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stonepicnicking_okapiTitle: Le Rêve
Fandom: Jeeves and Wooster
Length: 1000
Rating: Gen
Summary: Bertie visits a ghost jazz club in New York City.
Prompt:
I have to say it left me with a decidedly queer feeling.
But, wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Time and place, Bertram, your kind readers are not mind-readers!
Spring. New York City.
Jeeves and I had been decanted at some ungodly hour of the morning, seven, I think it was, by our transatlantic liner. We’d just washed up on the foreign shore only to discover that the domicile we’d reserved had sprung a leak or something and would not be habitable for another week.
Thus, my gentleman’s gentleman and I had no choice but to do our best Mary-and-Joseph impersonations and look for a room at an inn. We quickly settled for something nearby, one of the penthouse suites of an ultra-modern hotel called Le Rêve, you know, all straight lines and polished chrome and sparkling glass.
Now America is a curious place for many reasons, and one of them is the counting of the floors in a building. They start with the first floor, not the ground floor, you see, thus the second floor being what we English would call the first and so on.
To avoid confusion, I’d taken to telling the lift operators to simply ‘take me to the top.’
And so it was on the Friday night following our arrival. I’d been catching up with old friends until the wee hours.
Now the fellow in charge of the lift wasn’t one I recognised. Nevertheless, I gave him a jolly greeting and my usual instructions.
At that, the fellow grinned in a most unsettling way.
I gave an uneasy nod and looking down noted my charioteer was sporting the most unusual socks. They bore, believe me or believe me not, green and orange parrots. He was sitting on a little stool with his feet on the rungs and his knees bent, the better, evidently, to show off this singular piece of his wardrobe.
If I thought the shot was on the board at any price at all for Jeeves to allow me to be seen in public in similar, I would have inquired as to their origin with a view to purchase. But as it was, I merely admired them from afar.
A bell sounded. The doors opened.
And I was, at once, catapulted into something like the inferno.
Blasts assaulted me.
Music. Heat. Bodies. Noise.
People dancing. People drinking. People laughing.
A band going full force. A dance floor in a crowded frenzy.
And as I was carried by the current of patrons, I passed a perch with a huge green and orange parrot, squawking and bobbing to the beat, looking like nothing so much as a cubist’s dream of a jazz carrot.
I hadn’t much time to consider this unusual mascot because perforce I flowed towards the dancing.
I must lay stress the music was electric.
Under normal circumstances, I swing a dashed efficient shoe, but this jazz, this swing, this melody, and rhythm, had me in its clutches and I was dancing as I’d never danced before. Every so often I would find myself at the edge of the throng and a kind soul would pour a few drops of elixir down my gullet to stave off utter exhaustion.
The temperature was like an oven. I was marinating in my own persp, but nothing mattered.
Then suddenly, I noted, much like one does if one spends much time near ovens, something was burning.
“Fire!”
Frenzy turned to pandemonium as the place filled up with smoke.
My eyes burned. My lungs burned. I groped my way to a side door and then found myself tumbling down steps. The walls seemed to give one last electric wail and then all went black.
I woke to Jeeves looking as unflappable as ever.
“Jeeves!”
“Tea, sir?”
“Jeeves, what about the fire?”
“Fire, sir?”
“The lift operator took me to the club on the roof, Jeeves, a corkin’ club, by the way, absolute scorcher, but there was a fire. I barely escaped with my life.”
I looked about me and saw I was in a position of repose in the bedroom of the suite. “The fire didn’t reach here?”
“There wasn’t a fire, sir, and I’m afraid there isn’t a club on the roof, either.”
“I assure you, my good man, I attended a soiree like none other last night.”
“You were found in an altered state on the fire escape, sir. A security guard alerted me as to your location and condition, and I fetched you.”
“Was it all a dream, Jeeves? Or a hallucination?”
“I can’t readily say, sir.”
“Jeeves, can we go to the roof and investigate?”
“Of course, sir, if it will set your mind at ease.”
We went up the fire escape. Jeeves showed me the spot where he’d found me.
The roof was just a roof. Industrial. Serviceable. Not a single trace of any kind of club or a fire.
I shook my head when our fruitless search ended.
“Well, that’s that, Jeeves. I suppose I should go and get fitted for a Colney Hatch waistcoat. The flat’s will be ready tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
The following day Jeeves went ahead to make certain all was in order. About an hour later, I received a message instructing me to meet Jeeves at a certain address.
The address turned out to be the public library. I found Jeeves in the periodicals room.
“Sir, I found something that may be of interest to you.”
He pointed to an article in a copy of the Times which was five years old.
I read. I boggled.
“Jeeves!”
“Yes, sir.”
“There was a fire! At a rooftop club! At that address!”
“Yes, sir. The entire edifice was consumed. There was, tragically, a great loss of life.”
“Le Rêve was built afterwards.”
“Yes, sir. If I may wax poetic, a dream constructed atop a nightmare.”
“Goodness! That gives me a decidedly queer feeling.”
“Yes, sir.”
He offered me his arm. I took it and was glad of it.
Fandom: Jeeves and Wooster
Length: 1000
Rating: Gen
Summary: Bertie visits a ghost jazz club in New York City.
Prompt:
I have to say it left me with a decidedly queer feeling.
But, wait, I’m getting ahead of myself. Time and place, Bertram, your kind readers are not mind-readers!
Spring. New York City.
Jeeves and I had been decanted at some ungodly hour of the morning, seven, I think it was, by our transatlantic liner. We’d just washed up on the foreign shore only to discover that the domicile we’d reserved had sprung a leak or something and would not be habitable for another week.
Thus, my gentleman’s gentleman and I had no choice but to do our best Mary-and-Joseph impersonations and look for a room at an inn. We quickly settled for something nearby, one of the penthouse suites of an ultra-modern hotel called Le Rêve, you know, all straight lines and polished chrome and sparkling glass.
Now America is a curious place for many reasons, and one of them is the counting of the floors in a building. They start with the first floor, not the ground floor, you see, thus the second floor being what we English would call the first and so on.
To avoid confusion, I’d taken to telling the lift operators to simply ‘take me to the top.’
And so it was on the Friday night following our arrival. I’d been catching up with old friends until the wee hours.
Now the fellow in charge of the lift wasn’t one I recognised. Nevertheless, I gave him a jolly greeting and my usual instructions.
At that, the fellow grinned in a most unsettling way.
I gave an uneasy nod and looking down noted my charioteer was sporting the most unusual socks. They bore, believe me or believe me not, green and orange parrots. He was sitting on a little stool with his feet on the rungs and his knees bent, the better, evidently, to show off this singular piece of his wardrobe.
If I thought the shot was on the board at any price at all for Jeeves to allow me to be seen in public in similar, I would have inquired as to their origin with a view to purchase. But as it was, I merely admired them from afar.
A bell sounded. The doors opened.
And I was, at once, catapulted into something like the inferno.
Blasts assaulted me.
Music. Heat. Bodies. Noise.
People dancing. People drinking. People laughing.
A band going full force. A dance floor in a crowded frenzy.
And as I was carried by the current of patrons, I passed a perch with a huge green and orange parrot, squawking and bobbing to the beat, looking like nothing so much as a cubist’s dream of a jazz carrot.
I hadn’t much time to consider this unusual mascot because perforce I flowed towards the dancing.
I must lay stress the music was electric.
Under normal circumstances, I swing a dashed efficient shoe, but this jazz, this swing, this melody, and rhythm, had me in its clutches and I was dancing as I’d never danced before. Every so often I would find myself at the edge of the throng and a kind soul would pour a few drops of elixir down my gullet to stave off utter exhaustion.
The temperature was like an oven. I was marinating in my own persp, but nothing mattered.
Then suddenly, I noted, much like one does if one spends much time near ovens, something was burning.
“Fire!”
Frenzy turned to pandemonium as the place filled up with smoke.
My eyes burned. My lungs burned. I groped my way to a side door and then found myself tumbling down steps. The walls seemed to give one last electric wail and then all went black.
I woke to Jeeves looking as unflappable as ever.
“Jeeves!”
“Tea, sir?”
“Jeeves, what about the fire?”
“Fire, sir?”
“The lift operator took me to the club on the roof, Jeeves, a corkin’ club, by the way, absolute scorcher, but there was a fire. I barely escaped with my life.”
I looked about me and saw I was in a position of repose in the bedroom of the suite. “The fire didn’t reach here?”
“There wasn’t a fire, sir, and I’m afraid there isn’t a club on the roof, either.”
“I assure you, my good man, I attended a soiree like none other last night.”
“You were found in an altered state on the fire escape, sir. A security guard alerted me as to your location and condition, and I fetched you.”
“Was it all a dream, Jeeves? Or a hallucination?”
“I can’t readily say, sir.”
“Jeeves, can we go to the roof and investigate?”
“Of course, sir, if it will set your mind at ease.”
We went up the fire escape. Jeeves showed me the spot where he’d found me.
The roof was just a roof. Industrial. Serviceable. Not a single trace of any kind of club or a fire.
I shook my head when our fruitless search ended.
“Well, that’s that, Jeeves. I suppose I should go and get fitted for a Colney Hatch waistcoat. The flat’s will be ready tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
The following day Jeeves went ahead to make certain all was in order. About an hour later, I received a message instructing me to meet Jeeves at a certain address.
The address turned out to be the public library. I found Jeeves in the periodicals room.
“Sir, I found something that may be of interest to you.”
He pointed to an article in a copy of the Times which was five years old.
I read. I boggled.
“Jeeves!”
“Yes, sir.”
“There was a fire! At a rooftop club! At that address!”
“Yes, sir. The entire edifice was consumed. There was, tragically, a great loss of life.”
“Le Rêve was built afterwards.”
“Yes, sir. If I may wax poetic, a dream constructed atop a nightmare.”
“Goodness! That gives me a decidedly queer feeling.”
“Yes, sir.”
He offered me his arm. I took it and was glad of it.