B00C4I7LJE EBOK (22 page)

“No limo,” I said.

“Why don’t you get the bags,” she asked, as if the thought had just occurred to her.

“Good idea. Wait here. I’ll see if I can find which conveyor belt is ours.”

“Don’t leave me!” She reached out and grabbed my arm, which told me how nervous she was—Phyllis did not encourage physical contact.

“I have to get the bags.”

Reluctantly she released me. “All right.” She looked so small and helpless standing next to the pillar, like somebody’s grandmother (which in fact she was) feeling helpless in a foreign country.

“I’ll be right back,” I said.

Several of the conveyor belts were loaded with bags. It remained for me to find the one with ours. I picked the one which had most recently shuddered to life and watched for something familiar, heaving a sigh of relief when I spotted one or our big, plaid suitcases emerging. I waded through the group of people and started tugging luggage off the belt. I soon had a mountain of bags and realized that I couldn’t keep my eyes on both the bags coming out on the belt and the ones surrounding me. Phyllis would have to help.

Dragging over the first of the bags, I deposited them next to her. “You watch the luggage,” I told her. Some perverse little voice inside of me said,
Yeah, it’s time she started doing some work around here.

I collected the bags as quickly as I could, worrying each time I turned my back that one would disappear.

“How many do we have now?” Phyllis asked each time I added another to the group.

“You count ’em,” I told her with uncharacteristic curtness. I already knew, of course, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have some corroboration.

“That’s thirty-six,” she said when I returned with the next pair. “How many do we have?”

“Forty.”         

“What’s missing?”

“I’ll check in a minute. There’s more coming out.” I’d spotted the two wig boxes and wanted to snatch them before they were out of reach. In another minute, I had the complete set.

“I’m going to phone the hotel,” I said, although the idea was impractical. For one thing, I didn’t have any of the local currency. For another, I didn’t know how their phones worked. And, of course, I still didn’t speak the language.

Surprisingly, Phyllis vetoed the idea. The champagne was wearing off, thank heaven. “Let’s just get a cab.”

“I don’t think we can get all this in a cab.” Boy, was I wishing we’d spent that extra day at the Playboy Club-Hotel!

Just then an angel appeared in the guise of a perfectly ordinary porter. “Taxi?” he asked.

“Yes!” Phyllis and I answered in unison.

“Big taxi!” he said, his face splitting into a huge grin. “You wait,” he instructed and he scuttled outside.

We waited.

In five minutes the porter returned with a man in tow. “He owns wagon,” the porter said, and began to pile bags onto his handcart. The wagon owner looked more like he owned a pig farm, but if he could get us into town, I really didn’t care.

“Where are you going?” he asked in better English than they apparently spoke at the hotel.

“Caribe Hilton. There was supposed to be a limousine here to meet us,” I added in some forlorn hope that he would say, “Yes, there is a limousine here,” but he only nodded and said “Caribe Hilton.”

Phyllis tugged at my sleeve. “Watch the bags!” she said in an anxious, Pooh-like whisper. “Which ones?” Part of them were still sitting on the ground, while the others were being trundled off by the only English-speaking porter in San Juan.

“All of them.”

By that time the owner of the wagon had tucked several bags under his massive arms and was making his way outside.

“You go with those,” I told Phyllis. “I’ll stay with these.” She hesitated a moment. “Quick,” I urged as the driver disappeared around a corner.

I knew she was loath to go by herself, but after only another moment’s hesitation, she scurried after the man carrying away our luggage.

I picked up a couple of the smaller bags as I waited for our porter to return. He and the driver came back at the same time, and between the three of us we managed to wheel, drag, and tote the remainder of our luggage.

As we neared the curb, I spotted Phyllis standing next to a fairly decent-looking Volkswagen minibus. The driver quickly piled the rest of the bags inside as the porter told me, “Now I get taxi for you.”

“No. No taxi,” Phyllis said. Then she whispered to me, “I’m not letting this van out of my sight!”

“We’ll ride with the bags,” I told the porter. He repeated this to the driver in Spanish and they both shrugged.

“Tip him,” Phyllis instructed as she clambered up the high step and wedged herself into the back seat between the kitchen bag and a wig box. “A lot!” she added as I wrestled the petty-cash purse out of my handbag.

I extracted two twenty-dollar bills—about double the normal tip even in the U.S.—and handed them over.

The man grinned and said, “
Gracias, senorita! Muchas gracias!
” He added a “
Vaya con Dios!
” as he carefully closed the door. “
Gracias, gracias!
” he called again as we pulled away from the curb.

“I think I overdid it,” I muttered.

“It was worth it.”

As we drove through miles of cultivated fields toward the city, I tried not to consider the fact that the Caribe Hilton obviously didn’t know we were arriving that evening. It was grim comfort to be proven right. When we arrived at the hotel, we were part of a small parade of cars and taxis. Our driver angled into a vacant spot that featured “No parking, stopping or standing” signs and proceeded to do all three.

As he began to unload the bags, I clambered out of the van and held the door for Phyllis.

“I’m not budging from here until you get the manager,” she informed me. She crossed her arms and settled herself even deeper into the space between the suitcases. I wondered if she had taken those “Watch your luggage” signs too seriously and hoped she wasn’t going to make a life-long habit of it.

“The manager,” she repeated firmly as I hesitated. The driver unloaded the suitcases, and I pushed my way into the lobby. A mob of guests crowded the front desk. I elbowed my way to the front, determinedly ignoring the hostile glares and ominous mutterings. I leaned across and grabbed the nearest clerk by the arm.

“Get me the manager,” I said in a calm but firm voice. “Now!”

He rewarded me with a blank stare. “The
manager
!” I repeated and raised my voice. “
Ahora
!
Now
!”

The clerk followed the blank stare with a look of consternation, but as I let go of his sleeve, he stepped backward through a door marked “Employees Only.” Except that it said it in Spanish. I would give him thirty seconds, then I would follow him through that door. I was saved this painful necessity by his surprisingly speedy return with someone I was only too happy to assume was the manager.

“Listen,” I started, “Phyllis Diller is here. She’s in a van outside because you didn’t send the limousine to the airport like you were supposed to. She wants to be shown to her room right now.”

“Phyllis Diller?” his eyebrows shot up toward his hairline.

“Yes.”

“Why wasn’t I told?” he asked in an injured tone. He glanced at a book and held a brief conference with one of the other captives behind the desk.

“I will come,” he said as he slipped around the end of the counter and trotted behind me out to the van.

“Ah, Miss Diller! You are here!” he effused.

Now that things were about to be rectified, she smiled sweetly.

“But, alas, your room is not ready.” He did a wonderful imitation of an unctuous hotel manager, wringing his hands in distress and making little clucking noises. Perhaps it wasn’t an imitation. Perhaps he was the genuine article.

“I will put you in a room where you can wait!” The idea seemed to have come to him so unexpectedly that his whole face brightened. “Yes! You can wait until your room is ready. Yes?”

“That will be fine,” Phyllis told him.

“And those bags,” he continued as he waved to our traveling luggage shop. “We will put those in our baggage room.”

“No,” Phyllis said. “The bags will come with us.”

“All of them?”

“Yes. They are my costumes. I need them.”

“Oh.” He eyed the mountain of luggage as though it might have plans to take over the hotel, but he did not argue further. He waved toward the main door and several bellmen emerged. He spoke rapidly in Spanish, explaining, no doubt, that these two crazy women needed all this luggage to go with them to their room because they had a lot of clothes. As they began to load the bags onto their carts, I took a moment to deal with the van driver.

“How much?” I asked. He named an amount that I figured was quadruple what it should have been, but I wasn’t in any position to quibble. I forked over the cash and added a sizeable tip, and found myself once again being blessed as he pocketed the small fortune and leaped into his trusty Volkswagen van. “
Adios y gracias
!” he called merrily as he pulled into the tangle of traffic and shot across three lanes of traffic, ignoring the blaring horns.

I turned back in time to see our luggage caravan disappearing into the cool interior of the hotel. I followed.  

Eventually we were shown to our rooms. They were connecting, much to my dismay, but at least they were large and airy, with lots of closet space.

I stared glumly at our stack of luggage. “I guess we’d better do something with all these suitcases.” I would have to sort them—costumes to be transported backstage, clothes to be unpacked for our two-week stay, and suitcases with the cold-weather clothes to be put at the back of the closet. Although it was not an arduous task, it was one of those petty things that wears on a person. I was not in the mood.

“But first,” Phyllis said, “call room service and order two pińa coladas. Have you ever had one?”

“No. What’s a pińa colada?”

“I first had them when I was down here filming a movie with Bob Hope. You can’t come to Puerto Rico and not have a pińa colada.”

By the time we finished unpacking and stashing the suitcases, we’d each polished off three pińa coladas, which turned out to be a wonderful frothy mixture of pineapple and coconut and rum.

Mostly rum.

Puerto Rico and I were going to get along just fine.

28

W
hile we were in Puerto Rico, I reached the conclusion that Warde was not totally useless—he did have a place in the scheme of things and it was, surprisingly, slightly higher on the evolutionary ladder than pond scum. I realized that because Phyllis never went anywhere alone, I would have to go with her every time she wanted to go anyplace, no matter what time of the day or night. From the time Phyllis got up until the time we went to bed, unless she was in the bathroom or onstage, we were inseparable.

Phyllis had been there twice before, filming movies with Bob Hope, so there were places and people she wanted to revisit. We had drinks at El Convento—the old convent that had been transformed into a lovely hotel. We ate lunch at her favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurant and spent one entire afternoon shopping and going crazy over the handcrafts we found.

“Look at these embroidered shirts!” Phyllis crowed as she held up a man’s white shirt, decorated with elaborate stitching. “I’m going to get them for the boys.” So saying, she picked out six shirts, two for each of Warde’s sons and two for Perry.

I was loving all the beads and embroidery. I ended up getting a large necklace of wooden beads and macramé. It had a cross on it. It wasn’t until years later that I found out it was a rosary.
Oops!
I also got a large cloth bag that would serve very well as a beach bag. It looked like a horse blanket. It was sturdy and would hold a lot of stuff.

Another afternoon we went into a jewelry store where Phyllis, in less than an hour, spent what I considered to be an ungodly sum on things she didn’t need and several she later decided she didn’t even like.

The store owner either recognized Phyllis or realized she was a serious customer because nearly as soon as she began browsing, he went over and put the “Closed” sign on the door. He pulled out a tray of beautiful necklaces, but Phyllis told him that she didn’t wear necklaces.

“Let me look at those rings,” she said.

He pulled out an assortment of rings ranging from fairly plain to large and flashy.

“I’d like to try that one,” she said, pointing to a large gold ring that was sort of a modified S-shaped dome. “Yes, I like this.” She later referred to it as her “golden turd.”

“Let me see your lapis lazuli,” she said next. I’d previously heard it pronounced laz-
uli,
but the jeweler confirmed her pronunciation of
laz
-uli was correct. She chose another ring and a bracelet, too. Next she pored over the entire case of rings, earrings, and bracelets, but nothing there struck her fancy.

After that he showed her some unset stones, including a light-blue topaz.

“I thought topaz was yellow,” I told the jeweler. I had a lovely, smoky-topaz ring I’d bought in South Africa.

“It comes in several shades,” he said.

I was glad I didn’t care much about jewelry. I would never understand it and couldn’t afford it anyway. Phyllis ended up buying several pieces, including the blue topaz.

When all her purchases were bagged and the total rung up, Phyllis said, “Write the man a check.”

I’d been watching this spending spree with a mixture of awe and disbelief.
Surely she’s not going to get all of this.
At home she had begun to scrimp and save pennies in the most ludicrous ways. Phyllis told Val to buy only the brand of toothpaste that was on sale and the same went for hand lotion, shampoo, and other sundries. Also, we were told that “the house” would no longer supply cookies at breaks. If we wanted a snack, we were to bring our own. By practicing these small economies, she saved a couple of dollars a week, and now she turned around and spent an enormous amount on a whim. Granted, it was her money to do with as she liked, but this was ridiculous.