“I know,” she said. “So after work tonight . . .”
“Yes?”
“Have an eggnog with Sam. On me.”
“With Sam?” she asked. “But he’s a maître d’, and I am but a poor, lowly cigarette girl.”
“Forget it,” I said. “I think you two can make a match.”
And I walked into the instant deep-freeze outside.
• • •
Frosty, you know, ma
’Cause the weather’s two below
Since my fingers froze
Can’t massage my toes
And my lips are indigo.
It was cold, and it was dark, and it was late, and all I had left was four bits, which I flipped to the shoeshine boy on the corner. In honour of the Yule season, he’d shaved his head.
Back in my glass palace, I tried a nightcap on for size, activated the hi-fi, and leafed through the latest copy of Playmate. But even the Christmas Bunny Girl couldn’t make me forget I’d left myself without any tinsel at tree-trimming time.
Then I realized I wasn’t alone.
“Hello,” she said softly.
“Tuesday!” I said. “Tuesday Friday! What are you doing here Saturday night?”
“I have a confession to make,” she said.
“A confession?” I asked, quietly flipping on the tape recorder. Without her knowing it, I’d had her bugged ever since she first came to work for me.
“I took your list,” she said.
“You?” I was dumbfounded. “Why?”
“I didn’t want you to miss the pleasure of giving something you’ve picked out yourself for people you hold near and dear.”
“Yeah,” I said, “well thanks a whole bunch. As it turns out I wind up tired, broke, cold, minus two tickets to the show tonight, and all alone. Where does it get me?”
She didn’t say anything then. She just smiled, and took off her glasses, and she wasn’t Bobby Clark anymore. She kissed me, and then she left, with that quiet little walk of hers that rattles seismographs all the way out in California. On the radio, a group that called themselves the North Polecats harmonized:
Robert, the red-nosed shopper
Finished off his Christmas list
Louie, and Sam, and Unkie—
Was there anyone he missed?
Of course! Tuesday Friday. It was too late to go out again; the stores were closed and already putting up “January White Sale” streamers in the windows. And then it came to me: the perfect gift for a girl who made me realize that it is more fun to give than to receive . . .
The first day of Christmas, forget that bird-in-tree
The mailman’s delivering me!
Photographed by Bert Stern, Vogue, December 1961
Who’s Who in the Cast of “How to Succeed at Christmas Without Really Crying”
The funny face: Robert Morse, star of How to Succeed at Business Without Really Trying. On page 102, he plays the eye in the charade by William F. Brown—who wrote, too, four sketches for the revue at the new New York night place, What’s Upstairs at the Downstairs.