When he came into the crowded room, it was just past twelve. People were singing and embracing and that girl who passed out at all the parties was doing it again in the corner. Whitacre saw his wife in the crowd kissing a little man who looked like Hollywood. Somebody put a drink in his hand and a tall girl spilled some potato salad on his shoulder and said, "Excellent salad." She brushed vaguely at his lapel with a long, exquisite hand with crimson nails an inch and a half in length. Katherine came over with enough bosom showing to power a frigate in a mild breeze and said, "Mike, darling." She kissed him behind the ear, and said, "What are you doing tonight?" Michael said, "My wife arrived yesterday from the Coast." And Katherine said, "Ooops. Sorry. Happy New Year."
Michael lifted his glass and drank half of its contents. It seemed to be Scotch into which someone had poured lemon soda. Tomorrow, he thought, will be time enough for the wagon. After all, he had had three already, so this night was lost anyhow. Michael waited until he saw his wife finish kissing the bald little man, who wore a swooping Russian cavalryman's moustache.
Michael made his way across the room and came up behind his wife. She was holding the little man's hand, and saying, "Don't tell anyone, Harry, but the script stinks."
"You know me, Laura," the bald man said. "Do I ever tell anyone?"
"Happy New Year, darling." Michael kissed Laura's cheek.
Laura turned round, still holding the bald man's hand. She smiled. Even with the din of celebration all around her, and the drunks and commotion, there was tenderness and melting, that lovely welcome that always surprised and shook Michael, no matter how many times he saw it. She put up her free arm and drew Michael closer to her to kiss him. There was a single, hesitating moment when his cheek was next to hers, before she kissed him, when he could sense her sniffing inquisitively. He felt himself grow stolid and sullen, even as they kissed. She always does it, he thought. New Year, old year, makes no difference.
"I doused myself, before leaving the theatre," he said, pulling away and standing straight, "with two bottles of Chanel Number 5."
He saw Laura's eyelids quiver a little, hurt. "Don't be mean to me," she said, "in 1938. Why're you so late?"
"I stopped and had a couple."
"With whom?" The suspicious, pinched look that always came over Laura's face when she questioned him corrupted its usual delicate, candid expression.
"Some of the boys," he said.
"That's all?" Her voice was light and playful, in the accepted tone in which you quizzed your husband in public in her circle.
"No," said Michael. "I forgot to tell you. There were six Polynesian dancing girls with walnuts in their navels, but we left them at the Stork."
"Isn't he funny?" Laura said to the bald man. "Isn't he terribly funny?"
"This is getting domestic," the bald man said. "This is when I leave. When it gets domestic." He waved his fingers at the Whitacres. "Love you, Laura, darling," he said, and burrowed into the crowd.
"I have a great idea," Laura said. "Let's not be mean to wives tonight."
Michael drained his drink, and put the glass down. "Who's the moustache?" he asked.
"Oh, Harry?"
"The one you were kissing."
"Harry. I've known him for years. He's always at parties." Laura touched her hair tenderly. "Here. On the Coast. I don't know what he does. Maybe he's an agent. He came over and said he thought I was enchanting in my last picture."
"Did he really say enchanting?"
"Uhuh."
"Is that how they talk in Hollywood these days?"
"I guess so." She was smiling at him, but her eyes flicked back and forth, looking over the room, as they always did everywhere but in their own home. "How did you think I was in my last picture?"
"Enchanting," Michael said. "Let's get a drink."
Laura stood up and took his arm and rubbed her cheek softly against his shoulder and said, "Glad I'm here?" and Michael grinned and said, "Enchanted." They both chuckled as they went towards the bar, side by side, through the mass of people in the centre of the room.
The bar was in the next room, under an abstract painting of what was probably a woman with three magenta breasts, seated on a parallelogram.
Wallace Arney was there, greying and puffy, holding a teacup in his hand. He was flanked by a squat, powerful man in a blue-serge suit who looked as though he had been out in the weather for ten winters in a row. There were two girls, with flat, pretty faces and models' bony, ungirdled hips, who were drinking whisky straight.
"Did he make a pass at you?" Michael heard one of the girls saying as he came up.
"No," the other girl said, shaking her sleek, blonde hair.
"Why not?" the first girl asked.
"At the moment," the blonde girl said, "he's a Yogi."
Both girls stared reflectively at their glasses, then drained them and walked off together, stately and graceful as two panthers in the jungle.
"Did you hear that?" Michael asked Laura.
"Yes." Laura was laughing.
Michael asked the man behind the bar for two Scotches and smiled at Arney, who was the author of Late Spring. Arney merely continued to stare directly ahead of him, saying nothing, from time to time lifting the teacup to his lips, in an elegant, shaky gesture.
"Out," said the man in the blue-serge suit. "Out on his feet. The referee ought to stop the bout to spare him further punishment."
Arney looked around him, grinning and furtive, and pushed his teacup and saucer towards the man behind the bar. "Please," he said, "more tea."
The bartender filled his cup with rye and Arney peered around him once more before accepting it. "Hello, Whitacre," he said. "Mrs Whitacre. You won't tell Felice, will you?"
"No, Wallace," Michael said. "I won't tell."
"Thank God," Arney said. "She won't let me have even a beer." His voice, hoarse and whisky-riddled, wavered in self-pity. "Not even a beer. Can you imagine that? That's why I carry a teacup. From a distance of three feet, who can tell the difference? After all," he said defiantly, sipping from the cup, "I'm a grown man. She wants me to write another play." Now he was aggrieved. "Just because she's the wife of my producer she feels she has a right to throw a glass right out of my hand. Humiliating. A man my age should not be humiliated like that." He turned vaguely to the man in the blue-serge suit. "Mr Parrish here drinks like a fish and nobody humiliates him. Everybody says, isn't it touching how Felice devotes herself to that drunken Wallace Arney? It doesn't touch me. Mr Parrish and I know why she does it. Don't we, Mr Parrish?"
"Sure, Pal," said the man in the blue suit.
"Economics. Like everything else." Arney waved his cup suddenly, splashing whisky on Michael's sleeve. "Mr Parrish is a Communist and he knows. The basis of all human action. Greed. Naked greed. If they didn't think they could get another play out of me, they wouldn't care if I lived in a distillery." Looking at Laura he said: "Your wife is very pretty. Very pretty indeed. I've heard her spoken of here tonight in glowing terms." He leered at Michael knowingly. "Glowing terms. She has several old friends among the assembled guests here tonight. Haven't you, Mrs Whitacre?"
"Yes," said Laura.
"Everybody has several old friends among the assembled guests," Arney said. "That's the way parties are these days. Modern society. A nest of snakes, hibernating for the winter, everybody wrapped around everybody else. Maybe that'll be the theme of my next play. Except I won't write it." He drank deeply. "Marvellous tea. Don't tell Felice." Michael took Laura's arm and started to leave. "Don't go, Whitacre," Arney said. "I know I'm boring you, but don't go. I want to talk to you. What do you want to talk about? Want to talk about Art?"