In though the door from the main room came a young, slim, slightly-built queen-ehhif. She was fair-haired, the hair tucked up in a peculiar looped style underneath yet another of those hats— this one a close-fitting, slantwise business in a startling peacock blue, with a bizarre confection of blue veiling and blue-dyed fluffy feathers trailing back from it. Her dress, too, was blue, with a bouffant skirt that rustled noisily every time she took a step, and was perhaps as wide againon each side as she was.
She came clicking along toward their table on delicate little high heels. Rhiow, watching her come, thought that she was probably very pretty as ehhif reckoned such things: but there was something about her face, and about the set of the vivid blue eyes, that gave her pause. I’m not always expert at figuring out their faces, she thought; Iau knows their expressions don’t work anything like ours. But Rhiow couldn’t get rid of an initial impression of a calculating mind behind the innocuously pretty look. “Why, Mr. Runyon,” the queen-ehhif said as she came to stand, or rather pose, by the table, looking them all over, “how unusual to see you here! And what an unusual gathering! Where are the PR people?”
The Silent Man simply looked up at her…and then at something else. Rhiow had noted and dismissed the big straw bag embroidered with bright-colored straw flowers that the queen-ehhif was carrying over her shoulder. But now in the bag something moved, and Rhiow’s ears went right forward as the scent that had been masked by all the food-and smoke-smells in here became much plainer, and a Person put her head up out of the bag.
White fur, fluffy: ears set apparently permanently in a bad-tempered sideways slant: green eyes, watery: a nose that ran. It was surprising to see a Person of so broad-faced a breed somehow managing to look so narrow, pinched and unpleasant. Maybe it’s that poor squashed nose, Rhiow thought. How does she breathe through something like that?
The Silent Man, meanwhile, was eyeing the queen-ehhif in much the same way he had when one of the waiters had turned up at their table with the wrong meal. He reached for his pad and pen, though not with any great speed. Meanwhile, the bag-Person was looking over the other assembled People with a peculiar heavy-lidded mixture of disdain and envy that left Rhiow surprisingly unwilling to greet her.
But Urruah’s unshakeable sense of his own superlative quality as an uber-tom would hardly let him stay silent in the face of a new queen, no matter how tired he was. “Hunt’s luck to you, madam,” he said to the Person in the purse, letting an appreciative purr get into the greeting.
Those green eyes dwelt on him for a long, appraising moment before the mouth opened. What came out first, though, was a huge yawn: and after that, when they’d all had a better view than they needed of the gullet behind the yawn and the jaws had closed with a snap, and the green eyes looked at Urruah once more and then at the rest of them, a word came out.
“Peasants,” the bag-Person said, closed her eyes, and sank out of sight.
Rhiow flicked one ear back and forth in a“Why am I not surprised?” gesture. Urruah sank back onto the banquette, wounded but keeping that purr going by way of concealment. Hwaith looked mortified, and turned his face away. Arhu and Siffha’h exchanged a glance. I could tear her a new one, Arhu said to Rhiow. Come on, Rhi. It’s too late now to spoil anybody’s appetite…
Just you be still for the time being until we understand what’s going on around here!
“But what a surprise to find you here having a tea party with the kitties!” said the queen-ehhif. Her voice was of the light tinkly sort, which sorted oddly with the hostility that seemed to be peering out from behind the words. “And with a friend! It’s lovely to see the rumors aren’t true that you’re completely heartbroken. Or beyond a little more cradle-robbing.”
The Silent Man stopped dead in his writing for a moment, staring very hard at the pad. Then he finished what he was writing, ripped the page off with a touch more force than was strictly necessary, and held the page up.
SCRAM. DOING BUSINESS HERE.
“But Giorgio sent me back here on purpose to visit you and your lovely pussies!” the she-ehhif said, looking, not at any of the People, but at Helen. “Maybe I can see why.”
Helen looked up demurely from under that hat, all dark-eyed inscrutability, and said nothing.
“Why don’t you introduce us?” the she-ehhif said.
The Silent Man looked away and pointedly had another drink of his coffee.
The she-ehhif looked at Helen, put out a white-gloved hand.“Anya Harte,” she said, with the air of someone who expected the other party to know the name as a matter of course.
“Miss Harte,” Helen said, and reached up to shake the hand held out to her. “Helen Walks Softly.”
“Why, how wonderfully…ethnic!” Miss Harte said, turning away from Helen to smirk at the Silent Man. “You know, you’re just going to be confirming what everyone’s heard about your exotic tastes in the ladies.” She somehow managed to make “exotic” sound like a bad word. “But then it’s to be expected, I suppose, as what you’re used to by now. Your wife’s a Spanish countess, after all, no matter what some people say! And where is Mrs. Runyon, by the way? It’s been so long since we’ve seen her around.”
The Silent Man just looked at Miss Harte. Finally he reached for the pen again, aware that in the shadows of the door into the main room, people were standing, trying not to look as if they were watching. He scribbled for a moment, tore a page off the pad and held it up.
OUT OF TOWN
“I’m sure she is,” Miss Harte said. “Well, while the cat’s away! – so to speak.” She smiled what even Rhiow could have told was a poisonous smile for an ehhif, if her whiskers hadn’t already been practically vibrating with the sense of happy spite that emanated from the woman.
Miss Harte turned on Helen a look that was as simultaneously dismissive and envious as the expression of the Person in her bag.“Are you in the business?”
“The only one that matters,” Helen said, still smiling.
Miss Harte sucked in a long, happily scandalized breath.“Oh, my!” she said. “And you’re so open about it! But I’m sure you’ll do very well at it, with your dark good looks.”
“Thank you,” Helen said, that absolutely imperturbable smile shifting not a fraction. “But better an honest darkness than night masquerading as the innocent day.”
At that Miss Harte blinked, but only for a second.“And you recite your lines so nicely, too! You should really come out and meet some of the really important movie people, so that you can get out of the bit-part rat race! A whole lot of the people from the big studios are going to be up at the party at Dagenham’s tonight. It’s an open party,Mr. Runyon would have no trouble getting you in, there are lots of people who’d love to see someone like you there – ”
Rhiow sat there in wonder listening to that little tinkly voice, which seemed able to imply something cruel or cutting with practically every word. It made her think of the sound that broken bottles made when dumped into the Manhattan garbage trucks early in the morning: little razor-sharp shards, raining down, every one of them capable of slicing you deep if you would only pick it up the wrong way… “Oh, do come along to Dagenham’s tonight, Mr. Runyon! They’d be ever so surprised to see you.” Some further nasty implication lay behind the words: Rhiow was uncertain whether she wanted to know just what. “And just for a laugh, you should bring all your little friends!” The People were included in the glance, but the word seemed mostly for Helen.
“Dagenham’s?” Helen said, looking over at the Silent Man.
He shook his head, shrugged.
“Oh, you must know Elwin Dagenham, he does freelance PR for Goldwyn and Paramount and everybody, and he’s so successful at it, he has a lovely big house up in the hills, there’ll be just hundreds of influential people, and all that champagne and caviar! He has the most wonderful caterers, butthen he would have to, with all the important people he knows, you can’t serve them just anything – ”