“My advice, Brady,” sighed his sister, “is to start taking cold showers. You might be the surprised one. I can’t give you an authoritative opinion for obvious reasons, but it’s my hunch Peet would turn out to be as exciting a conquest as a cold mashed potato sandwich.”
Kindly and sound as this advice was, Prin could see that Brady was not impressed by it. He lit a cigarette and puffed at it moodily for a while, seeming to be thinking about where to go. To Prin’s relief he finally rose from the bed and left the room. Her head was still spinning, and she thought a nap might help it run down. So she turned over and went to sleep. The nap did in fact stop the spinning, although she felt rather gummy when she awoke — which was, to her surprise, at six o’clock.
It was halfway to seven before she went downstairs. Everyone was in the living room except Mrs. Dolan, who was muttering in the dining room as she set the table, and Uncle Slater, who had not yet made his appearance for a reason still generally unknown. Aunt Lallie, smoking a cigarette in a long onyx holder, was looking prettily regal (if you could ignore her hands) in a severe black gown. Cousin Twig was torturing a tune on the piano with one steel-nailed green-brown finger. Cousin Peet, draped over the sofa, had slipped into skintight red velvet pants and a sheer white silk blouse that suggested with curious effectiveness what she had fully displayed earlier. Brother Brady, slouched tigerishly in a chair, was watching Cousin Peet with an expression at once carnivorous and incredulous.
“Princess, my child,” chirped Aunt Lallie, “where is your Uncle Slater?”
“Search me,” Prin said; and at Cousin Twig’s evil side-glance from the piano she immediately regretted her choice of words. “I thought he’d surely be down by this time.”
“If he’s in the house, child. No one’s seen him since morning. He certainly didn’t show up for lunch.”
“Well, I saw him come home about two o’clock and go upstairs. So he must be in his room, unless he went out again.”
“Uncle Slater this, Uncle Slater that,” said Cousin Twig from the piano. “To hell with Uncle Slater. Why can’t we eat without him?”
“Because it’s his food, and his house,” Prin said. “That’s why. The least we can do is to pay him the courtesy of waiting for him.”
“But Princess,” Aunt Lallie said anxiously, “if he’s in the house, why isn’t he down here? You know how disagreeable Mrs. Dolan becomes if anyone is late to her table.”
“To hell with Mrs. Dolan, too,” said Cousin Twig. He stabbed a sad little B-flat with his claw, and it shrieked in protest. “Anyway, the old shtunk is probably up there sleeping off a toot.”
Prin glared at the back of Cousin Twig’s tall, pale head. She did not think Twig ought to refer to Uncle Slater as a shtunk, not because Uncle Slater hadn’t been one in his time, but because it seemed unfair for an ex-shtunk to be called a shtunk by a practicing one.
“A toot,” frowned Aunt Lallie. “Princess, would you say the condition of your Uncle Slater when he came home at two o’clock justifies Twig’s charge?”
“I only saw him for a few seconds from a distance, Aunt Lallie. But he looked all right to me — maybe a little cheerful — and anyway he didn’t have the least trouble getting up the stairs.”
“That’s not necessarily indicative, child. I’ve known your Uncle Slater to carry a quart of Irish in him without showing it. You know how he is — drinks with both hands the live-long day without a sign and then, whup! down he goes.”
“Well, I’m not very bright or anything like that,” Cousin Peet said, in one of her unexpected exhibitions of intelligence, “but it seems to me that the question of whether Uncle Slater is in his room, drunk or sober, could be settled in a minute by somebody’s going up to see.”
She sat up on the sofa and yawned and stretched. Brother Brady stirred in his chair and muttered something under his breath that no one could hear, which was probably just as well. Aunt Lallie looked at Peet with an expression of surprise and pride.
“Peet darling, that’s clever of you! Prin dear, you’re Slater’s favorite — you’ll run less risk of abuse if he wakes up in a bad humor. Please go upstairs like a good girl and see if he’s in his room.”
“I’ll go with you, if you want me to,” Cousin Twig said suddenly.
“No, thanks,” Prin said. “I don’t want you to.”
She went upstairs to Uncle Slater’s room and knocked. There was no answer. She knocked again. There was still no answer. So she tried the doorknob. It turned, and she pushed softly.
The room was on the dim side, it now being nearly seven o’clock, but Prin saw Uncle Slater immediately — at first glance he appeared to be asleep. But at second glance she noticed a couple of oddities: He was sleeping on his face instead of on his back, and on the floor instead of his bed. Considering the peculiar disposition of his arms and legs, he looked not so much like a man sleeping off a drunk as like a drunk who had had an accident.
It was disturbing, finding Uncle Slater like that, and for a moment Prin stood still in the doorway with a large hot rock in her throat. Her mind continued to function, however, and it told her coldly that Uncle Slater was (A) drunk, or (B) ill, or (C) dead. She tiptoed over to the bed and knelt beside him. It was at once evident that Uncle Slater was neither (A) drunk nor (B) ill, because he was not breathing. That meant he must be (C) dead.
Prin kept kneeling beside her uncle. Her position seemed just right for prayer, so she tried to think a little prayer, but it simply wouldn’t come. Then she tried to cry, with equal lack of success. Uncle Slater was dead, and nothing was going to change that, not the saying of prayers nor the shedding of tears, nor anything. All she could do was go away. So Princess O’Shea left the quiet bedroom on tiptoe, leaving part of herself with Uncle Slater, who looked so all used up on the floor.
The family was still in the living room downstairs, but someone new had been added. Mrs. Dolan was standing there with her club-like forearms jutting out from her prodigious hips. Dinner was getting stony, she was saying, and if anyone thought she was going to wait around half the night to do the dishes they could find themselves another cook, and anyway cooks oughtn’t to have to do dishes. The only thing that kept Mrs. Dolan going was the lure of the TV set in her basement room; everyone knew that the best programs were in the evening, so in Mrs. Dolan’s view any delay was by malice aforethought.
“Well,” sniffed Mrs. Dolan at sight of Prin. “And is himself going to come down for my dinner, or ain’t he?”
Prin said in a voice that she had difficulty recognizing as her own, “No, himself is definitely not coming down for your dinner, Mrs. Dolan.”
“Then the devil take him,” cried Mrs. Dolan, “and the rest of you, too. You can roust your own dinners!” and off she stamped to her own nether region and the television set.
“What did I tell you?” chuckled Cousin Twig. “He’s dead to the world, eh, Prin?”
“That,” said Prin tremulously, “he is.”
“Shut up, Twig,” growled Brother Brady. “Can’t you see something’s wrong? She’s the color of mud. What is it, Prin?”
“Uncle Slater’s dead.”
There was a considerable silence. Everyone seemed to be trying to digest Prin’s statement except Cousin Peet who, while her lips were moistly parted as usual, seemed unable even to swallow it. Cousin Twig swung the short legs hanging from his long shanks around to the room side of the piano bench, and he stared at Prin with a stare that for once had no slaver in it. Brother Brady was frowning preparatory to some powerful action, like striding over to the bar and perhaps drinking a toast to Uncle Slater’s memory. As for little Aunt Lallie, she became so agitated that she actually stopped looking at the wall and gestured at Prin with the smoldering cigarette holder in her big hairy hand.