What Are Words vs The Gift of a Legend?

You're Only Human Once
by Grace Moore Parera

But here on the Riviera Chato was still my funny, gay, and
dashing beau. He and Alec were returning to Paris the next day,
so we decided to give them a farewell Dutch Treat dinner under
the stars on the dirt terrace of the now marble-paved and famous
Eden Rock. The gala dinner consisted mostly of a Mediterranean
platter and Vin Rose, the light red wine of the country. We had
had such a happy summer and we had so much toasting to do
that we got quite warm and mellow on our parting salutes. Prob-
ably the most original toast of all was proposed by Zelda Fitz-
gerald. She and Scott always seemed to me straight out of The
Beautiful and Damned and never more than when she stood on
the table and said, "I have been so touched by all these kind
words. But what are words? Nobody has offered our departing
heroes any gifts to take with them. I'll start it off." Whereupon
she stepped out of her black lace panties and

threw them towards
the two guests of honor, for the lucky one to catch. Alec, dear
prim soul, was too shocked to make more than a pretense of
reaching, and Chato naturally caught the prize. Chato saluted
Zelda with a wave of the panties and said that since he was a hero
he could thank her only in a heroic way, by jumping from the
highest rock, with the panties clasped close to his breast to protect
him from harm. Then, being man to suit foolish action to word, he
jumped from the rock with all his clothes on and the little black
panties against his bosom. We all dashed down the rocks after
him, and soon everybody was in the water, still fully clothed.

The effect of salt water on the alcoholic content of Vin Rose
sometimes produces the familiar blur. We all edged out to the
parked raft before it got us. But suddenly we noticed Alec emerge
completely naked out of the shadow of an overcast moon. Ap-
parently he had lost all his clothes in the Mediterranean plunge
and now, blissfully unaware of his native state, was climbing a
ladder to the shore. He walked over to where he had left his
straw hat, solemnly put it on his head, lit a cigarette from the
case that had been left there, and walked with great dignity up
the path and to the hotel. We watched him with a kind of fasci-
nated and dulled horror, loath to remind him of his embarrassing
lack of clothes because we knew, knowing puritanical Alec, how
strong his reaction would be. We didn't see him again that season.
He had already departed for Paris by the time we could get the
end of the story from the room clerk. Alec, we were told, had
fortunately come into an empty lobby. Unaware of the picture
he made with hat and sans clothes, he came up to the desk and
with habitual pomposity said to the clerk in perfect although not
overfluent French, "Doimez moi le clef." Then, clef in hand, he
vanished, straw hat and all, to the upper regions and out of our
ken, like one of the wee ghosties of my own inimitable tales.


pg 115, 1944 at Archive.org

 The current Eden Rock on Youtube from megamiket123.