— Ellery, let him…
Benny stopped, and looked up at Ellery. — I know, he said. — That's what I can't stand. I know I'll bounce back, and that's what I can't stand. He looked at them all three. — Don't worry, he said. — This only happens once. That's the world I live in. You make one show, and when it's finished you throw it out. You give everything you've got to make one show, and then it runs for twenty minutes and you can never show — it again, so you throw it out. This only happens once. .
— Look, Benny. .
— But could I have this? he went on, in the same loud tone, holding up the book. — Do you understand? Because I'm sentimental. That's why I have my job, because I feel what other people feel but more, the same things but more, but not too much, not too much like he did. .
— Benny. .
— Not too much. He relaxed against Ellery. — You're O.K., Benny. You just need a drink.
Benny looked up at him. — Don't you get tired?
— Yeh, we both need a good night's sleep.
— I mean tired of the whole thing.
Ellery looked at him. — I'll get you a drink, he said, and bumped into the tall woman, who had turned from this scene to say to her husband, — Now, do you see what I meant about Hawaii?
She was interrupted. — Do you see what I mean? But the man who made this demand turned from her to look at Esther, and looking at Benny he said to Esther, his forearm extending its own length from the gray flannel sleeve which Benny looked at with glazed familiarity, — Do you see what I meant? Do you see what I meant?
— That's what I hate. That's what I hate. That's what I hate.
— Do you see what I meant?
— Merry Christmas, someone said, raising a glass. — If you'll pardon the expression.
— Great God. Whatever made you think of that?
The girl with Boston accents looked at Benny and said, — What's he high on, man? The stocky man in army uniform looked at the critic, still seated on the couch, and, saying, — A guy like that is dangerous, was, as usual, right for the wrong reasons.
— And the Swiss Guard at the Vatican? I suppose you know that the Pope has given them permission to practice shooting at a target range? And in plain clothes?
— And they say that the food in Spain is inedible, that is if you're used to eating like a civilized person, and so I'm taking scads of these marvelous reducing pills that simply take your appetite away.
— I finally got this new Cadillac, said the author of The Trees of Home, filling a hypodermic syringe with whisky. — I've just always wanted a brand new car, there's something about the way a brand new car smells inside, that new smell. It's something I've always wanted, it's been a regular phobia of mine.
The person with him was garnishing an unseasonal martini with Pernod from a pocket bottle, muttering — Just a drop in each one, there's some chemical reaction. But what's that? he added, looking up to see the needle fitted into place.
— You take it this way, you get just as drunk and you don't get hangovers, said the author of the best-selling book. — My analyst told me about it. He rolled up a sleeve. — Did I tell you about this new Cadillac I got? It's been a regular phobia with me. .
Esther stood looking round her, nervously as though for something to demand her attention and relieve her of going where her attention was demanded: from the doorway, Don Bildow directed a plastic-rimmed appeal over the shoulder of a paunchy man whose familiar face had been so many times, and she realized now, so inadequately, photographed. At hand, the collar of the green wool shirt and the dark head above reared over the back of the couch. The critic and his stubby companion were looking in the same direction. — Christ… It was difficult to tell, from behind, which of them was muttering. — The guest of honor. Why can't he stay home to get drunk?
Across the room, Stanley had looked up and interrupted himself to say, — Look, he must have just come, isn't that. .
— Somebody said he was coming, Agnes Deigh said. — Oh God, I don't want to listen to his soul-searching. .
— But if we…
— Not from him. Not tonight. She looked up at Stanley.
— Black beetles in wal-nut shells, bound round her baby's eyes, Mr. Crotcher sang. — Do you like that?
— The Boeuf on the Roof. . — I haven't seen her since Ischia. .
— It's in the Vatican, if you call that art. .
— And don't let those medieval costumes fool you, you can carry fifteen rounds in a good codpiece, a grenade if you're underdeveloped. .
— She says it happened right there in the Cappella Sistina, but you know her, it might as well have been the Cappella Paolina. .
— I wonder what ever happened to old Deedee, Ed Feasley said to no one, and then, to the sharkskinned Argentine, — What was that about battleships?
Don Bildow brought his shoulders up to a hopeful slope as Esther approached, but they sagged again as her eyes and her smile passed him to embrace a haggard, red-eyed, rash-looking young man who had just come in.
The two on the couch watched her, though the shorter one did not stop talking. — I got a look at the manuscript, he said. — It's called Wild Gousse Chase, and I swear he's got you in it. A character named Hawthorn, and I swear it's you, just about the time you were mixed up with that same blonde, except he's got her having you psychoanalyzed just like she had him analyzed when he was trying to get rid of her and couldn't because she was paying for the analysis, so he's got this character that I swear is you screwed up like that with her. You could sue that wise bastard.
— Yuh. Hand me that glass, will you?
— Who's that that Esther's got her hands all over now?
— A stupid kid named Otto.
— He looks like a truck ran over him.
Benny was talking to the man in his old suit. — I'm going back tomorrow, he said. — I haven't been home for eleven years. That's a long time, to go back and try to take up where you left off. I haven't seen anything grow for eleven years. You forget that things grow. The vegetables you get in restaurants, you can't believe that they ever really grew anywhere, and the flowers, you never think of flowers growing, you see them one way, cut, and you can't think of them any other way except posing, dead. The trees here don't grow, they're ready-made like furniture, that puts on new slip-covers in the spring. My God, you forget, you forget. .
— Benny. .
— Why, I'll be there tomorrow morning, I'll be out on the side porch watching the sun come up Christmas morning, you see if I'm not. .
Benny raised his head, looking around the room. Then, standing beside the door to the hall leading to the bedroom, he saw Ellery talking to the blonde; and when the man before him said, in the same tone he himself had been using a moment before, — Benny, would you take me along. .? Benny said nothing.
Behind him, a girl said, to someone else, — So I started this person-alidy course where they have you stand in front of a mirror and repeat your name over to yourself in a nice gentle tone. . and now I'm Mister Wipe's personal secretary. .
— So I said to her, you just go ahead and be pathological. .
— So I said to them when we got back to Florence, of course there's no place I'd rather live than Siena if I had my analyst there with me…
— So he said to me, Oh, Sappho, he was queer too wasn't he…
No longer the garden, but, as Benny said, cut flowers posing dead, without past or future, in as great a variety of jealous identities assembled as the tenants of an expensive florist's window, lacking the careless grandeur of indigenous plants, arranged instead in that slightly frantic symmetry which dazed passers-by call artistic, and move on, never hazarding the senses to violation by wire and the treachery of paper petals. Even now, Herschel, perilously erect, posed blossomtime. — Of course, baby, I've never been better in my life. . but no, I couldn't show you the tattoo. Since you must know, the two friends I met that night played a vile trick on me, at least it seemed so when I saw it in the mirror, what they had tattooed on me I mean, I never saw them again. But now that I've lived with it for awhile I'm quite fond of it. It's me. Do you like foxes? I can't even tell you, it's so naughty, but it is rather cute, would you like to see it? Come into the bathroom. .