful,” thought Scarlet. “I definitely see why people claw at each other like crazed rats just to enter this world.” However, Angelique didn’t object to a tip.
Scarlet stopped at the front desk for her parcels: “In your room, madam.”
Well THAT was a bit creepy and unforeseen. She WAS a rube, fresh from the country. A “goober”, India would say. She didn’t care for the idea of strange men entering her room.
Hopefully the bell captain watched while the parcels were unloaded – but if he delivered them himself, didn’t that mean that technically he had access to her room at any moment? Hotels were creepy! She could see that this attractive new world came with a side serving of helpless paranoia.
If you expected to be waited on by anonymous people closely scrutinizing your behavior, wasn’t that like inviting permanent spies? Could the loss of privacy ever be worth it? wondered Scarlet. Already she missed her anonymous old free-wheeling self – independently setting herself up as a critic whom it would never be worth anyone’s time to criticize back.
The idea for a play began to stir inside her – people following a treasure hunt finding terror instead and unable to warn the optimists still coming. Eyes glittering with an imagined future, like something out of a om painting – endless warnings but no one would listen! Hmmm.
Ten minutes to change meant a “whore’s bath” in Ian’s unlovely terminology: just a once over at the sink. She hadn’t brought perfume but the hotel’s lavender and cucumber soap left a pleasant enough scent. She wore the brocade top and the long black velvet skirt – she wouldn’t need the merry widow for that – what a pity she hadn’t thought to purchase a new pair of gold high-heeled sandals. Her old black court pumps would just have to do.
The phone rang: a gentleman awaited her in the lobby. The brocade top came with a matching evening bag – and once she had a room key and a handkerchief she didn’t really need anything else. That, she realized, was because she trusted Pom. He wasn’t a masher or a blackmailing cad – she felt certain he wouldn’t stand her up or strand her anywhere. On the other hand, if the hotel staff wandered in and out of her room at their pleasure, then she needed to add her coin purse and datebook, jut in order to feel confident nothing “truly Scarlet” had been left behind. Just another anonymous hotel room filled with a day’s shopping.
Pom glowed with a fresh shave and a deep crimson tie set off by his dark suit; no paint stains in evidence. Funny, thought Scarlet, we each removed a layer of skin and donned unaccustomed finery to spend the evening together.
“New outfit?” he inquired. “You look smashing.”
The doorman opened the passenger door of his battered Dorset with a flourish and Scarlet climbed in.
“I suppose you know what Thoreau said about new clothes,” she teased.
“Thoreau?” He pronounced it “thorough.” “Your naturalist fellow?”
“He was a philosopher. He said to beware enterprises requiring new clothes.”
“I hope you don’t feel that it was truly a requirement,” drawled Pom. “Certainly not by me. You know, we English also have a philosopher: Keats.”
“Oh, and what did he remark?”
“That beauty is its own excuse for being.”
No doorman at Luigi’s, the dark little restaurant in Soho whose shrimp scampi came so highly recommended.
They shared a dark booth, a bottle of chianti and an antipasto salad. Scarlet ate with an appetite.
She supposed any comment about the depthless hunger of breastfeeding Moms would dampen the conversation. Just thinking about Nick made her breasts leak. Perhaps she wouldn’t dry up after all.
“Is there anything I should know about this film?”
“No,” said Pom. “Hitchcock introduces the problem very elegantly. A fresh mind is all that’s required.”
“But that’s a lot,” said Scarlet. “Then tell me about the first time you saw it.”
“And the only time. Let’s see: it was two years ago – I just happened on it at The Rialto. The picture of James Stewart with a telephoto camera was intriguing. I think I assumed it was about blackmail, gangsters – you know, typical American. Then I saw the wheelchair.” He grimaced. “You’re tricking me into giving away the plot.”
“I’m not trying to. It’s just hard to get you to talk about yourself.”
“That’s a very English quality. I think we’re raised to be self-deprecating and make fun of ourselves.”
Not Ian, thought Scarlet. He always said no one toots your horn if you’re too shy. Maybe it was a class thing. But she certainly didn’t want to discuss her husband tonight.
“But ask me anything about cricket, shooting, or the ancient Greeks and Romans,” Pom continued. “The joke’s on my parents who spent all their assets qualifying me for a club I don’t care to join. Quantum ille canis in fenestra?”
“Family motto?”
“I suppose it ought to be. How much is that doggy in the window is what it really means.”
Scarlet burst out laughing. “You can see I’m deficient in dead languages.”
“They’re dead for a reason. There’s a credible theory that the English became great conquering explorers just to get away from their bad weather, repellant nannies and disapproving headmasters.”
“I heard something about the pursuit of sunlight. Warm weather.”
“Sadly, it seems we carry our inner darkness with us. All this “white men’s burden” stuff was really about trying to make seemingly happy people as miserable as we were.”
“I love your iconoclastic approach to history,” said Scarlet. “Learning iconoclasm is Artist’s Job #1 in my book.”
“Amen. How else could the whole colonial adventure have gone so horribly wrong? They gave us so much and we gave them so little. Sterno-flavored tea and cricket paddles explains everything.”
The scampi was worth waiting for. The shrimp were tiny, but encrusted with garlic and pecorino like so many little nuts.
“This is divine,” gasped Scarlet. “But I’m afraid I’m going to reek. What if they refuse to allow us into a public place?”
“This is Soho,” Pom explained. “Everyone in the theatre will have dined on garlic and onions.”
If they had, Scarlet wouldn’t be able to tell, but of course that was the wickedness of garlic.
The film was unexpectedly funny. Scarlet had expected something very dark and shocking but it was in full color and seemed to focus around an entire apartment house of fascinating relationships.
“Like an ant farm,” she whispered to Pom, but his, “Pardon?” seemed to suggest this was just another incomprehensible American reference.
“We used to get ant farms for Christmas,” she explained as the credits rolled. “Dirt encased in glass. You watched ants digging tunnels and rushing their little eggs around.”
“Sounds awful,” said Pom. “I was spared American excitements. It was all nuts, oranges and socks for the likes of us. I think I got a compass one year.”
They were silent until they found themselves sitting in the Dorset on the way to her hotel.
“So what did you think of the film?”
Her mind was bursting with complex impressions.
“Could we stop at a coffee bar? This is going to take some time to hash out fully.”
Alysse Aallyn 
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