If I hadn’t been in such a hurry to get back to Larry, I would have told him then and there, as I’d been vaguely planning to do for about a week, how hellishly bored I was with all his sophisticated maneuvers. It was partly out of necessity, of course, having both a wife and a mistress, as well as myself, that he jammed and juggled his days and nights with arranged and rearranged rendezvous. But that was not the only reason he always turned up so late. There was another one, as I suspected when he formed the habit of meeting me around eleven at the Ritz bar: it was that he simply refused to do anything in a straightforward way. He felt that his unpunctuality increased his mystery and desirability.

The unfortunate thing was that he had reckoned without my naïveté. I was honestly so thrilled at being at the Ritz in the first place that I didn’t mind how long I was kept waiting. There were so many marvelous new things to look at and so many marvelous new drinks to experiment with, sazaracs and slings and heaven knows what else, so that at first I never even noticed the passing of time. But then as the novelty wore off and I took to bringing magazines and novels along with me, I noticed how really put out he was when instead of discovering me ceaselessly scanning the horizon for him, he found me deep in Paris-Match.

Thus was I reflecting, standing there at the entrance of the bar that night, looking around for Teddy and painfully conscious of myself again. I was still wearing the evening dress I had on when I’d met Larry that morning and the funny thing about it was that, even though twelve hours had elapsed since then, it still wasn’t particularly appropriate. I mean I really felt I could expect it to be correct attire at some point of the day—like a watch that has stopped, eventually just happening to have its hands pointing to the right time. I can’t understand it. I have quite a lot of clothes and go to quite a lot of places. I never actually seem to be wearing the right things at the right time, though. You’d think the law of averages.… Oh well. It’s all very discouraging. Nevertheless this dress that I had on at the time, I encouraged myself, wasn’t actually unbecoming. It was a sort of blue and silver and of course I’d taken off the red leather belt and was wearing the proper belt—which pleased me as well. It was one of the few I hadn’t lost.

There is a terrific movie which gets shown a lot around Art cinemas, even though it’s a very old one, and I always try to see it if I can. It’s called The Scoundrel, and it has Noel Coward in it as this great Wolf. At one point when his latest victim comes around and begs him on her knees to take her back, he removes the boutonniere from the lapel of his dinner jacket and murmuring Forgive-me-my-dear-for-stooping-to-symbolism, he tosses the flower into his highball and drowns it with a squirt of the soda syphon. So you know what I mean? That’s the sort of thing I brought myself up on. I mean that’s more like it.

Basically I am a Space person, especially when up against it, and now I began hopping all over the room from corner to corner.

“Well,” I said finally, over by the bookshelves. “Well, I’m awfully sorry to hear about all this—I mean your—” I was over by the window by now. “I mean I didn’t dream that you’d be so easily.…” Back to the mantel. “Oh, hell. Of course I can’t marry you. It never occurred to me you’d ever want to. I just thought you’d be the ideal teacher to—you know, the ideal person to sharpen the old teeth on,” I finished, drifting back to the arm of the sofa and bending over him to see if he understood.

I was being savagely pressed against his chest and peremptorily ordered to get into bed.

[...] but the whole episode was forcing me to remember something that I’m always trying to forget and that is, that in a library as well, I’m always being taken for a librarian. No kidding. My last Christmas in New York, I had an English paper to write over the vacation, and there was this public library I used to go to, and no matter where I sat, people were always coming up to me and asking me where such and such a book was. They were furious too, when I didn’t know. It was eerie. I began to feel that I actually was a librarian. The wood growing into my soul and stuff. I suppose I am rather an intellectual.

I had been lumped together all this time with my fool cousin, placed “on his side,” so to speak, by accident of blood, nationality and the seating arrangements. It was an error I intended to rectify. It was dessert now, and I was deserting. He was just heading into a fresh topic—admittedly not one which he found as controversial as the last, but equally dull and equally mysterious.

Anyway, we danced a whole set, and at the end of it, to my great relief, he let me go. He gave me those crazy eyes again, but I decided they came with the face.

“It’s just that the mystique of brutality runs right through —well, it doesn’t run, but it’s there. It’s like that G.I. we knew who went AWOL in the war—” he turned slowly to the Englishman. “AWOL, A, W, O, L,” he repeated clearly for his benefit. “Do you have it? I mean of course you have it, but do you say AWOL. A, W, O, L—you don’t mind my asking?”

The Englishman nodded vigorously, managing to mingle total agreement with total astonishment, and though neither was exactly what was called for, they had to do, as he was obviously beyond speech. Doric’s wife said, “Yes, darling, he was AWOL,” quickly, to get him back on the track, but Doric, who had been hoping here for a chance to discuss the basic differences between American and British Army terminology, gazed around him, completely thrown.

“The film,” whispered his wife.

When we all sat around moaning and groaning about how expensive Paris was—and we did, it was one of our favorite conversations—he simply switched off. You could actually see it boring him. And the few times that we dined alone together, at the end of our meal there was none of the usual leaping up from the chair as though shot through with an arrow, yelling Wow! or similar Indian war whoops, which most of my friends felt de rigueur in heralding the arrival of the bill. I was grateful to him for that, and yet it was impossible to say just why, but it was always a relief to find out that he had the money to cover it. Did it mean he was going without breakfast next morning, or what? And it was crazy to feel like this, because sometimes you could see he was just rolling in the stuff.

“Are you a gambler?” I asked him finally.

“There isn’t anything you do in life that isn’t a gamble, Gorce,” he replied.

“But do you gamble?” I insisted.

“In a way. In a way.” He looked at me oddly.

It just defeated me. I could guess and guess and guess about Larry and still not get anywhere. It all led down a blind alley.

Now that I’ve been around (hey, hey) I am no longer astonished at the lubricity of these old biddies, but at the time I just couldn’t get over it.

After he left I started to cry. Then I fell asleep again. At two o’clock I woke up, suddenly remembering I’d made a date with Judy’s Frenchman, the painter Claude Tonnard.

He took me to his studio, poured me out some perfectly ghastly tea and we looked at his paintings a while. Then, as if it was the only thing left to do, he made love to me.

The studio was dark and cold when I left. I felt experienced without feeling that I, personally, had been through anything. I’d really shocked myself, to tell you the truth. I was a long way from St. Louis. My past was receding a little too rapidly.

I tried to remember one minute that whole week end when Marion and I weren’t either feeding people, or clearing up from doing it, or preparing to do it again. And presumably she never stopped doing it. But I couldn’t quite see why just because she did, I should. I mean, here was I practically fresh out of the egg, everything was so new to me, and here was everybody telling me to stop driftingy and start living in this world; telling me to start cooking, and sewing, and cleaning, and I don’t know what. Taking care of my grandchildren.

I sat in the studio lost in thought, watching the evening get darker and darker and colder and colder, unable to move. Finally I roused myself and went to look for Jim. I found him wandering aimlessly around the kitchen, peering every now and again into one of the empty cupboards, hoping as if by some miracle to find that particular one filled.

“What is it, Jim?” He looked so forlorn.

“I’ve … I’ve already invited them to dinner on Thursday.”

I took a deep breath.

“O.K.” I said. “Which is the stove and how do you light it?”