He takes her hand and closes her fingers around the glass, shaking his forefinger at her playfully: "Come on now, I can't believe that; you made me get it for you-" and as our methods of courtship seem to make her turn pale, I wink at him and whisk her away to the corner of the apartment where the C. S. vapor blooms. She tries it and gets a coughing fit. She goes sullenly back to the bar.
A MANUFACTURER OF CARS FROM LEEDS (genteelly): I hear so much about the New Feminism here in America. Surely it's not necessary, is it? (He beams with the delighted air of someone who has just given pleasure to a whole roomful of people.)
SPOSISSA, EGLANTISSA, APHRODISSA, CLARISSA, LUCRISSA, WAILISSA, LAMENTISSA, TRAVAILISSA (dear God, how many of them are there?), SACCHARISSA, LUDICRISSA (she came in late): Oh no, no, no! (They all laugh.)
When I got back to the bar, Clarissa was going grimly into her latest heartbreak. I saw Janet, feet apart-a daughter of Whileaway never quails!-trying to get down more than three ounces of straight rum. I suppose one forgets the first taste. She looked flushed and successful.
ME: You're not used to that stuff, Janet.
JANET: O. K., I'll stop.
(Like all foreigners she is fascinated by the word "Okay" and has been using it on every possible occasion for the last four weeks.)
"It's very hard not having anything, though," she says seriously. "I suppose, love, that I'm hardly giving anything away if I say that I don't like your friends."
"They're not my friends, for God's sake. I come here to meet people."
?
"I come here to meet men," I said. "Janet, sit down."
This time it was a ginger moustache. Young. Nice. Flashy. Flowered waistcoat.
Hip. (hip?)
Peals of laughter from the corner, where Eglantissa's latest is holding up and wiggling a chain made of paper clips. Wailissa fusses ineffectually around him.
Eglantissa-looking more and more like a corpse-sits on an elegant, brocaded armchair, with her drink rigid in her hand. Blue smoke wreathes about her head.
"Hullo," says Ginger Moustache. Sincere. Young.
"Oh. How do you do?" says Janet. She's remembered her manners. Ginger Moustache produces a smile and a cigarette case.
"Marijuana?" says Janet hopefully. He chuckles.
"No. Do you want a drink?"
She looks sulky.
"All right, don't have a drink. And you're-"
I introduce my cousin from Sweden.
"Why do you people catabolize foodstuffs in this way?" she bursts out. Still on her mind, it seems. I explain.
"Sickness," he says. "I'm not an alcohol head; that's not my bag. I agree with you. I'd just as soon see people eating the stuff."
(Amicissa dreams: perhaps he won't have the insatiable vanity, the uneasy aggressiveness, the quickness to resent any slight or fancied neglect. Perhaps he won't want to be top dog all the time. And he won't have a fiancщe. And he won't be married. And he won't be gay. And he won't have children. And he won't be sixty.)
"A-a-ah," says Janet, letting out a long breath. "Yes. Aha."
I left them for a while. I was alert to any opportunity. I was graceful. I smiled.
My brassiere hurts.
When I got back they had reached the stage of Discussing His Work. He was teaching high school but was going to be fired. For his ties, I think. Janet was very interested. She mentioned the-uh-day nurseries in-well, in Sweden -and quoted: "We have a saying: when the child goes to the school, both mother and child howl; the child because it is going to be separated from the mother and the mother because she has to go back to work."
"The tie between mother and child is very important," said Ginger Moustache reprovingly. ("Excuse me, let me move that cushion behind your back.")
"I'm sure Swedish mothers really groove on their kids, though," he added.
"Huh?" said my Janet. (He took it as an ignorance of English and relented.)
"Listen," he said, "some time I want you to meet my wife. I know this is a bad scene-I mean meeting you here with the plastic people, y'know?-but some day you're going to come out to Vermont and meet my wife. It's a great, heavy scene.
We've got six kids."
"Six you take care of?" said Janet with considerable respect.
"Sure," he said. "They're in Vermont right now. But after this work hassle is over I'm going back. You grok?"
He means do you understand, Janet? She thought it simpler to say yes.
"Hey," said Ginger Moustache, springing to his feet, "it's been great meeting you. You're a real ballsy chick. I mean you're a woman."
She looked down at herself. "What?"
"Sorry about the slang; I mean you're a fine person. It's a pleasure-to-know-you."
"You don't know me," she was developing the nasty look. Not very nasty as yet but frustrated-angry, tapping-the-fingers, now-look-here-I-want-this-explained.
She is quite spoiled, in her own way.
"Yeah, I know," he said. "How can we get to know each other in ten minutes, huh?
That's true. It's a formal phrase: pleasuretoknowyou."
Janet giggled.
"Right?" he said. "Tell you what, give me your name and address." (she gave him mine) "I'll drop you a line. Write a letter, that is." (Not a bad fellow this Ginger Moustache.) He got up and she got up; something must interrupt this idyll. Saccharissa, Ludicrissa, Travailissa, Aphrodissa, Clarissa, Sposissa, Domicissa, the whole gang, even Carissa herself, have formed a solid wall around this couple. Breaths are held. Bets get made. Joanissa is praying in a heap in the corner. Ginger Moustache got up and Janet trailed him into the hall, asking questions. She's a good bit taller than he is. She wants to know about everything. Either she does not mind the lack of sexual interest or-as is more likely in a foreigner-prefers it. Though he's got a wife. The harsh light from the kitchenette strikes Janet Evason's face and there on one side, running from eyebrow to chin, is a strange, fine line. Has she been in an accident?
"Oh, that!" says Janet Evason, chuckling, bending over (though somewhat hampered by her party dress), laughing, gasping with little feminine squeaks from the top of the compass right down to the bottom, hoarse and musical, "Oh, that!"
"That's from my third duel," she says, "see?" and guides Moustache's hand (his forefinger, actually) along her face.
"Your what?" says Moustache, momentarily frozen into the attractive statue of a pleasant young man.
"My duel," says Janet, "silly. Well, it's not Sweden, not really. You've heard of me; I was on the television. I'm the emissary from Whileaway."
"My God," he says.
"Ssh, don't tell anyone." (She's very pleased with herself. She chuckles.) "This line I got in my third duel; this one-it's practically gone-in my second. Not bad, hey?"
"Are you sure you don't mean fencing?" says Ginger Moustache.
"Hell, no," says Janet impatiently; "I told you, duel." And she draws her forefinger across her throat with a melodramatic jerk. This mad chick doesn't seem so nice to Moustache any more. He swallows.
"What do you fight about-girls?"
"You are kidding me," says Janet. "We fight about bad temper-what else?
Temperamental incompatibility. Not that it's so common as it used to be but if you can't stand her and she can't stand you, what's to be done?"
"Sure," says Ginger Moustache. "Well, goodbye." Janet became suddenly repentant.
"That-well, I suppose that's rather savage, isn't it?" she says. "I beg pardon.
You will think badly of us. Understand, I have put all that behind me now; I am an adult; I have a family. We hope to be friends, yes?" And she looks down at him solemnly, a little timidly, ready to be rebuked. But he hasn't the heart to do it.