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| Dick Cavett, talk show host |
Chewing Gum and a Strident Laugh |
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I was on one of my lone pilgrimages to New York and decided to visit the Cloisters.
Amidst the medieval structures I wandered, a wintry orange sun setting in the chill gray sky beyond the Hudson . . . I met a vaguely whorish-looking blonde, complete with chewing gum and a strident laugh, incongruous among the tapestries, prie-dieux and statuary, who had chosen that particular day to satisfy her curiosity as to "just what this old place was, anyhow." It was cold outdoors, warm in the Cloisters, there was that kind of panicky malaise and loneliness that Sunday afternoon brings. She had an insouciant air, I liked the way she had her hands thrust into her loden coat pockets and I wanted to marry her.
I took her to Downey's, where I bought her the most lavish dinner I could afford (chopped steak) and had a Manhattan to screw up my courage — which it did, badly — and then another one, which had the desired inhibition-dissolving effect. I invited her to my small cozy (four dollar) single in the Hotel Times Square, where, as Walker Percy says in one of his novels, "I gave her the merriest time a girl could imagine."
She told me I was sweet and vanished gradually down the subway steps, waving over her shoulder without looking back . . . and I headed for Grand Central feeling mature. (New York, mid-1950s)
from Cavett by Dick Cavett and Christopher Porterfield (Harcourt, © 1974)
© 2000 Nerve.com, Inc.
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