The Debutante’s Ball 1941: A Poem
Marissa Van Horne, Debutante
“You’re here to escort me to the ball, Mr. Albion?”
The laughing smiling face of the beautiful young woman
looked at me with merriment and amusement in her sparkling eyes
which glimmered like stars above her sunshine golden gown,
“A famed Los Angeles private eye reduced to a chaperone?”
I, Carson Cody Albion, stopped in my tracks
when I heard this statement
I was a private eye
But I had never thought of myself as famed.
“Don’t be so modest,” Marissa remarked with a wry smile as if she could read my mind, “of course you are!”
“The ball starts at 8 PM?” I queried looking at my watch.
“Yes, but drinks are served starting at 7,” she laughed.
“I don’t think your parents hired me to watch you get inebriated before the ball,” I said as I held open the arms of her fur coat
so she could finish her fashion ensemble for the evening.
Only the LA glitterati rich would wear fur coats
on a hot Los Angeles evening
But as the hired help, what did I know?
“No,” she slid her arms through the coat, “my parents hired you to keep me away from Lev Tomi.”
That was true.
They had.
Titus Van Horne was an influential newspaper editor in the city.
He seemed to know everything about everyone in the state of California
A West Coast J. Edgar Hoover as it were
Minus that DC bureaucrat’s penchant for wearing women’s clothing in private
Which was a good thing for the Van Horne family fortune
For the Paris dresses and gowns that Mrs. Van Horne and daughter Marissa wore
were already keeping the Bank of Monte Carlo afloat
to say nothing of Hitler’s Reich
while the Vichy government were reduced to making money off mineral water
A third Van Horne (and a male one at that) adorning the best of Parisienne feminine apparel
would definitely have put the Van Horne family fortune in the red
like Alger Hiss in the U.S. State Department
Van Horne knew all about Orson Welles’ private life
He had to
For the Boy Wonder of New York radio and theatre
was making a movie based on the life of Van Horne’s boss
But Van Horne knew nothing whatsoever about Lev Tomi
This older man that young Marissa had started seeing at the start of this year
Marissa just claimed that she was taking Russian language lessons from him
Nothing like a LA society girl with a hankering to visit the Soviet Union and see Josef Stalin’s paradise for herself
The movie The Grapes of Wrath had recently been shown in Moscow
Uncle Joe had hoped that this would cause outrage among Moscow’s workers
when they saw how the poor in America were treated
It caused outrage all right
but not in the way that Uncle Joe had hoped
Moscow workers had become outraged that the poor in America actually owned their own trucks
Viewings of the movie soon became obsolete in the USSR
Joining the obsolescence of most personally owned motor vehicles among the common people there
When Marissa came home and told her parents
that she had asked Lev Tomi to be her date
to the LA society’s debutante ball
Titus Van Horne finally put his foot down
causing him to be rushed to LA General Hospital
to get his now even deeper ingrown toe nail surgically removed
After a week of recuperation, Titus Van Horne and his wife Olivia came to see me
And asked me to be Marissa’s escort to the debutante’s ball
Since I had nothing pressing on me at the moment
Save some old white shirts that needed to be steampressed at the neighbourhood’s Chinese laundry
I took the case.
Olivia and Titus Van Horne asked Carson Cody Albion Private Eye to be their daughter Marissa’s escort to the LA society elite debutante’s ball
As I got into the back of the limousine with Marissa
I instructed the chauffeur to drive us to Ming Lo’s Blue Lantern Restaurant
I figured imbibing Marissa with a light Chinese dinner at 7
would far be safer than imbibing her with drinks prior to the ball
I turned out to be wrong on that
It must have been the spicy chop suey
that was the Blue Lantern special
It turned Marissa into a tigress in heat
And I was explorer Frank Buck
Bringing her back alive
It was now 11 PM
I had failed to present Miss Van Horne to the debutante’s ball by some 3 hours
Her beautiful gold dress lying on the seat of the booth along with her nylons and spiked stilettos
And all my clothes lying on the floor underneath the table
Implied a very unusual Russian language lesson was going on
when coincidentally Mr. and Mrs. Van Horne entered the restaurant right at 11 PM
I felt no inclination to open my fortune cookie which the waiter just brought
If it was accurate, I knew well what it would say
You can send me my cheque in the mail for my services
I hastily said to Mr. Van Horne before heading out into the night
like a stallion galloping out into the Santa Ana winds
I had no idea who this Lev Tomi fellow was
But I think I may have just saved his life
Too bad, I can’t say the same for my own.
-Carson Cody Albion Private Eye
-A Carson Cody Albion
Private Eye poem
and vampire novel chapter
written by Christopher
Monday March 18th
2018
Dracul Van Helsing 
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