Bernice, Marty, and Laverne’s Trip to NYC

My name is Bernice Krebs, and this is my trip to New York City. It was Friday and we were almost off work for a few days. “Hey girls! We worked so hard this year, let’s go somewhere!” I said.

“Ooh let’s go to a big city! Where do you want to go?” Marty said.

“I don’t care as long as there are hot guys where we go,” Laverne said.

“You’re so desperate, Laverne.” I sighed, shaking my head.

“How about New York City? I heard that the shows there are really good. We can watch one too,” Marty said.

“Any objections? No? Then it’s settled. We are going to New York City!!!” I yelled. Everyone in the office turned and looked at me. I went back to work with the thought of NYC, a constant thought, in the back of my head.

That night, we three got onto a plane to NYC. We were all super excited, well, maybe not Laverne.

She has been on many planes before, but for Marty and I, it was our first time! We three dressed up all nice, we walked up the very fancy staircase into the plane and every part of the experience except the actual flying was exquisite. The pilot himself with the rest of the flying crew welcomed us into the plane. All of the stewardesses’ uniforms were extremely neat and tidy. It was like they were just taken out of a toy box, and that pilot’s handsome face and sharp jawline almost killed me! Even though that pilot’s face was impeccable I’d say his flying skills need to be worked on.

 It was a very bumpy ride to NYC. There was a lot of turbulence and the landing probably could have been smoother, but we were in New York City! “We made it alive!” I exclaimed after exiting the plane.

“That was fun! Can we do that again?” Laverne said.

“You’re crazy right? That was insane!” Marty added.

“It wasn’t that bad, but it definitely could have been better. That doesn’t matter anymore, it’s time to have fun!” I said. Really I didn’t know what to do. “I guess we start by finding somewhere to sleep.”

“Ooh I know, we should go to a bar and get some drinks!” Laverne said, completely ignoring what I said.

“Are you trying to find some hot men again?” Marty said.

“What? Of course not. We just had a horrible plane flight and I wanted to relax and have a few drinks with you two.”

“Didn’t you just say that the plane ride was fun and you wanted to do it again?”

“Don’t worry about all the nitty-gritty. Do you want to go or not?” Laverne said.

“We can go tomorrow, I’m sure all of us are tired and we don’t have a place to stay yet. We need to find that now.”

“Marty, fine, but promise, tomorrow?” Laverne asked.

“Promise,” Marty replied.

“Okay, now that you two are done, we can finally find a place to stay for at least the next day or two?” I asked.

Then we went on a hunt, some would say, to find a place to sleep. It took us about an hour and a half. Laverne kept getting distracted by anyone of the opposite gender. There was one time Laverne even left us and stalked someone. After we started walking again, we came across a convenience store. It wasn’t just any convenience store. Laverne stopped, then ran into the store.

“Peter Lorre! Is that really you?” Laverne nearly screamed.

“What? Oh yes. That’s me. You nearly scared the crap out of me.” Peter Lorre said, very surprised by the loud question.

“What are you doing here in this store?” Laverne instantly asked.

“Oh, just buying some newspapers,” he said, clearly not wanting to go into detail.

At this time Marty and I were just entering the store. “Come on, Laverne we still need to find a place to sle- ooh who is this?” Marty said very interested.

“Come on Marty, you too?” I took a long look at Peter Lorre’s face, forcing myself to remember how he looked. My goodness, he was the cutest man I have ever seen. “I’m very sorry Peter Lorre, about my friends… but we just arrived in New York City and we still haven’t found a place to stay.”

“Oh it’s okay, I get this all the time. Good luck finding a place to stay,” he said, glad to finally get rid of us. But the way he so coolly brushed off us barging in almost killed me. I was almost in love with him after we left.

After that incident, Laverne was still acting up and finally, Marty and I were so fed up, that we just took the nearest hotel that looked not half bad and stuck with it: the Edmont Hotel. It was really a crummy place. The outside of the hotel wasn’t too grand nor was the inside. The hotel itself wasn’t too big either, but apparently big enough for an entire nightclub. The lobby was like someone without much money trying to make it seem like they had money. There were paintings almost everywhere. There were also cabinets with fruit in a basket; the main theme of everything was gold, but not real gold, like painted gold. It seemed as if the owner really wanted to make everything look expensive but didn’t have the dough to do so. They gave us each our own room, but it felt empty. Also, you could look through the window and see what people were doing on the other side of the hotel. It was disturbing, no one bothered to pull the shades down, and everyone was doing all kinds of things. But if you take your mind off it and tried to sleep it wouldn’t be too hard… seeing how tired I was.

I had a terrible night’s sleep. The bed was as hard as a rock and the sheets were rough on my skin. I forgot to pull the blinds the night before and the sun woke me up super early. I didn’t know the time, I don’t wear the time, but I knew it was early. It took me quite a long time to get ready.

When I finally did get ready, I went to find my friends. I knocked on both of their rooms; it took them about… I don’t know, about 10 years of me banging on their doors. I was so annoyed, I didn’t get enough sleep, I was groggy, and I did not want to wait to see Marty and Laverne.

“What’s with the banging? It sounds like the goddamn police out here,” Marty said, yawning while opening the door. “Oh, it’s you. What do you want, so early in the morning?”

“I was woken by the sun and I can’t get back to sleep. I want to get out of this crumby place. Let’s go explore the city!” I said.

“Oh, this place isn’t too bad. Say, you first let me get back to sleep for a few hours and then we can explore whatever you want. Okay? Grand. Now please let me sleep. Bye-bye now,” Marty snapped, clearly agitated, already closing the door.

“Wait! When should I come to ge-” I tried to ask her, but the door was already closed shut. Lousy. I was sick of the nasty imitation gold of the entire hotel. Even in the room everything was gold. It really got boring. Fine, I’ll explore the city with Laverne, I thought.

“Hey, Laverne! Do you want to come with me?” I shouted at the closed door of her room. She didn’t answer. “I guess you don’t want to go!” I tried enticing her to come with me but to no avail. I don’t need them, I thought. I’ll just go by myself. They don’t know what they’re missing.

When I got outside, there was almost no one on the street. Wasn’t this supposed to be a big city with lots of people? The sun was already out. Shouldn’t there be people going to work? I asked myself. Then I realized it was Saturday. “Even though it is Saturday, there still should be many more people on the streets right?” I walked up to one of the only people on the street other than myself. There was one man in a thick winter jacket looking at something in his hand. I walked up to him.

“I’m sorry but do you have the time?” I asked.

“Sure… What is such a pretty girl doing this early out?” he said, taking out his pocket watch with his right hand. He quickly shoved a metal key chain with a picture of a girl in his left pocket.

“Umm, my friends and I wanted to see what’s so special about New York City,” I said somewhat surprised by the sudden question. “By the way, what were you just looking at?”

“Sorry?”

“The key chain you just put in your pocket, it looked like a girl.”

“Oh, that… She was my daughter, she loved traveling.”

“What happened to her?” I asked.

“She joined the Air Force when on her 18th birthday. She was a WASP: a member of the Women Air Force Service pilots.  All she wanted was to serve her country.” He paused.

“Then what happened? Sorry I didn’t mean it in that way, I just want to know what happened.” I quickly said realizing what a jerk I probably sounded like.

“Oh, its ok. Well, she was shot down when bombing Germany.”

“Wow! That’s crazy. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“I see you’re not from here,” he said changing the subject. “How about I show you a breakfast place with authentic New York City food. It might even improve what you think about New York. Oh, I forgot to introduce myself. My name is…”. I have since forgotten what his name was, but the place that he showed me was really fantastic. I would have loved to go there again. Right before he dropped me off at the restaurant, he said, “Have a nice, time here in New York City, oh also, the time is 6:45 am…”.

6:45!? No wonder Marty and Laverne didn’t want to come with me. I probably tried to wake them up at 6:00, seeing how long I talked with the very generous man whose name I’ve forgotten. After breakfast, I walked back to the hotel. On the front of the hotel, there was an advertisement for the bar in the hotel. “Come to the Lavender Room tonight! The popular nightclub for celebrities!”

Now we don’t have to find a bar for Laverne anymore, I thought to myself. After I went back up to my room, I just lay in my bed. I don’t know how long I rested but suddenly Marty started banging on my door.

After she got Laverne and me out of our rooms (it took us almost an hour to get Laverne up and ready) we went to explore the city. Then the next part of the day went by really quickly, I don’t remember most of it.

We went to Times Square and walked through about half of the city. We had plans to go through the entire city, not realizing how big it was. After we did what we could though, we began taking our time. We got back to the hotel at 11 PM. I would have just gone to sleep but Laverne insisted on going to a bar, or nightclub. We ended up going downstairs to the Lavender Room.

I had told Marty and Laverne about the advertisement I saw in the morning. They both got super excited when I told them. They’d been so into their new handbags that they didn’t even look up when they entered the hotel. When the server finally came I ordered a bourbon and water – Marty and Laverne ordered Tom Collinses. There was a band, but they weren’t really good. Nothing really happened until this very tall teen (I think) walked in, eyeing everyone in the club, and eventually sat down at a table next to ours. I guess we passed inspection.

When the server went to him, he wanted some alcohol but didn’t have anything to prove his age, and he got mad at the server and tried to use his gray hair to prove his age but the server wasn’t having any of it. He kept eyeing us; it was kind of weird but cute in a way. It was kind of like a toddler trying to walk for the first time. Whenever he eyed us, us three would start giggling. Eventually, this teen asked me to dance.

“Would any of you girls care to dance?” When he said that, I knew he was directly talking to me. Here’s the thing, this is one of those times where when you want something out of someone but they’re in a group of people so you say it to all of them, but you really only look at the person you’re interested in.

When I was dancing with him, that was the first time really getting close and seeing who that kid was. He was very tall and smelled strongly of cigarettes. I know smoking is normal but I really just hate it. It made me mad and sad thinking how this teen turned out to become an alcoholic and a smoker at such a young age. He looked clean and messy at the same time – it looked like he had just had no sleep and tidied up just for this. It was kind of fun, except he kept trying to talk to me while dancing but I kept ignoring him. He once mentioned “Marco and Miranda” but I didn’t know who they were, so I just brushed it off. He was a pretty good dancer but it still felt strange.

After some time of him trying to start a conversation, I remembered the night before and how we met Peter Lorre and how I thought he was really cute.

“I and my girlfriends saw Peter Lorre last night. The movie actor. In person. He was buyin’ a newspaper. He’s cute”. He seemed to roll his eyes for a second, but I couldn’t be sure.

“You’re lucky. You’re really lucky. You know that?”  Then suddenly this kid kisses me on the forehead.

“Hey! What’s the idea?”

“Nothing. No idea. You can really dance. I have a kid sister that’s only in the goddamn fourth grade. You’re about as good as she is, and she can dance better than anybody living or dead”.

He kept trying to start a conversation with me but I was busy looking to see if Peter Lorre would enter the nightclub because of the advertisement and all. He used a lot of anti-Christ language that I hated, that’s one of my pet peeves, especially if it’s a child. We did some jitterbug and we sat down.

Turns out his name was Jim Steele. We didn’t invite him to sit but he did anyway. I didn’t care enough to kick him out. We three were always on the lookout for famous people but didn’t really see anyone. Jim kept bugging us about where we worked and all. He even asked if Marty and Laverne were sisters – that really got them going. Then he danced with both Marty and Laverne. When Jim was dancing with Marty, he must have told Marty something that was crazy, as she completely stopped dancing, trying to look over people’s heads to find something. She ran over and told us that she saw Gary Cooper in this nightclub!

“You will not believe who I just saw.”

“Who?!” Laverne and I said in unison.

“Gary Cooper!”

“What? Where?” Laverne said, looking around my shoulder.

“I think he already left. I only saw a glimpse,” Marty said.

“Really? I wish I could have seen him,” I said, kind of depressed. I was just waiting for a movie star or someone famous to come in. I guess the advertisement was right.

Jim bought us three two drinks apiece and ordered two Cokes himself. Laverne gave Jim a hard time about only drinking Cokes, but I guess he was used to it. Marty was being herself, making a bunch of jokes, none of them very good, but I didn’t pay enough attention to care. Laverne also was being herself, asking if Jim’s dad had any dates countless times. She was really trying to make him scram, trying to humiliate him about the Cokes and all.

Jim continued to bug me about anything and everything. It really got annoying until we three decided to go. We said we were going to watch a Radio City show the next day and it was getting late so we got up, and made one of the lamest excuses to get out of there.

“We need to get up early tomorrow and see the first show at Radio City Music Hall,” I said.

“Come on, just stay for a little longer?” Jim wheedled.

“No, we really need to get to bed,” Marty said.

He said he would sometime look us up in Seattle, Washington, but I really hope he doesn’t. I never felt so uncomfortable in my life. At least he didn’t say anything about us not paying for the drinks.

And like that, after watching the show, we got on a plane back to Seattle, Washington. This plane was better than the first. I guess the message of the story is: if a rich teenage boy tries to seduce you in New York City, or anywhere really, just make him pay for the drinks in the end.