my gin-soaked brain. What was Uncle Billy doing here? Who had let him in? Why was he wearing a tuxedo at this hour? And what was I wearing? Apparently nothing but a slip—and not even my own slip, but Celia’s. So what was she wearing? And where was my dress?
“Well, I’ve had my fun here,” said Billy. “Enjoyed my little fantasy of angels in my bed. But now that I realize you’re my ward, I’ll leave you be and see if I can find some coffee in this place. You look like you could use some coffee, yourself, girlie. May I say—I do hope you’re getting this drunk every night and tumbling into bed with beautiful women. There could be no better use of your time. You make me awfully proud to be your uncle. We’ll get along famously.”
As he headed to the door, he asked, “What time does Peg get up, by the way?”
“Usually around seven,” I said.
“Capital,” he said, looking at his watch. “Can’t wait to see her.”
“But how did you get here?” I asked, dumbly.
What I meant was, how did you get into this building (which was a silly question, because of course Peg would’ve made sure that her husband—or ex-husband, or whatever he was—had a set of keys). But he took the question more broadly.
“I took the Twentieth Century Limited. That’s the only way to get from Los Angeles to New York in comfort, if you’ve got the peanuts for it. Train stopped in Chicago, to pick up some slaughterhouse high-society types. Doris Day was in the same carriage with me, the whole ride. We played gin rummy, all the way across the Great Plains. Doris is good company, you know. A great girl. Much more fun than you’d think, given her saintly reputation. Arrived last night, went right to my club, got a manicure and a haircut, went out to see some old robbers and derelicts and ne’er-do-wells that I used to know, then came here to pick up my typewriter and say hello to the family. Get yourself a robe, girlie, and come help me scare up some breakfast in this joint. You won’t want to miss what happens next.”
Once I was able to rouse myself and get vertical, I headed to the kitchen, where I encountered the most unusual pairing of men I’d ever seen.
There was Mr. Herbert sitting at one end of the table, wearing his usual sad trousers and undershirt, his white hair tousled and hopeless looking, his customary Sanka in a mug before him. At the other end of the table was my Uncle Billy—tall, slim, sporting a sharp-looking tuxedo and a golden California tan. Billy was not so much sitting in the kitchen as lounging in it, taking up space with an air of luxurious pleasure while enjoying his highball of scotch. There was something of Errol Flynn about him—if Errol Flynn couldn’t be bothered to swashbuckle.
In short: one of these men looked like he was about to go to work on a coal wagon; the other looked like he was about to go on a date with Rosalind Russell.
“Good morning, Mr. Herbert,” I said, as per our habit.
“I would be shocked to discover that was true,” he replied.
“I couldn’t find the coffee and I couldn’t stomach the idea of Sanka,” Billy explained, “so I settled on scotch. Any port in a storm. You might want a nip yourself, Vivian. You look as though you’ve got a heck of a sore dome.”
“I’ll be all right once I make myself some coffee,” I said, not really convinced of this fact myself.
“So Peg tells me you’ve been working on a script,” Billy said to Mr. Herbert. “I’d love to have a look at it.”
“There’s not much to see,” said Mr. Hebert, glancing sorrowfully toward the notebook that sat before him.
“May I?” Billy asked, reaching for the notebook.
“I’d rather you . . . oh, never mind,” said Mr. Herbert—a man who always managed to be defeated before the battle had even begun.
Billy slowly paged through Mr. Herbert’s notebook. The silence was excruciating. Mr. Herbert stared at the floor.
“It looks as though these are just lists of jokes,” Billy said. “Not even jokes, all of them, but punch lines. And a lot of drawings of birds.”
Mr. Herbert shrugged in surrender. “If any better ideas should develop themselves, I’m hoping to be alerted.”
“The birds aren’t bad, anyway.” Billy set down the notebook.
I was feeling protective of poor Mr. Herbert, whose response to Billy’s teasing