Mawrdew Czgowchwz by James McCourt

while one of the Broadway mannequins wailed over the general observant silence, “There ain’t no fuckin’ pastrami!” Grace mediated splendidly: soon there were multiple ardent embraces, laughing tears everywhere, and hasty kisses all around.
    G-G lit up a perfecto. She crossed directly to a beige boudoir to phone the Countess Madge.
    The phone rang at Magwyck. Wedgwood answered. The Countess was “in reverie.” While the cat, Rose(ncrantz), pawed Wedgwood’s impeccably turned trouser cuffs, the Countess sensed her summons and came to the phone. She inquired: “Hello?”
    â€œMagda? It’s G-G.”
    More than just a suspensory pause occurred.
    â€œWhere are you, darlin’? McCrory’s bargain basement? The noise!”
    â€œI’m at Grace Jackson-Haight’s matinee.”
    â€œWho’s she got, Ringling Brothers?”
    â€œTrixie Gilhooley is pouring bourbon in both ears. Dolly Farouche dropped her earrings in the blancmange. Rotten Rodney Bergamot made a fuss. See you for dinner.”
    â€œDarling, was there anything special you called for?”
    â€œNo, toots, only Dolly’s earrings. And by the way, who the hell is ‘Poofie de Chavannes’?” She hung up the phone; two of the Broadway ladies had entered the beige boudoir. One was wailing desolately, “I’m not a nice person at all!”
    New York prepared for a snow emergency. The mayor drank Four Roses, on his winter vacation somewhere in Mexico.
    The Countess Madge turned three-quarter profile from the ebony telephone table toward her guest, Pèlerin (Pierrot) Deslieux. He himself was fumbling busily into a cache in the great tree’s back-top underbranch, tucking away the first, the unfound , Yuletide ornament—a dazzling Bohemian spunglass orange globe, centuries old.
    â€œPierrot, G-G and her protégée—that poor drunken Theresa Gilhooley: you remember the story: she was born almost literally in the wings between numbers at Dubuque on that first national Show Boat tour—they’re up there in the stratosphere in Grace Jackson-Haight’s pinnacle parlor. I heard somebody in the background sounding like Paranoy saying, ‘In this crowd of noisy outrés arrivistes ?’ It sounds what Wedgwood might describe—as did he once, if you remember, that unfortunate Jackson-Haight beach fete—as a ‘rawly secular affair’ altogether. Dolly Farouche’s diamond earbobs contrived to plop into a blancmange, evidently necessitating a dire scene.”
    Pierrot held the ball suspended in his tense hand, at length affixing the steely hook to a firm branch, deep in at the trunk. “Well! One can’t be everywhere.”
    The Countess thought it over. “Magdalen,” continued Pierrot, the way he thought perhaps he ought, the way a careful French curé might, “don’t you think this habit of people knowing where people are at all hours all season long—well, apart from anything else—well, just that.”
    â€œUh-oh,” worried the Countess Madge. Whenever addressed by her saint’s name, she seemed to feel starched shifts, icy douches, and furtive subcellar scents threatening all over again —memory’s imperishable dues. She was holding Rose(ncrantz) absently. She dropped him in an ample Regency chair. He bristled; he yawned; he preened. He found accommodation.
    â€œThis only ever happens in dead winter, Pique. Sibyl and G-G seem to practice it absolutely necessarily. It becomes tantamount to a ritual for lasting.”
    â€œTantamount. It can’t amount!” His heavily accented baritone growled. Rose(ncrantz) shot a single-amber-eyed glance toward the speaker; a paw splayed measuredly. Pierrot gazed not that carelessly at his black aspect bloated in a silver ornament. He laughed—a laugh, they said, like treacle bursting from barrels—misting the surface of the perfect