“As a matter of fact,” Essie remarked unplayfully.
The boys gave her a confused smile and turned again to Florence. Whenever Essie opened her mouth, Florence noted, it was plain to see how inadequate she was at saying anything that might hold a man’s attention. Soon the boys had to go to practice (somewhere in the ship’s labyrinth was a full-sized tennis court), but they asked if the girls would join the team for a drink after dinner. “If it isn’t past our bedtimes,” Florence said, waving them goodbye with a cigarette between her fingers.
—
THAT EVENING, AFTER THE second dinner bell, Florence met Essie in the carpeted hallway outside the Kronprinz Lounge. She took a look at Essie’s skirt, and at her shoes, and said, “Come with me.”
From the lower berth in Florence’s cabin, Essie looked around with undisguised envy. “You’ve got this all to yourself?”
“They don’t normally sell out of second-class tickets. What’s your shoe size?”
“Six-and-a-half. They pack us eight to a room, but it’s really nine because there’s a four-year-old, too, and the others are all Social Democrats who debate in Polish all night, so you can’t catch a wink of sleep.”
“I only have size eight. We’ll have to stuff the toes. Here, try this for size.” Florence threw her a loose dress with wide kimono sleeves.
“What’s the matter with the shoes I got on?”
“Nothing’s the matter if you don’t care to tell which one’s left and which one’s right, they’re so boxy.” She squinted at the dress and said, “We’ll have to cinch the waist,” though Essie hardly had any waist to speak of.
“The trouble’s my hair,” Essie said despondently. “All the salt in the air makes it a bird’s nest. If I had your curls…”
“You can. Just roll ’em around a hot pair of scissors. I’ll show you after,” she said. “Right now we’re late.”
—
THE NEW HAVEN PLAYERS, about half a dozen of them, were assembled at one of the high tables near the bar. Collectively, they gave off an almost menacing air of good health. Essie and Florence’s arrival aroused from them no interest apart from Brian’s cheerful dragging of more chairs. “Two Joe Rickeys over here.” He tapped his glass. “They claim to be out of gin, so we’re nursing bourbons.”
“Three Rickeys,” corrected a pink-cheeked six-footer beside Florence.
“You’ve had enough to wash the decks, Kip,” someone said. Unpersuaded, Kip lifted a finger to the waiter.
“I’ll tell you one thing, the Davis Cup’s become too big,” said a young man by the name of Leslie. “No one hears his own name called anymore. You hear ‘advantage, States,’ or ‘France four, England two.’ The fate of the whole damn country’s on your neck.”
Florence didn’t have the remotest idea what they were talking about, and was glad when Brian asked if the two of them were really headed to Russia. “Don’t we look it?” she said.
Kip cast a bored look over them and said, “The Frenchies don’t seem to be feeling the heat.”
“The Germans do, I can promise you,” said Leslie. “And they’ve got Hitler breathing down their throats about their physical superiority.”
“So long’s they’ve got von Cramm, they can still take the Cup. One champion horse is all you need.”
“Which one’s von Cramm?” Essie said, entering the conversation late, but the men went on talking.
“If von Cramm plays.”
“Why won’t he?”
“He and Old Hitts aren’t exactly chums. Last year he called Herr Führer a house painter.”
“I heard Ribbentrop was trying to get him to sign up with the Nazis but von Cramm told him to go eat hay.”
“Too much an aristocrat for them, eh?”
“No, he’s sore about them kicking his buddy Daniel Prenn off the team.”
Florence saw Essie’s eyes grow bright with angry comprehension. “It’s revolting,” she said, “the way they’ve been expelling the Jewish athletes.”
“They’re crippling themselves without Prenn,” said Brian.
“Prenn’s an all-right player,” admitted Kip, “but no one’s irreplaceable.”
Florence was considering a proper rejoinder to this when Essie jumped in ahead of her. “It’s imponderable to me,” she pursued, “how Germany can even be permitted to host the Olympics when they’re driving out the Jewish players….”
“Just imponderable!” Kip mimed cruelly. “Prenn can go play for someone else if he doesn’t like it.”
“The Brits will snap him up.”
“Or the Russkies. He’s one of theirs, right?”
“They ought to toss Germany out of the games,” Essie declaimed.
“So you don’t like their politics. Well, I don’t like the Bolshies and theirs,” said a sharp-nosed boy with a crew cut. “Let’s toss them out. And the goat-sniffing Greeks while we’re at it, why not?”
Taking the bait, Essie launched into an attack on this reasoning. But no one was listening to her. Even to Florence, she looked like a schnauzer among Dobermans. “I’d say your friend’s a wet fish on dry land, but there ain’t any for miles,” Brian said in a whisper to Florence. Florence felt a sense of shame for her silence—letting Essie take a beating from these shkotzim.
“Come on, chaps, no politics tonight,” someone pleaded. “Let the Olympic Committee sort it out.”
“They have sorted it out,” said Kip. “Brundage said all this talk about the Jewish athletes was pure booshwash.”
“And these committees always do such a fine job,” Florence replied, seizing her opening. She washed down the dregs of her Rickey. Her gaze fell coldly on Kip. “It ain’t booshwash when half the world’s calling for a boycott.”
“Not half the world, just a few Jews and commies who want to get us into a fresh war. Good night, everyone,” he said, rising to his full Aryan height.
“Auf Wiedersehen!” Florence called after him, and took hold of Essie’s hand before her friend could drop any more cinders from the hot cavity of her mouth.
—
“AND THAT’S WHAT COUNTS for loyal patriots these days, Florence! First-class American flag-waving bigots. That’s who’s in charge, and that’s why I’m through with the fine U.S. of A.”
Florence could hear heavy tears gathering behind Essie’s nasal passages. Essie hadn’t stopped talking since they’d entered Florence’s cabin.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Florence happily assured her. She wondered why Essie’s dismay made her so buoyant. Then it occurred to her that, for the first time since separating from her family and boarding the ship, she was absolutely convinced of the rightness of her decision. America had nothing to offer her.
“High-minded swine with their muzzles in their fancy drinks and their heads in the sand. Hypocrites making nicey-nice with the fascists while they arm against all of Europe,” Essie went on. “And it’s people like that who’d be the first to call my parents traitors.”