The handsome man reddened, and Sheklov placed him; he'd been pointed out as a minister of religion. Powers? No, Powell, that was it: Maurice Powell.
“Hey, Don” Lora added, seeing that Shekldv was on the point of leaving the room. “Don't run off I”
Sheklov halted on the threshold. There was a pause. Eventually Powell gave an insincere grin and went out.
"Oh, that slug!" Lora said, falling back on the couch. Danty had twisted around into a sitting position and reached for a glass on a nearby table. "Put the lights down again, Don, and have a chair." "I don't want to interrupt " Sheklov began.
“Zip it!” she interrupted with a harsh laugh. “That's one of his lines Know what he did to me, last party he came to here? Walked right into my bedroom where I was making out with somebody, sat down, and started playing with himself while he watched Christ, he makes my skin crawl”
She seized and lit a cigarette from the table.
“Still, as long as he knows you're in here, he won't come back. Or with luck he'll find Peter. Made for each other, those two. . . , Shit, I forgot. Danty, this is Don Holtzer.”
“We almost met,” Danty said with a crooked grin. “In the pic with Prexy.”
“Yes, of course,” Lora muttered. “Jesus, Danty, how does that hit you?”
“Like dry ice.” Danty set his glass aside again. “You're from Canada, aren't you, Don?”
On edge for some indefinable reason-maybe because of the searching quality of the stare Danty had given him before-Sheklov nodded. “Yes, I'm in timber up there. Manitoba.”
That much was absolutely safe to say. There were scores of Canadian firms ready to give Russian agents cover, and he had a genuine deal to conclude.
“I'd like to go north some time,” Lora said. She realized that her left nipple was showing through one of the gaps in her dress, and tugged a lozenge of cloth back into place. “There's something rather cultural about Canada, I think.”
Sheklov blinked, experiencing the sensation of being displaced backward in time more acutely than ever. How long since kulturny ceased to be a fad-word Back There? Ten years? Twenty?
“What makes you say that?” he inquired, honestly curious.
“Well-uh-its links with European tradition. Speaking French there, for one thing.” Lora's answer had a seizing at-straws sound. “Mother's maid Estelle is from Montreal, and she speaks French. I think it's a romantic language.”
Obviously, having recovered from her annoyance at failing to get all the way with Danty, she was sliding into a regular role. Now she added in a wistful tone. “I've often dreamed of standing on the Champs-Elys&s and watching the sun go down behind the Arc de Triumphal”
“You'd have a long wait,” Danty said.
She glared at him. “Shit, you know what I mean!”
But Sheklov's nape had suddenly begun to prickle. Danty had uttered that statement with authority. And it was quite correct; if you were standing in the Champs-Elyses, the sun couldn't set behind the Arc de Triumphed. He said, before Lora could go on, “You've been there, have you?”
“How would I get a passport?” Danty grunted, and turned to his drink again.
Yet there had been assurance in his tone . . .
Still, Lora was talking again. “Have you traveled much, Don? It's easier for Canadians, isn't it?”
“Well, I guess so,” Sheklov said, mentally reviewing Holtzer's life-story. “But me, I haven't been around too much. We're one of the few countries left with a frontier, you know. Pushing north instead of west. That gives us a lot of elbow-room. So we-”
The door. which Powell had closed on leaving, slammed wide, and there in the opening was Peter. Obviously he had been drinking heavily; he was flushed and unsteady on his feet.
“Well, well” he exclaimed. “That's so sweet! My sister and her johnny reb snuggled up!”
“Zip your mouth. you reeky turd,” Lora said, and twisted on the couch so her back was towards her brother.
“Hey!” Sheklov exclaimed. half-rising. A look of instant fury had appeared on Peter's face, and he seemed about to launch himself bodily at Lora.
“Oh, fade away” she told him over her shoulder.
“Peter?” a richly resonant voice said from outside. Yes, it was Powell back again. “Ah, there you are” He touched the boy companionably on the arm, and left his hand there as Peter stepped back against him.
“I'm going to make you pay for that!” he snarled at Lora.
“Peter!” Powell reproved. “That's no way to talk to-”
“So how would you like to be called a reeky turd?”
“Oh, sticks and stones, you know, sticks and stones” Having located Peter again, Powell seemed to have had his good humor restored too. He eased the boy into a chair and sat on its arm, his hand still where he had first put it. “I must say the party's going splendidly, isn't it? Are you enjoying yourself, Lora?”
“In the company of my johnny reb, yes, thank you.”
“My dear girl!” Powell said, shocked. “That's not a terra to bandy around lightly, you know. To call someone a reb is to accuse him of being a wastrel, whose actions strike at the very foundations of our cherished heritage”
And Danty glanced up and nodded: mm-hm!
That threw Powell completely. He almost gaped for a moment, and then added, making a fast comeback, “Though we must not condemn too harshly. It's not for us to sit in judgment, after all.”
“Except on ourselves,” Danty murmured, and packed a dozen personal implications into the comment. Powell got them all. He tugged at his clerical collar as though it were suddenly too tight.
"Very true. I must remember that phrase. 'Sermons in stones . . .' And we're told that stony ground will be the
lot of some of our seed. Tell me, young man, are you lapsed from the brotherhood of your church?" "I guess so," Danty said indifferently.
“Shame! But we mustn't lose hope for you, must we? 'There is more joy in heaven-' And so on.”
Maliciously Danty said, “And so on-what?”
“'Over one sinner that repenteth,”' Powell answered automatically. Then he realized he was being needled. He rose.
“Pardon me,” he said with a half-bow. “I'm a longsuffering man, but I can't endure mockery of my Cloth. Come, Peter. I think I begin to understand your antipathy to your sister.”
The instant the door closed, Lora threw herself at Danty. “Oh, you're wonderful” she cried, and thrust her tongue into his ear. “I'll go find some more drinks-I want to wash away the taste of that slug Won't be long!”
And, rising, she added to Sheklov, “What's yours, Don? Whiskey? Rightly”
Left alone with Danty, Sheklov thought himself by main force back into the conservatively disapproving role that fitted his pose as a successful Canadian salesman, and said, “You told the minister you're a reb. I hope you were only -uh-needling him?”
Danty gave a shrug. “Well, I didn't invent the term, but I find it easy to put on.”
Sheklov's mind raced. How to strike a balance between ostensible conformity and real interest? Once again he recalled Bratcheslavsky, squatting on the floor in distant Alma-Ata; the old man had said, “Reb! That's a word to bear in mind. There's something going on. From here one can't find out exactly what. Official smog surrounds the reality. Maybe it's just another term for what we used to call stilyagf,'or jet-set. On the other hand, maybe not.”
He felt suddenly dizzy. Those dark eyes were boring into his again. Could the liquor-? No, of course not. It was far weaker than the 140-proof Polish vodka he . . .
From a very great distance a voice that was recognizably Danty's reached him. It was saying, “You want I should join the church Powell runs? Twenty million people watch his sermons every Sunday. That makes him a holy man?”