The Fall of France

I thought I would drive out to The Anchorage today. It's only a burned out shell now, disfiguring a strip of beach east of the Hamptons. Winter storms and summer hurricanes have eroded the broad beach that was once dotted with yellow umbrellas and red cabanas.

Before the war, people with money spent their summers there. Overweight women with their overworked husbands mingled with members of their own class. Lubricated in oil, they sunned themselves on the hot summer sand beside their private cabanas. At regular intervals, they would signal for a drink by waving their little red flags at the college student waiters.

We hated afternoon duty. We had to wear black pants and white coats which trapped the rays of the sun. Before long we were drenched in sweat as we labored through the softly burning sand with pitchers of Martinis, Manhattans, and Bloody Marys. Afternoon duty was a penance for those of us who had screwed up serving dinner the evening before. If there weren't enough of us, the roster would be filled by drawing a number from a hat.

There weren't many tips during afternoon duty. The guests were in various stages of undress and had no access to their wallets or purses. Everyone "put it on the tab," which left us holding the bag. It gave us a real incentive to be on our toes for the evening meal. If we were successful, we had our afternoons to ourselves. At a secluded area of the beach, far from the sight of the guests, the 'garcons' and the 'femmes de chambres' could spend a few hours together. We would pair off and make out as best we could in the glare of the sun. The 'garcons' had to work fast for the cocktail hour commenced at four.

We were all college students working our way through vacation. The temptation of getting away from home with free board and meals was irresistible. For many of us, it was the last summer of youthful abandon. The war was just across the ocean, and the news was bleak from abroad. But we were too young, far too young to think of tragedy and far too buoyant to let the glum faces of the paying guests rain on our parade.

I had made great strides with Gladys. She worked the third floor east and was usually through by noon. By the cocktail hour, we had usually worked ourselves into a frenzy. At the stroke of four I had to be in the lounge, in a fresh uniform, polished patent leather shoes, and hair slicked down with pomade. There, under the watchful eye of Al Dorfmann (whom everyone called "Monsieur Dorfmann"), I would circulate with the canapes. The guests, who had been drinking in the sun all afternoon, were in a catatonic state from exposure and over-indulgence.

Albert Dorfmann was one of the few people I've ever known to wear a monocle. It was a perfect prop for a Hollywood Nazi and fitted him to a "T." It hung from a white silk ribbon to contrast with his midnight blue tuxedo jacket. He also wore a ginger-colored military moustache that stood out arrogantly from his upper lip like the bristles on a toilet scrub brush. We called him "The Monsieur" because all the guests did. With authoritarian fervor, he used the Gallic name for everything on the menu. "Madame WILL enjoy the roulade," or "Monsieur MUST sample the macedoine," or "Chef HAS outdone himself en brochette this evening." In the presence of the guests he would refer to the waiters and bus boys as "mon Petits;" in the kitchen, however, he called us "assholes."

Like many Maitres-de, he spent much of his time walking backwards and pirouetting as he shepherded the guests from the lobby to their tables. His Dutchman's haircut, bristly moustache, and fierce blue eyes conflicted with his kow-towing, and to make up for it, he would be especially savage in the kitchen. While waiters called him The Monsieur, the Chef, a sad-eyed and silent Frenchman, referred to him as Der Fuhrer.

The Monsieur was a past master of eating as he worked. Hardly a dish passed from the kitchen to the dining room without having been sampled by him. His recommendations to the diners were based on his own preferences, and he was fond of truffles and endorsed them highly. By ten p.m. he would have put away nearly half of those that had been ordered. He had learned to eat without moving his jaws or cheeks and, indeed, could keep up a running conversation with the guests as he ate much of their food.

He used his own ample anatomy to describe to diners where the cuts of meat came from. He would lift his leg at Lady Lavaliere and, with a deft slicing motion, demonstrate where the lamb steak had originally resided. "Les Cuisse, Madame!" For breast of chicken, he would raise an arm in stiff salute and, with the other, carve himself from armpit to waist. I looked forward to the evening when Lady Lavaliere might ask him where her Rocky Mountain Oysters came from.

Mrs. Lavaliere's husband, Jules, and his family owned a distillery in Picardy, which was wrested from their grasp by Hitler very early in the war. He was, of course, devastated. He would spend every afternoon walking on the beach wearing a wide brimmed straw hat, shaking his fist in the general direction of France. He would rarely come down for dinner at night, and Lady Lavaliere would dine alone. Younger by far than her husband, she would cast carnal glances at the bus boys and waiters throughout the evening meal. By July she had singled out Angie Spinoza. In spite of Angie's torrid romance with Gina (the chambermaid on the fourth floor west), he had enough in reserve to fulfill Lady Lavaliere's requirements. It seemed to be all right with The Monsieur, as long as they didn't go at it in the dining room.

These thoughts, long forgotten or swept into that dusty corner of my mind where such memories are hidden, came flooding back to me as I stood in the sand. The beach is now disreputable. Sea wrack is washed up nearly to the old foundations. All signs of the building, save its foundation, are gone. Yet somehow, in the cold emptiness of it all, the music from the three-piece combo that played on weekends came back to me ... "Red Sails in the Sunset" ... "Stars Fell on Alabama."

How wonderful it was to be nineteen! There -- over there -- was the dining room, four enormous chandeliers with candle shaped light bulbs. And there -- over there -- Mrs. Frankel and her husband Max would scan the menu for something without pork, or "porc" as The Monsieur would say. He would monocle his eye, bypassing the shellfish with regret, and announce to the Frankels that only fowl and hare were available, knowing full well that both were served with truffles.

All gone. Every bit of it -- gone. Why am I here? A short summer -- a lifetime ago. 1940! Not yet half way through the twentieth century. So many of us yet to die in the coming holocaust. Why is this place so special?

There's a chill in the air - September, after all. I think I'll go home. I walk up to the curb which used to mark the edge of the old parking lot, sit down and take off my shoes. The sand I shake from them is gray and cold now. Dead sand. Sand that used to be warm and white, that glittered in Gladys' hair like tiny diamonds as we made love by the sea on a summer afternoon.