“Ah, Paree!!” Flodden exclaimed, as he stepped off the iron stairs and tapped the sidewalk with his malacca stick. Billington was laughing.
“No, seriously, Flod! How did you do it? You aren’t beautiful, you know.”
“Cookie, he says I’m not beautiful.… A thing of duty is a boy for ever. That’s the secret of my success.”
Billington took Cooke’s arm.
“He won’t tell me how he got his gallery of mistresses in Paris. You know, those photos in his room. ‘Votre Petite Amie, Dolorine.’ ‘To my dear little cabbage, with all my heart, from Goo Goo.’ And so forth.”
“Never-never!” cried Flodden. “Betray the little darlings? Grossly indelicate.”
They all laughed.
“All the same, Flod, I believe you bought the whole collection—of pictures, I mean—for a franc.”
“Half a franc. There was nothing indecent in them, so they went cheap.”
In the dark French restaurant, with its bare polished tables, its winy smell, and rows and rows of bottles and great casks, bottles tiered all the way to the ceiling, Flodden chuckled.
“My dear Bill, my poor Bill, I understand you perfectly, and sympathize with you deeply. Yes, you lack that something, that je ne sais quoi, which brings the bird to your hand. If you really want to know how I did it, it was like this. When I wanted a mistress, I went into the Magazin du Louvre, or the House of a Thousand Shirts, pretending to seek a hat for Madame—Madame Flodden. The hat girls are usually very pretty. Flirtations. Discreet innuendoes. Flattery. And there”—he snapped his fingers—“it was.”
Anchovies—crabmeat salad—Amer Picon—how romantic! thought Cooke. He was excited by the conversation between Billington and Flodden, but was ashamed to ask questions. He would have liked to know everything about it—everything. How unbearably hot it was in here. Electric fans whirled their colored ribbons of paper. Did Flod really do that? The photos on Flod’s bureau had agitated him—soiled and scented trophies of six months in Paris. Flod was lucky. Once or twice he had talked seriously about Dolorine, who had lived with him on Montmartre. They had been on a picnic together to some place near Paris where there were houses in trees. They sat in a sidewalk café drinking beer under a chestnut tree which was in bloom. Dolorine had a sad sensual face, was pale, had a habit of putting her elbows on the table and resting her chin on her hands. “Monsieur,” she said, “monsieur, monsieur.” How astonishing to climb the dark tenement stairs at night with Dolorine, a French girl. Dolorine struck a match, lit the gas, and squealed. Ah! those devils! they have forgotten my milk. Oh, Toto! Your poor coffee! You will have no coffee. She squealed again, when Toto—Flod—kissed her, tipping her hat to one side and getting a feather in his eye. The bed was by the window.
Billington was talking excitedly, as he always did, his eyes sparkling and darting about, never resting anywhere for long. “It’s perfectly true—I do lack something, I do. I don’t know what it is—I don’t really! I’m shy, but just the same women stimulate me simply extraordinarily, and I can talk to them—oh, infinitely better than I can with men. And yet I don’t make the slightest impression on them! Not the slightest. Now this afternoon I went to see Celia Daggert—you know, the miniature painter. She lives on Sixty-second Street. She attracts me very much, and I should like immensely to make her fall in love with me—in which case I’d fall in love with her. Well. This afternoon she had a terrific effect on me—absolutely terrific. She has a quick mind—she has a kind of tired prettiness, if you know what I mean. And really, she intoxicated me. I never talked so brilliantly before in my life. I talked like a genius—like a genius! I showered epigrams—I was a chandelier-tree, showering crystal. I was conscious of my power—I used it up to the last notch—I was like a magician, making strange and beautiful things come out of words. I was so excited that I couldn’t sit still. I stood in the middle of the floor and talked to her. Really, I’m not exaggerating at all—I’m quite detached about it. And Celia was amazed—and that was the end of it. Now how do you explain it? It’s most tiresome.”
“Wasting your sweetness on the desert air,” said Cooke. “I think it’s a mistake—you probably frightened her. I think what women like best is to have you confide in them.”
Flodden slapped the table.
“Oh, Cookie, you’re so nice and young! Ha, ha! What do you confide in them, Cookie? Come, now, tell us. Can’t you just hear him, Bill, confiding in a sort of throaty, hesitating voice, you know, with his dear face turned a little away, sadly—‘Nellie, if you only knew how unhappy I am!—but there! I mustn’t bore you by talking about myself.’”
“The foul fiend fly away with you,” growled Cooke, blushing, “and pick your pox-pit bones.”
Flodden’s remark hurt him and made him angry; he was silent; but he reflected that it was for just this sort of remark that he most cherished Flodden. His utter recklessness of other people’s feelings and, so often, the sharpness of his perceptions! Just the sort of sharpness he himself lacked. Arrows dipped in dragon’s blood. It was curious, just the same, that Flodden didn’t write any better—all his ability was on the surface. Dull, facetious little pot-boilers. The humor of the comic strips. He sipped his Amer Picon.
“You haven’t had your bat’s uvula,” said Flodden. “Waitah!” he cried, but not too loud. Then a thought struck him. “By George! I forgot to tell you, Cookie, you have an admirer—a great man admires you. Not a woman, I regret to say—no stage queen. But old man Butler, the portrait painter. I was talking with him at the Petit Pas the other night. ‘Who was the boy,’ he said, ‘in Bill’s room the other day—with the honest blue eyes? A lovely face! And of an innocence inconceivable.’ He wants to meet you again—he wants you to sit for him.… Look at him blush! By God, he is innocent.”
When they had finished their dinner they strolled down to the Battery. Flodden, swinging his stick, walked ahead, singing, as if he had forgotten them. At the water’s edge they sat, dangling their feet. They took their coats off, sat in silence watching the Staten Island ferries. Lights rippled on the water, and a faint east wind cooled their faces.
III.
Cooke liked to feel the strong draught blowing through the subway express, with its rubbery underground smell. A gale in a cellar. Escaped newspapers floated like ghosts from car to car, crashed against the doors, wrapped themselves round people’s legs, flapped, wheeled, spread themselves out flat. Bill was talking about some poet he knew and his prowess as a swimmer. Flagrant plagiarism from Byron and Swinburne. “Powerful! I never saw anything like it. He beats the waves with tremendous, imperious arms. Yodles in the water, wallows there like a monster, like a leviathan! By God, it’s wonderful to watch him. We went to Midland Beach. He absolutely subjugates the sea.… And when he comes out, hairy and immense, he runs up the sand, dances, sings, stamps, exults like a god!”